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Re:Hang on by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-13 03:20 · Score: 1 · on Call Interception Demonstrated On New Cisco Phones

I think he is referring to the use of PsTools. I've personally dissected viruses which have used that set of utilities as part of their payload but this was years ago before SysInternals even belonged to Microsoft and the viruses I saw which used them were very unsophisticated. Either way, I don't see how it's relevant to Cisco having unsafe-defaults.

Re:what is malware? by RobertM1968 · 2011-05-12 15:04 · Score: 1 · on Win 7's Malware Infection Rate Climbs, XP's Falls

That's why now days I just run this.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security_essentials/default.aspx

From reading all of your posts on this topic, I swear you must work for Microsoft, or for an advertising/marketing company they pay, or for benefits given to you by them.

Of all the infected machines I see, that are running, FULLY up to date anti-malware software on FULLY up to date versions of Windows, the top two culprits for missing things are (in this order) McAfee and MSE.

Again, I am only counting machines where the software is up to date and where Windows is up to date (and verifying the malware infected the machine AFTER the anti-malware software was installed).

TL:DR FUD by Deathlizard · 2011-05-12 13:34 · Score: 1 · on Win 7's Malware Infection Rate Climbs, XP's Falls

Article makes it sound like Win7 is getting inundated with viruses, but when you look at the counts it paints a different story.

Windows 7: Increase of 33%
1Q2010: 3/1000
2Q2010: 4/1000 - 64 Bit: 2.5/1000

Windows XP: Decrease of 22%
1Q2010: 18/1000
2Q2010:14/1000

Basically, You're still safer using windows 7 vs other Windows versions.

Current Numbers from MS are Here. Not exactly sure how computerworld got those numbers since MS numbers are higher and lower than others but there you go.

Re:what is malware? by rhook · 2011-05-12 11:47 · Score: 1 · on Win 7's Malware Infection Rate Climbs, XP's Falls

That's why now days I just run this.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security_essentials/default.aspx

Huge sample size by pavon · 2011-05-12 10:47 · Score: 1 · on Win 7's Malware Infection Rate Climbs, XP's Falls

According to the Microsoft Report this is based on a sample size of 600 million computers. That is plenty large enough for the results to be statistically significant.

It was trollish for the summary to omit that Windows 7 still has 1/5 of the infection rate of Windows XP, though.

Re:It's just sales by Darth+Snowshoe · 2011-05-12 06:16 · Score: 1 · on Sergey Brin: Windows Is "Torturing Users"

By your definition, everyone is then a "bad user". Clueless individual users like my father-in-law are "bad users" and have no business using a Windows computer. And technology companies larded with full-on technology professionals are "bad users".

I think that, if Windows auto updates were a real solution, everyone would be using it, all the time. Yet slashdot is rife with stories about security vulnerabilities Windows (and their handmaiden of chaos, Adobe) have left uncorrected for all kinds of reasons (obsolescing some older piece of software, its part of the business model, etc.) And the IT at pretty much everywhere I've worked simply has not trusted it. Oh, look what just popped up on my calendar here, just while I was typing this;

.
AUDIENCE:
All Enterprise Managed Windows desktop and laptop system users

SUMMARY:
As part of routine maintenance of Windows computers, patches to the Windows operating system and select Windows applications will be installed on Friday, 5/13/2011 starting at 2:00 am.

ACTION:
These updates might require one or more reboot(s). If required, the reboot(s) will occur starting at 3:00 am on Friday, 5/13/2011. It is possible that additional reboots may still be required following 3:00 am; if so, a pop-up will appear asking you to reboot now or later. Please reboot at your earliest convenience.

DETAILS:
If your computer is not on at 2:00 am on Friday, 5/13/2011, the updates will install as soon as possible after 9:00 am on 5/13/2011, but will not force a reboot. If you have a laptop that is not attached to the network, in a loaner pool, or out in the field and would like to have it updated prior to the scheduled time, you may activate the patches via the [Some third party not Windows auto updates] Patch Management system as early as Thursday morning. If you need to install the patches prior to their availability in [that third party software], feel free to install the patches using Microsoft's Windows Update website. Please install all Critical and Important patches.

For more detailed information regarding the Microsoft patches, please visit the following website:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-May.mspx

Please note: In some cases Microsoft makes changes to the patches that are distributed on the Windows Update web site. If the version of the patch installed on your system is not the most current version, the [third party] patch distribution software will reapply the patch and reboot your system if needed. If you would like to update your system prior to the schedule time, you can follow the directions posted here:
http://someplace/services/desktop/security/PatchManagementSystemFAQs.htm
.

That's fine, it's not like I'm doing any work on this PC that could be interrupted by multiple (and an apparently unpredicable number of) reboots. It's not inconvenient at all.

YET, even still, with a ginormous IT department, huge budget for IT, ruthless discipline, multiple networking choke points, and some skin in the game WRT national security and cyber warfare, my employer was hacked, thoroughly and repeatedly, by real adversaries, ah, but only through the Windows machines. Must be we are all "bad users". It couldn't be Windows.

Re:Windows tortures users... what's new? by amliebsch · 2011-05-12 06:06 · Score: 1 · on Sergey Brin: Windows Is "Torturing Users"

Of course third-party applications can use the logging facility! Wow. You are a Windows admin and you didn't know this?

Scripts can use it too:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176682.aspx

Re:Windows tortures users... what's new? by 0123456 · 2011-05-12 03:22 · Score: 1 · on Sergey Brin: Windows Is "Torturing Users"

if it's a system error, you can always look in the system log.

Because 'the fubar service failed to start' is so useful when you're trying to figure out why your system isn't working. Particularly when the service control panel claims that it's running.

BTW, the new Slashdot interface is definitely 'torturing users'. How can they keep screwing it up more and more with every update?

Re:Windows tortures users... what's new? by VGPowerlord · 2011-05-12 03:16 · Score: 1 · on Sergey Brin: Windows Is "Torturing Users"

Windows are terrible to troubleshoot: the norm is "in case of any error, silently terminate program, never ever log anything, don't even have an option to do so." It wasn't until I've been using various Linux workstations for a few years and then had to troubleshoot a Win7 box that I realized this. ("[warn] cannot open /foo/bar/baz.xyzzy" is not massively helpful, but it's much better than the "" you'll get from Windows and most programs for Windows.)

Isn't that actually a problem with the mindset of the people who write the applications.

If it's a system error, you can always look in the system log.

Re:Wrong Question by dch24 · 2011-05-11 17:29 · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Antitrust Oversight Ends

This is tired old FUD that you Microsoft shills trot out all the time.

Can you name one technology that Microsoft innovated? And by the way, it doesn't count if they bought it from someone else.

Ok, now to your original question:
1. Alchemy
2. Bespin
3. Bitcoin
4. eyeOS
5. KDE Social Desktop
6. Ksplice
7. Unity
8. HTTP, the Web, TCP/IP, and ARPAnet
9. X Windows
10. Perl
11. Slashdot
12. Google keeps playing with open source, but can't make up their minds. Here are some
13. Microsoft plays with open source, here are some. This must just eat you up. Too bad, Open Source is everywhere.
14. Here are some more innovative open source projects.

Now, I expect you to provide at least 5 innovative projects Microsoft created within the last 10 years. (Sorry, you can't count Windows or Office, since those ideas are much older, and are no longer considered innovative.)

Failing that, at least read what I wrote.

Re:Bait and switch off by AHuxley · 2011-05-10 22:21 · Score: 0 · on Android Honeycomb Will Not Be Open Sourced

Apple and MS built on the entry cost of computing or the lack of low cost options in many areas.
Google offered a vision of been more open to set itself apart and draw in mindshare.
Now the code stops in one area. What will be closed next and why...
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/directory.aspx http://www.codeplex.com/ MS is trying ;)

Re:Failed? by DerekLyons · 2011-05-10 06:04 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Vintage Collection of Tech Failures

I think the submitter needs to understand what "failed" means.

He's mostly using "failed" in the conventional marketdroid sense - they didn't fly off the shelves making the corporation manufacturing them and those investing in them buckets of cash.

A lot of that stuff were far from failures. they were designed for a specific task. the 3d mousing devices are STILL used to this day in high end 3d CAD.

That's true of many of the items in the collection.

He labels the overblown Swiss Army Knife as a bad design - while failing to consider the purpose of the design. (As a collectible/art piece, which he tacitly admits it was a success at.) The next knife down he's equally dismissive of. But he fails to consider that a) there are other methods of carrying (a belt pouch for example), or b) that there *are* people who constantly have something it will fit into handy (a photographer and his camera bag, a fisherman and his tackle box, etc..). The lowest knife, which he praises, has so little functionality it's only real use is to be impressive to the guy in the next cubicle over because you're the Guy Who Always Has A Knife.

The same with the Nikon Coolpix 100. He seems utterly unaware that there are a huge number of cameras out there... My little Canon A1200 has no extra chargers or cables either.

He praises the Olympic Memory Stick Thumb Drive - but take away the 'cool' packaging, and it's just another thumb drive. Maybe he keeps the 'cool' packaging as an art piece on his desk, but I suspect he's one of the few.

Overall Mr Buxton is really, really bad at evaluating the success or failure and the usefulness or not of many of the items he has in his collection.

Re:Failed? by DerekLyons · 2011-05-10 06:04 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Vintage Collection of Tech Failures

I think the submitter needs to understand what "failed" means.

He's mostly using "failed" in the conventional marketdroid sense - they didn't fly off the shelves making the corporation manufacturing them and those investing in them buckets of cash.

A lot of that stuff were far from failures. they were designed for a specific task. the 3d mousing devices are STILL used to this day in high end 3d CAD.

That's true of many of the items in the collection.

He labels the overblown Swiss Army Knife as a bad design - while failing to consider the purpose of the design. (As a collectible/art piece, which he tacitly admits it was a success at.) The next knife down he's equally dismissive of. But he fails to consider that a) there are other methods of carrying (a belt pouch for example), or b) that there *are* people who constantly have something it will fit into handy (a photographer and his camera bag, a fisherman and his tackle box, etc..). The lowest knife, which he praises, has so little functionality it's only real use is to be impressive to the guy in the next cubicle over because you're the Guy Who Always Has A Knife.

The same with the Nikon Coolpix 100. He seems utterly unaware that there are a huge number of cameras out there... My little Canon A1200 has no extra chargers or cables either.

He praises the Olympic Memory Stick Thumb Drive - but take away the 'cool' packaging, and it's just another thumb drive. Maybe he keeps the 'cool' packaging as an art piece on his desk, but I suspect he's one of the few.

Overall Mr Buxton is really, really bad at evaluating the success or failure and the usefulness or not of many of the items he has in his collection.

Re:Failed? by DerekLyons · 2011-05-10 06:04 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Vintage Collection of Tech Failures

I think the submitter needs to understand what "failed" means.

He's mostly using "failed" in the conventional marketdroid sense - they didn't fly off the shelves making the corporation manufacturing them and those investing in them buckets of cash.

A lot of that stuff were far from failures. they were designed for a specific task. the 3d mousing devices are STILL used to this day in high end 3d CAD.

That's true of many of the items in the collection.

He labels the overblown Swiss Army Knife as a bad design - while failing to consider the purpose of the design. (As a collectible/art piece, which he tacitly admits it was a success at.) The next knife down he's equally dismissive of. But he fails to consider that a) there are other methods of carrying (a belt pouch for example), or b) that there *are* people who constantly have something it will fit into handy (a photographer and his camera bag, a fisherman and his tackle box, etc..). The lowest knife, which he praises, has so little functionality it's only real use is to be impressive to the guy in the next cubicle over because you're the Guy Who Always Has A Knife.

The same with the Nikon Coolpix 100. He seems utterly unaware that there are a huge number of cameras out there... My little Canon A1200 has no extra chargers or cables either.

He praises the Olympic Memory Stick Thumb Drive - but take away the 'cool' packaging, and it's just another thumb drive. Maybe he keeps the 'cool' packaging as an art piece on his desk, but I suspect he's one of the few.

Overall Mr Buxton is really, really bad at evaluating the success or failure and the usefulness or not of many of the items he has in his collection.

Re:Failed? by DerekLyons · 2011-05-10 06:04 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Vintage Collection of Tech Failures

I think the submitter needs to understand what "failed" means.

He's mostly using "failed" in the conventional marketdroid sense - they didn't fly off the shelves making the corporation manufacturing them and those investing in them buckets of cash.

A lot of that stuff were far from failures. they were designed for a specific task. the 3d mousing devices are STILL used to this day in high end 3d CAD.

That's true of many of the items in the collection.

He labels the overblown Swiss Army Knife as a bad design - while failing to consider the purpose of the design. (As a collectible/art piece, which he tacitly admits it was a success at.) The next knife down he's equally dismissive of. But he fails to consider that a) there are other methods of carrying (a belt pouch for example), or b) that there *are* people who constantly have something it will fit into handy (a photographer and his camera bag, a fisherman and his tackle box, etc..). The lowest knife, which he praises, has so little functionality it's only real use is to be impressive to the guy in the next cubicle over because you're the Guy Who Always Has A Knife.

The same with the Nikon Coolpix 100. He seems utterly unaware that there are a huge number of cameras out there... My little Canon A1200 has no extra chargers or cables either.

He praises the Olympic Memory Stick Thumb Drive - but take away the 'cool' packaging, and it's just another thumb drive. Maybe he keeps the 'cool' packaging as an art piece on his desk, but I suspect he's one of the few.

Overall Mr Buxton is really, really bad at evaluating the success or failure and the usefulness or not of many of the items he has in his collection.

Re:Failed? by DerekLyons · 2011-05-10 06:04 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Vintage Collection of Tech Failures

I think the submitter needs to understand what "failed" means.

He's mostly using "failed" in the conventional marketdroid sense - they didn't fly off the shelves making the corporation manufacturing them and those investing in them buckets of cash.

A lot of that stuff were far from failures. they were designed for a specific task. the 3d mousing devices are STILL used to this day in high end 3d CAD.

That's true of many of the items in the collection.

He labels the overblown Swiss Army Knife as a bad design - while failing to consider the purpose of the design. (As a collectible/art piece, which he tacitly admits it was a success at.) The next knife down he's equally dismissive of. But he fails to consider that a) there are other methods of carrying (a belt pouch for example), or b) that there *are* people who constantly have something it will fit into handy (a photographer and his camera bag, a fisherman and his tackle box, etc..). The lowest knife, which he praises, has so little functionality it's only real use is to be impressive to the guy in the next cubicle over because you're the Guy Who Always Has A Knife.

The same with the Nikon Coolpix 100. He seems utterly unaware that there are a huge number of cameras out there... My little Canon A1200 has no extra chargers or cables either.

He praises the Olympic Memory Stick Thumb Drive - but take away the 'cool' packaging, and it's just another thumb drive. Maybe he keeps the 'cool' packaging as an art piece on his desk, but I suspect he's one of the few.

Overall Mr Buxton is really, really bad at evaluating the success or failure and the usefulness or not of many of the items he has in his collection.

I actually moved away... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-09 22:28 · Score: 0 · on Ubuntu Aims For 200 Million Users In Four Years

...to Windows 7. No troll.

I've been using Linux desktop for years now, and when I discovered Ubuntu I was immediately sold. Started using Ubuntu itself and manually setup KDE because I figured it would be better to use the original product. As soon as I learned about the LTS version I immediately started using that one.

I'm the kind of guy who used to tinker a lot with his system but now my main concern is stability and continuity. I don't want to be confronted with having to upgrade or re-configure stuff within very short periods, also because I don't always care about the "latest and greatest" any longer; my main concern is getting my work done and considering that I'm self-employed means I need to have a system which continues doing what I want.

SO the latest LTS came out and as can be expected I took my time to perform the upgrade. Even "took a day off" so to speak so that I had all the time required to upgrade.

That was sheer hell. First from LTS 8.04 to 10; I ended up with many inconsistencies. From accidently installed 64bit libraries thus chocking my 32bit system after a reboot right to the upgrade procedure hanging itself along the way. I wasn't going to give up that easy; no way. I then decided to simply go between versions; I edited /etc/sources.list to reflect the changes, and dist upgraded. No go; while I did manage to upgrade one version I then ended up with hardware issues.

One of my Samsung printers couldn't be properly addressed anymore (even though it supports LPR besides your regular protocols), my screen resolution was a mess again (I knew this up front; I had to hack X.conf manually last time as well) and it only got worse.

SO eventually restored a backup and started to look for other people's experiences. The outcome? "You're probably better of re-installing from scratch".

Well, that is not why I started to use Linux, especially a Debian (-based) distro in the first place! I know my hardware is dated, but surely it can't be that hard to keep stuff somewhat backwards compatible ?

Alas; I had been using Vista for some time by then (but disliked it) and came into contact with Windows 7. The eventual outcome was that I removed Linux entirely and replaced it with Windows 7. It was even a breeze to move my GPG keys over (which kinda worried me at first) thanks to stuff like GPG4Win and Enigmail which works on both Linux and Windows.

No offense here but now I can finally get some work done again while still keeping a relative modern (patched) system around. And the best part here for me is that I will have at least 9 years of support without the need or urgent requirement to upgrade.

When looking at the latest Firefox and Thunderbird as well as Ubuntu I think more programmers should realize that not everyone wants to change the way they work every product cycle. At the very least give people some option to continue working as they were used to.

Microsoft isn't a saint on this subject either (just look at the difference between XP and Vista/Win7) but in the overall the changes usually aren't that drastic (not to mention that you can easily change the way Windows looks; right down to a 98 look and feel).

So.... Millions of people using Ubuntu? On a server, absolutely. But on the desktop; I don't see this happening. Not after the first upgrade requirement.

Re:Disclosure policy by Rockoon · 2011-05-09 10:56 · Score: 5, Interesting · on New Chrome Exploit Bypasses Sandbox, ASLR and DEP

Browsers such as Chrome contain memory allocations that avoid DEP by using VirtualProtectEx() as it is pretty much a requirement of JIT compilation.

Blaming Microsoft in this case is extremely premature, since we know that Chrome does in fact disable some protections intentionally.

Re:Hungarian Notation by RobinH · 2011-05-08 14:03 · Score: 1 · on Why the New Guy Can't Code

For an example of object-oriented language that supports "units of measure" see F#.

Re:Don't do it... by bertok · 2011-05-06 20:59 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Ask Slashdot: Moving From *nix To Windows Automation?

I'm a programmer-slash-sysadmin, and I've taken a stab at writing both command-line tools using C/C++, .NET, and these days with PowerShell, so I might be able to answer your question.

When I write complex software, I usually provide some command-line tools for the admins to do things like import data, export logs, or whatever. This is a royal pain in the ass, but I do it because it's useful. I always end up spending something like 80% of the time on annoying stuff like handling command-line parameters, input validation, and error messages. Of course, because whatever I come up with is new and different, I have to write doco for it, train staff, and so on.

Now, with PowerShell, instead of having to write a whole new program to implement a command, I can simply extend a class from a framework library. The PS framework does almost everything automagically: handle the pipeline, input parameters, parameter validation, parameter sets, optional parameters, help, tab-complete, wildcard matching, output formatting, etc...

To give you an idea, it is possible to write a PowerShell command in C# (.NET) with several parameters and complex output that does a useful task in about 50 lines of rather trivial code. The equivalent C program would be thousands of lines.

More importantly, the resulting PowerShell command will be orthogonal, consistent, discoverable, and embeddable

By orthogonal, I mean things like: every PS command that handles wildcards does it with the same shared library, which is trivial to use. Hence, I can do things like: Get-VM "prod_win_[a-k]*" which is a VMware snapin, and the behavior will be exactly the same as if I had called a Citrix XenApp snapin to lists farm servers with: Get-XAServer "prod_win_[a-k]*". Similarly, the output of commands is structured data. You can say: Get-VM | Export-CSV or Get-XAServer | Export-Csv and get similar results. Compare with legacy command line tools, which often implement such formatting internally, and badly. I just had to work on some Novell systems, for example, which export invalid XML files because the utility doesn't escape ampersands! Of course, our example 50 line command will get all of that. Export to CSV? You have it! Export to XML? Done! Quickly, tell me how to export CSV formatted data from the following 3 Linux command-line tools: 'ls', 'apt-get', and 'ps'.

By consistent, I mean that parameters are always specified with "-param", never "/param", or "--param", or "-abcdgh" where each letter does something that you can only determine by reading a five page document. Similarly, Microsoft has established a strict naming system for developers, so that instead of "retrieve-foo", "ask-foo", "query-foo", "request-foo", "list-foo", "foo-list", "fooenum", or god knows what else, the only acceptable standard is "get-foo". VMware has "Get-VM", Citrix has "Get-XAServer", Microsoft has "Get-Process", etc... no guessing! There are standards for command names, parameter names, and coding conventions. E.g.: Verb Naming Rules, and Cmdlet Development Guidelines.

By discoverable, I mean that if I write a little 50-line utility with a bunch of parameters, an administrator at the command line can simply press 'tab' and have both the command and the parameter names automatically completed. The help is automatically generated from my 50 lines of code. GUI script wizards can load a bunch of metadata about each parameter to enable drag & drop script development.

By embeddable, I mean that even a 50-line utility can be called not just from the shell, but from within a hosting application in the same process. Instead of having to handle text-based streams, PS commands take .NET objects, and return .NET objects. There's no guessw