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Security

Submission + - Analysis of a hardware backdoor (ksplice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Remember Reflections on Trusting Trust? We know we can't trust our compilers, or our operating systems, or our userspace software. Now even our hardware might be out to get us. This post describes how to install a backdoor in the "expansion ROM" of a PCI card, which patches the BIOS to patch GRUB to patch the Linux kernel to give the controller remote root access. The upshot is that even if the compromise is detected and the victim reinstalls the operating from CD, the backdoor will still be there. Now you know why the NSA builds all its own hardware!
Wireless Networking

The Many Faces of 3G 122

Posted by Soulskill from the propaganda-of-the-ether dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Did you ever notice how each new generation of cell-phone tech gets branded '3G,' and the previous thing is retroactively downgraded to some lesser number of Gs? An MIT engineer explains why in this brilliant essay about '3G' over the last 10 years, showing how the cell carriers have kept offering it and swiping it away to sell more stuff. He cites numerous Cingular/AT&T and Sprint press releases showing how the companies have made '3G' into a brand name ideally suited for amnesiac consumers. Meanwhile, no cell carrier is foolish enough to sell you bottom-line throughput like an ISP in 1996 — you could actually hold them to that (PDF)."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - The many faces of 3G (ksplice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Did you ever notice how each new generation of cell-phone tech gets branded "3G", and the previous thing is retroactively downgraded to some lesser number of G's? An MIT engineer explains why in this brilliant essay about "3G" in the last 10 years, showing how the cell carriers have kept offering it and swiping it away to sell more stuff. He cites numerous Cingular/AT&T and Sprint press releases showing how the companies have made "3G" into a brand name ideally suited for amnesiac consumers. Meanwhile, no cell carrier is foolish enough to sell you bottom-line throughput like an ISP in 1996 — you could actually hold them to that.

Submission + - Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day (sysadminday.com)

Submitted by ArbiterOne
ArbiterOne writes: The 11th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day is today. Celebrated worldwide on the last Friday of July, this holiday honors those who fight in the digital trenches to keep the 'Net alive.

OpenDNS offers a way to remind your boss about the holiday, while another blogger shares war stories. The startup Ksplice created an homage to these heroes... in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure.

How are you celebrating Sysadmin Day?
Unix

Submission + - Writing filesystems now as easy as Web apps (reddit.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Remember the old days of writing Web apps, when you had to parse the CGI arguments separately, do all the safety checks yourself and implement everything manually? Neither do I, but it looks like all the cool stuff from Web apps is making its way to writing filesystems. This guy shows how to writing an entire Linux filesystem in 50 lines of Python using "dispatch" techniques totally stolen from Ruby on Rails. Are we ready to give up the Web and go back to just using the filesystem for everything, the way Unix intended?

Comment Re:Anyone else think is was a .NET Fortran? (Score 1) 267

by jesboat (#31116578) Attached to: An Interview With F# Creator Don Syme

The name "functional" is a little confusing, since imperative languages are heavily based on functions as well, though they are not typically used in the same way.

Actually, imperative languages are typically based on procedures, not functions. The fact that such languages tend to call procedures "functions" is the confusing bit.

Comment xmonad (Score 1) 460

by jesboat (#30944554) Attached to: 2 Displays and 2 Workspaces With Linux and X?

xmonad does what you want with desktops my default. Each of my monitors is bound to one specific workspace at a time; I can switch either monitor independently to any workspace, or manually stretch windows across the gap in between.

You can use xmonad as the window manager for GNOME.

It'll require a little bit of tweaking to make it look normal, though (you'll need to add window decorations, and configure it to make windows floating by default), or you could learn the keyboard shortcuts and use tiling, which sounds like it may work better with the way you want to think about screens anyway. (It sounds terrible, I know, but it's remarkably effective.)

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HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

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