"The crux of the matter is that a perfect emulator of any sufficiently complex system would have to be a bug-free program, and we don't know how to write those yet,"
Compare this to making a "secure" operating system - every bug doesn't have to be secured - just the ones that are being exploited. Same with anti-virus programs - they don't catch all viruses, only what they know to look for.
So the rootkit doesn't have to be perfect to be invisible to *most* users... it just has to hide from the AV software (or other security). And as the security software gets better... so can the rootkit, ie, in the next "version" add the bugs that the security programs are looking for.
At the same price for a HP box put together and a Custom build... if you know what your doing - build it yourself.
From HP you get a 250/300/350 watt power supply (whatever leaves almost no room to upgrade) and some of the parts are lesser quality than retail parts. This is based off other people's comments over the years, and and intuitevly feel myself by comparing the 5+ custom boxes my family has had to the 4 Dell/HP mainstream systems. Note I said mainstream - usually the enterprise/business family from a vendor is an improvement over the mainstream ones, but priced much higher.
- Nag-ware - Dell/HP are PAID to include them
- Bulk Purchasing - They buy HUGE quantities of PC parts, and thus get them way below retail cost
- Cheap Licenses - I've bought a $400 Dell PC with Windows XP, So I really doubt they weren't paying the $125 for the OEM version (or that was the price in Aug/06 in Canadian Dollars)
Take these three together and the cost of a Dell/HP pc with windows will work out about the same as building a PC from parts without an OS. This doesn't hold true at the extreme end but for the $500-1'200 mainstream range will be fairly accurate.
So if you don't want Windows but you need a pre-made box with customer support, why not just buy it - burn the recovery disks (just in case you want windows/drivers) - format it and use the distro of your choice?
And for the record... I don't imagine any Slashdotters doing this, but in a corporate environment with an agreement to only buy PC's from XXX. Or the home user who wants linux but doesn't have the knowledge to put together a PC from parts (and wants Dell over the local guy) and may need some customer support with diagnosing a hardware problem (and I bet you laughed when I said burn the recovery disk before formatting)
And what's going to happen when certain computer savvy individuals decide to play the Boeing Flight Simulator?
AKA. hijacking the control signal to the plane and lock eveyone else out and having fun seeing how many passengers they can make sick... or worse
I know the crown has the authority to file under the Legal Act (not checking it's actual name) for murder, drugs, etc. I am aware and excluding the situation of someone declining to press charges.
I wouldn't be surprised if the crown is responsable for bringing charges against anyone copying movies for commercial purposes.
But, If the crown could file charges for someone in a theater with a camcorder... Why hasn't MPAA (well CMPDA or whatever the canadian equivilant is) pushed the crown and police to bring in the individual with a camcorder and prosecute them? While instead are pushing for stronger copyright laws?
I don't think this is quite true... My Understanding is that the copyright law is being broken with a camcorder in a theater, it just isn't a law that is enforced directly by the police. I believe a lawsuit can be brought against the person with the camcorder but it's up to the copyright holder to start the process. Similar to RIAA going through the courts to find the individual from their IP/ISP and then filing against the individual directly.
I've also seen the story that half the movie piracy is from in Canada with camcorders in theaters. TOTAL BS! Go to any torrent site (or any other place to pirated movies) and the majority of the movies are DVD rips. So how exactly did those come from a camcorder in a theater?
Here come the lobbyists.
Who knows, maybe in Canada they can even manage to implement a Vista Tax on computer equipment, you know - to make up for all the lost revinue because of people using vista without paying for it (equivilant to the 15cent tax on all blank cd's that RIAA's lobbyists had imposed a few years ago)
I called BS on the report based on my perception that the report was intended to bash MS and specifically vista. Again, I'm not defending MS because I like them or their products... I'm saying this because I don't like FUD reports.
Straight from the article (from the PDF linked above)
All systems were completely reinitialized before tests using default values
While I normally would rather see benchmarks done on a freshly booted machine, this does not make sense in testing User Interface Friction, as Pfeiffer defines it (on page 4 under the background section of the report): "the difference in fluidity and productivity that can be observed..."
When testing this way Vista's readyboost and other optimizations that pre-load commonly used programs/data is completely ignored. Tom's Hardware looked at Vista's ReadyBoost feature and showed http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/windows-vis ta-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed/page5.html that the first time opening Office 2007 or Open Office (admittedly with 512Mb ram) can take 10 seconds, but by the third time this dropped to 3-4 seconds. If all the tests were performed after a fresh reboot then it's not representative of how the end user would use the computer (excluding Windows since it crashes all the time, see I told you I wasn't just defending MS;)
Menu Latency - Again straight from the report (Page 6)
Menu latency was measured by accessing menus and submenus according to varying usage patterns (single submenu, two specific submenus in different menus, three different submenus in 3 distinct menus). Each operation was executed several times in succession, and each set of operations was clocked several times
And from page 5
All tests were preformed using the standard system installation and configuration
They clearly included the configurable delay before drawing a menu as part of the comparison between the OS's. Granted they used the default settings between OS's, I know XP is 400ms, but if the default settings are different in Vista/OSX, this test could simply be a check of this default delay.
All of their tests have one individual performing/repeating each task, taken to the extreme they could have had mac fans as the tester(s) and easily skewed the results towards buying OSX instead of Vista.
Pfeiffer's report also covers Menu Latency --the slight lag that Windows imposes when displaying menus and submenus. Here, the report concludes Vista/Aero has worsened by no less than 20% compared to Windows XP
They compared a SETTING and conclude that the lag is worse by 20%. BS!
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37024.aspx shows how to change the setting, so if you set it to 10'000 (in XP) and compared that to Vista (with the default setting) and you would see a >99% DECREASE in lag for vista opening a menu. I'm not saying this is useful at all, but the report could just as easily been done this way and come to the conclusion that "Here, the report concludes Vista/Aero has improved by no less than 99% compared to Windows XP"
For the record, I've never used vista and am definately not trying to defend it. I would have thought that they could have at least compared things that were programmed in by MS, not configurable by ME.
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Compare this to making a "secure" operating system - every bug doesn't have to be secured - just the ones that are being exploited. Same with anti-virus programs - they don't catch all viruses, only what they know to look for.
So the rootkit doesn't have to be perfect to be invisible to *most* users... it just has to hide from the AV software (or other security). And as the security software gets better... so can the rootkit, ie, in the next "version" add the bugs that the security programs are looking for.
At the same price for a HP box put together and a Custom build... if you know what your doing - build it yourself.
From HP you get a 250/300/350 watt power supply (whatever leaves almost no room to upgrade) and some of the parts are lesser quality than retail parts. This is based off other people's comments over the years, and and intuitevly feel myself by comparing the 5+ custom boxes my family has had to the 4 Dell/HP mainstream systems. Note I said mainstream - usually the enterprise/business family from a vendor is an improvement over the mainstream ones, but priced much higher.
You might not get windows for free, But:
- Nag-ware - Dell/HP are PAID to include them
- Bulk Purchasing - They buy HUGE quantities of PC parts, and thus get them way below retail cost
- Cheap Licenses - I've bought a $400 Dell PC with Windows XP, So I really doubt they weren't paying the $125 for the OEM version (or that was the price in Aug/06 in Canadian Dollars)
Take these three together and the cost of a Dell/HP pc with windows will work out about the same as building a PC from parts without an OS. This doesn't hold true at the extreme end but for the $500-1'200 mainstream range will be fairly accurate.
So if you don't want Windows but you need a pre-made box with customer support, why not just buy it - burn the recovery disks (just in case you want windows/drivers) - format it and use the distro of your choice?
And for the record... I don't imagine any Slashdotters doing this, but in a corporate environment with an agreement to only buy PC's from XXX. Or the home user who wants linux but doesn't have the knowledge to put together a PC from parts (and wants Dell over the local guy) and may need some customer support with diagnosing a hardware problem (and I bet you laughed when I said burn the recovery disk before formatting)
And what's going to happen when certain computer savvy individuals decide to play the Boeing Flight Simulator? AKA. hijacking the control signal to the plane and lock eveyone else out and having fun seeing how many passengers they can make sick... or worse
I know the crown has the authority to file under the Legal Act (not checking it's actual name) for murder, drugs, etc. I am aware and excluding the situation of someone declining to press charges.
I wouldn't be surprised if the crown is responsable for bringing charges against anyone copying movies for commercial purposes.
But, If the crown could file charges for someone in a theater with a camcorder... Why hasn't MPAA (well CMPDA or whatever the canadian equivilant is) pushed the crown and police to bring in the individual with a camcorder and prosecute them? While instead are pushing for stronger copyright laws?
I don't think this is quite true... My Understanding is that the copyright law is being broken with a camcorder in a theater, it just isn't a law that is enforced directly by the police. I believe a lawsuit can be brought against the person with the camcorder but it's up to the copyright holder to start the process. Similar to RIAA going through the courts to find the individual from their IP/ISP and then filing against the individual directly.
I've also seen the story that half the movie piracy is from in Canada with camcorders in theaters. TOTAL BS! Go to any torrent site (or any other place to pirated movies) and the majority of the movies are DVD rips. So how exactly did those come from a camcorder in a theater?
Here come the lobbyists. Who knows, maybe in Canada they can even manage to implement a Vista Tax on computer equipment, you know - to make up for all the lost revinue because of people using vista without paying for it (equivilant to the 15cent tax on all blank cd's that RIAA's lobbyists had imposed a few years ago)
Straight from the article (from the PDF linked above)
All systems were completely reinitialized before tests using default values
While I normally would rather see benchmarks done on a freshly booted machine, this does not make sense in testing User Interface Friction, as Pfeiffer defines it (on page 4 under the background section of the report): "the difference in fluidity and productivity that can be observed..."
When testing this way Vista's readyboost and other optimizations that pre-load commonly used programs/data is completely ignored. Tom's Hardware looked at Vista's ReadyBoost feature and showed http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/windows-vi
Menu Latency - Again straight from the report (Page 6)
Menu latency was measured by accessing menus and submenus according to varying usage patterns (single submenu, two specific submenus in different menus, three different submenus in 3 distinct menus). Each operation was executed several times in succession, and each set of operations was clocked several times
And from page 5
All tests were preformed using the standard system installation and configuration
They clearly included the configurable delay before drawing a menu as part of the comparison between the OS's. Granted they used the default settings between OS's, I know XP is 400ms, but if the default settings are different in Vista/OSX, this test could simply be a check of this default delay.
All of their tests have one individual performing/repeating each task, taken to the extreme they could have had mac fans as the tester(s) and easily skewed the results towards buying OSX instead of Vista.
They compared a SETTING and conclude that the lag is worse by 20%. BS!
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37024.aspx shows how to change the setting, so if you set it to 10'000 (in XP) and compared that to Vista (with the default setting) and you would see a >99% DECREASE in lag for vista opening a menu. I'm not saying this is useful at all, but the report could just as easily been done this way and come to the conclusion that
"Here, the report concludes Vista/Aero has improved by no less than 99% compared to Windows XP"
For the record, I've never used vista and am definately not trying to defend it. I would have thought that they could have at least compared things that were programmed in by MS, not configurable by ME.