Re:Other avenues of attack . . .
on
Network Hacking
·
· Score: 1
While this will stop the 99% of people harmlessly using webmail, it will not touch the 1% who're technically clued and determined to get around it, be it to just read their mail, or to do malicious damage.
I have admin'ed several websense boxes (as well as multiple other proxies.) I am a network/security consultant, and the first point I make to any of my customers who want to use an internet control mechanism (i.e. filtering proxy) is that anyone sufficiently determined will get around it--don't try to solve non-technical problems with technology.
In short, websense makes managers feel good, but it does not work. It doesn't work for SSH port forwarders, it'll work even less once distributed proxy avoidance toys like Triangle Boy gain widespread use, and it'll completely break down once.NET and friends get spinning (read the part where proxy avoidance is explicitly mentioned in.NET docs.)
At this point, I should probably mention that almost all filtering software works very similarly, that is, it draws from combinations of blacklists meticulously compiled by cat-eyed librarian types trolling for smut, keyword lists, file extensions and content signatures (breaks down with encrypted files, unless you just want to block everything you don't recognize) and sometimes some sort of gymcrackery involving content pattern matching (such as the company claiming to be able to detect porn pictures from the amount of flesh.) The latter rarely work correctly.
That said, you're just as well off using something free, like DansGuardian or SquidGuard with one of the myriad of free filter lists they link to--assuming you can give your management the same feelgood effect from something free or cheap that they'd normally get from forking out $30k upwards to a company like WebSense.
By the way, did I mention that there is no IDS product which can consistently and reliably detect HTTPS-tunneled SSH traffic based on packet (or even stream) signatures?
In short, your idea for blocking webmail sites works, as long as your only goal is to prevent the casual user from getting at viruses and other Bad Things (tm) by means other than the corporate sanctioned means, like your local Exchange server. Good Luck!:-)
I live in Switzerland; every spring, each village here has what's called a 'Banntag' (no clue what it means.)
Essentially, all the villagers pack up large amounts of firecrackers and toy cannon and things and march the entire length of their community border, getting properly liquored up in the process.
A bunch of the local yokels always dress up in period costumes and spend the day shooting black powder muskets, inevitably blowing off a few fingers and bits--what else could you expect from a bunch of soused farmers with explosives?
The tradition stems from an age-old custom of every village making sure the bunch of foreigners (the next village) up the road didn't try anything funny with the border markers (big heavy engraved stones.) Best way to do that is to grab your flintlock and a few pints of the local jet fuel schnaps and to make sure your borders are respected...
Some software already does this, albeit not automatically.
Witness the existence of 'skins' for a lot of applications, or themes for window managers. Even on the level of something as superficial as appearance of a computer GUI, the point holds that people are more at ease around something whose looks are familiar to them than with a completely new frontend.
It makes for an interesting train of thought whether it's possible to fluidly redesign the layout of your 'real world counterpart'; while dynamically rearranging buttons isn't exactly practical, everyday items such as cars, phones, and refrigerators have replaced knobs, levers and buttons with graphical equivalents. There's no reason why it shouldn't be possible to give grandpa a representation of an alarm clock on the front panel of his TiVo.
While this raises the question of comfort/competence with a virtual representation as opposed to a physical manifestation (i.e. a push-button compared to a picture of a push-button on a touch-sensitive screen), you have to start drawing the line somewhere; I point you to the Dilbert cartoon with the PC reduced to one button which comes pre-pushed at the factory.
I'm in a similar situation as you, except that I was never good at math in the first place.
A colleague highly recommended a book called 'Engineering Mathematics' by Kenneth Stroud--I bought it, and have started going through it. It looks pretty comprehensive, and seems to be a good kick-start for re-learning everything from basic algebra on upwards which usually put me to sleep during high school and college.
This is easy--I have put some thought into what I want from a PDA. I really like my Sony Clie, but I would like the following:
-Microdrive (or larger storage support)
-Filesystem hardware abstraction (now you have to load files into their respective applications, and most apps don't understand external storage)
-Bluetooth & IRDA
-GPRS
-a native IP stack & RJ 45 jack
-A full-color screen
-Long battery life
-USB port (keyboards, etc.)
-Good quality screen (Clie scratches very easily)
I understand there are Windows CE device with various combinations of these, but I like the PalmOS interface (I can use a Targus keyboard for text entry).
I am actually considering buying a subnotebook (such as a Vaio Picturebook) but would really like the ability to use a pen (plus I f**king hate touchpads.)
However, they are vastly outnumbered by customers who prefer to whine about products and their "rights" instead of doing the only right thing--voting with your wallet, and letting the offending companies know about it.
You have no "right" to get what you want from a company (barring them meeting contractual obligations, of course.) The only right you have is to avoid said company if you disagree with their terms.
You as an individual customer will not change the world, or a company's policy, but it's masses of individual consumers (or not-consumers, in this case) which show corporations that, given the conditions they attempt to set, they lose potential revenue.
So, quit whining, and start not-consuming. Anyway, it's a nice day outside.
2) Doing business as an end-consumer with most British technology companies is a nightmare, in my experience (note the qualifier.) The contracts are worded in a bossy manner, and the staff are often rude and not knowledgeable. Caveat emptor. Not that this differs from a lot of the rest of the world, mind.
Regarding research, several colleagues with Orange, BTMobile, and other contracts should do the trick?
AND because you live in the UK, the land of civilized business-customer relationships, you get to foot the bill for your SMS spams as well!
Seriously, unless I'm very badly mistaken, the UK is one of few countries in the world where mobile phone users foot the bill not just for received calls, but also for received text messages (including advertisements from your very own provider.)
Interestingly enough, all the providers (BT Cellnet, Vodafone, maybe a few smaller ones) get away with such behavior (stipulated in mobile phone contracts, no less.) In many business areas in the UK, even if there is competition, a consumer has no real choice since most firms offering similar services (insurances, banks, etc.) "offer" equally restrictive conditions. If you don't like it, you're perfectly free not to have a mobile phone/insurance/bank account...
Part of the "solution" here (in Switzerland) is the lack of flat-rate local calling. Remember that in the US, 15-20 bucks per month gets you unlimited local telephone calls. Switzerland (and most of Europe) -costs- them.
Additionally, as with the guy posting about South Africa, there's the social pariah factor-- There was a wave of SMS spams a while ago, and the predominant telco (Swisscom) claimed to be completely unable to stop them. Remember, SMS are not covered by any of the anti-telemarketing laws. They eventually stopped, most likely due to a combination of exorbitant costs, and the fact that sending someone an SMS every 3 minutes isn't likely to gain them as a customer...
As for the 'no advertising' mailbox stickers, I'm starting to doubt whether they do anything; it looks like they only relate to clearly marked ads, NOT enclosed in newspapers or with phone bills, NOT hand-delivered (the SVP, the local republican party loves that kind.)
Mainly, though, I think a large part of what saves a lot of Europeans from telemarketing is the high cost of labor--you'll hardly find anyone who speaks the local language intelligibly to sit at a phone for $5 per hour and be insulted by people disturbed during their dinners...
I DHL'ed a Sun Ultra2 (the size of a large desktop) from Zurich (Switzerland) to Frankfurt (Germany), as a firewall for an exchange connection for a major bank.
As background, Switzerland is not part of the EU, and thus your usual border and customs garbage applies for anything going out of the country. In addition, the Swiss see German officials (often rightfully so) as a rather thuggish bunch.
The box arrived, and our (non-technical) on-site contact connected it. Repeated attempts to talk him through powering it up failed, until it came out that the back of the machine was completely caved in.
I had him ship it back to our office for inspection; the box looked as though someone had taken a very large iron mallet to it. Interestingly enough, the original shipping carton was still completely intact.
The only time any of our guys lost sight of the machine was when the German customs people took it away for "inspection"...
Re:If you remember the WEB and e260 comment here!!
on
Netrek
·
· Score: 1
ARP-Datacon has a reputation here (Switzerland) for massively overchanging for everything (up to 1000% overprice for things like serial adapters)
so it's not really reflective of what they're worth.
Unlike the Russians, the British, while having Gen. Elphinstone lose a > 12,000 man army the first time around, actually whupped
the Afghan tribes something good, blew up their main mosque, then left, having made their point.
They were not trying to take over territory, but rather to prop up a suitable puppet capable of keeping the Russians from moving in and threatening India in their desire
for a non-isolated warm-water port.
As Afghanistan, under the English-installed kings was actually quite stable from 1847-1965-ish, at which point the British were no longer in India, and with an Indian government in power which was friendly to the soviets, one might conclude that they were pretty
successful.
So none of this untameable tribal barbarian stuff, please. It's a fairy tale.
Very strange that something along these lines should come out at just about the same time that the IT industry's employment capacity is being decimated by an impending recession.
Call me cynical either about malingering employees or heartless callous companies, but I can't help but suspect some sort of correlation.
Papst in Germany appear to be one of the most popular manufacturers of quiet fan equipment in Europe. I'm looking into some of their gear to help quiet down a noisy Sparc 20 at home.
Some other techniques I've come across fairly often involved coating the inside of your case with sound-absorbent material (heat-resistant foam), as large PC cases are little more than large resonating bodies (i.e. drums), or of snipping the power wire to your fan and soldering a resistor in (do you really need all that airflow if you're not overclocking?)
I work for a fairly large bank's network group--they have what seems like a fair system.
My teammates and I, contractors and permies alike, each alternate informally carrying the team's emergency pager on a weekly basis. We're expected to be able to dial in reasonably quickly, and are paid the equivalent of about $350 per week we're on call, as well as hourly rate * 1.5 or some such for every hour we actually have to work outside of regular hours (I don't recall anyone ever actually claiming this.)
The whole thing works on common sense, and we're not controlled too tightly, but compared to what I read from some other IT employees, we seem to be getting a pretty liberal deal.
The large company I am a contractor for employes a pretty high number of external consultants, to handle even its most sensitive IT work.
In dealing with some of these people, I've found that the ones with more experience are usually pretty reputable and responsible--they just hunker down and want to get the job done, generally working 1.5-2 times what the salaried employees put in. They are paid accordingly, but get little respect. My general observation has been that the permies goof off a lot more, a la Dilbert, but that as a contractor you really can't measure yourself by that. You are paid more, and it is a given that you set a much higher bar for yourself.
However, it's also come to my notice that a lot of the contractors in admin-type jobs very often spend time goofing off, quietly collecting money. Above a certain size, companies tend to lack the awareness or dynamism it takes to root out the less astute among their consultants, relying instead on general purges ("we're going to make everyone a permanent employee.")
My solution has just been to try to do the best job I can, and to make everyone extremely satisfied with the performance they're getting for their dollar. I'm expensive, but I'm definitely worth it--I think it's really up to individuals to promote a good work ethic. Word gets around awfully fast if you're a stinker.
"After seeing the Unix market fragment and ultimately fail in the 90s, he knows what he's talking about"
Maybe you are looking at a different market than the rest of us, but while I was unable to find any commercial statistics (I know they're out there), the Internet Operating System Counter seems to think differently...
This is not meant as a snide comment, I'm quite serious, so bear with me:
I haven't been particularly able to take my line of work (IT security & infrastructure consulting) very seriously ever since I've started. Like many people, I'm in it because I enjoy the technology, and to be honest, a bit of the prestige and money and job security that go with it (admit it, deep down you do too.)
The whole thing is pretty well symbolized by the fact that I am a reasonably organized person who tries to keep track of his emails and correspondence. However, I appear to be somehow cursed to regularly have my mailspool and paper files blown away/deleted/thrown out beyond recovery.
Know what? Who cares. If anyone wants something from you, they'll get back to you! As a fairly intelligent person, I trust myself to remember and prioritize the really important tasks, and to do these professionally and on time. Plus, as an IT guy you can generally get away with it, since most of the "fuzzies" still perceive "us" as brilliant, introverted, chaotic weirdos, whose occasional lapses in organization can be excused as long as stuff works.
For all those of you who're stressed, I highly recommend this sort of "accidental" catharsis from time to time--it really lets you giggle a little bit about the suits throwing buzzwords around and trying to whip you into a frothing stress.
Yeah, but Vaios are..."different." They were always sexy.
You'll always have certain gizmos which are instantly recognized as status symbols based on extra-cool appearance, and I think Vaios qualified as such. I think you're over-generalizing about the functionality bit--most people (myself included) who work in technology have always enjoyed owning something that looked 500p3r-d00p3R 318 w1x3d /
Also significant is that I've heard from many free OS users, who especially liked Vaios based on their stability and ease of installation with *BSD/Linux. As compared to, say, Dell. Now if your tool just happens to not look like a dull run-of-the-mill black or gray everyday laptop, all the better...
Frankly, now that you mention it, they look like particularly ugly versions of said iBooks. And who was the genius who compared those to toilet seats, and iMacs to pool toys?
Slashdot Mirror
While this will stop the 99% of people harmlessly using webmail, it will not touch the 1% who're technically clued and determined to get around it, be it to just read their mail, or to do malicious damage.
I have admin'ed several websense boxes (as well as multiple other proxies.) I am a network/security consultant, and the first point I make to any of my customers who want to use an internet control mechanism (i.e. filtering proxy) is that anyone sufficiently determined will get around it--don't try to solve non-technical problems with technology.
In short, websense makes managers feel good, but it does not work. It doesn't work for SSH port forwarders, it'll work even less once distributed proxy avoidance toys like Triangle Boy gain widespread use, and it'll completely break down once .NET and friends get spinning (read the part where proxy avoidance is explicitly mentioned in .NET docs.)
At this point, I should probably mention that almost all filtering software works very similarly, that is, it draws from combinations of blacklists meticulously compiled by cat-eyed librarian types trolling for smut, keyword lists, file extensions and content signatures (breaks down with encrypted files, unless you just want to block everything you don't recognize) and sometimes some sort of gymcrackery involving content pattern matching (such as the company claiming to be able to detect porn pictures from the amount of flesh.) The latter rarely work correctly.
That said, you're just as well off using something free, like DansGuardian or SquidGuard with one of the myriad of free filter lists they link to--assuming you can give your management the same feelgood effect from something free or cheap that they'd normally get from forking out $30k upwards to a company like WebSense.
By the way, did I mention that there is no IDS product which can consistently and reliably detect HTTPS-tunneled SSH traffic based on packet (or even stream) signatures?
In short, your idea for blocking webmail sites works, as long as your only goal is to prevent the casual user from getting at viruses and other Bad Things (tm) by means other than the corporate sanctioned means, like your local Exchange server. Good Luck! :-)
I live in Switzerland; every spring, each village here has what's called a 'Banntag' (no clue what it means.)
Essentially, all the villagers pack up large amounts of firecrackers and toy cannon and things and march the entire length of their community border, getting properly liquored up in the process.
A bunch of the local yokels always dress up in period costumes and spend the day shooting black powder muskets, inevitably blowing off a few fingers and bits--what else could you expect from a bunch of soused farmers with explosives?
The tradition stems from an age-old custom of every village making sure the bunch of foreigners (the next village) up the road didn't try anything funny with the border markers (big heavy engraved stones.) Best way to do that is to grab your flintlock and a few pints of the local jet fuel schnaps and to make sure your borders are respected...
Some software already does this, albeit not automatically.
Witness the existence of 'skins' for a lot of applications, or themes for window managers. Even on the level of something as superficial as appearance of a computer GUI, the point holds that people are more at ease around something whose looks are familiar to them than with a completely new frontend.
It makes for an interesting train of thought whether it's possible to fluidly redesign the layout of your 'real world counterpart'; while dynamically rearranging buttons isn't exactly practical, everyday items such as cars, phones, and refrigerators have replaced knobs, levers and buttons with graphical equivalents. There's no reason why it shouldn't be possible to give grandpa a representation of an alarm clock on the front panel of his TiVo.
While this raises the question of comfort/competence with a virtual representation as opposed to a physical manifestation (i.e. a push-button compared to a picture of a push-button on a touch-sensitive screen), you have to start drawing the line somewhere; I point you to the Dilbert cartoon with the PC reduced to one button which comes pre-pushed at the factory.
I'm in a similar situation as you, except that I was never good at math in the first place.
A colleague highly recommended a book called 'Engineering Mathematics' by Kenneth Stroud--I bought it, and have started going through it. It looks pretty comprehensive, and seems to be a good kick-start for re-learning everything from basic algebra on upwards which usually put me to sleep during high school and college.
This is easy--I have put some thought into what I want from a PDA. I really like my Sony Clie, but I would like the following:
-Microdrive (or larger storage support)
-Filesystem hardware abstraction (now you have to load files into their respective applications, and most apps don't understand external storage)
-Bluetooth & IRDA
-GPRS
-a native IP stack & RJ 45 jack
-A full-color screen
-Long battery life
-USB port (keyboards, etc.)
-Good quality screen (Clie scratches very easily)
I understand there are Windows CE device with various combinations of these, but I like the PalmOS interface (I can use a Targus keyboard for text entry).
I am actually considering buying a subnotebook (such as a Vaio Picturebook) but would really like the ability to use a pen (plus I f**king hate touchpads.)
There are, indeed.
However, they are vastly outnumbered by customers who prefer to whine about products and their "rights" instead of doing the only right thing--voting with your wallet, and letting the offending companies know about it.
You have no "right" to get what you want from a company (barring them meeting contractual obligations, of course.) The only right you have is to avoid said company if you disagree with their terms.
You as an individual customer will not change the world, or a company's policy, but it's masses of individual consumers (or not-consumers, in this case) which show corporations that, given the conditions they attempt to set, they lose potential revenue.
So, quit whining, and start not-consuming. Anyway, it's a nice day outside.
1) The UK isn't backwards in mobile telephony.
2) Doing business as an end-consumer with most British technology companies is a nightmare, in my experience (note the qualifier.) The contracts are worded in a bossy manner, and the staff are often rude and not knowledgeable. Caveat emptor. Not that this differs from a lot of the rest of the world, mind.
Regarding research, several colleagues with Orange, BTMobile, and other contracts should do the trick?
It's okay, I think NTL just went bankrupt. I don't think you'll be getting calls through them anymore.
Or any calls.
:-)
AND because you live in the UK, the land of civilized business-customer relationships, you get to foot the bill for your SMS spams as well!
Seriously, unless I'm very badly mistaken, the UK is one of few countries in the world where mobile phone users foot the bill not just for received calls, but also for received text messages (including advertisements from your very own provider.)
Interestingly enough, all the providers (BT Cellnet, Vodafone, maybe a few smaller ones) get away with such behavior (stipulated in mobile phone contracts, no less.) In many business areas in the UK, even if there is competition, a consumer has no real choice since most firms offering similar services (insurances, banks, etc.) "offer" equally restrictive conditions. If you don't like it, you're perfectly free not to have a mobile phone/insurance/bank account...
Part of the "solution" here (in Switzerland) is the lack of flat-rate local calling. Remember that in the US, 15-20 bucks per month gets you unlimited local telephone calls. Switzerland (and most of Europe) -costs- them.
Additionally, as with the guy posting about South Africa, there's the social pariah factor--
There was a wave of SMS spams a while ago, and the predominant telco (Swisscom) claimed to be completely unable to stop them. Remember, SMS are not covered by any of the anti-telemarketing laws. They eventually stopped, most likely due to a combination of exorbitant costs, and the fact that sending someone an SMS every 3 minutes isn't likely to gain them as a customer...
As for the 'no advertising' mailbox stickers, I'm starting to doubt whether they do anything; it looks like they only relate to clearly marked ads, NOT enclosed in newspapers or with phone bills, NOT hand-delivered (the SVP, the local republican party loves that kind.)
Mainly, though, I think a large part of what saves a lot of Europeans from telemarketing is the high cost of labor--you'll hardly find anyone who speaks the local language intelligibly to sit at a phone for $5 per hour and be insulted by people disturbed during their dinners...
Not necessarily Big Iron, but...
I DHL'ed a Sun Ultra2 (the size of a large desktop) from Zurich (Switzerland) to Frankfurt (Germany), as a firewall for an exchange connection for a major bank.
As background, Switzerland is not part of the EU, and thus your usual border and customs garbage applies for anything going out of the country. In addition, the Swiss see German officials (often rightfully so) as a rather thuggish bunch.
The box arrived, and our (non-technical) on-site contact connected it. Repeated attempts to talk him through powering it up failed, until it came out that the back of the machine was completely caved in.
I had him ship it back to our office for inspection; the box looked as though someone had taken a very large iron mallet to it. Interestingly enough, the original shipping carton was still completely intact.
The only time any of our guys lost sight of the machine was when the German customs people took it away for "inspection"...
yo
Don't be discouraged by their prices.
ARP-Datacon has a reputation here (Switzerland) for massively overchanging for everything (up to 1000% overprice for things like serial adapters)
so it's not really reflective of what they're worth.
Unlike the Russians, the British, while having Gen. Elphinstone lose a > 12,000 man army the first time around, actually whupped
the Afghan tribes something good, blew up their main mosque, then left, having made their point.
They were not trying to take over territory, but rather to prop up a suitable puppet capable of keeping the Russians from moving in and threatening India in their desire
for a non-isolated warm-water port.
As Afghanistan, under the English-installed kings was actually quite stable from 1847-1965-ish, at which point the British were no longer in India, and with an Indian government in power which was friendly to the soviets, one might conclude that they were pretty
successful.
So none of this untameable tribal barbarian stuff, please. It's a fairy tale.
Call me cynical either about malingering employees or heartless callous companies, but I can't help but suspect some sort of correlation.
-John
You might want to give them a try at www.papst.de
Some other techniques I've come across fairly often involved coating the inside of your case with sound-absorbent material (heat-resistant foam), as large PC cases are little more than large resonating bodies (i.e. drums), or of snipping the power wire to your fan and soldering a resistor in (do you really need all that airflow if you're not overclocking?)
-John
-John
-John
My teammates and I, contractors and permies alike, each alternate informally carrying the team's emergency pager on a weekly basis. We're expected to be able to dial in reasonably quickly, and are paid the equivalent of about $350 per week we're on call, as well as hourly rate * 1.5 or some such for every hour we actually have to work outside of regular hours (I don't recall anyone ever actually claiming this.)
The whole thing works on common sense, and we're not controlled too tightly, but compared to what I read from some other IT employees, we seem to be getting a pretty liberal deal.
"Innocent until proven guilty" and "the police can do no wrong" come to mind as responses.
In dealing with some of these people, I've found that the ones with more experience are usually pretty reputable and responsible--they just hunker down and want to get the job done, generally working 1.5-2 times what the salaried employees put in. They are paid accordingly, but get little respect. My general observation has been that the permies goof off a lot more, a la Dilbert, but that as a contractor you really can't measure yourself by that. You are paid more, and it is a given that you set a much higher bar for yourself.
However, it's also come to my notice that a lot of the contractors in admin-type jobs very often spend time goofing off, quietly collecting money. Above a certain size, companies tend to lack the awareness or dynamism it takes to root out the less astute among their consultants, relying instead on general purges ("we're going to make everyone a permanent employee.")
My solution has just been to try to do the best job I can, and to make everyone extremely satisfied with the performance they're getting for their dollar. I'm expensive, but I'm definitely worth it--I think it's really up to individuals to promote a good work ethic. Word gets around awfully fast if you're a stinker.
Maybe you are looking at a different market than the rest of us, but while I was unable to find any commercial statistics (I know they're out there), the Internet Operating System Counter seems to think differently...
-John
Yes, that is pretty much the point. US law (in theory) permits all that is not explicitly prohibited.
I haven't been particularly able to take my line of work (IT security & infrastructure consulting) very seriously ever since I've started. Like many people, I'm in it because I enjoy the technology, and to be honest, a bit of the prestige and money and job security that go with it (admit it, deep down you do too.)
The whole thing is pretty well symbolized by the fact that I am a reasonably organized person who tries to keep track of his emails and correspondence. However, I appear to be somehow cursed to regularly have my mailspool and paper files blown away/deleted/thrown out beyond recovery.
Know what? Who cares. If anyone wants something from you, they'll get back to you! As a fairly intelligent person, I trust myself to remember and prioritize the really important tasks, and to do these professionally and on time. Plus, as an IT guy you can generally get away with it, since most of the "fuzzies" still perceive "us" as brilliant, introverted, chaotic weirdos, whose occasional lapses in organization can be excused as long as stuff works.
For all those of you who're stressed, I highly recommend this sort of "accidental" catharsis from time to time--it really lets you giggle a little bit about the suits throwing buzzwords around and trying to whip you into a frothing stress.
You'll always have certain gizmos which are instantly recognized as status symbols based on extra-cool appearance, and I think Vaios qualified as such. I think you're over-generalizing about the functionality bit--most people (myself included) who work in technology have always enjoyed owning something that looked 500p3r-d00p3R 318 w1x3d / Also significant is that I've heard from many free OS users, who especially liked Vaios based on their stability and ease of installation with *BSD/Linux. As compared to, say, Dell. Now if your tool just happens to not look like a dull run-of-the-mill black or gray everyday laptop, all the better...
Frankly, now that you mention it, they look like particularly ugly versions of said iBooks. And who was the genius who compared those to toilet seats, and iMacs to pool toys?