You hit upon an idea... I wonder about just hiding packets in outgoing/incoming spam SMTP messages. If it is just the usual spam with random words permuted to get by filters, a censor will just shrug it off.
With me, encryption isn't for the cops (any decent police force has a crapload of methods to obtain data, up to and including the old fashioned rubber hose). It is to lock out intruders, potential hacks, people who would maliciously alter data in flight, and people who are collecting information they have no right to. This is why I use a VPN service.
For example, when using a Wi-Fi network, it isn't uncommon for some WISPs to intercept the data stream to do ads, log all DNS requests and URLs transferred for data mining purposes, or even insert a Web frame in a HTTP stream with their crap on it. Firing up a VPN (TLS based or PPTP) keeps them out of my business. Same with some ISPs. Why should I allow an ISP to make cash from my Web browsing from a Phorm like server, unless I get a discount on my service? Then there are attacks like FireSheep (although that specific one is mitigated by a constant SSL connection).
Having a VPN is just the same thing as locking and arming a car alarm, or throwing a deadbolt before going to sleep. It is to keep thieves at bay.
Actually, this is just the next step in the arms race.
The first generation were the firewalls. The sophistication has gone from just blind IP blackholes to active MITM attacks, changing posts in midstream.
Now, because of VPNs, the next step is to ban them, and then arresting anyone who might have any traffic out of the ordinary. With anti-VPN laws, a government can vacuum up people for "suspect packets".
This is just what a government will do when they realize people VPN around their surveillance/censorship controls. Pakistan is the first to implement this, but I am sure they will be the last.
It is only a matter of time before we see anti-VPN laws being passed, just like we see national firewalls sprouting up.
We have had some victories over disease -- the "swine flue" for example was slated to be a pandemic on the order of SARS. However, through quick action, it had less of an effect than the generic flu does each year.
However, we are losing the front in other ways. Take bedbugs for example. After WWII and DDT, they pretty much were removed from our existence until 2-3 years ago. Now they are back with a vengeance, and there are no real effective bedbug treatments. Of course, there is the good old flu which hits every year and nothing has stopped that. Flu shots mitigate the effect, but preventing it from spreading every year hasn't been done yet.
If a virulent strain couples itself with a long incubation period (which means that quarantine controls take longer to get in place), there is a good chance that we could get a deadly pandemic.
Of course, this all is assuming an infection is natural. Man-made is another story -- it doesn't take much other than guaranteed power to have the ability to have a bug farm, and there are a lot of psychopathic nation leaders out there who would love to test their research should their power be threatened.
They need to not just dump every single private key, but do it the right way, and use hardware security modules that limit access, and what access is granted is thoroughly logged.
RedHat had a break-in a few years back with a blackhat getting access. The attack was mitigated of in a matter of hours, and the damage was very limited (with "blacklist" keys sent out for the rogue packages that were signed.) A CA has to have their core keys in a HSM, or they should not be in business because their whole commerce resides around the trustworthiness of their keys.
My question: What makes these guys more trustworthy than someone who lives in a basement who wants to run a CA, and has the CA root key stored in an Aladdin eToken? CAs are supposed to be trusted for a reason, and because of that, they need to invest in the proper hardware, processes, and HR procedures in making sure what their keys sign is correct.
Very true. However, it would be nice if newer USB flash drives supported encryption and secure erase as part of a standard, just like how hard disks have the ATA password protection on the controller.
I'll bite. I can understand the cynicism, but this reminds me of one feature I really wish USB flash drive makers would actually consider putting in their devices:
An onboard controller with AES-256 encryption, the keys stored on a dedicated chip (not with the rest of the flash drive contents), and everything encrypted.
Couple this with a password mechanism that would zero out the keys if too many guesses are attempted, and loss of this flash drive can be mitigated.
For blue-sky features, perhaps add a GSM transceiver so the drive can get a "kill" message, as well as a setting where if the drive doesn't see a GSM prompt in "x" amount of time, zero out the keys.
Even better, how about just getting rid of the concept of activation altogether in the VLK versions?
Businesses are not going to be pirating because the BSA will turn them into component quarks as soon as one disgruntled, laid off ex-employee sends an anonymous complaint.
The pirates will have defeated any protection mechanism altogether.
Why even bother antagonizing the enterprise in the first place, as this is the core customer of MS these days?
It actually got on a breadboard as a prototype. The reason it got knocked off the drawing board were not the legal eagles, but the cost of having the board mass produced.
I think company DRM fetishes should be an economic indicator. Software companies dropping DRM? The economy is decent. When Draconian copy protection comes commonplace, it shows things are on the skids.
Then the lawsuits will fly. There was a time where every single Windows install failed WGA due to MS's servers being down for a few hours. If MS had decided to have machines shut down and encrypt data to lock users out, Congress would be having an inquiry and lawsuits would be flying.
Instead, the best antipiracy mechanism is to use CD keys and deny access to network based services (multiplayer games, online updates, backups to a core server). Trying to do Draconian tactics may just bring lawsuits, or at best people spamming review sites (a la Spore 3 and Amazon) saying how horrible the product is.
Strongarm antipiracy measures are not new. In the early 1990s, I knew a software company that was planning to bundle an IDE card that would function as a dongle with their product. If the dongle thought the software was hacked, it would dump a large amount of voltage via a cascade to fry the machine.
HP needs to reinvent itself. I still remember the days where they made bulletproof printers, calculators that were what serious engineers used (as opposed to TI toys [1])
My ideas:
1: Remake the consumer line. Leave the low end PC market to Gateway, E-Machines, etc. Keep the business class, workstation, and servers under the HP name. Even better, charge $50-$100 more and have better support and materials quality across the board.
2: Get with EMC and find some way to integrate vSphere in hardware on servers. Cisco has UCS blades which are an insanely strong server platform, especially with a decent SAN. The future will be dynamic virtual machines as a platform, so make the hardware work this way. Even the "low end" Proliants that are for SMBs, consider having those be mini chassis for blades with a solid RAID controller.
3: Start breaking new ground. Blow the dust off of HP-UX, use the technology that came with Tandem, license some POWER patents from IBM and make servers that can compete head to head with Oracle and IBM on the high end UNIX front. Add a cloud front end where a developer could spin up a HP-UX instance with a few mouse clicks, use it for testing, add some disk, then decommission it, and all the resource usage would be logged for possible billing.
4: Start working to get into vertical markets again. As the parent said, start making HP scopes which are the best of breed.
5: Start R&D. HP used to be a groundbreaking firm. There are tons of markets that are useful, from dedicated, hardened security appliances, to communications, all kinds of uses.
6: Spin off the low end inkjet printers. Yes, they are decent quality, but a true HP printer should be something like the LaserJets in the mid 90s -- insanely reliable. All models across the line should have Postscript too, so drivers are a non-issue, unless one wants to use special printer specific features.
7: Start doing some cool server stuff. Make a server that uses low power VIA CPUs to run the OS on a low power core, but can power on power-hungry Intel or AMD cores when needed.
That was thought of, but grippers have to do tens of thousands of moves, and reliably hitting those holes each time, every time, was an issue. If there was a misalignment, then the drive might not make onto the gripper's tray correctly. The good thing is that with a robotic gripper that has a tray for the drive to slide on, the chances of it falling are less, but trying to get it to a place where it can be read might be an issue.
Of course, an enclosure would remedy this completely, but there are no real standards for drive enclosures, and it would dramatically increase the cost per drive, unless one could make and sell a large number, so economies of scale could kick in.
I looked into making a hard drive silo as a business. Even dropped the business proposal by some vendors. You would put bare SATA or SAS drives in a load port and they would be dropped into place in groups for reading/writing. Critical data would have four HDDs writing at a time (three way mirror, plus one HDD that would go offsite.) Non critical would get 5-8 HDDs writing in a RAID 6 configuration. It would have been nice to have because disks can be erased faster than tapes for security (just do an ATA level secure erase when the data expires before writing new stuff).
However, I encountered a few problems:
1: 3.5" drives or 2.5" drives? A lot of enterprise arrays are running on the smaller drives. One could do both, but essentially it requires two silos due to the completely different shapes of the drives (requiring different grippers and such).
2: Engineering grippers for the drives. Enclosures would make the setup a lot more expensive, and there wouldn't be any standard for those. So, the drives need to be moved around bare. This is harder than you think, as a bare drive isn't engineered to have reliable gripping surfaces.
3: Delicate mechanisms. If a robot drops a tape, who cares. If there is no physical damage, it will work. A HDD that gets any significant shock is pretty much toast, or at best will be unreliable.
4: I could not find anyone interested in making a robotic mechanism for this. The only party that would do the job was Seimens.
4: Nobody was interested enough to fund this project.
I wished this would have worked out. A silo like this could be used as a disk array, swapping out bad disks automatically, a VTL, a replacement for a tape array, a place for cloning disks to send out to remote sites, all kinds of uses.
Things can change though. For example right now, monitoring by the USG is not on my list of worries, because I'm sure i'd bore to tears any people watching.
However, governments can change; the LEOs who are looking for felonies being committed and are abiding by their oath have a possibly of being replaced by people more interested in getting rid of any opposition.
Take a system for figuring out if someone gets an intensive or routine search at customs. That same technology can be used to data mine social networking sites to find people who are a threat because of their ideas and their writings. This can be left or right ideology. What it can mean is an easy way for a repressive government to run a couple SELECT statements with a threshold number, and pass the results to a secret police to do some arresting. It doesn't even have to be people's political bents. It can be their race, religion, Alliance or Horde preference, or any factors.
Right now, this isn't happening, so social networking sites are doing well. However, as soon as some government decides to use a social site on their soil to find people of a certain race for some ethnic cleansing action, this would all change.
It depends on VPN providers. Some are explicit in their SLA that they keep logs for "x" amount of time, and what they keep logs on. This is done to prevent abuse, as well as look for intrusion attempts or malicious activities. After a period of time, say 6-24 hours, the logs get erased via a wipe command in the rotation script and life goes on.
There are multiple levels of security a VPN provider provides, and there are trade offs. Couple examples:
VPN provider 1 is fast and US based. However they have a policy to turn any and all logs over on request of any LEO who asks. For defending against FireSheep attacks, this provider is decent, same with making sure no ISP is using Phorm-like tools to mess with traffic. For anonymity or posting controversial stuff, definitely not the case.
VPN provider 2 is slower, and offshore. They are in a country where if someone does something really bad, the LEOs can pull the logs. However, it takes an actual due process. This provider is good for when you need to hit a P2P site for some reason. However for normal use, they are too slow for everyday Web browsing.
There is always the option of VPN chaining. You can use a http proxy over a PPTP/L2TP connection for example, or use a VPN proxy on the physical machine, with another VPN running in a VM.
With all the snooping and Phorm-like attacks on Web traffic, VPNs have gone from something to use if one wants to discreetly use a P2P service to something that is a must use to protect one's privacy, and even one's security (as ad injectors can easily inject malware which the destination website would be blamed for.) Especially with the bar so low to do attacks on unencrypted connections with tools like FireSheep.
Mazlow's pyramid. I'd rather deal with a larger government that can provide basic services should something happen than have to worry about if I have enough cash for the doctor, enough cash to feed family, a place to sleep, private security so some crackhead doesn't shoot me for a gang initiation rite.
There is a happy balance of a government that can provide basic security for its citizens, but not become an overbearing police state. Ideally the best government is one where everyone participates in. This is why I like the idea of a permanent draft -- if politicians want a war, the populace has a major stake in it, as opposed to "just" volunteers. Plus, a permanent draft would teach people that firearms are "just" tools, nothing more. This way, someone toting a handgun in a waistband looks just as goofy as someone toting a rake around in the public's eyes.
Regardless of government, what is needed is that the government and the citizens to completely interact. Once the town hall meetings disappear and government separates from the citizens, it becomes quite easy for it to become corrupt.
Then proxy server providers get told to keep logs just like the ISPs to be perused at leisure by any LEO, who desires it. The guy who got into Palin's Yahoo used a VPN server, and those guys were more than willing to burn him when the Feds came knocking.
Or more likely, governments in the future will just sit back and build a profile from information shared internationally. Then use a heuristic tool to assign a point core on amount of posts, wording, and other such to assign a threat factor to someone. That threat factor gets beyond a threshold, the local police get notified, the person disappears, and either a prison camp gets another hand, or an organ bank gets another set of kidneys, heart and other items to sell to a high bidder.
Google pretty much had to buy out MM. That, or when Apple or MS buys them out, face an influx of patent lawsuits over everything Android.
However, what may be an issue are the two differing philosophies of the two companies:
Motorola's has been to lock down their devices in hopes of getting modders to go elsewhere. This makes people toss their phones when they can't run the latest apps and buy new ones.
Google wants to keep devices unlocked so they can push updates and show how consistent Android is.
Both of these are diametric opposites, because a locked phone that can't be upgraded looks bad for Android to an average consumer.
Now Google is in a pinch. They now compete against the same companies they are trying to woo to Android, and not go to WP7 or their own OS.
Google has four choices for the most part:
1: Sell phones by Motorola and compete against HTC, ZTE, and Samsung who may just get tired of Android and go completely WM like Nokia.
2: Sell MM, keeping the patents.
3: Spin MM off as a separate company.
4: Just shut down MM entirely.
Of all the choices, the most likely one is #3, as it allows Google to be "neutral" again.
Here is one prediction: If the cloud takes off, people will get used to having a desktop or laptop with ChromeOS, and all their devices syncing to a server, with all apps either cloud based or offline copies of them. Essentially the computers at home would be X terminals, except perhaps for games, would have a device that does the 3D rendering and stream it to the terminal that wants the pictures.
Problem with that is that it requires constant Internet connections, and with bandwidth caps, throttling, RST forgeries and other items, bandwidth actually is becoming more expensive.
The "grunt" will not go away. No matter how locked down Windows 8 gets with remote booting, rolling back cracks, etc., Joe Sixpack will still manage to get malware on his machine. There are just too many people with lots of money who want to crack into his machine and use it for a botnet. So, the guy who runs around and deals with this won't be disappearing anytime soon. What we might see are low to midrange PCs having an OS image that is signed and cannot be modified unless the new image that replaces is also signed. This way, a reinstall can be done similar to a recovery partition, even if the HDD is toast. Maybe even a full recovery mini-OS like Windows PE, although I sort of dream there.
On the server end, we will see people slap the name "private cloud" on their data center, go heavy on blade enclosures and VMWare, and essentially little will be fundamentally changed there. The SAN will just feed virtual HBAs over NPIV instead of hardware WWNs. Hub/edge networking will change a bit because of FCoE and combined networks, but still be pretty similar.
IPv6? Hopefully we will cross that bridge soon, and get over all the problems in the stack (so we don't have to deal with the IPv6 analogs of ping-of-death, teardrop, land, smurf, etc.) However, there is a lot of money and control to be had by keeping the IPv4 address space as the only space.
We will see more devices for a bit, then people will return to the desktop or laptop PC as their main device. Tablets are fine, but you can't really use one for compiling code, or being a file server in a pinch. One reason people will end up going back to general purpose machines is the increasing lockdown of devices. Maybe with HTC offering to unlock bootloaders, Motorola's cellphone division in capable hands, and other items, this may change, but Apple is the flagbearer in this field and they show zero interest in relenting on the locking down side.
Server hardware will be similar, except that with SSDs being relatively cheap, server machines will start having smarter drive controllers and hypervisors that can autotier. Files used a lot on a machine will be placed on the SSD filesystem, while stuff not used as much drops to the magnetic platters. The operating system swapfile will sit on the SSD, and the SSD drives will be closer to the CPU, so they can take advantage of faster I/O, as opposed to normal drives needing SATA, SAS, or FC. Machines will have hypervisors in the BIOS and will be pretty much plug and play into a vSphere console or other interface.
Security, we will be seeing a wholesale move to repos or app stores, and roadblocks put in to dissuading people from just grabbing something off the Net and installing it.
We might even see OSes start denying users access to admin functions altogether. App installs would be handled by SUID tasks, disk management would be handled by users that have that checkbox, etc. I just wonder if there will be a way to pop up a good old fashioned "#" sign, or an Administrator command prompt. Hopefully for servers there will be.
I see some steps made in this direction. For example, VMWare making a VM that runs on a user's phone with their work stuff safely encrypted. Remote wipe comes along, it just zaps that VM; the user's stuff is untouched.
Some things I wouldn't mind seeing. I would love an Atrix that would have the ability to use Citrix and other remote software, so on a trip, I can just carry a "dumb" docking station with all the vital data being on the phone, assuming Google makes it standardized so the $600 keyboard/monitor does not have to be re-bought with every new mode. of phone. Combine this with virtual machine tech so work based stuff for multiple employers/organizations is isolated from other stuff, and that would provide excellent usability.
I'd say tanking/healing are easier than a DPS role. Far easier. As a tank, if you keep agro and everyone makes through the instance alive, you have done your part. A healer has the same objective. DPS is far harder, because the sole thing you will be judged on will be how many HP you are knocking off a mob per unit time. Healers tend not to be judged on heals/sec assuming there are no wipes. Same with tanks and damage mitigated. However, no matter how well an instance or a raid does, a DPS that doesn't make the numbers will be thrown out on their ear, possibly deguilded.
Other MMOs, DPS isn't judged like that. Someone judging an enchanter in EQ1 for DPS will be laughed at. Same with someone judging a debuffing scout in EQ2.
What made things interesting pre-cata was running all the quests in the original expansion before setting foot past the gate. Done right, you could end up 65-67, then the quests in that expansion were cinches, and you could just mop everything up and hit Wrath at 72 or so.
With the 90% XP nerf, people are essentially forced into lockstep linear progression with no real choice of changing stuff around, especially with alts.
Contrast this with EQ2, where one can level alts from 1-70 and almost not have a single quest shared between them. 70-80, one can grind dungeons or quest, and get a good head start on the 80-90 run. Or you can even stay at level 10, get 90 in crafting and be able to get epic level raid gear because there are tradeskill instances. To boot, once you get a character to max level in EQ2, every other char on that account gets an XP bonus of 10%, up to five characters/50% bonus. So, combine that with BoA gear, and EQ2 is very alt friendly, where you can roll a farm alt, then once he is 90, roll a dedicated tank or healer who will have an easy ride due to the XP bonuses and gear.
Then, if you want a completely nonlinear levelling progression, there is always EQ1. EQ1 is not as hardcore as people think it is, as you can pick up a merc and go to town almost anywhere. Grab two other people and you have a fast XP group, then run tasks (EQ1's meta-quest arcs) to get geared up along the way, as well as get currency to buy gear as you travel between expansions.
As MMOs stand right now, the one that seems to appeal to me the most just because it doesn't fit the boring WoW model is EQ1. SOE has had their issues, but EQ1 has kept up with the times in everything but the Bazaar system and character models, and has craploads of content to boot. Want to start a new character? Got 14+ newbie zones to choose from, and if bored with one, hopping to a second one is only a PoK run away.
That is one of the reasons I left WoW behind. Classes with dual or triple roles could easily switch armor sets and specs for tanking or healing, which means almost zero queue wait times. My poor lock and mage end up pretty much on the wayside waiting 30-45 minutes until something pops up, and when it does, DPS gets treated like crap when it comes to player interaction.
It becomes no fun to play a class when you know that you have wasted all your time levelling it to 85 and gearing it out, while someone who spent the same time with a dual/triple purpose class will always have a raid spot... and do as much, if not more DPS.
At least in RIFT, all four archetypes have a hat they can wear that isn't DPS. Rogues can tank, mages can heal, priests can tank and heal. Warriors tend to have a lot of abilities, so they can use a soul set for tanking one group stuff, flip to a set for raids, while having a set for PvP and then general grinding. You never feel like you wasted your time levelling a class to 50 there because there is almost always some role available. RIFT isn't perfect though, but I have a "wait and see" attitude with it.
Another good MMO is EQ2. There, even DPS classes do far more than just hammering on a mob. Scouts can debuff. Mages have buffs which help the party/raid for DPS. Priests have buffs which can spike a raid's DPS every so often, and warriors can absorb incoming damage from the tank to help mitigate incoming DPS spikes. EQ2 also has a varied heal system, from the shammies which do wards (similar to power word: shield in WoW), to templars that do reactive heals (they heal when someone takes damage), to druids that do heals over time.
Personally, RIFT has a lot of promise. I subbed to it for a year even though I'm not playing because of this. However, EQ2 seems to be useful for holding attention because it just has a lot to do other than grinding to max level and hunting armor.
WoW had the catbird seat when it came to MMO gaming. However what is killing the game are above mentioned items as well as the lock-step progress of levelling, the fact that healing is a PITA compared to BC or WotLK, and the fact that people with pure DPS classes strongly feel that their time has been wasted, as opposed to playing a druid or paladin which can do just as much DPS (if not more), and can do other roles to ensure they do more in WoW than just wait for queue openings.
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You hit upon an idea... I wonder about just hiding packets in outgoing/incoming spam SMTP messages. If it is just the usual spam with random words permuted to get by filters, a censor will just shrug it off.
With me, encryption isn't for the cops (any decent police force has a crapload of methods to obtain data, up to and including the old fashioned rubber hose). It is to lock out intruders, potential hacks, people who would maliciously alter data in flight, and people who are collecting information they have no right to. This is why I use a VPN service.
For example, when using a Wi-Fi network, it isn't uncommon for some WISPs to intercept the data stream to do ads, log all DNS requests and URLs transferred for data mining purposes, or even insert a Web frame in a HTTP stream with their crap on it. Firing up a VPN (TLS based or PPTP) keeps them out of my business. Same with some ISPs. Why should I allow an ISP to make cash from my Web browsing from a Phorm like server, unless I get a discount on my service? Then there are attacks like FireSheep (although that specific one is mitigated by a constant SSL connection).
Having a VPN is just the same thing as locking and arming a car alarm, or throwing a deadbolt before going to sleep. It is to keep thieves at bay.
Easy... when in doubt and can't be parsed, it is encrypted. The accused have to prove it is not encryption, as opposed to the other way around.
Actually, this is just the next step in the arms race.
The first generation were the firewalls. The sophistication has gone from just blind IP blackholes to active MITM attacks, changing posts in midstream.
Now, because of VPNs, the next step is to ban them, and then arresting anyone who might have any traffic out of the ordinary. With anti-VPN laws, a government can vacuum up people for "suspect packets".
This is just what a government will do when they realize people VPN around their surveillance/censorship controls. Pakistan is the first to implement this, but I am sure they will be the last.
It is only a matter of time before we see anti-VPN laws being passed, just like we see national firewalls sprouting up.
We have had some victories over disease -- the "swine flue" for example was slated to be a pandemic on the order of SARS. However, through quick action, it had less of an effect than the generic flu does each year.
However, we are losing the front in other ways. Take bedbugs for example. After WWII and DDT, they pretty much were removed from our existence until 2-3 years ago. Now they are back with a vengeance, and there are no real effective bedbug treatments. Of course, there is the good old flu which hits every year and nothing has stopped that. Flu shots mitigate the effect, but preventing it from spreading every year hasn't been done yet.
If a virulent strain couples itself with a long incubation period (which means that quarantine controls take longer to get in place), there is a good chance that we could get a deadly pandemic.
Of course, this all is assuming an infection is natural. Man-made is another story -- it doesn't take much other than guaranteed power to have the ability to have a bug farm, and there are a lot of psychopathic nation leaders out there who would love to test their research should their power be threatened.
They need to not just dump every single private key, but do it the right way, and use hardware security modules that limit access, and what access is granted is thoroughly logged.
RedHat had a break-in a few years back with a blackhat getting access. The attack was mitigated of in a matter of hours, and the damage was very limited (with "blacklist" keys sent out for the rogue packages that were signed.) A CA has to have their core keys in a HSM, or they should not be in business because their whole commerce resides around the trustworthiness of their keys.
My question: What makes these guys more trustworthy than someone who lives in a basement who wants to run a CA, and has the CA root key stored in an Aladdin eToken? CAs are supposed to be trusted for a reason, and because of that, they need to invest in the proper hardware, processes, and HR procedures in making sure what their keys sign is correct.
Very true. However, it would be nice if newer USB flash drives supported encryption and secure erase as part of a standard, just like how hard disks have the ATA password protection on the controller.
I'll bite. I can understand the cynicism, but this reminds me of one feature I really wish USB flash drive makers would actually consider putting in their devices:
An onboard controller with AES-256 encryption, the keys stored on a dedicated chip (not with the rest of the flash drive contents), and everything encrypted.
Couple this with a password mechanism that would zero out the keys if too many guesses are attempted, and loss of this flash drive can be mitigated.
For blue-sky features, perhaps add a GSM transceiver so the drive can get a "kill" message, as well as a setting where if the drive doesn't see a GSM prompt in "x" amount of time, zero out the keys.
Even better, how about just getting rid of the concept of activation altogether in the VLK versions?
Businesses are not going to be pirating because the BSA will turn them into component quarks as soon as one disgruntled, laid off ex-employee sends an anonymous complaint.
The pirates will have defeated any protection mechanism altogether.
Why even bother antagonizing the enterprise in the first place, as this is the core customer of MS these days?
It actually got on a breadboard as a prototype. The reason it got knocked off the drawing board were not the legal eagles, but the cost of having the board mass produced.
I think company DRM fetishes should be an economic indicator. Software companies dropping DRM? The economy is decent. When Draconian copy protection comes commonplace, it shows things are on the skids.
Then the lawsuits will fly. There was a time where every single Windows install failed WGA due to MS's servers being down for a few hours. If MS had decided to have machines shut down and encrypt data to lock users out, Congress would be having an inquiry and lawsuits would be flying.
Instead, the best antipiracy mechanism is to use CD keys and deny access to network based services (multiplayer games, online updates, backups to a core server). Trying to do Draconian tactics may just bring lawsuits, or at best people spamming review sites (a la Spore 3 and Amazon) saying how horrible the product is.
Strongarm antipiracy measures are not new. In the early 1990s, I knew a software company that was planning to bundle an IDE card that would function as a dongle with their product. If the dongle thought the software was hacked, it would dump a large amount of voltage via a cascade to fry the machine.
HP needs to reinvent itself. I still remember the days where they made bulletproof printers, calculators that were what serious engineers used (as opposed to TI toys [1])
My ideas:
1: Remake the consumer line. Leave the low end PC market to Gateway, E-Machines, etc. Keep the business class, workstation, and servers under the HP name. Even better, charge $50-$100 more and have better support and materials quality across the board.
2: Get with EMC and find some way to integrate vSphere in hardware on servers. Cisco has UCS blades which are an insanely strong server platform, especially with a decent SAN. The future will be dynamic virtual machines as a platform, so make the hardware work this way. Even the "low end" Proliants that are for SMBs, consider having those be mini chassis for blades with a solid RAID controller.
3: Start breaking new ground. Blow the dust off of HP-UX, use the technology that came with Tandem, license some POWER patents from IBM and make servers that can compete head to head with Oracle and IBM on the high end UNIX front. Add a cloud front end where a developer could spin up a HP-UX instance with a few mouse clicks, use it for testing, add some disk, then decommission it, and all the resource usage would be logged for possible billing.
4: Start working to get into vertical markets again. As the parent said, start making HP scopes which are the best of breed.
5: Start R&D. HP used to be a groundbreaking firm. There are tons of markets that are useful, from dedicated, hardened security appliances, to communications, all kinds of uses.
6: Spin off the low end inkjet printers. Yes, they are decent quality, but a true HP printer should be something like the LaserJets in the mid 90s -- insanely reliable. All models across the line should have Postscript too, so drivers are a non-issue, unless one wants to use special printer specific features.
7: Start doing some cool server stuff. Make a server that uses low power VIA CPUs to run the OS on a low power core, but can power on power-hungry Intel or AMD cores when needed.
[1]: Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/768/
That was thought of, but grippers have to do tens of thousands of moves, and reliably hitting those holes each time, every time, was an issue. If there was a misalignment, then the drive might not make onto the gripper's tray correctly. The good thing is that with a robotic gripper that has a tray for the drive to slide on, the chances of it falling are less, but trying to get it to a place where it can be read might be an issue.
Of course, an enclosure would remedy this completely, but there are no real standards for drive enclosures, and it would dramatically increase the cost per drive, unless one could make and sell a large number, so economies of scale could kick in.
I looked into making a hard drive silo as a business. Even dropped the business proposal by some vendors. You would put bare SATA or SAS drives in a load port and they would be dropped into place in groups for reading/writing. Critical data would have four HDDs writing at a time (three way mirror, plus one HDD that would go offsite.) Non critical would get 5-8 HDDs writing in a RAID 6 configuration. It would have been nice to have because disks can be erased faster than tapes for security (just do an ATA level secure erase when the data expires before writing new stuff).
However, I encountered a few problems:
1: 3.5" drives or 2.5" drives? A lot of enterprise arrays are running on the smaller drives. One could do both, but essentially it requires two silos due to the completely different shapes of the drives (requiring different grippers and such).
2: Engineering grippers for the drives. Enclosures would make the setup a lot more expensive, and there wouldn't be any standard for those. So, the drives need to be moved around bare. This is harder than you think, as a bare drive isn't engineered to have reliable gripping surfaces.
3: Delicate mechanisms. If a robot drops a tape, who cares. If there is no physical damage, it will work. A HDD that gets any significant shock is pretty much toast, or at best will be unreliable.
4: I could not find anyone interested in making a robotic mechanism for this. The only party that would do the job was Seimens.
4: Nobody was interested enough to fund this project.
I wished this would have worked out. A silo like this could be used as a disk array, swapping out bad disks automatically, a VTL, a replacement for a tape array, a place for cloning disks to send out to remote sites, all kinds of uses.
Things can change though. For example right now, monitoring by the USG is not on my list of worries, because I'm sure i'd bore to tears any people watching.
However, governments can change; the LEOs who are looking for felonies being committed and are abiding by their oath have a possibly of being replaced by people more interested in getting rid of any opposition.
Take a system for figuring out if someone gets an intensive or routine search at customs. That same technology can be used to data mine social networking sites to find people who are a threat because of their ideas and their writings. This can be left or right ideology. What it can mean is an easy way for a repressive government to run a couple SELECT statements with a threshold number, and pass the results to a secret police to do some arresting. It doesn't even have to be people's political bents. It can be their race, religion, Alliance or Horde preference, or any factors.
Right now, this isn't happening, so social networking sites are doing well. However, as soon as some government decides to use a social site on their soil to find people of a certain race for some ethnic cleansing action, this would all change.
It depends on VPN providers. Some are explicit in their SLA that they keep logs for "x" amount of time, and what they keep logs on. This is done to prevent abuse, as well as look for intrusion attempts or malicious activities. After a period of time, say 6-24 hours, the logs get erased via a wipe command in the rotation script and life goes on.
There are multiple levels of security a VPN provider provides, and there are trade offs. Couple examples:
VPN provider 1 is fast and US based. However they have a policy to turn any and all logs over on request of any LEO who asks. For defending against FireSheep attacks, this provider is decent, same with making sure no ISP is using Phorm-like tools to mess with traffic. For anonymity or posting controversial stuff, definitely not the case.
VPN provider 2 is slower, and offshore. They are in a country where if someone does something really bad, the LEOs can pull the logs. However, it takes an actual due process. This provider is good for when you need to hit a P2P site for some reason. However for normal use, they are too slow for everyday Web browsing.
There is always the option of VPN chaining. You can use a http proxy over a PPTP/L2TP connection for example, or use a VPN proxy on the physical machine, with another VPN running in a VM.
With all the snooping and Phorm-like attacks on Web traffic, VPNs have gone from something to use if one wants to discreetly use a P2P service to something that is a must use to protect one's privacy, and even one's security (as ad injectors can easily inject malware which the destination website would be blamed for.) Especially with the bar so low to do attacks on unencrypted connections with tools like FireSheep.
Mazlow's pyramid. I'd rather deal with a larger government that can provide basic services should something happen than have to worry about if I have enough cash for the doctor, enough cash to feed family, a place to sleep, private security so some crackhead doesn't shoot me for a gang initiation rite.
There is a happy balance of a government that can provide basic security for its citizens, but not become an overbearing police state. Ideally the best government is one where everyone participates in. This is why I like the idea of a permanent draft -- if politicians want a war, the populace has a major stake in it, as opposed to "just" volunteers. Plus, a permanent draft would teach people that firearms are "just" tools, nothing more. This way, someone toting a handgun in a waistband looks just as goofy as someone toting a rake around in the public's eyes.
Regardless of government, what is needed is that the government and the citizens to completely interact. Once the town hall meetings disappear and government separates from the citizens, it becomes quite easy for it to become corrupt.
Then proxy server providers get told to keep logs just like the ISPs to be perused at leisure by any LEO, who desires it. The guy who got into Palin's Yahoo used a VPN server, and those guys were more than willing to burn him when the Feds came knocking.
Or more likely, governments in the future will just sit back and build a profile from information shared internationally. Then use a heuristic tool to assign a point core on amount of posts, wording, and other such to assign a threat factor to someone. That threat factor gets beyond a threshold, the local police get notified, the person disappears, and either a prison camp gets another hand, or an organ bank gets another set of kidneys, heart and other items to sell to a high bidder.
Google pretty much had to buy out MM. That, or when Apple or MS buys them out, face an influx of patent lawsuits over everything Android.
However, what may be an issue are the two differing philosophies of the two companies:
Motorola's has been to lock down their devices in hopes of getting modders to go elsewhere. This makes people toss their phones when they can't run the latest apps and buy new ones.
Google wants to keep devices unlocked so they can push updates and show how consistent Android is.
Both of these are diametric opposites, because a locked phone that can't be upgraded looks bad for Android to an average consumer.
Now Google is in a pinch. They now compete against the same companies they are trying to woo to Android, and not go to WP7 or their own OS.
Google has four choices for the most part:
1: Sell phones by Motorola and compete against HTC, ZTE, and Samsung who may just get tired of Android and go completely WM like Nokia.
2: Sell MM, keeping the patents.
3: Spin MM off as a separate company.
4: Just shut down MM entirely.
Of all the choices, the most likely one is #3, as it allows Google to be "neutral" again.
Here is one prediction: If the cloud takes off, people will get used to having a desktop or laptop with ChromeOS, and all their devices syncing to a server, with all apps either cloud based or offline copies of them. Essentially the computers at home would be X terminals, except perhaps for games, would have a device that does the 3D rendering and stream it to the terminal that wants the pictures.
Problem with that is that it requires constant Internet connections, and with bandwidth caps, throttling, RST forgeries and other items, bandwidth actually is becoming more expensive.
The "grunt" will not go away. No matter how locked down Windows 8 gets with remote booting, rolling back cracks, etc., Joe Sixpack will still manage to get malware on his machine. There are just too many people with lots of money who want to crack into his machine and use it for a botnet. So, the guy who runs around and deals with this won't be disappearing anytime soon. What we might see are low to midrange PCs having an OS image that is signed and cannot be modified unless the new image that replaces is also signed. This way, a reinstall can be done similar to a recovery partition, even if the HDD is toast. Maybe even a full recovery mini-OS like Windows PE, although I sort of dream there.
On the server end, we will see people slap the name "private cloud" on their data center, go heavy on blade enclosures and VMWare, and essentially little will be fundamentally changed there. The SAN will just feed virtual HBAs over NPIV instead of hardware WWNs. Hub/edge networking will change a bit because of FCoE and combined networks, but still be pretty similar.
IPv6? Hopefully we will cross that bridge soon, and get over all the problems in the stack (so we don't have to deal with the IPv6 analogs of ping-of-death, teardrop, land, smurf, etc.) However, there is a lot of money and control to be had by keeping the IPv4 address space as the only space.
We will see more devices for a bit, then people will return to the desktop or laptop PC as their main device. Tablets are fine, but you can't really use one for compiling code, or being a file server in a pinch. One reason people will end up going back to general purpose machines is the increasing lockdown of devices. Maybe with HTC offering to unlock bootloaders, Motorola's cellphone division in capable hands, and other items, this may change, but Apple is the flagbearer in this field and they show zero interest in relenting on the locking down side.
Server hardware will be similar, except that with SSDs being relatively cheap, server machines will start having smarter drive controllers and hypervisors that can autotier. Files used a lot on a machine will be placed on the SSD filesystem, while stuff not used as much drops to the magnetic platters. The operating system swapfile will sit on the SSD, and the SSD drives will be closer to the CPU, so they can take advantage of faster I/O, as opposed to normal drives needing SATA, SAS, or FC. Machines will have hypervisors in the BIOS and will be pretty much plug and play into a vSphere console or other interface.
Security, we will be seeing a wholesale move to repos or app stores, and roadblocks put in to dissuading people from just grabbing something off the Net and installing it.
We might even see OSes start denying users access to admin functions altogether. App installs would be handled by SUID tasks, disk management would be handled by users that have that checkbox, etc. I just wonder if there will be a way to pop up a good old fashioned "#" sign, or an Administrator command prompt. Hopefully for servers there will be.
I see some steps made in this direction. For example, VMWare making a VM that runs on a user's phone with their work stuff safely encrypted. Remote wipe comes along, it just zaps that VM; the user's stuff is untouched.
Some things I wouldn't mind seeing. I would love an Atrix that would have the ability to use Citrix and other remote software, so on a trip, I can just carry a "dumb" docking station with all the vital data being on the phone, assuming Google makes it standardized so the $600 keyboard/monitor does not have to be re-bought with every new mode. of phone. Combine this with virtual machine tech so work based stuff for multiple employers/organizations is isolated from other stuff, and that would provide excellent usability.
I'd say tanking/healing are easier than a DPS role. Far easier. As a tank, if you keep agro and everyone makes through the instance alive, you have done your part. A healer has the same objective. DPS is far harder, because the sole thing you will be judged on will be how many HP you are knocking off a mob per unit time. Healers tend not to be judged on heals/sec assuming there are no wipes. Same with tanks and damage mitigated. However, no matter how well an instance or a raid does, a DPS that doesn't make the numbers will be thrown out on their ear, possibly deguilded.
Other MMOs, DPS isn't judged like that. Someone judging an enchanter in EQ1 for DPS will be laughed at. Same with someone judging a debuffing scout in EQ2.
What made things interesting pre-cata was running all the quests in the original expansion before setting foot past the gate. Done right, you could end up 65-67, then the quests in that expansion were cinches, and you could just mop everything up and hit Wrath at 72 or so.
With the 90% XP nerf, people are essentially forced into lockstep linear progression with no real choice of changing stuff around, especially with alts.
Contrast this with EQ2, where one can level alts from 1-70 and almost not have a single quest shared between them. 70-80, one can grind dungeons or quest, and get a good head start on the 80-90 run. Or you can even stay at level 10, get 90 in crafting and be able to get epic level raid gear because there are tradeskill instances. To boot, once you get a character to max level in EQ2, every other char on that account gets an XP bonus of 10%, up to five characters/50% bonus. So, combine that with BoA gear, and EQ2 is very alt friendly, where you can roll a farm alt, then once he is 90, roll a dedicated tank or healer who will have an easy ride due to the XP bonuses and gear.
Then, if you want a completely nonlinear levelling progression, there is always EQ1. EQ1 is not as hardcore as people think it is, as you can pick up a merc and go to town almost anywhere. Grab two other people and you have a fast XP group, then run tasks (EQ1's meta-quest arcs) to get geared up along the way, as well as get currency to buy gear as you travel between expansions.
As MMOs stand right now, the one that seems to appeal to me the most just because it doesn't fit the boring WoW model is EQ1. SOE has had their issues, but EQ1 has kept up with the times in everything but the Bazaar system and character models, and has craploads of content to boot. Want to start a new character? Got 14+ newbie zones to choose from, and if bored with one, hopping to a second one is only a PoK run away.
That is one of the reasons I left WoW behind. Classes with dual or triple roles could easily switch armor sets and specs for tanking or healing, which means almost zero queue wait times. My poor lock and mage end up pretty much on the wayside waiting 30-45 minutes until something pops up, and when it does, DPS gets treated like crap when it comes to player interaction.
It becomes no fun to play a class when you know that you have wasted all your time levelling it to 85 and gearing it out, while someone who spent the same time with a dual/triple purpose class will always have a raid spot... and do as much, if not more DPS.
At least in RIFT, all four archetypes have a hat they can wear that isn't DPS. Rogues can tank, mages can heal, priests can tank and heal. Warriors tend to have a lot of abilities, so they can use a soul set for tanking one group stuff, flip to a set for raids, while having a set for PvP and then general grinding. You never feel like you wasted your time levelling a class to 50 there because there is almost always some role available. RIFT isn't perfect though, but I have a "wait and see" attitude with it.
Another good MMO is EQ2. There, even DPS classes do far more than just hammering on a mob. Scouts can debuff. Mages have buffs which help the party/raid for DPS. Priests have buffs which can spike a raid's DPS every so often, and warriors can absorb incoming damage from the tank to help mitigate incoming DPS spikes. EQ2 also has a varied heal system, from the shammies which do wards (similar to power word: shield in WoW), to templars that do reactive heals (they heal when someone takes damage), to druids that do heals over time.
Personally, RIFT has a lot of promise. I subbed to it for a year even though I'm not playing because of this. However, EQ2 seems to be useful for holding attention because it just has a lot to do other than grinding to max level and hunting armor.
WoW had the catbird seat when it came to MMO gaming. However what is killing the game are above mentioned items as well as the lock-step progress of levelling, the fact that healing is a PITA compared to BC or WotLK, and the fact that people with pure DPS classes strongly feel that their time has been wasted, as opposed to playing a druid or paladin which can do just as much DPS (if not more), and can do other roles to ensure they do more in WoW than just wait for queue openings.