It does if the Windows installer wipes only the Windows folder on the Windows partition and leaves alone the Linux partition that malware installed.
The virus can remain on the drive and it will do absolutely nothing unless it has some mechanism to ensure it is loaded. When you reinstall windows, the old install is moved to a Windows.old folder; while viruses may remain in there, they will not be loaded by the new installation, and are no threat unless someone digs thru there and starts running infected files or installing infected drivers from there.
I thought apt-get couldn't be run offline.
By "offline" i meant "stick an Ubuntu Live disk in and install ms-sys to your ram-disk". You can modify the running config of a Linux live boot because of this RAM disk, which makes it a really useful tool for fixing broken computers-- literally any utility you might want (gdd-rescue, gparted, VMFS drivers) can be loaded without touching the disk, so long as it fits within the size limitations of your RAMdisk.
I meant for Microsoft to add that capability to its OWN OS. Obviously it could not enforce such a restriction in Linux; I would think there, if there were a need for such protection, someone could write a kernel module that did the same thing and was an optional component for hardened installations.
What Im saying is that rather than doing this at an EFI level and crippling all OSes, each OS maker should be responsible themselves for making sure that the MBR is untampered with.
Secure boot is stupid because there is a much easier solution: Dont let the bootloader be modified from within the running OS. Require a reboot to a special mode (maintenance mode) or a boot-to-CD (for programs like truecrypt).
This smells of the war against terror. There are actually very few pieces of malware out in circulation which rely on rootkits invoked by the bootloader.
Whether or not the reasons they gave are bogus, THIS isnt true. There are TONS of rootkits out there that screw with the bootloader, which is why MBRCheck should be a standard part of everyone's rootkit removal kit. If you ever see a machine with a virus, you must assume the bootloader has been tampered with.
Off the top of my head, Sinowal and TDSS come to mind.
Seems to me like the easier solution would have been to actually secure the OS so that no program, kernel or otherwise, has sufficient direct disk access to write a new bootloader. Loading a new bootloader should require booting into a special mode to do so (BIOS level?). I dont believe Ive ever seen a windows update or servicepack that touched the bootloader.
Of course truecrypt et al need to mess with the bootloader, but I dont see why you couldnt simply load it from CD at boot time.
On that note, does anyone know if there are any plans regarding truecrypt etc that need custom bootloaders?
Sir, I just wanted to congratulate you. Your post is such an excellent example of a "strawman post" that it is being archived by the internet elders for educational purposes.
Thank you for your example, it truly is a service to the online community.
THats not really true. The phenomenon you are describing has to do with the way SSDs record data and the requirement that a previously used block be erased prior to writing new data to it. As a drive fills up, more blocks are in the "already used" state and it begins to slow down.
But that problem has been solved since Win7, recent Linuxes, recent BSDs, and OSX 10.7-- they feature a capability called TRIM which periodically pre-erases deleted-but-used blocks so that they are ready for re-use with no performance loss. Additionally, many drives feature built in, controller-level garbage collection so even if you do not have TRIM, its not a complete wash.
On a modern OS with a modern SSD, what youre describing should not be an issue.
"atheistic worldview" perhaps should have been "secular worldview", as in if I ask "what happens when you die" they respond "I rot in the ground"; and if I ask "what is the purpose of life" their response is "to work hard and suceed materially"; or even more tellingly, when I asked "what do you place your hope in", their response "the state".
Thats about as "atheistic" / "secular" as it gets IMO.
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell publicly denounced the use of all modern medicine to save lives? Or is it that they have specific objections to specific technology (which is what my point was, and why the GP's position was such a strawman)?
Again, your post demands a big, fat, [citation needed].
Also, "people who identify as christian" is absolutely worthless as a category. Check some of the polling stats to see how incredibly diverse that "category" is, from protestants to mormons to unitarians to people who went to church once back in '94. I think one poll had 75% identifying as christian, but only some 50% identifying Christ as the son of God, and even fewer believing in a personal God. I have no doubt that you can find self-identified christians who are in favor of just about anything you could think of.
Through my lifetime I have seen plenty of professed Christians loudly representing that many actions, not limited to stem cell research, should be disallowed simply based on interpretations of the Bible and nothing more
What do you know, Im one of them, because I dont think you can be a christian and have a subjective morality; it must be based on SOMETHING. That doesnt mean I deny the use of any modern medicine.
Besides, all those embryonic stem cells are just going to the incinerator. It takes one sick, evil piece of shit to prefer incineration to the advancement science.
Just a thought experiment to demonstrate how wrongheaded that is: If someone has instructed in their last will and testament that they wish to be cremated, do you think a scientist would be justified in stealing the body for experimentation? I mean, its destined for the incinerator anyways!
You can argue about the ways in which that differs from the current point of discussion, but the point is that "scientific advancement" is not sufficient justification in all instances.
I think if you cared to do any research, you would find that "these people" tend to be much better informed about this sort of thing than the wider public.
Im a baptist in a major metropolitan area and I have not heard anything like this, that I can recall.
In fact it is common to pray that a surgeon be given skill and competence when performing a procedure on a member (or whomever we happen to be praying for).
Further, it seems kind of odd to imply that we could somehow deny God's will (in the decretive sense); I had thought evangelicals generally agreed that if God wills something, its GOING to happen. There wouldnt be much point to being a Christian if you could thwart God, now would there?
The problem with ringworld is that its soft sci-fi pretending to be hard sci-fi.
I always loved reading a book where it has some nugget of real information and its like, "cool, that makes sense, and its a real fact that I know now". Its what makes hard sci-fi cool.
The problem with ringworld (having read it a few months ago) is that it has all these factoids that are just false; like for example the klemperer rosette being inherently stable or a ringworld being able to maintain an orbit due to inherent stability. Which all sounds cool, until you spend a split second thinking about it, and say, wait, that doesnt seem right. And you research it, and find out it was completely bogus.
It was an OK book, with a decent plot, but that really bugged me, because it touted itself as hard sci-fi and I got all hung up trying to figure out why his facts seemed all wrong to me.
Perhaps they are offlaoding some of the work to the CPU or covering up some bugs by pre/post processing the data with the CPU or whatever.
Im pretty sure that would badly hurt performance, not help it. Video cards tend to be orders of magnitude faster at dealing with graphics data than the CPU.
The fact that we have a binary blob driver of such high quality (compared to the ATI experience)-- and have for recorded history-- indicates that they DO care about linux.
If it is all that, ask for that fine, and prohibit him from going back into the country. Why do Sweden need to force him back into the country to face the penalty of being prohibited to get back in the country?
Atheist generally is a term for those who do not believe in a God. This is both its common meaning, and its etymological meaning: atheos, meaning "without gods".
Atheists may or may not believe in supersitions; perhaps the term you are looking for is something like "naturalism" (as opposed to "supernaturalism") or "secular humanism"
Slashdot Mirror
It does if the Windows installer wipes only the Windows folder on the Windows partition and leaves alone the Linux partition that malware installed.
The virus can remain on the drive and it will do absolutely nothing unless it has some mechanism to ensure it is loaded. When you reinstall windows, the old install is moved to a Windows.old folder; while viruses may remain in there, they will not be loaded by the new installation, and are no threat unless someone digs thru there and starts running infected files or installing infected drivers from there.
I thought apt-get couldn't be run offline.
By "offline" i meant "stick an Ubuntu Live disk in and install ms-sys to your ram-disk". You can modify the running config of a Linux live boot because of this RAM disk, which makes it a really useful tool for fixing broken computers-- literally any utility you might want (gdd-rescue, gparted, VMFS drivers) can be loaded without touching the disk, so long as it fits within the size limitations of your RAMdisk.
I meant for Microsoft to add that capability to its OWN OS. Obviously it could not enforce such a restriction in Linux; I would think there, if there were a need for such protection, someone could write a kernel module that did the same thing and was an optional component for hardened installations.
What Im saying is that rather than doing this at an EFI level and crippling all OSes, each OS maker should be responsible themselves for making sure that the MBR is untampered with.
Because noone in their right minds would ever install iTunes on Linux, given how catastrophically bad it is on Windows.
Secure boot is stupid because there is a much easier solution: Dont let the bootloader be modified from within the running OS. Require a reboot to a special mode (maintenance mode) or a boot-to-CD (for programs like truecrypt).
Which is fine and dandy for me because I am not getting a Windows 8 machine, and I am recommending that all my clients skip it.
A kernel infection would not survive a windows reinstall. A MBR infection does.
Of course, MBR infections are much easier to remove offline (from linux: apt-get install ms-sys && ms-sys -m )
This smells of the war against terror. There are actually very few pieces of malware out in circulation which rely on rootkits invoked by the bootloader.
Whether or not the reasons they gave are bogus, THIS isnt true. There are TONS of rootkits out there that screw with the bootloader, which is why MBRCheck should be a standard part of everyone's rootkit removal kit. If you ever see a machine with a virus, you must assume the bootloader has been tampered with.
Off the top of my head, Sinowal and TDSS come to mind.
Seems to me like the easier solution would have been to actually secure the OS so that no program, kernel or otherwise, has sufficient direct disk access to write a new bootloader. Loading a new bootloader should require booting into a special mode to do so (BIOS level?). I dont believe Ive ever seen a windows update or servicepack that touched the bootloader.
Of course truecrypt et al need to mess with the bootloader, but I dont see why you couldnt simply load it from CD at boot time.
On that note, does anyone know if there are any plans regarding truecrypt etc that need custom bootloaders?
I dont believe it. Our government has denied all involvement, and thats good enough for me.
Sir, I just wanted to congratulate you. Your post is such an excellent example of a "strawman post" that it is being archived by the internet elders for educational purposes.
Thank you for your example, it truly is a service to the online community.
THats not really true. The phenomenon you are describing has to do with the way SSDs record data and the requirement that a previously used block be erased prior to writing new data to it. As a drive fills up, more blocks are in the "already used" state and it begins to slow down.
But that problem has been solved since Win7, recent Linuxes, recent BSDs, and OSX 10.7-- they feature a capability called TRIM which periodically pre-erases deleted-but-used blocks so that they are ready for re-use with no performance loss. Additionally, many drives feature built in, controller-level garbage collection so even if you do not have TRIM, its not a complete wash.
On a modern OS with a modern SSD, what youre describing should not be an issue.
"atheistic worldview" perhaps should have been "secular worldview", as in if I ask "what happens when you die" they respond "I rot in the ground"; and if I ask "what is the purpose of life" their response is "to work hard and suceed materially"; or even more tellingly, when I asked "what do you place your hope in", their response "the state".
Thats about as "atheistic" / "secular" as it gets IMO.
I challenge you to find a single forum posting from the last 6 years that recommends an ATI card over an nVidia card on a Linux box.
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell publicly denounced the use of all modern medicine to save lives? Or is it that they have specific objections to specific technology (which is what my point was, and why the GP's position was such a strawman)?
Again, your post demands a big, fat, [citation needed].
Also, "people who identify as christian" is absolutely worthless as a category. Check some of the polling stats to see how incredibly diverse that "category" is, from protestants to mormons to unitarians to people who went to church once back in '94. I think one poll had 75% identifying as christian, but only some 50% identifying Christ as the son of God, and even fewer believing in a personal God. I have no doubt that you can find self-identified christians who are in favor of just about anything you could think of.
Through my lifetime I have seen plenty of professed Christians loudly representing that many actions, not limited to stem cell research, should be disallowed simply based on interpretations of the Bible and nothing more
What do you know, Im one of them, because I dont think you can be a christian and have a subjective morality; it must be based on SOMETHING. That doesnt mean I deny the use of any modern medicine.
Pretty sure the NIH wont suggest that alcohol is ever the solution to "im going through a rough time."
Besides, all those embryonic stem cells are just going to the incinerator. It takes one sick, evil piece of shit to prefer incineration to the advancement science.
Just a thought experiment to demonstrate how wrongheaded that is:
If someone has instructed in their last will and testament that they wish to be cremated, do you think a scientist would be justified in stealing the body for experimentation? I mean, its destined for the incinerator anyways!
You can argue about the ways in which that differs from the current point of discussion, but the point is that "scientific advancement" is not sufficient justification in all instances.
I think if you cared to do any research, you would find that "these people" tend to be much better informed about this sort of thing than the wider public.
Im a baptist in a major metropolitan area and I have not heard anything like this, that I can recall.
In fact it is common to pray that a surgeon be given skill and competence when performing a procedure on a member (or whomever we happen to be praying for).
Further, it seems kind of odd to imply that we could somehow deny God's will (in the decretive sense); I had thought evangelicals generally agreed that if God wills something, its GOING to happen. There wouldnt be much point to being a Christian if you could thwart God, now would there?
Can you link to an example of such complaints? Because Im also not seeing this.
This looks, more than anything, like a classic slashdot strawman.
The problem with ringworld is that its soft sci-fi pretending to be hard sci-fi.
I always loved reading a book where it has some nugget of real information and its like, "cool, that makes sense, and its a real fact that I know now". Its what makes hard sci-fi cool.
The problem with ringworld (having read it a few months ago) is that it has all these factoids that are just false; like for example the klemperer rosette being inherently stable or a ringworld being able to maintain an orbit due to inherent stability. Which all sounds cool, until you spend a split second thinking about it, and say, wait, that doesnt seem right. And you research it, and find out it was completely bogus.
It was an OK book, with a decent plot, but that really bugged me, because it touted itself as hard sci-fi and I got all hung up trying to figure out why his facts seemed all wrong to me.
Perhaps they are offlaoding some of the work to the CPU or covering up some bugs by pre/post processing the data with the CPU or whatever.
Im pretty sure that would badly hurt performance, not help it. Video cards tend to be orders of magnitude faster at dealing with graphics data than the CPU.
The fact that we have a binary blob driver of such high quality (compared to the ATI experience)-- and have for recorded history-- indicates that they DO care about linux.
The UK has an extradition treaty. Whats your point?-
If it is all that, ask for that fine, and prohibit him from going back into the country. Why do Sweden need to force him back into the country to face the penalty of being prohibited to get back in the country?
Because thats how the judicial system works.
Atheist generally is a term for those who do not believe in a God. This is both its common meaning, and its etymological meaning: atheos, meaning "without gods".
Atheists may or may not believe in supersitions; perhaps the term you are looking for is something like "naturalism" (as opposed to "supernaturalism") or "secular humanism"