I recycle discarded computers into FULLY OPERATIONAL firewalls and sell them to medium sized companies for a substantial savings when compared to a wildly overpriced and easily hacked Cisco router.
Not to mention the fact that the PC will not go into the dump generating more usless pollution.
AND, if the router becomes obsolete in that attackers penetrate it, it's a simple matter to upgrade by slipping a new floppy in and hitting the reset button.
The floppy is FLAKEY technology but it's still very useful..
I understand the point you're trying to make, however:
You can pick up a P200 that boost from CD, for around $50 on ebay these days
Relying on pcs much older than that, which do not have PCI slots, is a worry. You can't buy ISA cards anymore.
I totally get what you're doing - I was setting up Linux firewalls for small businesses with minimal hardware for 5 years in my last job - but I think you should raise your hardware requirements. A P200 for example, is by no means expensive.
Every advantage you mention in favor of floppies is equally true of CD-Rs...
In my opinion, any "flakey" technology is not worth wasting your time with if there are more reliable choices available... just my opinion though.
All new PCs come with Windows 2000 or XP, which has working drive support for USB devices.
I've had no problems with using my USB disk in either Windows 2000 or FreeBSD - and you're not going to stick some old-ass Linux/BSD distribution complete with 3 years worth of security holes, on a new PC are you?
Microsoft themselves are dropping support for Windows 98 real soon now (or already have? cbf looking it up) - so its about time those users who are still running it got with the program.
Seriously guys.... if you want to keep using the floppy drives you have, no one is stopping you.
They need to die though - and the sooner they're not standard fitment, the quicker this will happen...
What about the apps where you DO NOT BOOT WINBLOZ ?!!!
I sell firewall systems that boot from 1.44m floppy. I can name NUMEROUS applications where you need to boot from a floppy disk.
You can NOT boot from the retarded thumb drive on older mobo's. I suspect that SOME newer mobo's might be able to but I'm not aware of any, a google search shows everyone asking about booting from thumb but no one reporting that they can.
IMHO, the thumb is a doo-dad fad. Nice for MP3 pirates, you can put a whole CD on a 128m thumb drive. Kids will love this..
But us tech types know this device is a just a toy and a fad. It serves no useful purpose from a PRACTICAL viewpoint..
No one is trying to rip the floppy out of your antique system.
The USB thumb drives are supremely useful for carrying around ssh keys, a terminal client, a couple of useful utilities, and security certificates, without the risk of them being unusable due to magnetism from mobile phones, power supplies, phase of the moon, etc.
You can get bootable USB thumb drives, and most new machines support them. Besides, if you're seriously using a machine thats so old it can't at least boot from CD in a production environment, you need your head examined.
Saying that the only use for a USB stick is for music piracy is just as retarded as the RIAA trying to get a CD-R tax because everyone uses them for piracy.
Again, no one is taking your floppy off you. If you're running one in an old machine, you're not the target market. You can continue to do so as you wish.
All of the "problems" you list are either non-problems, or will be trivial to fix with software.
When was the last time any of you used a Floppy drive?
Mine was about 3 weeks ago, to make/use some bootdisks, and after going to buy the floppies and spending a good 15 minutes preparing them, I had 1 out of 4 of them die on me upon boot - disks that had been purchased no less than 30 minutes ago. I don't remember floppies being that bad before, but the disk quality must have really gone to shit...
Floppies suck - and need to die.
I'm just amazed its taken this long - PCs have been able to boot from CD for the last 7 years, and no one has seriously been able to use floppies to back stuff up in longer than that.
A quick CDRW drive these days is almost the same cost as a floppy drive was a few years back - and probably just as cheap if you replace the standard CDROM the PC would usually ship with, with a CDRW.
As has been said... please report this to the local papers - this sort of thing is (obviously) not on, and is not a typical representation of the attitude of the Australian people over here.
I was tempted to cut+paste and send to the Australian myself, but then though that its not my place to do so...
Sounds like a couple of renegade cops/security staff, who deserve to get sacked/sued for their behavior...
On behalf of this country... my sincerest apologies...:-\
Unlike a virus, a worm doesn't require e-mail to replicate and transmit itself into other systems.
This I find interesting...do people really believe that viruses require email? Also, are the hordes of 'email viruses' actually viruses or worms. They (generally) don't infect executables, just exploit a particular program and use it to spread.
The terminology here is all messed up. Email "viruses" that require user intervention to spread are actually "trojans" - named after the trojan horse idea - get the user to execute code that they think is legit.
Those that exploit vulnerabilities in the mail client to do this should be termed "worms".
A virus that replicates in the background by intercepting data as it is read or written without user intervention, and without using the network to do it (other than mapped drives or shares).
Thats how I see it anyway... the line between virus and worm is becoming increasingly blurred...
Slammer gained access via "port 1434," tech lingo for a standard entry point for queries to Microsoft database servers. Simply closing that port isn't a viable option, however, as it would disable key business functions.
But closing, or at the very least, restricting this port IS a recommended solution.
The correct solution is to not have that machine visible to the internet at all, and place a firewall between it and the internet.
There is *NO REASON* for the internet to be able to directly query an SQL database. All internet based queries would be started via code running on a webserver (ASP, PHP, Perl, whatever), that should be designed to filter/validate user input, and limit the functions available (ie, search only).
The database server, is then placed behind a firewall, and then configured to talk ONLY to the webserver, and local user machines.
If employees need to be able to see the database from outside the LAN, you need to set up a VPN of some sort.
Anybody who keeps an SQL server directly visible to the internet (ie, not behind a firewall) has rocks in their head.
What's the point? Why go through all the effort to fix the broken phone system. We already have computer networks. It seems like it would be a whole lot more logical to build on top of the network we already got. Build up IP based phone services that use IP addresses, not phone numbers. And ask all your contacts to get with the times. Once the free software is stable and everyone has better than 56k net access at home...
Why fix the broken phone system? because at the moment, its all there is in some places;)
I agree that your suggestion is the way forward, however the 2 changes I proposed wouldn't require much to implement - a simple change in telco policy, and a new phone.
The IP telephony everywhere approach still needs more infrastructure installed before its going to be a workable replacement.
SMP makes the kernel less secure? Wow. Gee. Yeppers, we must have seen a MILLION security holes in Linux from the SMP code.... (yeah, right.)
Simply claiming that it would make it more complex and less secure still doesn't excuse the fact that it's just about the only real, stable, robust operating system left that doesn't support SMP.
They're called race conditions. Anyway, regardless of whether or not it directly adds to the security risk, it makes the code more complex and difficult to audit, which reduces the amount of developer time available for auditing the rest of it - and there has definately been more security holes in Linux than OpenBSD - maybe featuritis is a contributing factor?
SMP simply is not a requirement for OpenBSD's niche. Besides, if you want SMP in OpenBSD, there's nothing to stop you forking it and building your own...
Well, if it's binary compatible with other win32 platforms, you could just copy over your favorite shell (most people use explorer.exe). There are ports of XFree86 for win32, too. Voila, instant graphical interface.
The only problem with that, is that you'd need a copy of explorer.exe from a licensed copy of Windows to use, which kinda defeats the purpose of it all.
Don't get me wrong - I'm aware of the other interface solutions (Xfree, etc), but copying explorer.exe across isn't a workable solution;)
You may get a free copy of the NT kernel, maybe even the core OS, with ReactOS, but what server apps are you going to run on it?
Going to shell out for a copy of IIS or Exchange?
Or are you going to turn to open source applications as well?
If you go for the second option, you're most likely going to have exactly the same user interface for your applications (ie, configuring via text files), which somewhat nullifies the "ease of use" point of having an NT compatible OS.
If you go for the first option... well.. the costs of Exchange or whatever MS calls the IIS suite these days (the name escapes me at the moment) make the cost for NT server look insignificant..
Sure more drivers will be nice, however, if you pick your server hardware correctly these days, drivers aren't an usually an issue anymore - the main server devices you need are network cards and disk controllers - the manufacturers of which both seems to be supporting OSS development a lot better these days.
Because, of course, Apache, PHP, Squid, CVS, Linux and FreeBSD are all pointless hey...
Just because *you* have no use for any of the above, it doesn't mean they're pointless.
Over half of the internet's webservers run on apache, a large percentage of those use PHP. I'd put money on the fact that Squid caches more traffic than all the other web cache applications combined, and we all know that real web/ftp servers run either FreeBSD or Linux, if they don't run a commercial Unix.
BSD trolls... stick that in your pipe and smoke it:p
The BSDs have linux emulation, and are much more closely related to OS/X from a userland perspective... which is why they're not likely to "die" any time soon:)
And that "best of breed" is not Linux... at least, not yet;)
Distribution incompatibilites, non-compatible tools hand constantly out-of-date or missing documentation are problems that need attending to.
After running Linux in various situations (workstation, mail server, proxy server, VPN gateway, webserver, samba fileserver, etc) for 7 years, I'm quite a bit happier with FreeBSD thanks - the single distribution, integrated tools, and generally up-to-date documentation is a very nice thing to have;)
You get really irritated with Linux if you have anything to do with Solaris, SCO or one of the BSDs. Its too different and too fragmented, for no good reason.
I'm not trying to say FreeBSD is the best unix out there - it depends what you want to use it for. But to say Linux better than everything else there in every way is misguided.
To the Linux fanboys out there - I'd suggest giving one of the BSDs or Solaris a good go (and I mean more than a couple of hours, going "this sucks, it doesn't work like linux" and giving up;) and get an idea of the "other side". It will open your eyes, and give you a broader skills base in any case;)
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the Direct3d 3d format over Microsoft's competing Opengl format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
I think you mean to say he popularized the "OpenGL " format, and not direct3d...
I've had my phone number for 10+ years, how much of a pain would it be to disconnect my home phone and update everyone that needs to be updated? Sorry, there is the time I don't want to waste. I'd rather be able to tell the Marketiers collectively to not call me and be done with it.
Thats all well and good, and reasonable, but unfortunately, its just not going to happen.
The method of getting rid of their means of contacting you works, and IMHO, if a solution doesn't work (telling them "please don't call me"), its pretty pointless.
Personally, I think several changes need making to the telephone system:
Removal of caller ID blocking. There is no legitimate use for it - all its used for is prank calls, or people calling you who you do not want to speak to (harassment)
Ability to block incoming numbers/prefixes on your phone. Eg, if I find telemarketer A has a prefix of 61890212xxx, I can just block that prefix.
Essentially, I want to be able to "firewall" my phone. Once the call centre numbers of the various telemarketers are blocked, things should be sweet:P
we [linux users] still use Nvidia: because Nvidia supports our grass roots movement more.
How ironic (and actually close to the true meaning of ironic, for once.)
Yes, nvidia "supports linux". But I thought the "grass roots movement" was about "free, opensource software". Nvidia's support certainly does NOT fall into that category.
Hey there, give it a rest?
Nvidia release the source code they can, but bits of it can't be released for legal reasons.
You'd rather they just not bother?
Personally, I don't have a problem with binary only drivers, given that any problems are fixed in a timely manner. Nvidia seems to be doing OK in that regard, IMHO.
How does this relate to insurance? Imagine an insurance company willing to insure a TV set you store on your sidewalk. It's not going to happen.
So will an insurance company choose to cover a network that has any known vulnerabilities on it? Or are they going to do a risk assessment based on a company's ability to keep their machines secured? And do they plan to keep track of these things? Simple fact is, a well secured network probably won't need the insurance. And good administrators will know this.
Nope, they'll just refuse to pay out, due to fine print that disclaims resposibility if "due care" is not taken, if I know my insurance company practices:P
Slashdot Mirror
You pay to get into the concert to listen to it, and then you pay *again* to take a CD home.
Sounds like double profit to me :P
smash.
- You can pick up a P200 that boost from CD, for around $50 on ebay these days
- Relying on pcs much older than that, which do not have PCI slots, is a worry. You can't buy ISA cards anymore.
I totally get what you're doing - I was setting up Linux firewalls for small businesses with minimal hardware for 5 years in my last job - but I think you should raise your hardware requirements. A P200 for example, is by no means expensive.Every advantage you mention in favor of floppies is equally true of CD-Rs...
In my opinion, any "flakey" technology is not worth wasting your time with if there are more reliable choices available... just my opinion though.
smash.
I've had no problems with using my USB disk in either Windows 2000 or FreeBSD - and you're not going to stick some old-ass Linux/BSD distribution complete with 3 years worth of security holes, on a new PC are you?
Microsoft themselves are dropping support for Windows 98 real soon now (or already have? cbf looking it up) - so its about time those users who are still running it got with the program.
Seriously guys.... if you want to keep using the floppy drives you have, no one is stopping you.
They need to die though - and the sooner they're not standard fitment, the quicker this will happen...
smash.
I'n a PC I assume?
There's your connector sir...
Besides... no one said they were removing the connectors from the mobo just yet .. I'd give that a year or two...
smash.
The USB thumb drives are supremely useful for carrying around ssh keys, a terminal client, a couple of useful utilities, and security certificates, without the risk of them being unusable due to magnetism from mobile phones, power supplies, phase of the moon, etc.
You can get bootable USB thumb drives, and most new machines support them. Besides, if you're seriously using a machine thats so old it can't at least boot from CD in a production environment, you need your head examined.
Saying that the only use for a USB stick is for music piracy is just as retarded as the RIAA trying to get a CD-R tax because everyone uses them for piracy.
Again, no one is taking your floppy off you. If you're running one in an old machine, you're not the target market. You can continue to do so as you wish.
All of the "problems" you list are either non-problems, or will be trivial to fix with software.
smash
smash.
Mine was about 3 weeks ago, to make/use some bootdisks, and after going to buy the floppies and spending a good 15 minutes preparing them, I had 1 out of 4 of them die on me upon boot - disks that had been purchased no less than 30 minutes ago. I don't remember floppies being that bad before, but the disk quality must have really gone to shit...
Floppies suck - and need to die.
I'm just amazed its taken this long - PCs have been able to boot from CD for the last 7 years, and no one has seriously been able to use floppies to back stuff up in longer than that.
A quick CDRW drive these days is almost the same cost as a floppy drive was a few years back - and probably just as cheap if you replace the standard CDROM the PC would usually ship with, with a CDRW.
Floppies just do not make any sense any more...
smash.
I was tempted to cut+paste and send to the Australian myself, but then though that its not my place to do so...
Sounds like a couple of renegade cops/security staff, who deserve to get sacked/sued for their behavior...
On behalf of this country... my sincerest apologies... :-\
smash.
Those that exploit vulnerabilities in the mail client to do this should be termed "worms".
A virus that replicates in the background by intercepting data as it is read or written without user intervention, and without using the network to do it (other than mapped drives or shares).
Thats how I see it anyway... the line between virus and worm is becoming increasingly blurred...
The correct solution is to not have that machine visible to the internet at all, and place a firewall between it and the internet.There is *NO REASON* for the internet to be able to directly query an SQL database. All internet based queries would be started via code running on a webserver (ASP, PHP, Perl, whatever), that should be designed to filter/validate user input, and limit the functions available (ie, search only).
The database server, is then placed behind a firewall, and then configured to talk ONLY to the webserver, and local user machines.
If employees need to be able to see the database from outside the LAN, you need to set up a VPN of some sort.
Anybody who keeps an SQL server directly visible to the internet (ie, not behind a firewall) has rocks in their head.
smash.
I agree that your suggestion is the way forward, however the 2 changes I proposed wouldn't require much to implement - a simple change in telco policy, and a new phone.
The IP telephony everywhere approach still needs more infrastructure installed before its going to be a workable replacement.
smash.
SMP simply is not a requirement for OpenBSD's niche. Besides, if you want SMP in OpenBSD, there's nothing to stop you forking it and building your own...
smash.
Don't get me wrong - I'm aware of the other interface solutions (Xfree, etc), but copying explorer.exe across isn't a workable solution ;)
smash.
You may get a free copy of the NT kernel, maybe even the core OS, with ReactOS, but what server apps are you going to run on it?
Going to shell out for a copy of IIS or Exchange?
Or are you going to turn to open source applications as well?
If you go for the second option, you're most likely going to have exactly the same user interface for your applications (ie, configuring via text files), which somewhat nullifies the "ease of use" point of having an NT compatible OS.
If you go for the first option... well.. the costs of Exchange or whatever MS calls the IIS suite these days (the name escapes me at the moment) make the cost for NT server look insignificant..
Sure more drivers will be nice, however, if you pick your server hardware correctly these days, drivers aren't an usually an issue anymore - the main server devices you need are network cards and disk controllers - the manufacturers of which both seems to be supporting OSS development a lot better these days.
smash.
Just because *you* have no use for any of the above, it doesn't mean they're pointless.
Over half of the internet's webservers run on apache, a large percentage of those use PHP. I'd put money on the fact that Squid caches more traffic than all the other web cache applications combined, and we all know that real web/ftp servers run either FreeBSD or Linux, if they don't run a commercial Unix.
smash.
Adding SMP will make the kernel more complex, and complexity is bad from a security standpoint.
OpenBSD is supposed to be used for network edge devices - firewalls, etc, in which SMP is not required.
If you want a Unix for your desktop - try Linux, or help out testing FreeBSD 5.0.
Its not about Theo "getting it together" ... no SMP is a design decision that has been made.
smash.
The BSDs have linux emulation, and are much more closely related to OS/X from a userland perspective ... which is why they're not likely to "die" any time soon :)
smash.
Typos due to lack of sleep...
smash.
Distribution incompatibilites, non-compatible tools hand constantly out-of-date or missing documentation are problems that need attending to.
After running Linux in various situations (workstation, mail server, proxy server, VPN gateway, webserver, samba fileserver, etc) for 7 years, I'm quite a bit happier with FreeBSD thanks - the single distribution, integrated tools, and generally up-to-date documentation is a very nice thing to have ;)
You get really irritated with Linux if you have anything to do with Solaris, SCO or one of the BSDs. Its too different and too fragmented, for no good reason.
I'm not trying to say FreeBSD is the best unix out there - it depends what you want to use it for. But to say Linux better than everything else there in every way is misguided.
To the Linux fanboys out there - I'd suggest giving one of the BSDs or Solaris a good go (and I mean more than a couple of hours, going "this sucks, it doesn't work like linux" and giving up ;) and get an idea of the "other side". It will open your eyes, and give you a broader skills base in any case ;)
smash.
smash.
The method of getting rid of their means of contacting you works, and IMHO, if a solution doesn't work (telling them "please don't call me"), its pretty pointless.
Personally, I think several changes need making to the telephone system:
- Removal of caller ID blocking. There is no legitimate use for it - all its used for is prank calls, or people calling you who you do not want to speak to (harassment)
- Ability to block incoming numbers/prefixes on your phone. Eg, if I find telemarketer A has a prefix of 61890212xxx, I can just block that prefix.
Essentially, I want to be able to "firewall" my phone. Once the call centre numbers of the various telemarketers are blocked, things should be sweetsmash.
Nvidia release the source code they can, but bits of it can't be released for legal reasons.
You'd rather they just not bother?
Personally, I don't have a problem with binary only drivers, given that any problems are fixed in a timely manner. Nvidia seems to be doing OK in that regard, IMHO.
smash.
Set a pass mark of 60%, and then, of those students who make the grade:
The top 15% should be As, the next 25% Bs and the remainder Cs.
Cs should be an adequate grade.
As and Bs should be reserved for those who show knowledge above and beyond the normal requirements - and hence be able to command better pay.
Just my 10c.
smash.
There's 25 games worth playing on Linux? :P
smash(relax, its a joke ;)
smash.
If you're going to smoke, you might as well get a hit of nicotine out of it ;)
smash(no I'm not a smoker ;)