Sometimes an application prompt pops up, and so the machine won't shutdown. That could mean your machine would be accessible to other people for a while.
Alternatively it could mean you forgot to save something important.
That's probably not a big deal to most people, but some people would be bothered by that and who is to say they're wrong?
A friend of mine told me about his stint in Toyota Japan.
Apparently the people there would be arranging their stuff on their tables at 9+pm just before they leave the office so that they'd be better able to start work when they come in the next day.
There were also circles marked on the floor where the wastebaskets are to be. So if you see a circle by itself it means a wastebasket is in the wrong place or missing.
From the reports of other slashdotters the "scanning" stuff just pretends to scan - it even claims to find windows dlls on Linux machines:), then it says in effect "You have a problem, download and run this software to fix it".
On further investigation it seems like these scumbags try multiple means to get their software installed - human vulnerabilities (as above), and various browser vulnerabilities (IE, Firefox). I've also seen claims that some versions of the trojan exploit vulnerabilities in older versions of Sun's Java to do a "drive by" install.
As it is, my main point still stands - if the millions of people were running ubuntu, they'd still be infected, it's not really a problem with windows. Say they use firefox. If it's a vulnerable version of Firefox (there've been many critical firefox vulnerabilities and there will be many more[1]), the scumbags will exploit it. Otherwise, they'll get a message asking them to "download and install a firefox update":).
Either way, they'll be infected. I don't really see a big difference, windows or not.
Currently windows is just the best target platform. If you want to DDoS someone, or send tons of spam the more machines you have the better. The linux home user market share is pitiful and there's no point DDoSing from 50 infected Linux machines behind a single corporate line.
Once Mac OSX reaches the 20-30% share mark, I think you'd see more malware authors targeting that platform. I believe there are already some signs of interest:).
OSX has stuff like perl preinstalled, which might make things a bit easier. TIMTOWTDDDoS:). The malware could google for new instructions and run "eval" on it:). Perl "windows style malware" could easily be written to run on OSX, Linux, *BSD. So Linux users may be hit as a "side effect" of targeting OSX. Most antivirus/antimalware software are still quite reliant on pattern recognition (despite what they claim;) ), so it'll be interesting to see how they cope with stuff like perl (or even more "interesting" languages).
As for the registry - most "Windows class" users will have as much difficulty with/var/spool/cron/,/etc, initrd, linuxrc and more, as they would with the windows registry. My mom will have just as much difficulty removing malware entries in the registry as she would removing it from/etc and other places.
There's just so much you can expect the average person to do, you can design your tech accordingly but they will still be exploited from time to time. The internet just allows mass remote exploits.
The authorities should maintain a top 10 list. Work from the top, follow the money trail and take action on those within their juridiction. Many of these people are actually in the US despite their servers being elsewhere, even if they are not, their money might be there and thus seizable.
On Windows and Linux, I normally use a nonroot/admin user, but even in that account, I run firefox using yet another different user account (I used to work in IT security:) ). So if I get infected it's a lot easier to fix, and the malware cannot access my documents in my main user account. I tried to set this config up in XP for some relatives, but they couldn't cope with it. They also didn't like my suggested password formats and picked easy to guess passwords instead and share it freely (doh).
If these millions of people were running Ubuntu they'd still be infected by malware.
Why? Because these people thought the malware was _good_ software. They would do whatever seems reasonable to them to install it. If it means downloading and executing something, or even entering an admin password, they would do it.
There have been windows viruses that spread via password protected zip files - victims would have to enter the password in the email to unzip the zipfile, then launch it. Many did.
The authorities should just be more active in prosecuting such cases of fraud. Because that's what the scareware scam is - mass fraud. Such scammers cause far more harm than that silly Brit who hacked into US military computers to look for evidence of UFOs.
Once you start jailing scammers the amount of spam we get will be less - because there's a fair bit of scam spam too.
[1] Linux isn't much more secure than Windows XP SP3. Fact is Windows XP SP3 provides better sandboxing than many Linux distros. When you launch some new unsigned program, Windows often prompts you to say that the program is trying to make outbound network connections. Ubuntu, Suse don't do that by default. They have apparmor and SELinux but if the average sysadmin finds them a pain to deal with, they're not suitable for even the more knowledgeable users.
I have made suggestions to Ubuntu and Suse to try to make sandboxing better (better than windows and anything out there that I'm aware of), but I don't see very much progress happening.
I guess those people have fallen into a meanspirited way of thinking.
Some people bake cakes for fun - and give them away for free.
Some people write programs for fun - and give them away for free.
There are free lunches in the world. Saying there aren't any just because someone else is happily paying is missing the point.
And if they think the people happily giving away stuff are actually selfish because it makes them feel good to give stuff away, well maybe so, but at worst they're generous selfish people rather than selfish selfish people. To me a good person does good and feels good about doing good. Whereas a bad person does bad stuff and likes doing bad stuff.
While your life is what you have, you cannot keep it for very long, so you might as well spend it well.
To me it is hard to say that spending part of your life baking cakes and giving them away for free, is really sillier than spending most of your life accumulating lots of money but very few friends.
Because after taking the 100 million, trying and failing, the vendor could say "OK, we give up, it'll cost us less to go bankrupt and risk being sued than to build the satellite for you, tough luck".
Vendors you invite to participate in such a tender might say "We decline to participate", or say "1 billion dollars", and the one without a clue will say "100 million dollars".
If nobody has done the thing before then there is a high risk of the estimates being off.
Easier to guess how much it costs to build a second copy after building the first satellite of its kind:).
As open source software spreads in usage, the amount of bad estimates might go up, because if something has been done before in OSS, you might just copy it for free, instead of rewriting it (even though you have a good idea of how long it'll take to rewrite it). Then again, much of what businesses need is just gluing stuff together and only rarely will you be making "really new" stuff;).
One of the reasons is the average portion size has increased.
Two "asian sized" people can share one US sized meal and still be rather full at the end.
If you keep finishing double sized portions (or at least attempting to finish), you're more likely to grow bigger.
Bonus growth for snacking and drinking large sugary drinks (huge lattes, smoothies etc) between those huge meals.
I think drinking large sugary drinks to quench your thirst is also a big problem. I doubt it's easy for your body to absorb just the water and let the sugar stay in your stomach and pass out in your feces (well it might be easier if you have bacteria that help;) ).
If vast quantities of sugar enter your bloodstream, and you don't burn it up by being active (or super inefficient) then either it gets stored ASAP as fat, or you effectively have type II diabetes.
Unless those nanobots have an amazing source of energy, it's going to be very hard for them to destroy us or other stuff physically - as in tear us apart, or break us down.
If it were so simple, bacteria, fungi or insects would have consumed everything already.
If the nanobots could "eat" us to build more nanobots, that means bacteria, fungi or insects could eat those nanobots too - unless they're doing some transmutation of elements.
They'll have to compete with tons of stuff out there that's been "tested and proven" for millions or even billions of years.
If it does turn out that the nanobots are toxic - like asbestos particles, or can somehow parasite us (or other desirable creatures) just as viruses or other microorganisms do, then that's a problem to us.
I wouldn't mind inheriting some of these virtual items - if they're worth a fair bit on the open market. Just as I wouldn't mind inheriting thousands or even millions of dollars worth of stocks:).
To me it's good they don't take up much space, so it'll be better than inheriting some tea set or vase that's equivalent in $$$ value.
Oh yah. Hope you guys make space launches much cheaper.
Would also be nice if we eventually build space stations (with artificial "gravity) that can build more space stations (from asteroids or other stuff) without too much help from the Earth.
That seems more useful than sending humans to Mars (or back to the Moon again). Of course it's a bit more ambitious in some ways - but at least take the first few steps (build a space station with artificial gravity etc).
You did say that for the shuttle "the propellant costs are a few tens of millions".
I was assuming that the Ariane propellant costs would be similar.
The stuff in a battery often doesn't cost as much as the whole battery itself but with rockets you're practically building a new battery each time. You're not refilling an old tank with fuel.
Maybe some day they'll figure out how to do a reusable launch vehicle that doesn't actually cost more than using an expendable launch vehicle.
The current reusable launch vehicles appear to be as reusable as a race car that takes part in a race which involves some parts crashing into a wall at the end. The car is hopefully repaired enough so that it works well enough for the next race.
"3) Rocket fuel costs essentially nothing. The Space Shuttle costs half a billion per flight or so, the propellant costs are a few tens of millions. A good rule of thumb is that LEO is $20/kg in propellant"
Assuming what you say is true, all that shows is just how bad the space shuttle is for putting satellites up. The shuttle is good for capturing, taking satellites down intact (and publicity stunts) and that's probably why the US military wanted it, but most companies would just leave the stuff up, and so most companies don't use the Shuttle to launch their stuff.
The Ariane 5's purported USD120 million/launch charge (not cost - i.e. there should be profit in there somewhere) is already making some companies flinch. See:
But it can take 8 tonnes to geostationary, and the Shuttle can only take about 4 tonnes.
USD120 million commercial charge vs 2 x USD500 million cost.
If the propellant costs really are a few tens of millions it shows the Ariane isn't that inefficient.
While that rocket fuel may relatively cost "nothing" for Shuttle launches it clearly costs a lot for commercial launches.
I wonder how many people clap hands when the Ariane 5 launches. I think they still do.
It's a sign of mature tech when after a normal successful launch, people don't claps hands but read the newspaper or eat some peanuts (clearly labelled: "Warning: May contain nuts").
While you have to give the satellite the same energy, with conventional rockets you also need to have extra propellant to just to move the propellant itself.
Assuming a simplistic comparison, with the space elevator you just need to spend energy to move the satellite up.
Whereas with a rocket, you need energy to move the satellite + propellant + rest of rocket.
And at the initial stages the rocket to satellite ratio is quite high.
That's why they have multistage rockets - so they can chuck the leftover mass when they're done with it.
But to properly compare the efficiencies you would have to compare how much in terms of resources it takes to build and sustain a space elevator, and averaged over a per launch basis vs a conventional rocket launch.
If the elevator costs a lot and ends up only lasting 10 years, it'll be a lot more expensive than conventional rockets.
Most of those Vikings went to England and became ancestors of those skinheads that like bashing people up for fun.
Those that stayed in Norway (and the rest of Scandinavia) were the far more peaceful folk who didn't feel like travelling to other countries to bash people's heads in.:)
I don't see that drying stuff up. China et all are still buying US bonds, they're doing their part in helping to prop the whole thing up - I guess it's "Mutually Assured Financial Destruction" at the moment.
Another example:
Say I have just USD1.00. I buy something from you, and write an IOU that says I'll pay USD2.00 for it in 30 years time. You accept it.
I take the stuff I bought from you, "add value" and sell it for USD2.50.
You take that IOU and you sell it for USD1.10.
Voila, money is being created:).
Yet another example:
Say I am a bank only allowed to lend up to 50% of deposits. You deposit USD1. I lend USD0.50 to someone. Say that someone deposits USD0.25 later on. I lend USD0.12 to someone else. And so on... Add up the money circulating and it's more than before.
Then the Gov suddenly tells me I can lend more than 50% of deposits. Voila more money created:).
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes an application prompt pops up, and so the machine won't shutdown. That could mean your machine would be accessible to other people for a while.
Alternatively it could mean you forgot to save something important.
That's probably not a big deal to most people, but some people would be bothered by that and who is to say they're wrong?
Why don't they schedule the AV and maintenance stuff to be at night?
Anyway, many cybercafes have computers that restore themselves to a known state on reboot.
Companies should just implement that, and have staff save their work onto network drives where their work can be backed up daily (or even more often).
All other changes will be gone after a reboot.
If you're less fascist you could allow stuff in the home directory to stay.
A friend of mine told me about his stint in Toyota Japan.
Apparently the people there would be arranging their stuff on their tables at 9+pm just before they leave the office so that they'd be better able to start work when they come in the next day.
There were also circles marked on the floor where the wastebaskets are to be. So if you see a circle by itself it means a wastebasket is in the wrong place or missing.
What IM are you using? MSN and Yahoo support offline messages.
It depends on what he really meant by video game.
If it's an online game and the updater takes up significant bandwidth, then it can make things slower - more laggy.
As it is I think I won't bother trying Chrome for now - seems that uninstalling chrome does not get rid of the updater.
From the reports of other slashdotters the "scanning" stuff just pretends to scan - it even claims to find windows dlls on Linux machines :), then it says in effect "You have a problem, download and run this software to fix it".
On further investigation it seems like these scumbags try multiple means to get their software installed - human vulnerabilities (as above), and various browser vulnerabilities (IE, Firefox). I've also seen claims that some versions of the trojan exploit vulnerabilities in older versions of Sun's Java to do a "drive by" install.
As it is, my main point still stands - if the millions of people were running ubuntu, they'd still be infected, it's not really a problem with windows. Say they use firefox. If it's a vulnerable version of Firefox (there've been many critical firefox vulnerabilities and there will be many more[1]), the scumbags will exploit it. Otherwise, they'll get a message asking them to "download and install a firefox update" :).
Either way, they'll be infected. I don't really see a big difference, windows or not.
Currently windows is just the best target platform. If you want to DDoS someone, or send tons of spam the more machines you have the better. The linux home user market share is pitiful and there's no point DDoSing from 50 infected Linux machines behind a single corporate line.
Once Mac OSX reaches the 20-30% share mark, I think you'd see more malware authors targeting that platform. I believe there are already some signs of interest :).
OSX has stuff like perl preinstalled, which might make things a bit easier. TIMTOWTDDDoS :). The malware could google for new instructions and run "eval" on it :). Perl "windows style malware" could easily be written to run on OSX, Linux, *BSD. So Linux users may be hit as a "side effect" of targeting OSX. Most antivirus/antimalware software are still quite reliant on pattern recognition (despite what they claim ;) ), so it'll be interesting to see how they cope with stuff like perl (or even more "interesting" languages).
As for the registry - most "Windows class" users will have as much difficulty with /var/spool/cron/, /etc, initrd, linuxrc and more, as they would with the windows registry. My mom will have just as much difficulty removing malware entries in the registry as she would removing it from /etc and other places.
There's just so much you can expect the average person to do, you can design your tech accordingly but they will still be exploited from time to time. The internet just allows mass remote exploits.
The authorities should maintain a top 10 list. Work from the top, follow the money trail and take action on those within their juridiction. Many of these people are actually in the US despite their servers being elsewhere, even if they are not, their money might be there and thus seizable.
On Windows and Linux, I normally use a nonroot/admin user, but even in that account, I run firefox using yet another different user account (I used to work in IT security :) ). So if I get infected it's a lot easier to fix, and the malware cannot access my documents in my main user account. I tried to set this config up in XP for some relatives, but they couldn't cope with it. They also didn't like my suggested password formats and picked easy to guess passwords instead and share it freely (doh).
[1] http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox30.html
http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox20.html
Windows isn't really the problem[1].
If these millions of people were running Ubuntu they'd still be infected by malware.
Why? Because these people thought the malware was _good_ software. They would do whatever seems reasonable to them to install it. If it means downloading and executing something, or even entering an admin password, they would do it.
There have been windows viruses that spread via password protected zip files - victims would have to enter the password in the email to unzip the zipfile, then launch it. Many did.
The authorities should just be more active in prosecuting such cases of fraud. Because that's what the scareware scam is - mass fraud. Such scammers cause far more harm than that silly Brit who hacked into US military computers to look for evidence of UFOs.
Once you start jailing scammers the amount of spam we get will be less - because there's a fair bit of scam spam too.
[1] Linux isn't much more secure than Windows XP SP3. Fact is Windows XP SP3 provides better sandboxing than many Linux distros. When you launch some new unsigned program, Windows often prompts you to say that the program is trying to make outbound network connections. Ubuntu, Suse don't do that by default. They have apparmor and SELinux but if the average sysadmin finds them a pain to deal with, they're not suitable for even the more knowledgeable users.
I have made suggestions to Ubuntu and Suse to try to make sandboxing better (better than windows and anything out there that I'm aware of), but I don't see very much progress happening.
Disney Corp prefers a world where Disney Corp copyrights last forever and other copyrights don't.
e.g. Disney vs Peter Pan, and probably some others...
I guess those people have fallen into a meanspirited way of thinking.
Some people bake cakes for fun - and give them away for free.
Some people write programs for fun - and give them away for free.
There are free lunches in the world. Saying there aren't any just because someone else is happily paying is missing the point.
And if they think the people happily giving away stuff are actually selfish because it makes them feel good to give stuff away, well maybe so, but at worst they're generous selfish people rather than selfish selfish people. To me a good person does good and feels good about doing good. Whereas a bad person does bad stuff and likes doing bad stuff.
While your life is what you have, you cannot keep it for very long, so you might as well spend it well.
To me it is hard to say that spending part of your life baking cakes and giving them away for free, is really sillier than spending most of your life accumulating lots of money but very few friends.
Because after taking the 100 million, trying and failing, the vendor could say "OK, we give up, it'll cost us less to go bankrupt and risk being sued than to build the satellite for you, tough luck".
:).
;).
Vendors you invite to participate in such a tender might say "We decline to participate", or say "1 billion dollars", and the one without a clue will say "100 million dollars".
If nobody has done the thing before then there is a high risk of the estimates being off.
Easier to guess how much it costs to build a second copy after building the first satellite of its kind
As open source software spreads in usage, the amount of bad estimates might go up, because if something has been done before in OSS, you might just copy it for free, instead of rewriting it (even though you have a good idea of how long it'll take to rewrite it). Then again, much of what businesses need is just gluing stuff together and only rarely will you be making "really new" stuff
One of the reasons is the average portion size has increased.
;) ).
Two "asian sized" people can share one US sized meal and still be rather full at the end.
If you keep finishing double sized portions (or at least attempting to finish), you're more likely to grow bigger.
Bonus growth for snacking and drinking large sugary drinks (huge lattes, smoothies etc) between those huge meals.
I think drinking large sugary drinks to quench your thirst is also a big problem. I doubt it's easy for your body to absorb just the water and let the sugar stay in your stomach and pass out in your feces (well it might be easier if you have bacteria that help
If vast quantities of sugar enter your bloodstream, and you don't burn it up by being active (or super inefficient) then either it gets stored ASAP as fat, or you effectively have type II diabetes.
It's not just water.
I believe sugar, fat and edible oils can be heated up in a microwave oven too.
Microwave heated oils may be less healthy than conventionally heated oils:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/0yblxvnrnhmd8p4e/
Unless those nanobots have an amazing source of energy, it's going to be very hard for them to destroy us or other stuff physically - as in tear us apart, or break us down.
If it were so simple, bacteria, fungi or insects would have consumed everything already.
If the nanobots could "eat" us to build more nanobots, that means bacteria, fungi or insects could eat those nanobots too - unless they're doing some transmutation of elements.
They'll have to compete with tons of stuff out there that's been "tested and proven" for millions or even billions of years.
If it does turn out that the nanobots are toxic - like asbestos particles, or can somehow parasite us (or other desirable creatures) just as viruses or other microorganisms do, then that's a problem to us.
I wouldn't mind inheriting some of these virtual items - if they're worth a fair bit on the open market. Just as I wouldn't mind inheriting thousands or even millions of dollars worth of stocks :).
To me it's good they don't take up much space, so it'll be better than inheriting some tea set or vase that's equivalent in $$$ value.
Oh yah. Hope you guys make space launches much cheaper.
Would also be nice if we eventually build space stations (with artificial "gravity) that can build more space stations (from asteroids or other stuff) without too much help from the Earth.
That seems more useful than sending humans to Mars (or back to the Moon again). Of course it's a bit more ambitious in some ways - but at least take the first few steps (build a space station with artificial gravity etc).
The Ariane 5 also uses about 470+ tons of solid propellant. I'm curious - how much would that cost roughly?
Esp this part:
:).
"You get signals from each censor mounted on the forearm"
The censorship level in Australia is higher than I thought
You might inherit a few unique items :).
You did say that for the shuttle "the propellant costs are a few tens of millions".
I was assuming that the Ariane propellant costs would be similar.
The stuff in a battery often doesn't cost as much as the whole battery itself but with rockets you're practically building a new battery each time. You're not refilling an old tank with fuel.
Maybe some day they'll figure out how to do a reusable launch vehicle that doesn't actually cost more than using an expendable launch vehicle.
The current reusable launch vehicles appear to be as reusable as a race car that takes part in a race which involves some parts crashing into a wall at the end. The car is hopefully repaired enough so that it works well enough for the next race.
"3) Rocket fuel costs essentially nothing. The Space Shuttle costs half a billion per flight or so, the propellant costs are a few tens of millions. A good rule of thumb is that LEO is $20/kg in propellant"
Assuming what you say is true, all that shows is just how bad the space shuttle is for putting satellites up. The shuttle is good for capturing, taking satellites down intact (and publicity stunts) and that's probably why the US military wanted it, but most companies would just leave the stuff up, and so most companies don't use the Shuttle to launch their stuff.
The Ariane 5's purported USD120 million/launch charge (not cost - i.e. there should be profit in there somewhere) is already making some companies flinch. See:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article3828181.ece
But it can take 8 tonnes to geostationary, and the Shuttle can only take about 4 tonnes.
USD120 million commercial charge vs 2 x USD500 million cost.
If the propellant costs really are a few tens of millions it shows the Ariane isn't that inefficient.
While that rocket fuel may relatively cost "nothing" for Shuttle launches it clearly costs a lot for commercial launches.
I wonder how many people clap hands when the Ariane 5 launches. I think they still do.
It's a sign of mature tech when after a normal successful launch, people don't claps hands but read the newspaper or eat some peanuts (clearly labelled: "Warning: May contain nuts").
While you have to give the satellite the same energy, with conventional rockets you also need to have extra propellant to just to move the propellant itself.
Assuming a simplistic comparison, with the space elevator you just need to spend energy to move the satellite up.
Whereas with a rocket, you need energy to move the satellite + propellant + rest of rocket.
And at the initial stages the rocket to satellite ratio is quite high.
That's why they have multistage rockets - so they can chuck the leftover mass when they're done with it.
But to properly compare the efficiencies you would have to compare how much in terms of resources it takes to build and sustain a space elevator, and averaged over a per launch basis vs a conventional rocket launch.
If the elevator costs a lot and ends up only lasting 10 years, it'll be a lot more expensive than conventional rockets.
The space fountain would experience similar problems to the ones they mention for the space elevator.
If they are not show stoppers for a space fountain I doubt they would be show stoppers for the space elevator either.
I personally find djbdns easier to use and less error prone than BIND for most stuff ( http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/blurb/easeofuse.html ).
If you want to manipulate DNS records with perl, the djbdns format is much simpler than BIND's.
Yes it is different from BIND, but different can also be better.
Postfix's main.cf is different from sendmail.cf but much simpler(yes I know about m4, but honestly is it really simpler than Postfix? ).
The ISC have a long track record for producing hard to manage stuff with security problems.
It's no surprise that DNSSEC is a bad design (it's a good way for corporations like Network Solutions/Verisign to extract more money from people tho).
http://www.dnscurve.org/dnssec.html
Most of those Vikings went to England and became ancestors of those skinheads that like bashing people up for fun.
:)
Those that stayed in Norway (and the rest of Scandinavia) were the far more peaceful folk who didn't feel like travelling to other countries to bash people's heads in.
Just to clarify my remark about printing money. You don't have to actually print money to create money.
Say I'm the Federal Reserve. All I need to do is just suddenly lend people USD 2 trillion, and voila 2 trillion is created.
Yes in theory they're supposed to pay it back, but the last I checked the Federal Reserve has been rather secretive about who got that 2 trillion, and what collateral they got for it ( http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aatlky_cH.tY&refer=worldwide ).
I don't see that drying stuff up. China et all are still buying US bonds, they're doing their part in helping to prop the whole thing up - I guess it's "Mutually Assured Financial Destruction" at the moment.
Another example:
Say I have just USD1.00. I buy something from you, and write an IOU that says I'll pay USD2.00 for it in 30 years time. You accept it.
I take the stuff I bought from you, "add value" and sell it for USD2.50.
You take that IOU and you sell it for USD1.10.
Voila, money is being created :).
Yet another example:
Say I am a bank only allowed to lend up to 50% of deposits. You deposit USD1.
I lend USD0.50 to someone.
Say that someone deposits USD0.25 later on.
I lend USD0.12 to someone else.
And so on... Add up the money circulating and it's more than before.
Then the Gov suddenly tells me I can lend more than 50% of deposits. Voila more money created :).