And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target.
Hmm.. and how do you know the code wasn't ready unless you have a copy of it?:)
True, but the average person still watches or listens to the news and with the last Windows patch it was covered three ways to Sunday on the major networks and most news shows. CBS radio stations had Larry Magid explaining in layman's terms that if you log onto AOL or the Internet (he was specific in naming both) you need to do this patch thing. The local news stations also did more than a 30 second sound byte. And there was more than one news bit done on this specific patch - the first was when Microsoft released the April updates and the second was when Sasser started running rampant.
Regarding average person - my mom falls under "average" - she called and asked what she should do when she heard about it on the news. Most of the "average" folk probably checked with their "computer literate" friend or family member when they heard "warning, new blah blah internet blah blah computer blah blah windows" It's the ones that don't even do that (either because they be so 31337 or they just don't care) which are at fault here. (and as an aside - completely forgot about those machines that are just out there running...)
But if one is to condemn non-patchers in that way - I assume you also change your oil every 3000 miles, go to the dentist every 6 months, floss daily, get an annual physical, clean the lint filter in your dryer after every load, eat 6 daily servings of vegetables, rotate your tires every 20,000 miles, have all your car's factory recalls done, change the air filters in your heater monthly, and perform all the other mindless routine maintenance you're supposed to do.
The bottom line is, no one on earth outside the most anal retentive person alive does all that stuff. Not doing any of them could have consequences, but people simply don't have time to do all this shit.
So yes, I do blame microsoft. One shouldn't have to constantly check symantec's web page just to keep your computer usable. Computers are appliances now. They should just work, dammit.
We wish computers were appliances that you could just plug in and have them work. If you want an appliance, you get an xBox or a PS2. You get a general purpose system when you want to be able to do a lot of different things. And even the appliances are susceptable to various flaws - otherwise there wouldn't be firmware upgrades and the like. Now in regards to the bit about changing oil every 3000 miles, etc. That wouldn't be accurate. What would be more accurate, especially to the non-patchers would be the CDC (in the U.S.) announced to the nation that a special strain of the West Nile virus is going around, is highly contagious and fairly discomforting (possibly fatal in some instances). You can go to your local drugstore and after filling out a (very short) form get the free vaccine that protects you from that strain and anything that comes off that strain. If you got infected and were sick as a dog for a week, I bet you that you would go out and take the vaccine so you didn't get it again. If your next door neighbor got it and you didn't, I bet you'd go out and take the vaccine - just due to proximity. Anyone who ignored the first notice that was blasted on the airwaves, newspapers and websites that gets infected on the sub-strains shouldn't blame the CDC -- you can only tell people so many times before the true teacher is letting them get burned by it.
For those who don't know, http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html describes IP via avian carrier. If you haven't read it yet, you should. It pushes the capability of IP under difficult conditions, especially conditions where little to no power is available.
Packet size can be somewhat reasonable. (I wonder if you can strap a 128 or 256mb memory card to a pigeon - they're light enough...) Latency is a bear though. Definitely don't use it to connect your local LAN to play UT or VOIP.
I wouldn't have the slightest concern putting any 3 year old UNIX system of any flavor online to download its patches, or even an old-school Mac running that abomination known as Mac OS 9, or for that matter Windows for Workgroups or Windows 3.11...
So you think you could put a copy of Redhat 7.1 that would have Linux 2.4.4 (thank you Internet Archive) as the kernel would survive long enough to download everything to patch it to latest? Remember, this guy did nothing to try to prevent attacks on his machine before updating it - not even turn on the ip filtering that comes with Win2k Pro out of the box. (Not easy to find - but it is there) This is the equivalent of putting a non-ipchains/tables system up. ssh is available to the outside world and running. So is telnet. I don't think that the slapper worm has been completely wiped...
I think I'll try it as an experiment this week. I have an old redhat cd lying around and a spare cable modem pipe (although to be a fair comparison I should use a dial up account like the article) - I'll see if I can get that up, running and patched without being 0wn3d.
Okay, I read through the article and just have a few questions.
1) Which OS that if you reinstalled from the original installation disks (which is what he is doing) would be able survive on a live internet connection long enough to download all the most recent patches and updates?
2) He knew he was going to re-install - why didn't he download SP4 (or already have it downloaded most likely) and make a CD with it before he wiped his system?
3) Along the same vein, why didn't he download the additional patches before wiping the system?
This particular case is more of poor planning on the part of the system rebuilder.
Start with one about South Africa, and the apartheid regime.
They said the same thing.
Actually, first I'd point you to a book on geography. Unlike South Africa, where all the players were already on the same field, there's a few differences with the U.S. vs. "the muslims" or "the chinese". Approaches to the U.S. are for the most part either via air or water. (minimum of 2500 miles of ocean on the eastern and western border makes for better neighbors than even fences do!) Both approaches are relatively easily spotted/interdicted for large groups attempting entry - one offs are only good for 'terrorist' and 'commando' type actions (or narcotics deliveries).
Approaching by land is going to be either over the North Pole (inhospitable) and through Canada (tripwire/early warning) or through Central America/Mexico (tripwire/less early warning however traveling through Central America opens invading force to the various diseases that like to drop in on them - if they start in South America, crossing the Panama Canal becomes the tripwire/early warning point).
I disagree with you about the U.S. influence in 50 years. 200 years maybe.. but 50 years is too short a time. And be wary about watching the U.S. economy collapsing - everything that is tied to the Dollar will nose-dive with it so there's definitely forces in place working to prevent that from happening. No one wants another 1930s global depression. It isn't good for business.
I see. This is why Los Angeles have big smog problem? Btw, fyi, high smokestacks don't make air cleaner - it moves pollution further away but it eventually falls down.
Actually L.A.'s smog problem has gotten better over the years. But you forget to add that weather conditions and geography play a lot into the concentration of smog in the L.A. area. That and the 10 million people that live in the region.
Actually HD Drive is correct. HD stands for HardDisk. Now if you said HDD drive then heads would be rolling. I'm not going to even mention the rest of your comment;)
Shouldn't that be heads would be crashing? (duck. run.):)
Next time you're in a Fry's, Best Buy or CompUSA (or the local mom and pop computer shop where you really buy your parts if you can't wait for the overnight shipment) with them - take them to the repair counter and point out the posted prices for things like "installing antivirus software" and "system tune-up". Once they see what retail price is for checking something out, they are generally more appreciative of your time...
Thanks for the reference. I found a better one here. This was not because the hijackers intentionally crashed the aircraft but because the hijackers were fairly inept and unknowledgeable about fuel levels and the range of the aircraft they had taken. They thought the pilots were lying to them when they were told the plane didn't have enough gas to get to Austrailia.
Actually, I had forgotten this one. Thanks for the reminder. However, it's still a light aircraft that was stolen and not a fully loaded passenger plane flown by professional pilots as the original poster is contending. You (or anyone) wouldn't happen to have a published reference to his contention?
No the REAL question is how much mana does it take to get a "*Automagic* No-Fly-Zone Enforcement" going.
Well, first you need mountains and plains. You can have only 1 plain in play for any one creature to watch them. Creature must have ability to fly. If the mountain is tapped, one plain and one creature goes to the grave yard.
Okay - that means you need to have enough other land in play and enough counterspells to prevent your opponents from tapping your mountain. I'd suggest lots of islands.
The best translation of "post-modern" is "aware or its own context". Americans tend to be completely ignorant of the world around them, and because of this its politicians constantly bump into international opposition like a person stumbling around a dark room
Well.. yeah - typical American doesn't deal well with international politics. It's the whole "There's an ocean between us" mentality that drives a lot of it. Outside of Canada and Mexico (yes, I'm ignoring Central and South America for this exercise), the U.S.'s nearest neighbors (or enemies) have to have boats or airplanes to get here. That has been a driving force for foreign policy since the days of Jackson.
MS is like the guy who left his carkeys on the bar while taking a leak and now suing whomever stole their car. While exploiting the weakness may be illegal it's also the stupidity of microsoft (not writing secure software even though win95 already necessitated it) that causes the thieves to have such an easy time.
Okay - I gotta take a bit of exception to this. Let's roll the clock back to 1994 when Win95 was in final development...
The World Wide Web was in it's infancy and the playground of the digital literati. The Internet existed only to the colleges, the research labs and the government. (And a few lucky individuals in well-wired areas where "PPP" connections to the Internet were starting to become available)
The typical home user (i.e. the typical Windows user) who had an online connection used either AOL, Compuserve, GEnie or Prodigy or the local BBS and it was all via dial-up phone lines and a proprietary client. (Exceptions for BBS, Compuserve and GEnie... they let you use any terminal-type program)
Corporate networks weren't tied into anything but themselves. Heck, most of them were running Netware IPX/SPX or Microsoft NetBIOS (ewwe). Viruses propogated as floppy-to-floppy/boot sector infections. Stealing a connection involved searching for machines left connected to modems with PCAnywhere running.
Microsoft was developing their AOL-kller client MSN. Getting a TCP/IP stack for Windows to work was a kludge and a half. At this point, Windows 95 (end of 1994) is feature-complete and they're just knocking down the bugs. The assumption was more of the same - dialup using proprietary client to MSN network for home users. Corporate network for work users.
These guys weren't looking to the future of computing to assume that everything was going to be networked to everything. Up to then, network costs were prohibitively expensive. (Compuserve and AOL charged hourly connection rates.) Only companies with large IT budgets and extremely skilled staff networked pcs. The average user plugged a printer and a modem into their machine and all the hype was over the 33.6 connection. Rich users also plugged in a scanner.
They had no idea that within a year, everything would be switching to TCP/IP, PPP connections would become affordable to the masses and the cost of networking gear would plunge to "affordable" and every company on the planet would be tying it's LAN into the Internet. Not to mention the various viruses that started to propogate as time went on. The "Ping of Death" didn't exist in 1995. And they've been playing catch-up ever since as folks have become skilled enough to understand the underlying network portion and how poorly Microsoft had built on it.
It's fair to nail 'em for crappy security, but nailing them for not seeing into the future and assuming everything was going to really be plugged into everything within 2 years? That's a bit harsh.
Precisely my point. If there were no piracy, the RIAA wouldn't have a leg to stand on. But there is, so it does.
But you missed my point. Even if there *wasn't* piracy, the RIAA would blame it on piracy. When Napster was around, sales were up. Napster went away, sales were still up. Economy crapped out, sales went down. But the RIAA is going to blame it on the stuff that came after Napster instead of the economy. Now, with the rebound starting, if sales don't start to slowly climb, then they may have a point. Bet you that they do though. And bet you that the RIAA pushes it under the blankets and talks very softly about the increase.
Right now, legally, the RIAA has the upper hand, and will continue to seek every opportunity to protect its interests (and it has every right to do so). The only indisputable, absolute power had be every consumer is the control they have over their wallet. USE IT!
The problem with this part is that the RIAA is using the fact that people are voting with their wallets to say that piracy is up and P2P networks are evil and should be destroyed. Music sales are down? It has to be people getting things off Kaztilla instead of going to the store to buy it. And the whole economy/unemployment thing can't have anything to do with sales slacking.
Which means you install it on the 26 dcs that are in your branch offices and use group policies to point the local clients at the local servers. This scenario is actually in the documentation they ship with the product. Yes, SUS uses IIS. (that whole web services theme - can't have everything) You might want to look at it again - especially as it's easier to send a patch once down those ISDN lines than have each individual workstation download it.
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And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target.
:)
Hmm.. and how do you know the code wasn't ready unless you have a copy of it?
More offtopic-ness signature silliness but couldn't resist...
There may be no "I" in team, but there is in "WIN"...
(We now return you to your comment browsing, already in progress)
True, but the average person still watches or listens to the news and with the last Windows patch it was covered three ways to Sunday on the major networks and most news shows. CBS radio stations had Larry Magid explaining in layman's terms that if you log onto AOL or the Internet (he was specific in naming both) you need to do this patch thing. The local news stations also did more than a 30 second sound byte. And there was more than one news bit done on this specific patch - the first was when Microsoft released the April updates and the second was when Sasser started running rampant.
Regarding average person - my mom falls under "average" - she called and asked what she should do when she heard about it on the news. Most of the "average" folk probably checked with their "computer literate" friend or family member when they heard "warning, new blah blah internet blah blah computer blah blah windows" It's the ones that don't even do that (either because they be so 31337 or they just don't care) which are at fault here. (and as an aside - completely forgot about those machines that are just out there running...)
But if one is to condemn non-patchers in that way - I assume you also change your oil every 3000 miles, go to the dentist every 6 months, floss daily, get an annual physical, clean the lint filter in your dryer after every load, eat 6 daily servings of vegetables, rotate your tires every 20,000 miles, have all your car's factory recalls done, change the air filters in your heater monthly, and perform all the other mindless routine maintenance you're supposed to do.
The bottom line is, no one on earth outside the most anal retentive person alive does all that stuff. Not doing any of them could have consequences, but people simply don't have time to do all this shit.
So yes, I do blame microsoft. One shouldn't have to constantly check symantec's web page just to keep your computer usable. Computers are appliances now. They should just work, dammit.
We wish computers were appliances that you could just plug in and have them work. If you want an appliance, you get an xBox or a PS2. You get a general purpose system when you want to be able to do a lot of different things. And even the appliances are susceptable to various flaws - otherwise there wouldn't be firmware upgrades and the like. Now in regards to the bit about changing oil every 3000 miles, etc. That wouldn't be accurate. What would be more accurate, especially to the non-patchers would be the CDC (in the U.S.) announced to the nation that a special strain of the West Nile virus is going around, is highly contagious and fairly discomforting (possibly fatal in some instances). You can go to your local drugstore and after filling out a (very short) form get the free vaccine that protects you from that strain and anything that comes off that strain. If you got infected and were sick as a dog for a week, I bet you that you would go out and take the vaccine so you didn't get it again. If your next door neighbor got it and you didn't, I bet you'd go out and take the vaccine - just due to proximity. Anyone who ignored the first notice that was blasted on the airwaves, newspapers and websites that gets infected on the sub-strains shouldn't blame the CDC -- you can only tell people so many times before the true teacher is letting them get burned by it.
For those who don't know, http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html describes IP via avian carrier. If you haven't read it yet, you should. It pushes the capability of IP under difficult conditions, especially conditions where little to no power is available.
Packet size can be somewhat reasonable. (I wonder if you can strap a 128 or 256mb memory card to a pigeon - they're light enough...) Latency is a bear though. Definitely don't use it to connect your local LAN to play UT or VOIP.
(okay - back to washing glasses for me...)
I wouldn't have the slightest concern putting any 3 year old UNIX system of any flavor online to download its patches, or even an old-school Mac running that abomination known as Mac OS 9, or for that matter Windows for Workgroups or Windows 3.11...
So you think you could put a copy of Redhat 7.1 that would have Linux 2.4.4 (thank you Internet Archive) as the kernel would survive long enough to download everything to patch it to latest? Remember, this guy did nothing to try to prevent attacks on his machine before updating it - not even turn on the ip filtering that comes with Win2k Pro out of the box. (Not easy to find - but it is there) This is the equivalent of putting a non-ipchains/tables system up. ssh is available to the outside world and running. So is telnet. I don't think that the slapper worm has been completely wiped...
I think I'll try it as an experiment this week. I have an old redhat cd lying around and a spare cable modem pipe (although to be a fair comparison I should use a dial up account like the article) - I'll see if I can get that up, running and patched without being 0wn3d.
Okay, I read through the article and just have a few questions.
1) Which OS that if you reinstalled from the original installation disks (which is what he is doing) would be able survive on a live internet connection long enough to download all the most recent patches and updates?
2) He knew he was going to re-install - why didn't he download SP4 (or already have it downloaded most likely) and make a CD with it before he wiped his system?
3) Along the same vein, why didn't he download the additional patches before wiping the system?
This particular case is more of poor planning on the part of the system rebuilder.
Read a history book.
.. but 50 years is too short a time. And be wary about watching the U.S. economy collapsing - everything that is tied to the Dollar will nose-dive with it so there's definitely forces in place working to prevent that from happening. No one wants another 1930s global depression. It isn't good for business.
Start with one about South Africa, and the apartheid regime.
They said the same thing.
Actually, first I'd point you to a book on geography. Unlike South Africa, where all the players were already on the same field, there's a few differences with the U.S. vs. "the muslims" or "the chinese". Approaches to the U.S. are for the most part either via air or water. (minimum of 2500 miles of ocean on the eastern and western border makes for better neighbors than even fences do!) Both approaches are relatively easily spotted/interdicted for large groups attempting entry - one offs are only good for 'terrorist' and 'commando' type actions (or narcotics deliveries).
Approaching by land is going to be either over the North Pole (inhospitable) and through Canada (tripwire/early warning) or through Central America/Mexico (tripwire/less early warning however traveling through Central America opens invading force to the various diseases that like to drop in on them - if they start in South America, crossing the Panama Canal becomes the tripwire/early warning point).
I disagree with you about the U.S. influence in 50 years. 200 years maybe
They might just "Nuke the Wales" for living in the stuff
Hmm. I think Prince Charles might get a little pissed if we nuke Wales, considering he's the Prince of Wales and all...
(yes, I am going to hell for that one.)
I see. This is why Los Angeles have big smog problem? Btw, fyi, high smokestacks don't make air cleaner - it moves pollution further away but it eventually falls down.
Actually L.A.'s smog problem has gotten better over the years. But you forget to add that weather conditions and geography play a lot into the concentration of smog in the L.A. area. That and the 10 million people that live in the region.
Dangit man! Ya gotta warn people before ya post stuff like this. Do you know how hard it is to get Mountain Dew out of a notebook?
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." -Eldridge Cleaver
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate" - My High School Chemistry Teacher
Actually HD Drive is correct. HD stands for HardDisk. Now if you said HDD drive then heads would be rolling. I'm not going to even mention the rest of your comment ;)
:)
Shouldn't that be heads would be crashing? (duck. run.)
Next time you're in a Fry's, Best Buy or CompUSA (or the local mom and pop computer shop where you really buy your parts if you can't wait for the overnight shipment) with them - take them to the repair counter and point out the posted prices for things like "installing antivirus software" and "system tune-up". Once they see what retail price is for checking something out, they are generally more appreciative of your time...
Thanks for the reference. I found a better one here. This was not because the hijackers intentionally crashed the aircraft but because the hijackers were fairly inept and unknowledgeable about fuel levels and the range of the aircraft they had taken. They thought the pilots were lying to them when they were told the plane didn't have enough gas to get to Austrailia.
Actually, I had forgotten this one. Thanks for the reminder. However, it's still a light aircraft that was stolen and not a fully loaded passenger plane flown by professional pilots as the original poster is contending. You (or anyone) wouldn't happen to have a published reference to his contention?
Okay.. I hunted Google News and Discovery's website and could find no reference to anything you've stated. Source please?
No the REAL question is how much mana does it take to get a "*Automagic* No-Fly-Zone Enforcement" going.
Well, first you need mountains and plains. You can have only 1 plain in play for any one creature to watch them. Creature must have ability to fly. If the mountain is tapped, one plain and one creature goes to the grave yard.
Okay - that means you need to have enough other land in play and enough counterspells to prevent your opponents from tapping your mountain. I'd suggest lots of islands.
The best translation of "post-modern" is "aware or its own context". Americans tend to be completely ignorant of the world around them, and because of this its politicians constantly bump into international opposition like a person stumbling around a dark room
Well.. yeah - typical American doesn't deal well with international politics. It's the whole "There's an ocean between us" mentality that drives a lot of it. Outside of Canada and Mexico (yes, I'm ignoring Central and South America for this exercise), the U.S.'s nearest neighbors (or enemies) have to have boats or airplanes to get here. That has been a driving force for foreign policy since the days of Jackson.
MS is like the guy who left his carkeys on the bar while taking a leak and now suing whomever stole their car. While exploiting the weakness may be illegal it's also the stupidity of microsoft (not writing secure software even though win95 already necessitated it) that causes the thieves to have such an easy time.
Okay - I gotta take a bit of exception to this. Let's roll the clock back to 1994 when Win95 was in final development...
The World Wide Web was in it's infancy and the playground of the digital literati. The Internet existed only to the colleges, the research labs and the government. (And a few lucky individuals in well-wired areas where "PPP" connections to the Internet were starting to become available)
The typical home user (i.e. the typical Windows user) who had an online connection used either AOL, Compuserve, GEnie or Prodigy or the local BBS and it was all via dial-up phone lines and a proprietary client. (Exceptions for BBS, Compuserve and GEnie... they let you use any terminal-type program)
Corporate networks weren't tied into anything but themselves. Heck, most of them were running Netware IPX/SPX or Microsoft NetBIOS (ewwe). Viruses propogated as floppy-to-floppy/boot sector infections. Stealing a connection involved searching for machines left connected to modems with PCAnywhere running.
Microsoft was developing their AOL-kller client MSN. Getting a TCP/IP stack for Windows to work was a kludge and a half. At this point, Windows 95 (end of 1994) is feature-complete and they're just knocking down the bugs. The assumption was more of the same - dialup using proprietary client to MSN network for home users. Corporate network for work users.
These guys weren't looking to the future of computing to assume that everything was going to be networked to everything. Up to then, network costs were prohibitively expensive. (Compuserve and AOL charged hourly connection rates.) Only companies with large IT budgets and extremely skilled staff networked pcs. The average user plugged a printer and a modem into their machine and all the hype was over the 33.6 connection. Rich users also plugged in a scanner.
They had no idea that within a year, everything would be switching to TCP/IP, PPP connections would become affordable to the masses and the cost of networking gear would plunge to "affordable" and every company on the planet would be tying it's LAN into the Internet. Not to mention the various viruses that started to propogate as time went on. The "Ping of Death" didn't exist in 1995. And they've been playing catch-up ever since as folks have become skilled enough to understand the underlying network portion and how poorly Microsoft had built on it.
It's fair to nail 'em for crappy security, but nailing them for not seeing into the future and assuming everything was going to really be plugged into everything within 2 years? That's a bit harsh.
Precisely my point. If there were no piracy, the RIAA wouldn't have a leg to stand on. But there is, so it does.
But you missed my point. Even if there *wasn't* piracy, the RIAA would blame it on piracy. When Napster was around, sales were up. Napster went away, sales were still up. Economy crapped out, sales went down. But the RIAA is going to blame it on the stuff that came after Napster instead of the economy. Now, with the rebound starting, if sales don't start to slowly climb, then they may have a point. Bet you that they do though. And bet you that the RIAA pushes it under the blankets and talks very softly about the increase.
Right now, legally, the RIAA has the upper hand, and will continue to seek every opportunity to protect its interests (and it has every right to do so). The only indisputable, absolute power had be every consumer is the control they have over their wallet. USE IT!
The problem with this part is that the RIAA is using the fact that people are voting with their wallets to say that piracy is up and P2P networks are evil and should be destroyed. Music sales are down? It has to be people getting things off Kaztilla instead of going to the store to buy it. And the whole economy/unemployment thing can't have anything to do with sales slacking.
> Please explain how our robot wife overlords will be better than our current human wife overlords?
They'll be able to balance the (empty) checking account down to the penny, of course.
> Here's to hoping for cheap and effective robot wives, for all our sakes
I, for one, will welcome our robot wife overlords...
(ducking flying produce...)
Which means you install it on the 26 dcs that are in your branch offices and use group policies to point the local clients at the local servers. This scenario is actually in the documentation they ship with the product. Yes, SUS uses IIS. (that whole web services theme - can't have everything) You might want to look at it again - especially as it's easier to send a patch once down those ISDN lines than have each individual workstation download it.