Perhaps attacking the problem from the ISP side would be easiest and most productive. The problem, after all, is one of pollution -- in this case polluting the network with traffic. You can't continue to drink from the river if the polluter isn't stopped.
One possible approach is temporary disconnection from the public internet for any personal internet account found to be sending spam or engaging in virus-like activity.
Nowadays when starting a new broadband account, the ISP sends you to their startup page to complete the registration process. Instead of sending them there, send them to a "you are infected" page with AV downloads available from the ISP. This would only work with personal accounts, for businesses the concept wouldn't work. But I'd have to guess that most of the people getting infected are home users, and this could drastically reduce the number of computers available for any botnet, rendering it less profitable.
There's little reason not to lock down corporate computers. Microsoft provides group policy and other tools explicitly for this purpose.
BUT BUT BUT some software causes issues, for instance UPS WorldShip software requires administrative access to run. It's a stupid limitation, and one we raised with them numerous times to no avail. Our solution was to switch to FedEx. For some companies, individual pieces of software may require elevated privileges and there may not be a competing package to switch to.
Distributions act as gatekeepers for the repositories. In the case of Fedora / RHEL, Red Hat is the gatekeeper. They not only compile their own packages (with their own tweaks) of software, but in the case of RHEL, they actively support those packages as well. It's similar with other distros.
In the end, it all comes down to reputation. We purchase RHEL for peace of mind, and for the servers that aren't critical we use Fedora. That gives me the opportunity to see what's coming up and stay current (Fedora is testing grounds for RHEL) as opposed to us running a no-charge no-support RHEL clone such as CentOS.
Slashdot is quite perky with the last couple of betas. But it's especially disheartening that the video "upgrades" in this most current release fall short on my platform. When viewing the demo page ( http://demos.hacks.mozilla.org/openweb/HWACCEL/ ), I get 1 fps. I get 6 fps when running the same demo on Firefox inside a Parallels Windows XP SP3 VM. The VM is significantly faster... which boggles the mind actually.
So far as I remember, this was an Apple issue not necessarily a Mozilla issue, but still disappointing.
+1 Insightful. Wow I hadn't gotten that far to think of that yet... I guess it also means you might see other unsavory things with snippets of searches too. What if you're in a place where the act of searching for certain items is outlawed or a crime... could you be held liable for auto-searches on a snippet of text?
The only thing to the right of the text entry box on http://www.google.com/ is "Advanced Search" and "Language Tools". You have to move the mouse and wait for the fade-in to see them. Firefox 4.0b5 on Snow Leopard.
Surely I'm doing something wrong. I didn't see the "balls" everyone said was there. I didn't see the automatic search everyone said was there. And my Google Preferences has no mention of the term "Google Instant" or anything similar.
If it helps, I use the regular http://www.google.com/ address and I sign in to my account automatically. Tested with Firefox 4.0b4 and 4.0b5 on Snow Leopard.
Eventually your girlfriend / boyfriend figures out that your lifestyle isn't funded by magic fairy dust and when you break up, people talk. Or you don't break up and he/she can't contain the joy of a particularly nice present, and tells a friend.
All it takes is a bit of chatter and your (now extended, these things tend to grow beyond the initial circle of friends) circle knows all about it. Sooner or later, details leak out. You can be flashy to no one but certain things, like your shoes, watch, bedding, vacation destinations, jewelry, how you spend your free time, who you know etc etc all add up to paint a very private picture which even the least flashy reveals things you may not want others to know.
As for your "high school" comment, I'm not sure where to begin except it seems a particularly high-school-type of comment for one to make. Surely you're better than that.
Once you go through a divorce, or have one of your "friends" steal money from your wallet that you carelessly left unattended in your bedroom, or have a seemingly regular stream of different "friends" asking for money, you would best be on your toes.
Unfortunately money brings out the worst in people, especially if they're in a bad place or they don't see themselves ever getting where they want to be. In the US we tend to have an entitlement society which I think feeds this behavior.
When people introduce you as successful to others, or take for granted that you will pick up the tab, some people get the idea that you have some blood to suck. You never know who is real and who is just waiting for you to drop some coin their way. It's a very lonely existence, and especially ironic since you've worked hard to get where you are and want another like-minded person to start things over with. May you never experience this.
Very insightful. But remember that it doesn't take that much money to be surrounded by "friends" leeching off you. You just have to make a certain amount more than they do, or have a higher standard of living than they do. The "certain amount" varies from person to person, but if you're making double their wage I'd bet you can assume that the disparity in income is sufficient to cause jealousy and a sense of entitlement for these spongers.
When everyone around you is in a lower standard of living, you become a focal point, and as you insightfully explained, not in a good way. Even worse if you started at the same basic socioeconomic point and they stayed the same while you earned more. At some point they want to eat you so they can share some of your power and luck. It ain't pretty.
In today's world, it's nice to see people who "get it" and are finding new fans and publicity by doing something which hurts no one, by giving of themselves. I wish them continued success!
Windows still requires someone with knowledge to setup the systems correctly, or you get all sorts of problems. Yes, for a small business, you can hire a newbie to do most of it, but as you grow you'll quickly realize you have to spend a lot of time / effort / downtime redoing things.
The separation of the two is in the enterprise space -- think midsize businesses and larger -- and as your enterprise grows larger, Linux is easier to maintain and implement.
Personally, I maintain 10 Linux servers / VM's, a half-dozen SQL Server servers with 30 or so SQL Server DB's (the largest is just under a TB), 4 MySQL servers, and I find time to do enterprise application development, enterprise reporting, and some web development (I consider myself poor at that). I also serve as 3rd tier network and OS support for 300+ employees.
If you know what you're doing, it's not difficult... and I'm paid fairly given my experience and years in the business.
Just because you can get someone for $20K a year to be a server intern doesn't mean they will be the one planning the network or making large decisions. A good seasoned admin keeps things running in a predictable way, allowing the business to focus on its core functionality and NOT on system limitations or integration issues.
Yes I agree, it's a mess, but certainly Microsoft can change this. It wouldn't be the first time that API's or direction has changed, and if it's for the better good...
I'm just thinking as technology continues to advance so quickly, why not improve the process? It would result in more machine sales; I think most people are concerned about migrating their data and programs which right now is a royal PIA. Moving a profile is relatively simple but the rest, not so much.
How does Apple accomplish this? I know on Linux you have package managers such as RPM which help identify components, give CRC's and install info. I know OS X uses "receipts" of some sort to do similar things. It just seems like if others can do portions of the task, the process should also be adaptable to Windows.
And yes for simplicity's sake I'm ignoring crazy apps (looking at YOU Adobe) who write to unpartitioned space for some DRM.
How does Apple get publishers to fall in line? Better system or better stick (to beat up the ones who don't do as told)? If there's something to be gleaned / copied from this, I hope somebody sees it and acts on it.
One thing more powerful than Microsoft's lawyers is Apple's lawyers. I think the only thing more powerful than that is IBM's lawyers, the dreaded Nazgul.
The days of Apple cowering in fear of Microsoft are over... such a strange time to be alive.
Not sure if it's intentionally borked on Windows or not. I'm using a Core 2 Duo 2.4 with 4GB RAM under Snow Leopard (recently upgraded from Tiger) and iTunes loads instantly -- quicker than Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, etc. It's snappy for my uses (9000+ song library with videos stored on a NAS, lots of rule-based playlists, some of which are based on other playlists, etc).
I understand Apple concentrating talent on making it run faster in OS X but they're pissing off Windows users with a poor experience. That's not smart.
What would have been helpful -- and I'm really not trying to start a flame war here, just giving food for thought -- is if Windows could be upgraded easily without trashing the apps and user settings. If there were some sort of migration possible, I know I'd be more likely to get excited about trying Windows 7 instead of sticking with XP in my VM.
Recently I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Tiger. That's 2 versions away. I installed a second hard drive in my laptop because the original drive was only 160GB, and did a clean install of Snow Leopard to that drive. When the install was complete, it asked me if I wanted to import settings, documents, applications, etc (all had checkboxes, but all-or-nothing from each category, for instance all documents not just certain ones). It asked me where the data was (on the network, connected via FireWire, on another drive etc). I told it which drive had the data and let it do its thing.
When it finished I had the same icons on my desktop, all my apps (including Parallels, which is virtualization software), all my VM's, all my system passwords, my location-specific network settings, printers, preferences, user dictionary, screen resolution settings (including my second monitor settings), documents, custom pass-through printers, crontab settings, shell scripts etc etc were there. If some of the icons hadn't been different I would have sworn no upgrade was performed.
And yes, some printers weren't connected at the time and required me to download drivers later (Ricoh and Canon network printers) but really it went FAR easier than I could have ever expected.
Microsoft would make a KILLING if it were that simple to upgrade their consumer OS's. Surely this is within their grasp, and it's just a matter of time before it's considered archaic to have to import and re-install applications and settings. The closest I've seen to this holy grail on the Windows side is Acronis TrueImage, which allows installation to another machine even of differing hardware. Its limitation is primarily in the extra cruft you have to remove after said image is applied -- for instance HP drivers aren't needed on a Dell system.
I'm an atheist, and don't tolerate anyone preaching to my kids. But when they got old enough to drive, I allowed them to explore religions. They're old enough now to stand on their own in that way, to not be bullied into a decision, which is important.
I had Baptist parents and friends, and I went to Catholic school as a child / Baptist school in middle school. I have attended various religious events and ceremonies throughout the years. I've seen Wiccan, American Indian, Catholic, Jewish, and other methods of worship.
I don't consider myself an ignorant atheist by far -- because it's a big decision I researched before I made my choice. I live my life as best I can, I do not believe I get a "second chance" and I do not believe that "sins" can be forgiven. While that works for me, I'm sure there are others who have comfort that they can do harm to others and be absolved afterward.
And, yes, I share your view that if "god" magically exists then that entity would be capable of not destroying swaths of people because they hadn't sacrificed at the proper altar, or called the entity by the preferred name, or pressured others into worshipping the "true" god. And if not, well, f that deity. I want no part of that kind of group.
29 years here if you count when I started programming as a hobby... 25 years since I took my first college programming class... 21 years since I first started earning money for it... and 17 years since I started doing it full-time. I graduated high school 19 years ago.
And now for something completely different...
on
Shakespeare In Klingon?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I am just waiting for someone to come out and say "All right, that's enough! This is just silly. Silly, silly, silly!"
Mad props to the Monty Python gang for many laughs over the years.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps attacking the problem from the ISP side would be easiest and most productive. The problem, after all, is one of pollution -- in this case polluting the network with traffic. You can't continue to drink from the river if the polluter isn't stopped.
One possible approach is temporary disconnection from the public internet for any personal internet account found to be sending spam or engaging in virus-like activity.
Nowadays when starting a new broadband account, the ISP sends you to their startup page to complete the registration process. Instead of sending them there, send them to a "you are infected" page with AV downloads available from the ISP. This would only work with personal accounts, for businesses the concept wouldn't work. But I'd have to guess that most of the people getting infected are home users, and this could drastically reduce the number of computers available for any botnet, rendering it less profitable.
There's little reason not to lock down corporate computers. Microsoft provides group policy and other tools explicitly for this purpose.
BUT BUT BUT some software causes issues, for instance UPS WorldShip software requires administrative access to run. It's a stupid limitation, and one we raised with them numerous times to no avail. Our solution was to switch to FedEx. For some companies, individual pieces of software may require elevated privileges and there may not be a competing package to switch to.
Distributions act as gatekeepers for the repositories. In the case of Fedora / RHEL, Red Hat is the gatekeeper. They not only compile their own packages (with their own tweaks) of software, but in the case of RHEL, they actively support those packages as well. It's similar with other distros.
In the end, it all comes down to reputation. We purchase RHEL for peace of mind, and for the servers that aren't critical we use Fedora. That gives me the opportunity to see what's coming up and stay current (Fedora is testing grounds for RHEL) as opposed to us running a no-charge no-support RHEL clone such as CentOS.
Slashdot is quite perky with the last couple of betas. But it's especially disheartening that the video "upgrades" in this most current release fall short on my platform. When viewing the demo page ( http://demos.hacks.mozilla.org/openweb/HWACCEL/ ), I get 1 fps. I get 6 fps when running the same demo on Firefox inside a Parallels Windows XP SP3 VM. The VM is significantly faster... which boggles the mind actually.
So far as I remember, this was an Apple issue not necessarily a Mozilla issue, but still disappointing.
Chuck Norris was wandering the universe looking for asses to kick, got bored, and shot it.
I bet you're glad he hit Earth and not Uranus.
+1 Insightful. Wow I hadn't gotten that far to think of that yet... I guess it also means you might see other unsavory things with snippets of searches too. What if you're in a place where the act of searching for certain items is outlawed or a crime... could you be held liable for auto-searches on a snippet of text?
The only thing to the right of the text entry box on http://www.google.com/ is "Advanced Search" and "Language Tools". You have to move the mouse and wait for the fade-in to see them. Firefox 4.0b5 on Snow Leopard.
Surely I'm doing something wrong. I didn't see the "balls" everyone said was there. I didn't see the automatic search everyone said was there. And my Google Preferences has no mention of the term "Google Instant" or anything similar.
If it helps, I use the regular http://www.google.com/ address and I sign in to my account automatically. Tested with Firefox 4.0b4 and 4.0b5 on Snow Leopard.
After the CD rootkit debacle, I will never trust Sony again. They could come to my house bearing roses and I'd kick 'em in the nads.
Get to a cheaper place if you can. Those prices are insane! Even South Florida is cheaper than that.
Eventually your girlfriend / boyfriend figures out that your lifestyle isn't funded by magic fairy dust and when you break up, people talk. Or you don't break up and he/she can't contain the joy of a particularly nice present, and tells a friend.
All it takes is a bit of chatter and your (now extended, these things tend to grow beyond the initial circle of friends) circle knows all about it. Sooner or later, details leak out. You can be flashy to no one but certain things, like your shoes, watch, bedding, vacation destinations, jewelry, how you spend your free time, who you know etc etc all add up to paint a very private picture which even the least flashy reveals things you may not want others to know.
As for your "high school" comment, I'm not sure where to begin except it seems a particularly high-school-type of comment for one to make. Surely you're better than that.
Once you go through a divorce, or have one of your "friends" steal money from your wallet that you carelessly left unattended in your bedroom, or have a seemingly regular stream of different "friends" asking for money, you would best be on your toes.
Unfortunately money brings out the worst in people, especially if they're in a bad place or they don't see themselves ever getting where they want to be. In the US we tend to have an entitlement society which I think feeds this behavior.
When people introduce you as successful to others, or take for granted that you will pick up the tab, some people get the idea that you have some blood to suck. You never know who is real and who is just waiting for you to drop some coin their way. It's a very lonely existence, and especially ironic since you've worked hard to get where you are and want another like-minded person to start things over with. May you never experience this.
Very insightful. But remember that it doesn't take that much money to be surrounded by "friends" leeching off you. You just have to make a certain amount more than they do, or have a higher standard of living than they do. The "certain amount" varies from person to person, but if you're making double their wage I'd bet you can assume that the disparity in income is sufficient to cause jealousy and a sense of entitlement for these spongers.
When everyone around you is in a lower standard of living, you become a focal point, and as you insightfully explained, not in a good way. Even worse if you started at the same basic socioeconomic point and they stayed the same while you earned more. At some point they want to eat you so they can share some of your power and luck. It ain't pretty.
you can't polish a Hurd?
In today's world, it's nice to see people who "get it" and are finding new fans and publicity by doing something which hurts no one, by giving of themselves. I wish them continued success!
I will take a day of my vacation for this if he can do it.
Windows still requires someone with knowledge to setup the systems correctly, or you get all sorts of problems. Yes, for a small business, you can hire a newbie to do most of it, but as you grow you'll quickly realize you have to spend a lot of time / effort / downtime redoing things.
The separation of the two is in the enterprise space -- think midsize businesses and larger -- and as your enterprise grows larger, Linux is easier to maintain and implement.
Personally, I maintain 10 Linux servers / VM's, a half-dozen SQL Server servers with 30 or so SQL Server DB's (the largest is just under a TB), 4 MySQL servers, and I find time to do enterprise application development, enterprise reporting, and some web development (I consider myself poor at that). I also serve as 3rd tier network and OS support for 300+ employees.
If you know what you're doing, it's not difficult... and I'm paid fairly given my experience and years in the business.
Just because you can get someone for $20K a year to be a server intern doesn't mean they will be the one planning the network or making large decisions. A good seasoned admin keeps things running in a predictable way, allowing the business to focus on its core functionality and NOT on system limitations or integration issues.
Tell me again why a corporate environment would be running iTunes (other than people with a company-provided iPhone / iPad)?
It's OK, I can wait. Take your time.
Yes I agree, it's a mess, but certainly Microsoft can change this. It wouldn't be the first time that API's or direction has changed, and if it's for the better good...
I'm just thinking as technology continues to advance so quickly, why not improve the process? It would result in more machine sales; I think most people are concerned about migrating their data and programs which right now is a royal PIA. Moving a profile is relatively simple but the rest, not so much.
How does Apple accomplish this? I know on Linux you have package managers such as RPM which help identify components, give CRC's and install info. I know OS X uses "receipts" of some sort to do similar things. It just seems like if others can do portions of the task, the process should also be adaptable to Windows.
And yes for simplicity's sake I'm ignoring crazy apps (looking at YOU Adobe) who write to unpartitioned space for some DRM.
How does Apple get publishers to fall in line? Better system or better stick (to beat up the ones who don't do as told)? If there's something to be gleaned / copied from this, I hope somebody sees it and acts on it.
One thing more powerful than Microsoft's lawyers is Apple's lawyers. I think the only thing more powerful than that is IBM's lawyers, the dreaded Nazgul.
The days of Apple cowering in fear of Microsoft are over... such a strange time to be alive.
Not sure if it's intentionally borked on Windows or not. I'm using a Core 2 Duo 2.4 with 4GB RAM under Snow Leopard (recently upgraded from Tiger) and iTunes loads instantly -- quicker than Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, etc. It's snappy for my uses (9000+ song library with videos stored on a NAS, lots of rule-based playlists, some of which are based on other playlists, etc).
I understand Apple concentrating talent on making it run faster in OS X but they're pissing off Windows users with a poor experience. That's not smart.
+1 Agree Sony is evil. Same thing happened to me.
What would have been helpful -- and I'm really not trying to start a flame war here, just giving food for thought -- is if Windows could be upgraded easily without trashing the apps and user settings. If there were some sort of migration possible, I know I'd be more likely to get excited about trying Windows 7 instead of sticking with XP in my VM.
Recently I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Tiger. That's 2 versions away. I installed a second hard drive in my laptop because the original drive was only 160GB, and did a clean install of Snow Leopard to that drive. When the install was complete, it asked me if I wanted to import settings, documents, applications, etc (all had checkboxes, but all-or-nothing from each category, for instance all documents not just certain ones). It asked me where the data was (on the network, connected via FireWire, on another drive etc). I told it which drive had the data and let it do its thing.
When it finished I had the same icons on my desktop, all my apps (including Parallels, which is virtualization software), all my VM's, all my system passwords, my location-specific network settings, printers, preferences, user dictionary, screen resolution settings (including my second monitor settings), documents, custom pass-through printers, crontab settings, shell scripts etc etc were there. If some of the icons hadn't been different I would have sworn no upgrade was performed.
And yes, some printers weren't connected at the time and required me to download drivers later (Ricoh and Canon network printers) but really it went FAR easier than I could have ever expected.
Microsoft would make a KILLING if it were that simple to upgrade their consumer OS's. Surely this is within their grasp, and it's just a matter of time before it's considered archaic to have to import and re-install applications and settings. The closest I've seen to this holy grail on the Windows side is Acronis TrueImage, which allows installation to another machine even of differing hardware. Its limitation is primarily in the extra cruft you have to remove after said image is applied -- for instance HP drivers aren't needed on a Dell system.
+1 Insightful.
I'm an atheist, and don't tolerate anyone preaching to my kids. But when they got old enough to drive, I allowed them to explore religions. They're old enough now to stand on their own in that way, to not be bullied into a decision, which is important.
I had Baptist parents and friends, and I went to Catholic school as a child / Baptist school in middle school. I have attended various religious events and ceremonies throughout the years. I've seen Wiccan, American Indian, Catholic, Jewish, and other methods of worship.
I don't consider myself an ignorant atheist by far -- because it's a big decision I researched before I made my choice. I live my life as best I can, I do not believe I get a "second chance" and I do not believe that "sins" can be forgiven. While that works for me, I'm sure there are others who have comfort that they can do harm to others and be absolved afterward.
And, yes, I share your view that if "god" magically exists then that entity would be capable of not destroying swaths of people because they hadn't sacrificed at the proper altar, or called the entity by the preferred name, or pressured others into worshipping the "true" god. And if not, well, f that deity. I want no part of that kind of group.
29 years here if you count when I started programming as a hobby... 25 years since I took my first college programming class... 21 years since I first started earning money for it... and 17 years since I started doing it full-time. I graduated high school 19 years ago.
I am just waiting for someone to come out and say "All right, that's enough! This is just silly. Silly, silly, silly!"
Mad props to the Monty Python gang for many laughs over the years.