Due to dodgy clone hardware companies refusing to put their name on various products, I've used the FCC-ID to locate the manufacturer of a few pieces of hardware, in an effort to get it to work.
As far as regulating comms goes, i couldn't give a hoot for the FCC, but as far as tracking manufacturers down, its been quite useful for me in the past.
If I go to a site that tries to install *ware or open a million pop-ups or in-line floating ads in my face, I abandon that website.
Fuck 'em.
Discreet, well placed ads are fine, but if someone is going to try and annoy the shit out of me with ads, I hope their site dies from lack of revenue due to people ditching it.
The whole WWW experience has been going steadily downhill for a few years now, methinks its about time to go outside again:D
Yeah, unfortunately, in this case, there is NO CHOICE.
The software is from Caterpillar, and plugs into their mining trucks, to tell the mechanic what is wrong with the truck.
There apparently is a Java or WinCE version of the software in development, but at the moment a Win95/98 device is the lowest thing it will run on.
In this case, Win98's deficiencies aren't a huge problem - no network connection, no support applications, etc.... its just a dumb serial application... couldn't give a shit if the OS is insecure, buggy, etc so long as it can drive a serial port for more than 5 minutes:D
At the moment we're just using old laptops that aren't useful for anything else, but as I mentioned, they kill 1 or 2 off per month, and locating old laptops crappy enough to be sacrificed is getting difficult.
Either we start throwing newer machines away... or find something less awkward to balance on the side of a mining truck:D
For example, at work, we happen to have a piece of software that simply talks to a truck engine management computer. Very basic, all it has to do is read the serial port and list what is wrong with the truck.
The code is proprietry, and requires windows of some description (98/2k/XP) to work.
Now, I've had no use for a pocket PC before, but if they're reasonably inexpensive, and have some way of driving a serial port, it would be great to use for this purpose.
At the moment, our maintenance guys are going through about 1 laptop per site every 2 months - simply getting destroyed - dropped/run over/covered in mining crap... 10 sites... thats a lot of money in notebooks.
Something smaller and less unwieldy would be great. If its cheaper to replace, all the better.
Where did you get this information??
I've installed it and Terminal services works perfectly fine. There are caveats about installing on Terminal Services for NT 4.0, but nothing indicating that it breaks terminal services at all.
nntp://msnews.microsoft.com
the microsoft.public.windowsupdate newsgroup.
Lots of people on Win2k SP4 having bluescreens when this update is applied - and unable to log in to windows.
Solution? Uninstall the update... Doesn't happen to everyone it seems...
Microsoft teams have confirmed that the Sasser worm (W32.Sasser.A and its variants) is currently circulating on the Internet. Microsoft has verified that the worm exploits the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) issue that was addressed by the security update released on April 13 in conjunction with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-011.
The local security authority service, presumably one of the more heavily audited, security mechanisms in windows, is exploitable?
I mean, of course, we all know Windows is an insecure, steaming pile of shit, but still.... doesn't say much for the trustworthy computing initiative:D
He scored the program quite highly on features - its ease of use and speed which let it down.
Which is exactly true... if you've used any other image editor the gimp is "different" to try and get used to, and its very slow at rendering effects - fact. I've run gimp on both Windows and Linux (also FreeBSD), and on windows the UI is sluggish, granted and linux/bsd isn't - but most the filters are very slow on all platforms.
Its criticism like this that is needed to raise the bar on open source software - rather than getting all pissy and going "he's a wimp!", there's a chance that some developer out there might actually take the points with a grain of salt and work on the problems.
The Gimp is a great piece of software - I use it from time to time myself, but it IS a lot different to use and thus, hard to just sit down and use without gimp experience, than other packages.
For him, it was the ONLY criteria for his computer...that it be "the fastest" available. I have stocked a school with 1 to 1.4GHz machines, and they work fine...most of his time is spent browsing the internet and sending e-mails anyway...but not buying "the fastest" makes him feel dirty, at least that's the feeling I get from what he's said to me. That's the thing that drives me nuts about people like that...they believe the marketing hype over reality.
No offense, but closed minded thinking like this is deserving of being ripped off.
FreeSWAN is friggin impossible to configure. So no wonder nobody wants to use it...
True.
I'm sure it IS configurable, but the documentation is terrible.
Now, I'm not trying to be a FreeBSD whore... but this is one of the things I was most impressed with so far with FreeBSD.
IPSec still isn't *really* simple to configure, but at least I managed to get it working within a day.
I still don't have key exchange working properly between windows and BSD, but I set up a wireless link using BSD to BSD and ipsec, and its been running without a hitch for the last 18 months - all set up in 1 day. Windows -> FreeBSD works, but it falls over after 5 minutes due to key exchange not working. This is probably because I'm using a pre-shared secret, and not a certificate, but as I haven't urgently needed to do Windows -> BSD just yet, i haven't bothered following it up.
The only times it has been down is when there was power issues, and when one of the units got fried... which you can hardly blame the OS for:D
I believe FreeBSD uses KAME? If this is what is going into Linux as standard, colour me extremely happy - I've been most impressed with this software so far...:)
The solution to spam seems clear to me, and it requires little more than upgrading mail servers and email user agents.
"Little more"?
Do you realise how much of a headfuck that will be? Besides, you've got 2 choices:
Drop support for the old smtp protocol in your e-mail. You are not reachable by the rest of the world until they switch
Support the old e-mail protocol in parallel. Very few people bother to switch, as they can still contact you, and the spammers certainly won't bother
Why has something like this not been implemented yet?
Thats why:D
Unfortunately, email has become a victim of its own success, and is far too widespread to just rip out.
The tools are already there to block spam in any case - if people would just secure their bloody machines (open relays, open socks proxies, virus infected desktops running their own smtp servers, open outgoing port 25 for every dialup user, etc), we'd receive a hell of a lot less spam, as the spammer would be traceable much easier.
The thing about spam is that we sign ourselves up for it.
True, some websites are very devious about obtaining your email address and using it against your will, but the careful surfer should be able to avoid most of that to begin with.
No, not necessarily.
My e-mail has been harvested from the following places:
My AUNIC handle (before the email addresses were hidden).
Newsgroup postings
Neither of which involved signing up for spam.
Yes, if you don't use your email address for anything other than e-mailing friends, you should be fine, however even then, when they e-mail some chain letter to you in the CC list, it could end up getting collected that way...
Hehe... its not quite THAT bad (I'm in a similar boat, having run Linux since '96).
I've got a P4 desktop with Geforce 4 4200ti running FreeBSD just fine here:D
I keep hearing about people having hardware issues, but to be honest, I haven't stumbled across any yet.
But yeah, I definately agree - if you've used Linux, give FreeBSD a shot. And I don't mean install it, see the "sh" prompt and cry, either. Spend a few weeks with it, and become enlightened. If nothing more, it will teach you a lot about the traditional unix way of doing things...
I'm a current Debian user (since 1997 - debian 1.2), and have used various Linux distros on and off in that time, Slackware (versions 3.3, 3.6, 7), Redhat (4.1, 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2), Suse (some old version I don't recall), and Gentoo (after I started using FreeBSD. Its basically FreeBSD without the durability and inferior package management. Sorry gentoo guys).
I've run both systems in a production environment, Linux as an SMTP/POP server, squid proxy server, web server, database server and ipchains/iptables firewall for around 50 ISP business clients and a small (2500 user) ISP, and VPN gateway.
FreeBSD I have run as an SMTP/POP/IMAP server, squid proxy, firewall, sql server, ipsec gateway, pptp gateway, ipfilter and ipfw firewalls, etc... for a 500 employee mining company.
So, I feel I'm somewhat qualified to comment on both sides of the fence.
First of all, the claims of superiority of FreeBSD to Debian/GNU Linux are utterly bogus. Debian chooses to distribute its packages in ready binary form, while FreeBSD mostly prefers it if you compile everything from ports. So neither is superior as far as packages are concerned. However, keeping Debian current and secure is a single command that needs to be run occasionally (you know what it is). With FreeBSD it's more difficult and you have to spend considerable time compiling stuff regularly.
Packages are downloadable in binary form, just as you would use with Debian.
pkg_add -r package..... will retrieve a package using FTP, all other relevant packages required, and install them.
Not too hard? Easier than this "apt-get update, apt-get install -f, apt-get install package", or "emerge package" (what???) bullshit, no?
Compiling from source is PREFERABLE, because then its optimised for your system. Simply tweak the settings in/etc/make.conf if you like, and every package you compile from then onwards is compiled for your system. Fuck up/etc/make.conf? Simply delete it, and the system sources all its defaults from/etc/defaults/make.conf.
Upgrades are a simple matter of using portupgrade.
Much has to be said about community. Debian has one of the best geek communities around. #debian IRC channel is much, much more helpful than #freebsd channel, in my experience. Most of the FreeBSD questions are answered with RTFM, which implies reading a 1000+ page FreeBSD manual. Quite often the RTFM answer is simply misplaced (there is no answer in the manual). But at least it makes the 31337 FreeBSD h4k0rs feel superior.
This is, because there actually IS a damn fine FM to read, with BSD.
I've been running Linux for 8 years now (and still do, for the time being, however I'm phasing it out - in my server room its LINUX that is dying:D), and BSD for 3.. and I have to say that everything I have tried to do with BSD has been far easier to find documentation for than under Linux. Linux documentation is usually available, but its either de-centralised, outdated, or otherwise irrelevant. The BSD system has also behaved exactly as documented, because the documentation is either current, or the program interface has remained consistant.
I'm not talking about crap like "how do I get my scroll wheel working in X???", I'm referring to *real* problems like "how do I get IPSEC to work", or "how do I get myself set up with IPv6?".
Besides, if you're reading through an entire 1000 page manual, you're an idiot - thats why the handbook has a very usable, very efficient, hyperlinked table of contents.
Last, but not least, the industry is consolidating behind Linux, and not BSD or Windows or OS X.
The industry is consolidating behind open source. Linux, like FreeBSD is just a vehicle for that. BSD is gaining support just as Linux is (Microsoft's C# compiler for one example Linux doesn't have).
If you hear more anti-Linux and pro-BSD rants than anti-BSD and pro-Linux ones it's only because BSD is largely irrelevant to Linux users, while BSD users have to suffer in the shaddow of Linux, and port software from it (or try to run it in the compatibility mode - not always successfully)
Actually, you hear more anti-linux rants than anti-bsd rants, because Linux, for all its good points, has been developed as a very different and incompatible "nix" variant, for no really good reason at all - hence the majority of unix people who use Linux bitch about it.
Compare BSD to Solaris or SCO (yes, dirty word) for example. The user environment on BSD is much more familiar than the inter-operability between say Solaris and Linux.
Its also been my experience that more BSD users have tried Linux out seriously and then switched to a BSD than the other way aro
I actually use all of the software you list above - however, for the average joe (ie, not me, but a lot of clients I have dealt with in the past), he's sold on the MS alternatives, because:
Office often ships for "free" with windows
MS-SQL is sold as an easy upgrade to access - contains upgrade wizards, data types are similar, etc
There's no *easy* way of accessing MS-SQL from Apache, at least not that I've found (not that I've tried real hard, either). There's plenty of ASP code for doing so, however, and most of the web developers building database front end web apps code in ASP.
What folks here would really hate most is this: Microsoft actually getting their OS into a position where the *ix folks would have nothing to complain about that didn't happen years in the past. The best they could do is say, "Well I don't trust an OS that is as buggy as Windows USED TO BE"
Actually, the main reason I really don't like Microsoft, is their habit of locking you into their product.
Example - you buy Office. You need Windows to run it. You need SQL server to neatly port all the overgrown Access databases that spring up.
You want to make this data available on an intra/internet site? You need to install IIS...
Your IIS intranet site gets too big? Need a server to run it on? Here's win2k server...
Yes, there's alternatives to all of the above, however, the tendency is to follow the path of least resistance, and you end up being a total Microsoft shop - and therefore at the mercy of their future decisions.
This wouldn't be quite so bad, if they weren't so downright anti-competitive about things with the choice of closed spec, or slightly "altered enough to be incompatible" standards use.
Thats my 2c - security is just another factor - anyone who puts a windows machine on the net without having a firewall of some form in front of it is just asking for trouble...
If you accept the fact that you need a firewall between you and the net, windows isn't THAT bad, security wise...
For the record, I'm a network admin with 8 years commercial experience... I use Windows where it makes sense - like the desktop, but open-source software wherever I can otherwise.
Have you ever seen the inside of a hot water heater, after it's been in use a couple of years? It's disgusting.
Along the same lines... where do you think all that scum comes from? Thats right, your water supply.
If you're not going to drink hot tap water (which, considering it has left deposits in your water heater, is probably cleaner than cold), you should stop drinking cold tap water also.
Slashdot Mirror
Before the flames start... here's why...
Due to dodgy clone hardware companies refusing to put their name on various products, I've used the FCC-ID to locate the manufacturer of a few pieces of hardware, in an effort to get it to work.
As far as regulating comms goes, i couldn't give a hoot for the FCC, but as far as tracking manufacturers down, its been quite useful for me in the past.
smash.
Fuck 'em.
Discreet, well placed ads are fine, but if someone is going to try and annoy the shit out of me with ads, I hope their site dies from lack of revenue due to people ditching it.
The whole WWW experience has been going steadily downhill for a few years now, methinks its about time to go outside again :D
smash.
The software is from Caterpillar, and plugs into their mining trucks, to tell the mechanic what is wrong with the truck.
There apparently is a Java or WinCE version of the software in development, but at the moment a Win95/98 device is the lowest thing it will run on.
In this case, Win98's deficiencies aren't a huge problem - no network connection, no support applications, etc.... its just a dumb serial application... couldn't give a shit if the OS is insecure, buggy, etc so long as it can drive a serial port for more than 5 minutes :D
At the moment we're just using old laptops that aren't useful for anything else, but as I mentioned, they kill 1 or 2 off per month, and locating old laptops crappy enough to be sacrificed is getting difficult.
Either we start throwing newer machines away... or find something less awkward to balance on the side of a mining truck :D
smash.
Many reasons.
For example, at work, we happen to have a piece of software that simply talks to a truck engine management computer. Very basic, all it has to do is read the serial port and list what is wrong with the truck.
The code is proprietry, and requires windows of some description (98/2k/XP) to work.
Now, I've had no use for a pocket PC before, but if they're reasonably inexpensive, and have some way of driving a serial port, it would be great to use for this purpose.
At the moment, our maintenance guys are going through about 1 laptop per site every 2 months - simply getting destroyed - dropped/run over/covered in mining crap... 10 sites... thats a lot of money in notebooks.
Something smaller and less unwieldy would be great. If its cheaper to replace, all the better.
smash.
Those dirty bastards don't want to pay me to use my product, because they're using something else! I'm going to sue!!
WTF? Its called a free market...
smash.
nntp://msnews.microsoft.com
the microsoft.public.windowsupdate newsgroup.
Lots of people on Win2k SP4 having bluescreens when this update is applied - and unable to log in to windows.
Solution? Uninstall the update... Doesn't happen to everyone it seems...
smash.
Yes, your win2k terminal server, that has access to your win2k file server has a problem.
Patch it, and potentially knock out terminal services.
Firewall it, and prevent file share access from working
Leave it, and get 0wn3d.
Good set of choices there, thanks Microsoft....
Before jumping to conclusions and pointing the finger at the admin how about having a go at microsoft for:
smash.
from: https://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser .asp
Anyone else find this disturbing?
The local security authority service, presumably one of the more heavily audited, security mechanisms in windows, is exploitable?
I mean, of course, we all know Windows is an insecure, steaming pile of shit, but still.... doesn't say much for the trustworthy computing initiative :D
smash.
He scored the program quite highly on features - its ease of use and speed which let it down.
Which is exactly true... if you've used any other image editor the gimp is "different" to try and get used to, and its very slow at rendering effects - fact. I've run gimp on both Windows and Linux (also FreeBSD), and on windows the UI is sluggish, granted and linux/bsd isn't - but most the filters are very slow on all platforms.
Its criticism like this that is needed to raise the bar on open source software - rather than getting all pissy and going "he's a wimp!", there's a chance that some developer out there might actually take the points with a grain of salt and work on the problems.
The Gimp is a great piece of software - I use it from time to time myself, but it IS a lot different to use and thus, hard to just sit down and use without gimp experience, than other packages.
smash.
Haven't had d driver problem with any of my nvidia cards since 1998 :D
smash.
I think you mean our descendants
smash.
smash.
smash.
smash.
5 points for the person who picks out the source ;)
smash.
I'm sure it IS configurable, but the documentation is terrible.
Now, I'm not trying to be a FreeBSD whore... but this is one of the things I was most impressed with so far with FreeBSD.
IPSec still isn't *really* simple to configure, but at least I managed to get it working within a day.
I still don't have key exchange working properly between windows and BSD, but I set up a wireless link using BSD to BSD and ipsec, and its been running without a hitch for the last 18 months - all set up in 1 day. Windows -> FreeBSD works, but it falls over after 5 minutes due to key exchange not working. This is probably because I'm using a pre-shared secret, and not a certificate, but as I haven't urgently needed to do Windows -> BSD just yet, i haven't bothered following it up.
The only times it has been down is when there was power issues, and when one of the units got fried... which you can hardly blame the OS for :D
I believe FreeBSD uses KAME? If this is what is going into Linux as standard, colour me extremely happy - I've been most impressed with this software so far... :)
smash.
LOL.... its I've unfortunately used their unix (vomit)
smash.
Do you realise how much of a headfuck that will be? Besides, you've got 2 choices:
- Drop support for the old smtp protocol in your e-mail. You are not reachable by the rest of the world until they switch
- Support the old e-mail protocol in parallel. Very few people bother to switch, as they can still contact you, and the spammers certainly won't bother
Thats whyUnfortunately, email has become a victim of its own success, and is far too widespread to just rip out.
The tools are already there to block spam in any case - if people would just secure their bloody machines (open relays, open socks proxies, virus infected desktops running their own smtp servers, open outgoing port 25 for every dialup user, etc), we'd receive a hell of a lot less spam, as the spammer would be traceable much easier.
smash.
My e-mail has been harvested from the following places:
Neither of which involved signing up for spam.
Yes, if you don't use your email address for anything other than e-mailing friends, you should be fine, however even then, when they e-mail some chain letter to you in the CC list, it could end up getting collected that way...
smash.
I've got a P4 desktop with Geforce 4 4200ti running FreeBSD just fine here :D
I keep hearing about people having hardware issues, but to be honest, I haven't stumbled across any yet.
But yeah, I definately agree - if you've used Linux, give FreeBSD a shot. And I don't mean install it, see the "sh" prompt and cry, either. Spend a few weeks with it, and become enlightened. If nothing more, it will teach you a lot about the traditional unix way of doing things...
smash.
I'm a current Debian user (since 1997 - debian 1.2), and have used various Linux distros on and off in that time, Slackware (versions 3.3, 3.6, 7), Redhat (4.1, 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2), Suse (some old version I don't recall), and Gentoo (after I started using FreeBSD. Its basically FreeBSD without the durability and inferior package management. Sorry gentoo guys).
I've run both systems in a production environment, Linux as an SMTP/POP server, squid proxy server, web server, database server and ipchains/iptables firewall for around 50 ISP business clients and a small (2500 user) ISP, and VPN gateway.
FreeBSD I have run as an SMTP/POP/IMAP server, squid proxy, firewall, sql server, ipsec gateway, pptp gateway, ipfilter and ipfw firewalls, etc ... for a 500 employee mining company.
So, I feel I'm somewhat qualified to comment on both sides of the fence.
smash.
Packages are downloadable in binary form, just as you would use with Debian.
pkg_add -r package ..... will retrieve a package using FTP, all other relevant packages required, and install them.
Not too hard? Easier than this "apt-get update, apt-get install -f, apt-get install package", or "emerge package" (what???) bullshit, no?
Compiling from source is PREFERABLE, because then its optimised for your system. Simply tweak the settings in /etc/make.conf if you like, and every package you compile from then onwards is compiled for your system. Fuck up /etc/make.conf? Simply delete it, and the system sources all its defaults from /etc/defaults/make.conf.
Upgrades are a simple matter of using portupgrade.
This is, because there actually IS a damn fine FM to read, with BSD.
I've been running Linux for 8 years now (and still do, for the time being, however I'm phasing it out - in my server room its LINUX that is dying :D), and BSD for 3.. and I have to say that everything I have tried to do with BSD has been far easier to find documentation for than under Linux. Linux documentation is usually available, but its either de-centralised, outdated, or otherwise irrelevant. The BSD system has also behaved exactly as documented, because the documentation is either current, or the program interface has remained consistant.
I'm not talking about crap like "how do I get my scroll wheel working in X???", I'm referring to *real* problems like "how do I get IPSEC to work", or "how do I get myself set up with IPv6?".
Besides, if you're reading through an entire 1000 page manual, you're an idiot - thats why the handbook has a very usable, very efficient, hyperlinked table of contents.
The industry is consolidating behind open source. Linux, like FreeBSD is just a vehicle for that. BSD is gaining support just as Linux is (Microsoft's C# compiler for one example Linux doesn't have).
Actually, you hear more anti-linux rants than anti-bsd rants, because Linux, for all its good points, has been developed as a very different and incompatible "nix" variant, for no really good reason at all - hence the majority of unix people who use Linux bitch about it.
Compare BSD to Solaris or SCO (yes, dirty word) for example. The user environment on BSD is much more familiar than the inter-operability between say Solaris and Linux.
Its also been my experience that more BSD users have tried Linux out seriously and then switched to a BSD than the other way aro
smash.
Example - you buy Office. You need Windows to run it. You need SQL server to neatly port all the overgrown Access databases that spring up.
You want to make this data available on an intra/internet site? You need to install IIS...
Your IIS intranet site gets too big? Need a server to run it on? Here's win2k server...
Yes, there's alternatives to all of the above, however, the tendency is to follow the path of least resistance, and you end up being a total Microsoft shop - and therefore at the mercy of their future decisions.
This wouldn't be quite so bad, if they weren't so downright anti-competitive about things with the choice of closed spec, or slightly "altered enough to be incompatible" standards use.
Thats my 2c - security is just another factor - anyone who puts a windows machine on the net without having a firewall of some form in front of it is just asking for trouble...
If you accept the fact that you need a firewall between you and the net, windows isn't THAT bad, security wise...
For the record, I'm a network admin with 8 years commercial experience ... I use Windows where it makes sense - like the desktop, but open-source software wherever I can otherwise.
nutter.
If you're not going to drink hot tap water (which, considering it has left deposits in your water heater, is probably cleaner than cold), you should stop drinking cold tap water also.
Just something to think about.
smash.