Re: sexist content in the package openclipart2-png
On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Martin Read <zen75...@zen.co.uk> wrote: > On 01/01/16 17:47, Ric Moore wrote: >> >> On 01/01/2016 11:23 AM, pe...@berghold.net wrote: >>> >>> I'm confused what specifically is meriting censorship? >> >> >> I'm not seeing any full frontal nudity. Ric > > > An image can feature full frontal nudity without being an exercise in sexual > objectification, and equally can be an exercise in sexual objectification > without featuring full frontal nudity. > > A reasonable person could certainly conclude that quite a few of the images > specifically called out by the original poster in this thread > fall into the latter category. Actually that is incorrect. All such conclusions rest on the interpretation of the graphic, and interpretation is guided or even controlled by the biases of the observer. So objectification, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. So people who detect objectification in an arrangement of pixels should be forbidden from interpreting imagery. Such a policy is NOT censorship -- it is more an exercise of preventive medicine. One might as well object to the data downloaded on the basis that the bits involved were recycled rather than fresh. Prohibit images composed of stale bits! Not. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America
nano needs curses.h?
The following sequence of commands leads to an error: mkdir nano cd nano apt-get source nano ./configure make [... snip ...] make[2]: Entering directory `/var/home/lee/Work/demos/nano/nano-2.2.6/src' gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.. -DLOCALEDIR=\/usr/local/share/locale\ -DSYSCONFDIR=\/usr/local/etc\-g -O2 -MT browser.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/browser.Tpo -c -o browser.o browser.c In file included from proto.h:27:0, from browser.c:24: nano.h:92:20: fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory compilation terminated. Should the nano package include curses.h or is some other package a prerequisite for nano? Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/CABaAhFAZvbA7jqb4Do1XTr5==0vfw7kgsgdbtnq+qomeb0e...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Important and Confidential
No. If you ask again me answer will be _HELL_NO_. Please go eat something poinsonous and die in agony. Have a bad day. On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 9:20 PM, VACCATION TOUR jamesmithvaccati...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I'm sharing some private and important documents with you, kindly click the link below and Sign In with your email to view the documents shared with you privately. http://acerossatelite.com/doc/ Important: This e-mail message may contain information which is confidential or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this message and any attachments without distributing or retaining a copy. Thank you.
Re: Installing an Alternative Init?
On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Patrick Bartek nemomm...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 10 Nov 2014, Michael Biebl wrote: Am 10.11.2014 um 17:26 schrieb Patrick Bartek: On Mon, 10 Nov 2014, Michael Biebl wrote: You can use pre-seeding and run preseed/late_command=in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core in the debian-installer. While that does indeed first install systemd-sysv, it's directly replaced again during system installation and doesn't require you to boot with systemd as PID 1. So it might be pretty close to what you're looking for. Should I install LILO first and then replace it with GRUB? Should I install Gnome first and then replace it with XFCE? Hardly. Of all the options available in the NON-expert installer, the choice of init alternatives might not warrant a user selection option, but all of the _consequences_ of that selection, i.e., things that get sucked in, mandate that users be offered a choice. Silent selection of a user-hostile init system is probably sub-optimal. After all, what gas Debian got to hide? In theory, nothing. But Yogi Berra had some insightful comments about the difference between theory and practice. Thanks. But wouldn't it be nice if as an option, you could just pick which init you wanted in the installer. It would make things so much easier. Too late to implement this, I suppose. Maybe, in the next release? Most users simply don't care and don't want to be bothered with this. I agree, but enough do -- mainly server guys -- that it is a problem. It's not like we prompt the user whether he wants to use grub or isolinux. If we added an explicit switch, this would have to be in expert-install-mode only imo. I can't speak for the d-i people, but Maybe, we should for diversity of choice. There is an option of where to install grub after all even though most put it on the MBR. But I agree the init options should be in expert-install. Will make everyone happy. Freedom of choice is the greatest freedom. Freedom to make such a consequential choice should not be limited to experts. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America
Re: redo
On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard j.deboynepollard-newsgro...@ntlworld.com wrote: Lee Winter: One key component of an effective startup process is dependency handling. So why not look for one of the best as a model? I suggest DJB's redo system. It is excruciatingly simple. But very effective. And it is the opposite of monolithic. Is practically nonexistent the opposite of monolithic, now? (-: He never actually published it, you know (although a few of his other unfinished works that did get published contain glimpses in their build systems). The task of constructing and publishing working redo toolsets was left to Alan Grosskurth, Avery Pennarun, and some other bloke. There are more than three implementations of what little DJB did publish, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. But building software and booting (including careful shutdown) are two quite separate goals. I suspect you interpreted my suggestion a bit too literally. redo is a useful tool that can have a use in system initialization. Someone asked me an interesting question about /etc/rc.conf.local in FreeNAS recently and I came up with an interesting answer that made use of redo which I have to write up at some point. But it's another tool in a good toolbox, not the whole of the toolbox. Nor is it necessarily the starting point for everything that has the word dependency somewhere in its description. I can think of three things in the various implementations of redo that will interact quite poorly with the notion of repeatably starting up daemons with controlled initial process states and dropped privileges: maintaining database and job control access, alternative routes, and what the process tree ends up looking like. And that's skipping over the whole notion of shutdown. There are ways to marry service dependencies with the the-filesystem-is-the-database paradigm, but one doesn't really start here to reach them. DJB's design for redo is not aimed at an init tool. It is aimed at a make tool. It might be possible to adapt a make tool into an init tool, but that does not sound to me like it would be fun. The missing concept is a replacement for timestamp sequencing as used by make et al with a set of events that mean approximately ready. And initing requires a systematic approach to determining readiness for every step of the boot process. I don't think timestamps will cut it. We need a different boolean predicate. And I agree that it has to be bidirectional in an edge-triggered sense. Maybe Alan Grosskurth, Avery Pennarun, or that other bloke have written some tools for system and daemon management. It's possible. I do not track those implementations. I did study redo intensively as part of a better build search about a year ago. There were two finalists in my search, of which redo was one. But IMHO redo has too much human element to be reliable for large software development projects. But with redo it is _extremely_ easy to determine what is going on and just as easy to customize. Those are both properties that I also value for system software. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America
Running Debian Installer without rebooting.
It appears to me that it should be possible to run the Debian Installer just as a program and a set of package files rather than as a bootable image containing both. So, given a bootable image in .ISO or .img format, how can the image be transformed into an executable program and associated package files that reside on a typical (HDD) file system? As a corollary question, are the debian installer isos bootable as is, or is it mandatory that they be burned to media (CD/DVD/USB) and the media booted? For example, several boot loaders allow a kind of chainload from their own boot sector to the boot sector of an ISO or img file. But the booted image has to be able to find itself in order to continue the process. Can debian install images find themselves? Thanks for any hints about this topic or where I might look for more information. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America
Re: If Not Systemd, then What?
On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Patrick Bartek nemomm...@gmail.com wrote: After much vitriolic gnashing of teeth from those opposed to systemd, I wonder... What is a better alternative? And it can't be sysvinit. Yes. Syvinit still works, but it is after all 20 years old. It's been patched and bolted onto and jury-rigged to get it to do things that weren't even around (or dreamt of) at its inception. It's long past due for a contemporary replacement. Whatever that may be. So, what would you all propose? For a server? Or for a user desktop? Or something that fulfills both scenarios? And why? Just wondering. One key component of an effective startup process is dependency handling. So why not look for one of the best as a model? I suggest DJB's redo system. It is excruciatingly simple. But very effective. And it is the opposite of monolithic. But the real answer to this question will be found in the specs for the better system. So someone needs to go through the specs for both sysv-init and its competitors marking features to keep and features to kill. Then the real discussion will begin. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 5:24 AM, Richard Hector rich...@walnut.gen.nzwrote: On 19/05/14 17:42, Lee Winter wrote: On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 10:50 PM, Zenaan Harkness z...@freedbms.net mailto:z...@freedbms.net wrote: Are you aware that there is a useful (from the perspective of freedoms) distinction to be made between physical property and so-called 'intellectual property'? No. In fact hell no. You may not consider the distinction useful; others do. Too bad for those others. But claiming there is a distinction is not the same as there being such a distinction. If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg. (Attribution to A. Lincoln). The only distinction I have heard of is the cost-of-copying argument. It claims thatbecause information can now be copied inexpensively it is somehow in a different category than ordinary, material possessions. But that argument is nonsense. Copying informationis not free. Injection molding is rigiculously cheap compared to other methods of production (once the molds have been made). Does that mean that injection-molded property is in a different category than machined property? Hardly. And as for arbitrary and capricious distinctions, I draw a distinction between what is mine and what is not mine. Shouldn't that distinction have the same weight as the distinction you would like to draw between intellectual and non-intellectual property? Note that that question is really a trick question. So-called non-intellectual property _always_ has an intellectual component of its value. Often it it the only component with any value. So I can argue that there is no such thing as non-intelletual property because anything that just happens naturally is not property. It is only when it is removed from or altered from its natural state that it becomes property. Consider if you please (or use the Socratic defense of not listening) the definition of property. How does something become property? Materials in the wild are not property. So how does it become property owned by some person(s)? I like John Locke's answer in the labor theory of property/ownership/first appropriation. Natural materials become owned when a person, who automatically owns their ownself and thus their own labor, mixes that labor with the natural materials. So plowing a field, digging a well or a mine, or cutting down a tree are all ways of mixing one's labor with raw land, which combination is the basis for all property. Even unimproved land can be characterized as property if the would-be owner is willing to defend it. It's an interesting definition; I doubt it's universal. For example, one might consider that 'wild' materials are owned by everybody, rather than nobody. So if you improve it, then both parties - everybody as well as you specifically - part-own it. Or if nobody owns the wild materials, then it could be considered that you part-own it, and nobody owns the rest. The phrase I think you are looking for it the common heritage of all mankind. It was stupid when it was adopted by the United Nations,it is stupid now, and it will always be a stupid excuse (as opposed to a reasoned reason) for preventing people from benefiting from their own efforts. Control freaks love it though. Intellectual property is the most pure form of personal property. It involves skull sweat. There may be little or no physical property or even no tools involved in the creation of the intellectual stuff. But it is absolutely and unconditionally the fruit of human effort. Mental effort. I agree that by your (Locke's) above definition, you own the results of your thinking. But remember Newton as well - If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. The results of your thinking are almost certainly a 'derivative work' of the results of many other people's thinking. I would suspect in most cases, most of what you (not specifically you) come up with is not original. Those are just attributions. They need to be made, but if you read Newton's work product it is difficult to the point to impossibility to avoid the conclusion that his contribution was unique in human history. And if you don't consider pure thought to be property, we're back to square one. So, what are the arguments in support of the proposition that pure thought, principally ideas, are not property? I have studied this question for a long time. I know of no such argument that holds gravel.much less sand or water. And we have an unlimited supply because, while real estate is a finite supply, the scope of human thought is not finite. So no limit applies. And there is no barrier to entry. One cannot erect a fence to prevent people from thinking the way one could erect a fence to protect a field against trespassing. Not only is the scope of human
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: A lot of people responding to this post don't seem to understand that freedom applies to more than just personal choice. The United States was not a free nation while it accepted slavery and Firefox is not free software while it accepts digital restrictions management. Just as no one forced Americans to own slaves, the fact that slavery was allowed was an insult to notion of freedom. Arguing that the freedom to choose whether to own slaves or not made Americans freer would be called ridiculous by any sane person, yet the same argument is being bandied about in this discussion as if it made any sense. The Free Software Foundation got this one right. The above message contains good rhetoric and execrable reasoning. The above dogma confuses two basic categories of freedoms freedom from andfreedom to. Freedom from is the ability to avoid undesirable situations. Freedom to is the ability to pursue desirable situations. Being a slavery is something that people tend to avoid. So the freedom (or lack thereof) must be assessed from the perspective of the slave). If one believes otherwise then, in the vein of the above statements, America_was_ free because the slave _owners_ were free to own other human beings. Is that the freedom you are trying to promote? DRM is two things: a legal doctrine and a technical implementation. While I believe in protecting the rights of owners of intellectual property, both the existing DRM legal doctrine and the original and existing DRM implementations are flawed. So badly that I will not abide by them, rely upon them, nor tolerate their existence within my areas of control. DRM is not about freedom of any kind. It is about control of ones property. Owners of intellectual property are free (in all senses of the term, including Stallman's) to attach such restriction on the property they sell/lend/rent/gift.. Potential customers are free (in all senses of the term, including Stallman's) to buy/borrow/rent/accept (or not) that property based on its own merits or based on the fact of DRM restrictions. The real argument is not about DRM restrictions. Those restrictions are irrelevant. The real argument is whether to allow DRM-restricted property (often called content) into one's own domain. Anyone who proposes to restrict my ability to choose, for or against, DRM-restricted property is making a proposition that I will _always_ res *ist.* After all, it is about freedom. Mine. Not some wacko theoretical objection based on alleged principles, but a fully personal decision on a care-by-case basis about the property in question. And, for the record, I do not consider intellectual property to be morally equivalent to a human being. Owning property has been around for million of years. And I approve of that practice (see Locke). The distinction is that people are not and never have been property, much as some would like to think of other people as property. But, contrary to Stallman's arguments, intellectual property is real and worth protecting. Otherwise I would consider every GPL protected product to have a BSD or an MIT license. It is my respect for the owner's ability to set terms of use for their property that protects GPL'd products. Not the terms of that or any other license. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Slavko li...@slavino.sk wrote: Ahoj, Dňa Sat, 17 May 2014 21:00:48 +0900 Joel Rees joel.r...@gmail.com napísal: What Mozilla is doing is providing a framework for keeping the companies that want into your computer out, by providing them tools to get only what the law allows them and no more. I am not lawyer, then i will not write about laws, nor in our country nor international. I will write only on ethic level... But exactly this i consider as wrong. Or will these companies allow me to go into their computer(s) to i can see, that they don't break my right? I will consider all companies as criminal, by the same way as these companies consider all people as criminals (which is needed to persecute by inspecting of their computers). At least, most people here know, how are companies involved in people's privacy, how they know to respect personal information, etc. Nothing from this, only money, money and money and THEIR right. Nothing about our rights. And this Mozilla's decision is another step to get our right into second rail. And right are thing, for which the free software starts, not for money, not for to be best browser, only rights. Finally, is widely known how are these companies able to approve e.g. GPL and right of author's of the GPL (or similar free) software. Once again, i am not a criminal. And i want to no criminals go into my home at all, don't depends if they will use door or computer (internet connection) None of the above matters. . Do you want this? Now you are getting to the heart of the matter. Neither you, nor Mozilla, nor Adobe, nor FSF have any say in the matter. It is a personal matter. I will make the decision myself. I will also live with the consequences of that decision. But if you interfere with my ability to make that decision, then you are making a bad mistake. After all, it is about freedom. Mine. Not yours, not Mozilla's, not Adobe's, and certainly not FSF's. Mine. And when you comprehend that then you will then understand why all of the preceding portions of your message just don't matter. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: So freedom from doesn't include freedom from DRM? Of course you are free from DRM. Just don't buy/install content that is restricted by DRM. Unfortunately the DMCA and its international clones prohibit me from accessing DRM except by methods provided by the content owner. Yeah. That is _their_ freedom in action. They are perfectly free to be as stupid as they want. I am not free to use my own implementation through reverse engineering, etc.. Think of the DRM as part of their packaging. You aren't free to dictate to them (thus limiting their freedom) that they have to ship to you in green-qualified, 100% recycled, non-climate-harming bubble- wrap either. Don't re-implement DRM, just find the loopholes in it and use them. Or exercise your freedom to choose another content vendor and tell the DRM people about it in excruciating detail. Whining about DRM is both unsavory and unsatisfying. You aren't free to ignore the consequences of attempting to ignore the law of gravity. Whose fault is that? Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire (Live Free or Die) United States of America
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: On 18/05/14 01:49 PM, Lee Winter wrote: On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.netmailto: garyd...@torfree.net wrote: So freedom from doesn't include freedom from DRM? Of course you are free from DRM. Just don't buy/install content that is restricted by DRM. Unfortunately the DMCA and its international clones prohibit me from accessing DRM except by methods provided by the content owner. Yeah. That is _their_ freedom in action. They are perfectly free to be as stupid as they want. I am not free to use my own implementation through reverse engineering, etc.. Think of the DRM as part of their packaging. You aren't free to dictate to them (thus limiting their freedom) that they have to ship to you in green-qualified, 100% recycled, non-climate-harming bubble- wrap either. Don't re-implement DRM, just find the loopholes in it and use them. Or exercise your freedom to choose another content vendor and tell the DRM people about it in excruciating detail. Whining about DRM is both unsavory and unsatisfying. You aren't free to ignore the consequences of attempting to ignore the law of gravity. Whose fault is that? Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire (Live Free or Die) United States of America If packaging prevents me from using a product for a purpose that I am legally entitled to use it for then I have a right to demand that the packaging be changed. Correct. Andyou can demand that all day long from the content providers who use DRM. But your demands are just that: requests. Noeither you nor anyone else has the authority to _force_ them to accept andcomply with your demands. More importantly, you are not legally entitled to use the product in ways other than the provider permits. Like Micros~1, they can require that you hold your mouth a certain way. Facing that requirement you are not free to violate it. You are free to choose a different product (despite Ballmer's insistence otherwise). DRM prevents not just my use on platforms that they don't support but also to make fair use of the product. It does limit the portability of the product. That's the provider's problem. You are not free to solve that problem for them. It does not limit fair use. The term fair use has a technical definition in copyright law that provides an exception to the requirement for permission from the publisher. That discussion is way beyond the scope of this one. And that discussion is irrelevant to this one I think. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire (Live Free or Die) United States of America
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net wrote: On 18/05/14 02:41 PM, Lee Winter wrote: On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net mailto: garyd...@torfree.net wrote: On 18/05/14 01:49 PM, Lee Winter wrote: On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Gary Dale garyd...@torfree.net mailto:garyd...@torfree.net mailto:garyd...@torfree.net mailto:garyd...@torfree.net wrote: So freedom from doesn't include freedom from DRM? Of course you are free from DRM. Just don't buy/install content that is restricted by DRM. Unfortunately the DMCA and its international clones prohibit me from accessing DRM except by methods provided by the content owner. Yeah. That is _their_ freedom in action. They are perfectly free to be as stupid as they want. I am not free to use my own implementation through reverse engineering, etc.. Think of the DRM as part of their packaging. You aren't free to dictate to them (thus limiting their freedom) that they have to ship to you in green-qualified, 100% recycled, non-climate-harming bubble- wrap either. Don't re-implement DRM, just find the loopholes in it and use them. Or exercise your freedom to choose another content vendor and tell the DRM people about it in excruciating detail. Whining about DRM is both unsavory and unsatisfying. You aren't free to ignore the consequences of attempting to ignore the law of gravity. Whose fault is that? Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire (Live Free or Die) United States of America If packaging prevents me from using a product for a purpose that I am legally entitled to use it for then I have a right to demand that the packaging be changed. Correct. Andyou can demand that all day long from the content providers who use DRM. But your demands are just that: requests. Noeither you nor anyone else has the authority to _force_ them to accept andcomply with your demands. More importantly, you are not legally entitled to use the product in ways other than the provider permits. Like Micros~1, they can require that you hold your mouth a certain way. Facing that requirement you are not free to violate it. You are free to choose a different product (despite Ballmer's insistence otherwise). DRM prevents not just my use on platforms that they don't support but also to make fair use of the product. It does limit the portability of the product. That's the provider's problem. You are not free to solve that problem for them. It does not limit fair use. The term fair use has a technical definition in copyright law that provides an exception to the requirement for permission from the publisher. That discussion is way beyond the scope of this one. And that discussion is irrelevant to this one I think. So I am free to build a fence on public property that denies my neighbour the right to access his house? That seems to be the crux of your argument. No. That is neither part of nor related to my argument. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire (Live Free or Die) United States of America
Re: Iceweasel and DRM
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 10:21 PM, Zenaan Harkness z...@freedbms.net wrote: Those who (...whatever...) create content get to decide HOW THEY DISTRIBUTE or otherwise SELL that content. No more. No less. Wrong. Once it's on my computer, on in my brain, it's mine. I can do with it as I choose, and within the limits of my capacity. Wrong. The copyright holders continue to control your ability to make copies. That, after all, is what copyright means. If the copyright holders say no copies period, then you do not get to make _any_ copies. None for backup and none for your kids. If the copyright holders say one backup copy then that's all you can make. If the copyright holders say no other media then you can make copies to your heart's content, but only on the medium allowed. That means a floppy disk's contents cannot be copied to a CD, DVD, or to a web site. Period. Nor to any other medium. Only to other floppies. You do not buy the rights to a copyrighted work when you buy an instance of it. You could buy the copyright holder's interest, but that tends to be a complex transfer. Such rights generally do not appear on Amazon, Ebay, or Programmer's Connection's catalog. And once it is in your brain, anything you create yourself is called a derived work and it may not be distributed without permission from the original work's copyright holder. That is what clean room development is all about -- avoidance of derivation. Before you rant further it might be useful to actually understand the issues involved. So far you have only demonstrated serious misunderstandings. Note that the _statutory_ penalty for a purposeful violation of copyright law is USD$150,000.00 plus fees and legal costs. Per violation. Are you really going to admit in this public forum that you regularly violate copyright law on purpose? Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire (Live Free or Die) United States of America
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
help. But you appear to be beyond my ability to help. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire (Life Free or Die) United States of America
How to get D-I to put /boot on a flash drive?
If I want / to be on a hard drive and /boot to be on a separate drive or partition D-I appears to handle this request gracefully. But if I put / on a hard drive logical partition and /boot on a bootable flash drive partition, e.g, /dev/sdc1, it appears that there is no boot loader (e.g,, GRUB or LiLo) that can install itself. There are very many tutorials on how to get an install image or a live image onto a bootable flash drive, but I've not been able to find one that works with the boot info in /boot on a flash drive and the rest of the system on an HDD partition. Where should I be looking for information on this issue? -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/cabaahfd4pr7wm8sa2yvu5qxg1jwcvevdpfcfunnmuqwnpob...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Wiping hard drives - Re: debian-user-digest Digest V2011 #1704
On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:21 PM, D G Teed donald.t...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 11:07 PM, Scott Ferguson prettyfly.producti...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 12:57 PM, D G Teed donald.t...@gmail.com wrote: I think it is healthy to have a dose of skepticism with these things. You also need to apply that attitude to what you see in the mirror. It has been demonstrated that a zeroed drive cannot be recovered at the typical data recovery service business. No it has not. There is no such thing as a typical data recovery company. Each has strengths as weaknesses. There is also this outstanding challenge for someone to recover data from a zeroed drive: http://hostjury.com/blog/view/195/the-great-zero-challenge-remains-unaccepted That challenge is a crok of crap. Kinda like the reward put up for psychics to prove themselves. The only caveat which could be getting in the way is to not disassemble. 1. So you think three days is enough time? Have you ever had to read an entire drive one sector at a time? 80 GB is 160M 512-byte sectors. Even on a 15K RPM drive, single-sector reads will take a long time at one revolution per sector. 15K sectors per minute implies about 10K minutes. Three days is less than half of that. Yet With induced variations on the drive electronics one might need many such passes to accomplish a decoding. 2. So you think the prohibition on writing to the drive is not an obstacle? That eliminates a huge number of approaches based on characterizing the write circuitry. 3. So you think the disclosure requirement is not an obstacle? There is no word for that degree of naivete. This would get in the way of using a more powerful read head or other methods, but at the same time this does demonstrate if it is simply a personal drive you want to zero and sell on eBay, zeroing will cover the situation well enough. No it will not. But two passes with a TRNG will certainly do so. The skeptics here await links illustrating data has been accurately recovered from zeroed drives. Please hold your breathe until then. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America (NDY) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CABaAhFATBa2AAbVbXFw_YxMkH6+2MRhk7jxww=ki7b2pjkq...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Wiping hard drives - Re: debian-user-digest Digest V2011 #1704
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Aaron Toponce aaron.topo...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 08:59:14AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: If you want to be safe, you need to overwrite the data several times, Have anything to back that up? If you're using drives that used the old MFM or RLL encoding schemes, and had massive space for bits per linear inch, then sure, but on today's drives, with perpindicular encoding, and the extremely dense bit capacity, going more than once is silly. That conclusion is not valid. All such analysis is sensitive to the value of the data. If you are going up against a serious adversary, colloquially known as National Technical Means, then no amount of overwriting is secure. If you are going up against an ordinary thief of the machine or drive, then a single overwrite is sufficient. In fact there is no need to overwrite the entire drive when the meta-data of directories, inodes, journals, etc. is a small fraction of the entire drive. I perform this service for commercial recyclers. In addition to scrubbing techniques, some need to damage the drive by rendering it non-functional (with a hammer or a drill). Some need to destroy the drive, usually by shredding. Some need to destroy the recording medium, for which incineration tends to be the least expensive. For high security situations a combination of scrubbing and physical measures are recommended. For example, unscrubbed media that has been finely shredded can still offer recoverable data because the high density of the recording means that a very small shred may contain many intact sectors of data. 'shred' does delete data several times. We hardly are able to recover data that one time really was deleted at home, but CSI is able to do this [citation needed] and I'm not talking about the trash that is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. There e.g. are real methods with lasers that make it possible to recover magnetic data from sledgehammer deformed HDDs and even a private person legally just need to pay some k of Euros to a company and can benefit from those methods. OTOH nobody is able to factorise primes, it would take 20 or 30 years to crack openPGP with a super computer, but if there should be delicate data on your HDDs, that isn't encrypted, note, it just takes some seconds to open the door of your flat and to get your HDD that's still in use. You may want to read this, as well as the references the article links to: http://goo.gl/5QG4U Claiming that you can recover data after a single pass of zeros on today's spinning platters is urban legend. No. Consider that those organizations able to recover after a single pass with known mask pattern have a negative incentive to advertise their abilities. One pass scrubbing, even with a variable mask pattern driven by a TRNG rather than a PRNG, is ineffective because the write activity hands the adversary a complete copy of the mask pattern. A second pass to obscure the mask pattern is strongly recommended. I guess if you like wasting your time, go for it. I've got better things to do than do several passes on a 2TB SATA disk, running at 30MBps, and I can sleep at night knowing that no one will get access to the data. Why do you care how long it takes? Stick the drive in in a spare, low-end machine and let it hum for as long as it takes. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America (NDY) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cabaahfcp5mo1c4zjenrh1wsth7hhojsm-0yuz0suxocqe2z...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Wiping hard drives - Re: debian-user-digest Digest V2011 #1704
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 12:57 PM, D G Teed donald.t...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Lee Winter lee.j.i.win...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Aaron Toponce aaron.topo...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 08:59:14AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: If you want to be safe, you need to overwrite the data several times, Have anything to back that up? If you're using drives that used the old MFM or RLL encoding schemes, and had massive space for bits per linear inch, then sure, but on today's drives, with perpindicular encoding, and the extremely dense bit capacity, going more than once is silly. I perform this service for commercial recyclers. Or in other words, it must be true because the service provided depends on this being true. No. And I find your comment offeisive. It remains an urban legend as long as there is no proof offered otherwise. I'm not saying it is true or not, but just that there has never been a demonstration made public of getting data off drives after a complete zeroing. That you know of. I suspect I read much more of this literature than you do. So it remains an unknown, and never demonstrated. You also failed to consider the asymmetry between the possible outcomes once the truth becomes known. If one-pass overwrite is sufficient, but one uses multiple passes, then one has lost a small increment of time. If one pass overwrite is not sufficient and you use only one pass, then you have a disaster on your hands. The way to resolve uncertainty is not to guess or flip a coin. It is to carefully evaluate the risk vs. cost tradeoff. People who perform that evaluation tend to be conservative about assessing unknown potential risks against known, fixed, and minor costs. Paranoia is whole 'nother story. I suspect you use the term for dramatic purposes rather than for the purpose of clarity. It devalues all of your comments. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America (NDY) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cabaahfbmeqcjwhu+5n3t7hxunssxtsivfuiy-eyjxqu+3qd...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Wiping hard drives - Re: debian-user-digest Digest V2011 #1704
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Scott Ferguson prettyfly.producti...@gmail.com wrote: I use Dban and shred (stick them in an old machine and take as long as it takes) - then disable the drive (pin in the breather hole), pliers on the power connectors. DBAN is definitely one of the better tools out there, but it has weaknesses that have to be considered. For example, it believes the drive ID and info. It uses that info to determine what needs to be done (e.g., number of sectors to be written). If the drive is working and being replaced to increase capacity, that it not a problem. But a drive being replaced due to unreliability or with intermittent errors can deceive DBAN which will happily scrub only the number of sectors reported by the corrupted firmware. So when you run it, particularly when doing batches of drives, you have to verify that the ID and drive info matches the specs on the drive. Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America (NDY) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cabaahfaqs40l35xdxxfffz+v2vzmzurefh_ky-aoq_tfzl1...@mail.gmail.com
Re: file systems
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI edua...@kalinowski.com.br wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition Both wrong. Wrong context. Please read them again carefully. Bigamy is having one spouse too many. Monogamy is the same. Are you writing from experience? Lee Winter Nashua, New Hampshire United States of America (NDY) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/banlktimvjuxg2oxzziekqh0dgczwrbv...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Free book - GNU/Linux Advanced Administration
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Kent West we...@acu.edu wrote: Why, oh why, don't professionals proof-read their material? On the first page, in the first paragraph: The GNU/Linux systems have reached an important level of maturity, allowing to integrate them in almost any kind of work environment, from a desktop PC to the *sever* facilities of a big company. A legitimate issue for publishers. One problem is writers who think spell checking is good enough. Clearly their self-expectations are set too low. Another problem is that it is extremely difficult for a writer to read what he actually wrote as opposed to what he intended to write. Even worse is the problem of what he meant by what he intended to write as opposed to what the reader might think he meant by what he actually wrote. This is why proofreading is a serious, professional (and thus expensive) skill. Multi-platform software coders learn the basics of such parallel, multi-path interpretation when they confront the problem of multiple compilers all of which claim to be standard, but no two of which interpret certain code fragments the same way. -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Sorting elements *and* knowing where each one has been put
On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Merciadri Luca luca.mercia...@student.ulg.ac.be wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi, I have some numerical values, i.e. something like == value_1 value_2 . . . value_n == There are many ways to sort them, but the `sort' command is clearly appropriate. The problem is that I need to know where value_i is, before, and after, the sorting. It can be found easily by keeping in memory where value_i is before the sorting (for every i, 1=i=n), and finding where value_i is after the sorting, by looking in the sorted numbers and finding value_i. However, this solution, despite being simple, is clearly bad on an algorithmic point of view. The best way is consequently to use the sorting function (which could be, e.g. a Heapsort, or simply the `sort' command) to know where value_i is displaced once it has been transformed by the sorting function. However, I do not know how I can do this with the `sort' function. Is it even possible? (I considered 1=i=n through the whole message.) In the discussion above you persist in mixing the sort function with the sort command. They are not the same, so please be more careful in your descriptions of what it is you want to accomplish. To sort with a function, such as is found in many programming languages, you should create a data structure containing the value to be sorted (the key) and any audit/trance information you need about the position of each item prior to the sort. After sorting such data structures with the language's sort() function you will be able to identify where each value started and ended. To sort with a command, such as is found in many command-line envoronments, you should create lines of text, each containing the value to be sorted (the key) and followed by any audit/trace information you need about the position of each item prior to the sort. After sorting the text lines with the command-line environment's text sorting utility you will be able to identify where each value started and ended. The above descriptions answer the question you asked. But it appears to me that the answer you need is related to a different question. What do you need to do with the values after they are sorted? If you have both the initially ordered list and the sorted list, why do you care where things started as long as they are where they need to be when you are done? -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Does lenny use grub2?
On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Stephen Powell zlinux...@wowway.com wrote: On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:31:13 -0500 (EST), Matteo Riva wrote: I have a squeeze system installed and I wanted to install a debian lenny in another partition and I was wondering if there could be issues with the bootloader. Does lenny use grub2 now? If not, will there be conflicts with the two versions? Grub2 should be able to boot both Squeeze (2.6.32) and Lenny (2.6.26) kernels. But putting them in separate partitions is another matter. I've never tried booting two completely separate Linux systems in different partitions from the same boot loader before. It seems like it should be possible, but I've never tried it. It is possible. With Grub. In fact the most bootable operating systems (environments in the case of micros~1 window~1) ever installed on a single PC was created exactly that way. They got more than 150 separate bootable partitions on (IIRC) four drives. -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: OT: Standards was Re: Does everything depend on everything?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Johannes Wiedersich johan...@physik.blm.tu-muenchen.de wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Dennis Wicks wrote: Sadly, only three nations have the good sense not to spend 10's of millions of their GNP converting to Yet Another Arbitrary System Of Measurement. Burma, Liberia, and the United States. FWIW, I don't think that it makes sense that different countries, etc. use different sets of standards. The standards [1] of the ISO [2] are not 'Yet Another Arbitrary System Of Measurement'. They are *the* common standard that exists. I wish that were true, but it is not. It is just ISO propoganda. All other systems are arbitrary (ie. different for different countries, different purposes, etc.). Wrong. The system of natural units is not arbitrary. So it is the One True System if you want to get religious about it. However, the individual metrics in all possible systems, including those based on natural units, have several equivalent forms, the choice of which is necessarily arbitrary, but only slightly. Note that this very mailing list would not exist in its present form, if instead of a common standard there were different implementations for email for the different applications and/or countries. By that reasoning the US component of this mailing list is necessarily incompatible with the rest of the internet. Since that conclusion is manifestly false either your factr or your reasoning is wrong. IMHO both are. There are many more examples, why common standards are important. That statement confuses common with right, which is a serious error. It also implicitly assumes that common standards are intolerant of alternatives, which is also manifestly wrong. And at one time the ISO system was uncommon, so it would have been subject to the same criticisms that you now level against its competitors. That indicates that your assertions are based on the shifting sands of history and its accidents rather than on objectively measureable merits. So why should anyone care about the current fads of metricians? After all they are certain to change. (C.F. the shrinkage in the ISO national standards for weight as compared to the master standard.) Please consider these propositions: Resolved: that the existence of standards is a Good Thing(tm). Resolved: that the existence of standards zealotry is a Bad Thing(tm). Since we have adequate standards we should not tolerate any kind of standards zealotry. -- Lee P.S. Astute observers will note that the Imperial/American system of units has already been converted to an ISO basis. That is why the modern inch is DEFINED to be 2.54 cm. -- L. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Floppy Net Install Stable
On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 4:58 PM, Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote: S. Fishpaste put forth on 10/29/2009 3:41 PM: Does this default to installing Etch, and does one get a choice to switch the distro sources list before it's written to disk during the install? I don't remember ... I'm pretty sure all the boot floppy installs point to the stable directories on the mirrors. Lenny is the current stable, so you should end up with a Lenny system regardless of using Sarge or Etch net install floppies. The lenny version of the network installer (which the badly named netinst is not) seems to look for both lenny and stable on the mirror. If either is missing it complains and the web server logs reflect the unsuccessful request. -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Could you recommend CD/DVD writer program?
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Leandro Quibem Magnabosco leandro.magnabo...@fcdl-sc.org.br wrote: This thread *has* to stop! And you are adding to it in order to shorten it? =( Every time someone replys to this thread, God kills a kitty. Who told you that? It's true. How would you know? -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Could you recommend CD/DVD writer program?
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Matthew Moore anonymous.jon...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday October 16 2009 9:11:05 am Lee Winter wrote: leandro.magnabo...@fcdl-sc.org.br wrote: This thread *has* to stop! And you are adding to it in order to shorten it? This thread is much like any infinite set. Adding a finite number of elements to it does not change it's size. Good point. But I think there's a reasonable quibble about the difference between unbounded and infinite (in the cantorian sense). Every time someone replys to this thread, God kills a kitty. Who told you that? It's true. How would you know? 2 observations: (1) I kill a kitty every time this thread is posted to. (2) you cannot prove that I am not god. (1) is a on't care. (2) is obviously false by inspection because I am. I think this is related to the proof of existence of actions god cannot perform like creating a stone so heavy he cannot reflect it. Being your probably belongs in that class. -- Lee P.S. for the purposes of this thread we should assume that there is no such thing otherwise we would have to submit to his/her/its dicta re list message length and the suitablity of Reply-To headers. Thus the topic is OT for this thread (as opposed to OT for this list). -- L. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Could you recommend CD/DVD writer program?
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Chris Jones cjns1...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 04:21:40AM EDT, Terence wrote: 2009/10/13 Dave Sherohman d...@sherohman.org: The position I was trying to explain in my earlier message was that, even though 99% of replies to mailing list messages are intended to go to the list, directing an intended-private message to the list causes over 100 times more harm than a message intended for the list being inadvertently made private. The Debian list policy is, therefore, reasonable, because it minimizes the overall total harm caused by misdirected messages. cut Well said. I think that about covers it. Not quite. +1 I have personally experienced the embarrassment of such situations on a couple of occasions, and counted my blessings that there was nothing sensitive in these messages. This is an excellent example of why there should not be a globally defined policy denying the utility of potentially useful features. While this poster has _personal_ experience that influences his preferences, others may have a different experiential context, and thus have a diferent preference. If Reply-To is available then users are able to exercise choice is using it or not. If Reply-To is not available due to some Ex-Cathedra policy decision then user's choices are eliminated. I suggest that it is not the place authors of mail readers nor of mailing list administrators to make user's choices for them, or worse, prohibit them from exercising choice at all. Consider an email UI that offered the following choices: - reply to sender (only) - reply to list (only) - reply to all This would appear to make it possible for the user to establish a default preference and selectively override it as necessary. If such a UI were commonly available, how would that hurt the community of mailing list members? -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Could you recommend CD/DVD writer program?
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Chris Jones cjns1...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 01:09:22PM EDT, Lee Winter wrote: [..] This is an excellent example of why there should not be a globally defined policy denying the utility of potentially useful features. No global policy..? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Spending too much time looking in the mirror? Almost everything you write was flat-out wrong. And couched in an argumentative tone that appears to invite a flaming response. You would probably enjoy such a response because it would make you feel superior. Thing is, I'm a sadist, so it is my intention to deny you that pleasure. Please suffer my neglect of your need in silence. The fact that some people fear inadvertent embarassment does not justify the administrative imposition of rules to protect all users by eliminating options they would reasonably expect to have available. Are you going to bounce message due to bad spelling? Or bad grammar? They are also embarassing and far more frequent. Just how far should protecting the members of the community from their own errors go? Personally, I neither need nor want such protection. If you and others like you want such protection you should implement it at your end and not impose your prejudices upon the other members of the community. One thing you mentioned, or at least implied, is certainly worthwhile, which is the fact the the responsibility for handling messaging lies with the writer, not matter how stupid and short-sighted the policies of the list admins might be and no matter how malformed the mail reader software might be. So I will happily comply with the policies of this list and send to all until sanity in the form of a sensible alternative evolves. After all, if your email software is too stupid to suppress duplicate messages, perhaps you should upgrade to a more reader-friendly application instead of forcing everyojne else to change their behavior to accomodate to the defects in your mail handling app. Duplicatively, Lee Winter NP Engineering Nashua, New Hampshire -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: OT: mutt/nano spell checking
On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Jon Dowland jon+debian-u...@alcopop.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 04:27:56PM -0400, Chris Jones wrote: 'p' for 'paste' does strike me as rather more intuitive than Ctrl-V. That all depends on your background. I use vi every day (I am a UNIX systems administrator); most of the time my vi is actually vim; but I wouldn't for a second recommend it to anyone who was not already familiar with the original vi (or any other modal editor: I can't name any others). Just about anyone who isn't an old-hand UNIX user will have some familiarity with a modeless editor and will have used an environment where CTRL+V is the key binding for 'paste', as it's been the default for over 10 years in GNOME, KDE, Mac OS, and Windows, to name but four. Nano is a perfectly fine, minimal-featured modeless editor. It was written as a F/OSS clone of 'pico', which is not DFSG free. It is considerably more intuitive and user friendly to the vast majority of people who are new to Debian or Linux (and thus are not already affiliated with any particular church or cult of $EDITOR). See http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.1/faq.html#1.4 for more information. ^Z, ^X, ^C, and ^V were not chose for mnemonic value. They were chosen for user convenience due to their physical placement on early keyboards with only one crtl key. The idea was to make high-frequency actions like undo, cut, copy, and paste very easy to type. That mapping pre-dates the Macintosh. I think it came from Xerox PARC where WIMP user interfaces were fist invented and implemented. -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Suggestions for video/tv capture?
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Chris Jones cjns1...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 04, 2009 at 08:32:09AM EDT, Christer Oldhoff wrote: [..] You probably mean Hauppage PVR-150. Actually, it's Hauppauge but you are excused, since nobody outside Long Island knows how to spell it, never mind pronounce it. ;-) In a phonetic world that would be Lonn Giland, right? -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Gmail again
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Brad Rogers b...@fineby.me.uk wrote: On Sat, 3 Oct 2009 19:19:53 +0300 Jari Fredriksson ja...@iki.fi wrote: However, on at least one list I'm on, there are people that *insist* on only replying privately, not the list. I'm starting to get tired from the constant need to redirect my reply to the list. Even adding a suitable line in the email doesn't dissuade these people from replying privately only. Maybe I should just killfile them.. Nah, don't do that. Instead send them a blunt reply stating that you will only respond to messages submitted to the list and asking them to resubmit their message to the list if they was to see your reply to it. If you want to be seriously obnoxious you can wax effusive about how interesting their comments were but use such stilted, formulaic phrasing that it becomes obvious they are reading a mechanical, non-responsive response. (C.f. Lou Dobbs' responses to email submissions). The sender is the problem, not the message he sent. So make the message handling his responsibility. This is based on one of the fundamental principles of good citizenship, which states that the best way to deal with a bad law is to enforce it vigorously. This comes with the implication that enforcing it upon its proponets is often a useful optimization. In the email situation the best way to deal with bad habits is to make the person with the bad habits deal with the consequences of their behavior. The worst that will happen is that they will adjust their behavior _toward_you_ alone. Which reduces to the killfile solution excapt they have to maintain the killing-of-self rather than you having to maintain the entry in your file. Good luck (I am certain you will need it ;-) -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Xfce GNU/Icecat and Gnome-programs
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 5:45 AM, ura cherka...@smila.com wrote: Good day! I have this problem: using Xfce, browser GNU/Icecat, Evolution, and other Gnome-programs can not open links to Internet. How can I fix it? Can you you reach your ISP from the command line with ping? -- Lee -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: OT: Re: There is no planet B
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Chris rac...@makeworld.com wrote: On Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:04:40 +1200 sam blackmore sig...@greenpeace.org.nz wrote: Yup this is a mail bomb - sign on with Greenpeace to help stop climate change. You'll win a planet! ... You can't stop cyclical stages (please, no more global warming or climate change terms when in fact it would be correct to use something like cyclical change or stages). The earth cools, goes through ice ages (as it has many, many times before - and will continue to do) - then heats up again (as it has many, many times before - and will continue to do) and ends ice ages and everything gets greens and happy again. You are simply silly to think that mankind can do more damage than Mother Earth herself can do so much quicker, efficiently, and will continue to do all on her own at any one time... Visa-Vie droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, pole shifting, etc. I'm waiting for these types to tell us that volcanism, plate tectonics and pole shifting is also brought on be mankind. When that happens, then I'll believe in human induced global warming... Now let's be constructive. Instead of blaming or punishing humans for their faults as a way of collecting political power we should be applying positive behavior modification to motivate constructive action as follows: Of course vulcanism, plate tectonics, and pole shifting are the fault of humans. In fact sunspots, the 3% variability in the solar output, the frequency of asteroidal and cometary impacts, and all gamma-ray bursts within 1K light years of the star Solaris are also the fault of humans because so far humans failed to do anything to protect the planet from those disasters. -- from an up-coming Scientific American /r/a/n/t/ article by Tsipsis and Sachs. The only question really worth debating is how much responsibility we should accept for the historical destruction of the eco-sphere. Is it enough to simply stop the present harmful activity or do we have to undo the past damage? And how far back should we look? If we want to stop the ice ages we have to restore the planet to a time about 5.5e8 BC when the great oxygenation event destroyed the greenhouse gasses that were stabilizing the climate. That caused the first ice age and contributed to the following ones. But if we really want a complete restoration we have to go back about 2.5e9 BC to the time before early biological activity first oxygenated the atmosphere and destroyed the iron-dominated ecology of the oceans. All we have left of that ecology is thousands of square miles of banded iron formations (BIF), which /s/e/e/ google. Clearly oxygen is the culprit. When it appears with DHMO then watch out. Biological activity caused all of those damaging changes. Many people think we should fix that. I ain't one of 'em. Lee Winter NP Engineering Nashua, New Hampshire -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: install problem
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Jan Willem Stumpel jstum...@planet.nl wrote: This is really an embarrassing question for an old Debian hand to ask, but how do I install Debian? I just bought a netbook which has no CDROM drive, but which can boot from a USB stick. I could dd an Ubuntu image to the stick and then boot from it. But I prefer just plain old Debian. I found (through the Debian home page) an image called debian-503-i386-netinst.iso. I dd'd it to the stick. But the netbook does not boot from it. There must be something very elementary which I did wrong. But what? What you are looking for is labeled hd-media. It doesn't mean high density media (floppies). It means USB. Good luck, Lee Winter NP Engineerinr Nashua, New Hampshire -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Defects in apt-spy and associated documentation
2009-09-13 Defects in apt-spy and associated documentation 1. [normal] Man apt-spy states that the default location for the -m argument is /var/lib/apt-spy/mirrors.txt. That statement is false. I found the file in /var/cache/apt-spy/mirrors.txt. 2. [normal] Man apt-spy state that the -i option defines the location of the input file and that the input file should be created with the -w option. But the description fails to mention any purpose or use of the input file. There appears to be no such purpose given that -f, -m, and -u define all of the files that apt-spy is supposed to use as inputs. 3. [normal] When run as apt-spy -d lenny -s us it tests one single url, that being ftp.us.debian.org despite the fact that mirrors.txt many mirrors and lists several members of the ftp.us.debian.org pool. And when run with -d lenny -s ca,us it tests all of the canadian mirrors, but only ftp.us.debian.org in the United States. 4. [important] It only tests with ftp. There appears to be no method to persuate it to test with http as the man documentation suggests it should. 5. [normal] None of the output files contain any of the metric information on which a user might based decisions regarding the contents of sources.list. 6. [important] Some configurations, which I cannot reliably cause, produce entries of the form (null) in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt-spy.list. There are no error or warning messages associated with the error condition. Submitted by Lee Winter NP Engineering Nashua, New Hampshire -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Installing onto an old laptop
On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 4:53 PM, AG computing.acco...@googlemail.com wrote:
I have an old generic laptop which has Slackware 10.1 installed. It has
access to the Internet as well as to a small LAN. The machine it is
connected via a hub to is my main desktop/ workstation which runs Debian
testing. The CD-ROM drive in the laptop does not work. This is a hardware
issue, so installation via CD is not feasible.
The laptop does have a couple of USB drive sockets, but I don't think that
the BIOS is sufficiently modern to boot from a USB drive (the laptop was
bought circa 2002 from a company that has since gone belly up).
What is the best method for getting this laptop up and running in the 21st
Century with Debian testing?
Thanks for any ideas/ suggestions.
This worked for me:
1. On the laptop download the netboot kernel linux and initial ram
disk initrd.gz from ftp.{countrycode}.debian.org to the root of the
first partition on the hard drive. You do not need a .ISO file.
2. On the laptop run grub (e.g., from a PC-DOS floppy or a linux file
system) and enter the following commands:
root (hd0,0) # assuming the files in step 1 are on the
first parition of an IDE drive
kernel linux
initrd initrd.gz
boot
3. Complete the installation over the internet.
Lee Winter
NP Engineering
Nashua, New Hampshire
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Re: Inquiry:How to totally wipe out the entire hard drive
On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Florian Kulzer florian.kulzer+deb...@icfo.es wrote: On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 23:56:47 -0400, Napoleon wrote: It is only their opinion that it cannot be done. Wright et al. have empirical evidence supporting their conclusions. No they do not. This key to this issue is that when one consults an expert, no matter how many credentials they have, one must consider their statements critically. An expert (or even a nuby/amatur) who claims I know how to do this should get the benefit of the doubt and be believed. Similarly, an expert who says I do not know how to do this should also be believed. If they say I have tried many ways to do this and found none that works they should be believed and probably consulted as to how to not accomplish the goal. But if they say I know that it is not possible for anyone to do this then they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. They have to provide a proof. Now if they can elaborate by saying the laws of the universe prohibit anyone from doing this and can provide a valid proof then they should be believed. But the authorities you quote do not have such a proof. In fact they do not even have any evidence. What they have is an opinion as to the difficulty of reaching the goal, about which they should be believed. Please do not confuse that is hard with that is impossible. Meditatively, Lee Winter NP Engineering Nashua, New Hampshire -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
DBAN (was: Inquiry:How to totally wipe out the entire hard drive)
-- Forwarded message -- From: Lee Winter lee.j.i.win...@gmail.com Date: Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 2:21 PM Subject: Re: Inquiry:How to totally wipe out the entire hard drive To: Andrew M.A. Cater amaca...@galactic.demon.co.uk On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 6:39 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater amaca...@galactic.demon.co.uk wrote: Better, by far, is to get hold of a copy of DBAN [floppy image/CD image or even Windows .exe] Runs in memory, uses a Linux kernel to bootstrap a disk wipe program offering various options.] Using this, you can also securely delete hard drives before disposing of a machine / securely remove any pre-existing contents on any drives in a machine you acquire. Be careful with DBAN. It is good, but it has weaknesses. Among other things, it will believe the drive electronics even if the data provided is obviously wrong. For example, if the drive electronics tells DBAN that your 100GB disk is really a 100MB disk DBAN will happily clean the first 100 MB and report success. I do professional drive cleaning (e.g., 100-1000 drive batches) and DBAN is a good tool. But it is far from perfect. So use it carefully. Lee Winter NP Engineering Nashua, New Hampshire
Re: Inquiry:How to totally wipe out the entire hard drive
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 3:42 PM, Sven Joachim svenj...@gmx.de wrote: On 2009-09-06 21:12 +0200, John Hasler wrote: Napoleon writes: Overwriting with zeros (or ones) once is not at all secure. It can easily be nearly 100% recovered by someone with the necessary equipment, even more so on a modern drive. Please provide evidence that anyone has ever done this on a modern drive. Jumping into that discussion, here is evidence that this is not possible with modern drives: http://www.h-online.com/news/Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it--/112432 No, that it not evidence. It is an opinion; possibly a very informed opinion. But security issues often require a skeptical perspective. In this case an expert's statement that he does not know how to retrieve info from a drive is abolutely worthless in determining whether anyone else knows how to retrieve info from a drive. http://www.h-online.com/news/Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it--/112432 So, anyone who wants to sell his hard disk can just use dd if=/dev/zero ... and be done with it. That will work up to the value of the information being secured. But once the value of the information reaches an upper limit then it becomes worthwhile for people to use more sophisticated techniques, and overwriting with a constant pattern becomes worthless. There is a recently revised NIST standard for securing information. It says very little -- propably because the US givernment has an interest in lowering other entities security. The previous versions of that standard were a lot more informative and useful. BTW, no sensible person ever said that 35 passes were necessary and/or useful. A well-informed and well-intentioned expert answered a silly question and his answer boils down to the (valid) claim that it is not possible for any drive to require more than 35 passes. The total of 35 was obtained by summing all of the possible overwrite techniques for all possible drive/recording technologies. After that many non-sensible people claimed that 35 passes was the ne-plus-ultra in disk scribbing, which claim is both invalid and stupid. Lee Winter NP Engineering Nashua, New Hampshire
Re: Inquiry:How to totally wipe out the entire hard drive
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Christopher Walters cjw20...@comcast.netwrote: Lee Winter wrote: On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 3:42 PM, Sven Joachim svenj...@gmx.de wrote: [snip] Jumping into that discussion, here is evidence that this is not possible with modern drives: http://www.h-online.com/news/Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it--/112432 No, that it not evidence. It is an opinion; possibly a very informed opinion. But security issues often require a skeptical perspective. In this case an expert's statement that he does not know how to retrieve info from a drive is abolutely worthless in determining whether anyone else knows how to retrieve info from a drive. [snip] That will work up to the value of the information being secured. But once the value of the information reaches an upper limit then it becomes worthwhile for people to use more sophisticated techniques, and overwriting with a constant pattern becomes worthless. There is a recently revised NIST standard for securing information. It says very little -- propably because the US givernment has an interest in lowering other entities security. The previous versions of that standard were a lot more informative and useful. BTW, no sensible person ever said that 35 passes were necessary and/or useful. A well-informed and well-intentioned expert answered a silly question and his answer boils down to the (valid) claim that it is not possible for any drive to require more than 35 passes. The total of 35 was obtained by summing all of the possible overwrite techniques for all possible drive/recording technologies. After that many non-sensible people claimed that 35 passes was the ne-plus-ultra in disk scribbing, which claim is both invalid and stupid. Lee Winter NP Engineering Nashua, New Hampshire Not a fan of Peter Guttman, I take it. Incorrect. He is pretty well known in the fields of computer security and data deletion. Here is a link to his paper. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.htmlhttp://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/%7Epgut001/pubs/secure_del.html Yup, that's the one. Please read the first paragraph of the section entitled Epilogue and compare it to the summary I gave above in the last paragraph. It was my intention that they mean the same thing. In the section entitled Further Epilogue he goes on to describe the hopelessness of trying to recover info from a modern drive. That section is the target of my comments re the opinion of an expert who states he does not know how to accomplish a certain task. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his statement. There is everything wrong with the reader mis-interpreting his statement as evidence or proof that the certain task is infeasible. Case in point. A couple of years ago one of the major financial companies (3rd I think) in NYC was concerned about reducing costs. They run an IT-intensive operation so they recycle machines often. That is expensive. But a 1-or-2-year-old HD is reasonably valuable. So they wanted to recycle them rather than destroy them. But they have _extremely_ valuable information on even their desktop drives. Many contain customer information, so, as a fiduciary, any preventable leakage would essentially put them out of business. Other drives may contain strategic information either in the form of documents or in transaction records. And of course the data-center drives are even more valuable. What's all that information worth? Many zeros. _Many_. As an aside, shredding is a popular method of drive destruction. But modern drive densities are so high that even a shred 0.01 square can hold valuable data, so physical destruction alone is not sufficient. That may have something to do with the fact that _internal_ gov't standards allow only a very few kinds of physical destruction -- i.e., complete to the level of a minimum-sized magnetic domain of the particular recording media. Think acid, thermite, grinding/abrasion, etc. Given the incredible value of the financial system data, how much is it worth to recover it? The modern recovery process usually has two distinct phases, one quite capital- and skill-intensive and one quite ordinary. The first phase is to build a data recovery capability (lab). That takes time, money, and skilled labor. The second phase is operating the recovery lab, which is fairly cheap. It isn't very fast though (meaning long latency, but not meaning low throughput). Point is that once you have such a capability many unreasonable possibilities become quite reasonable. And industrial espionage is a thriving industry. Just who owns (or more importantly controls) the recycling company that hauls away your machines/drives? Have you ever taken a drive apart, replaced the drive electronics and resold it? People do it all the time. And if the replacement happens to be a much more sophisticated board, you can read lots of things that the original
