Oh, I think it makes perfect sense in a kind of stupid way. Since SCO's just riding on fumes, they need to throw something like this out every few weeks. It's the only way for them to keep up the pretense that they're anything more than a paper tapeworm.. er.. tiger. Reliably, and gullibly, the tech press eats it up giving them a few more days of pseudo-credibility.
Really, the old on-line adage "don't feed the trolls" seems somehow appropriate.
Gee-willikers you're right! Why before flash memory became common no company ever released a product! That explains all those barren shelves I remember in the stores...:-)
That's not even true really - for a lot of data entry stuff the GUI doesn't really provide much benefit and can actually can get in the way. It gives the user more ways to screw up.
When we moved from terminals to PCs many moons ago, our support issues went through the roof and most all of it was simple stuff like users confused by the mouse or not knowing how to drag a partly obscured window back onscreen.
Also a GUI app many be quicker at first for the unexperienced, but the mouse slows entry down yet discourages many people from learning the keyboard shortcuts.
Bound to a hardware device? Not really sure what you mean by that. All of the DVD decoders I've seen will produce fully unencrypted VOB's that most software DVD players can play driectly from the HD - menus and all.
Really I don't understand why this guy has a problem. All you need do is rip each DVD to its own directory and munge together some simple front end menu to launch the player with a given one.
Same as always. They'll probably add three more layers of bulbous bitmap GUIs, a larger splash screen, a few more systray icons, a sprinkle of dubious pop-up warnings saying you need the "pro" version, and lots of playskool animations of cartoon syringes chasing "virus monsters". Oh don't forget a custom toolbar or two, a IE hotbar and maybe a custom desktop theme - all with links to their website of course.
No, but it is logical that a company who's product's image has suffered so heavily due to viruses would want to make sure all users have up to date software. I think it's actually of far more benefit to Microsoft to keep the updates free.
Actually an MS monoculture will make the job of the virus writers *so* much easier - they'll only have to write a bug smart enough to disable one AV product!:-)
Have you ever tried any? Remember most of these rendered via software directly to the video card - no acceleration at all, but they were designed to be playable on systems of that time.
Since then everything from CPU to memory, bus, and video speed has increased dramatically, and the later DOS 3D games do play much faster and smoother on a modern system (if they play at all). You can usually crank all GFX up to full and never see any slowdown.
The main "problem" I notice is just that the software rendered 3D looks so ugly by today's standards. Supported resolutions are usually very low with none of the filtering and effects we're used to.
Also since many had no speed throttling, earlier 286 era games can be completely unplayable without something like moslow. It's actually a bit comical to try. By the 486 era PCs varied in speed enough that games at least were written to throttle their max speed. Many won't go above a certain framerate.
Several were patched afterwards for later re-releases, but quite a few released in the 286 era and before really had no throttling at all. I remember even on my 486 the original Wing Commander was unplayable. That's why programs like moslow were developed.
I doubt it. Those really old DOS games were *long* before accelerated 3D so any 3D driver vsync options will do absolutely nothing. Remember we're talking VGA or at best VESA video here, just to switching into these modes (if your card still supports them) will usually jump to a lower compatible vsync rate. Even so, many of the older games like the early Wing Commanders just ran as fast as the CPU would allow.
XFree86 is certainly the most popular, but I was more thinking of the original "official" X11 implementation (which I *think* XFree86 forked from for licensing reasons).
This I think is the real problem. By the end of the day what counts is that a language be fairly easy to learn, use, and able to do what you need. Having some academic idea of lexical perfection really benefits no one but the professors applying for grant money. Indeed, the whole idea of a "perfect" language may be a bit of an illusion to begin with.
I think it's why simple but messy languages like Perl continue to be more popular than stuff like lisp. Just as in the real world none of the many "ideal" spoken/written languages developed by academia have ever really won out over the lexical hodge-podge of traditional languages.
Personally, I have trouble trusting any language where it's developers spend more time talking about the language syntax than they do talking about the project they're actually working on. To me, it's a sign the language's complexity may be hurting development more than any of it's supposed advantages are helping. Heck, even popular languages like C++ gets dangerously close to that sometimes.
maybe someone just happened to use your domain when coming up with a fake email. Domains with very common names tend to get a lot of that.
Also, the recent spate of mydoom clones not only forges from addresses, but also shuffles the name and domain. I'm getting tons of AV bounces from addresses that never even existed at my domain, and have also started seeing spam with similar user names.
Makes me wonder if, since these viruses are often suspected to be the work of spammers, if they actually use the random AV bounces as a way to collect addresses.
CNET's download.com is really bad for this. If you ever wonder how some of the ultra-crappy spyware-loaded apps get such a high rating, just look carefully. You'll see an endless stream of almost identical reviews singing it's praises intermixed with a few honest ones warning people it's a load of e-turds. I'm sure the number of downloads (which companies and news articles love to quote) is similarly inflated.
Really, it makes me wonder if there's some "service" out there that specializes in spamming reviews.
...so, what about those games that slip way past their release date, yet are *still* full of more bugs than a roach motel? Sometimes those long-missed release dates don't mean quality, but just that the company's made promises they can't deliver.
I'm for the "wait for it to hit the bargain bin model" myself. I find many games that sucked at $50 aren't so bad at $15, and by that time they run great on my not-so-cutting-edge hardware too.
Unfortunately, the "public" by and large has little reason to care. Any direct impact these megacorp antics may have is far too dilute by the time it filters down to ol' Joe Q.
Now, when media protection takes his fast-forward button away - that's the kind of thing that'll get his ire elevated.
The only downside is it's not the know exploits that are the real danger - the really nefarious types who've found their own set of unknown pet exploits aren't going to waste them for something like this.
In essence, it would probably only show up fairly common exploits that should have been already patched. While not completely useless, it may give people a false sense of security. No one who's tried may have found an exploit yet, but how does that old saw go? "Absence of proof is not proof of absence"
What makes you say that? It's pretty much trivial to forge a packet with any source IP you like as long as you don't care about getting back a reply - it's not like an attacker needs any special access to your system what so ever. The only thing even a bit non-obvious is guessing the IP of the client, but in most cases even that's not very hard.
but would the sequence numbers be useful? Remember we have no connection yet - these are individual connection attempts doing the knocking. Shouldn't the initial sequence numbers be unpredictable on a good TCP/IP implementation?
Um, as I said "forged" - remember we're not establishing a connection, and if there's no need to get a packet back, then it's very easy to send a spoofed IP.
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Oh, I think it makes perfect sense in a kind of stupid way. Since SCO's just riding on fumes, they need to throw something like this out every few weeks. It's the only way for them to keep up the pretense that they're anything more than a paper tapeworm.. er.. tiger. Reliably, and gullibly, the tech press eats it up giving them a few more days of pseudo-credibility.
Really, the old on-line adage "don't feed the trolls" seems somehow appropriate.
Gee-willikers you're right! Why before flash memory became common no company ever released a product! That explains all those barren shelves I remember in the stores... :-)
That's not even true really - for a lot of data entry stuff the GUI doesn't really provide much benefit and can actually can get in the way. It gives the user more ways to screw up.
When we moved from terminals to PCs many moons ago, our support issues went through the roof and most all of it was simple stuff like users confused by the mouse or not knowing how to drag a partly obscured window back onscreen.
Also a GUI app many be quicker at first for the unexperienced, but the mouse slows entry down yet discourages many people from learning the keyboard shortcuts.
Bound to a hardware device? Not really sure what you mean by that. All of the DVD decoders I've seen will produce fully unencrypted VOB's that most software DVD players can play driectly from the HD - menus and all.
Really I don't understand why this guy has a problem. All you need do is rip each DVD to its own directory and munge together some simple front end menu to launch the player with a given one.
Same as always. They'll probably add three more layers of bulbous bitmap GUIs, a larger splash screen, a few more systray icons, a sprinkle of dubious pop-up warnings saying you need the "pro" version, and lots of playskool animations of cartoon syringes chasing "virus monsters". Oh don't forget a custom toolbar or two, a IE hotbar and maybe a custom desktop theme - all with links to their website of course.
No, but it is logical that a company who's product's image has suffered so heavily due to viruses would want to make sure all users have up to date software. I think it's actually of far more benefit to Microsoft to keep the updates free.
Actually an MS monoculture will make the job of the virus writers *so* much easier - they'll only have to write a bug smart enough to disable one AV product! :-)
Have you ever tried any? Remember most of these rendered via software directly to the video card - no acceleration at all, but they were designed to be playable on systems of that time.
Since then everything from CPU to memory, bus, and video speed has increased dramatically, and the later DOS 3D games do play much faster and smoother on a modern system (if they play at all). You can usually crank all GFX up to full and never see any slowdown.
The main "problem" I notice is just that the software rendered 3D looks so ugly by today's standards. Supported resolutions are usually very low with none of the filtering and effects we're used to.
Also since many had no speed throttling, earlier 286 era games can be completely unplayable without something like moslow. It's actually a bit comical to try. By the 486 era PCs varied in speed enough that games at least were written to throttle their max speed. Many won't go above a certain framerate.
Several were patched afterwards for later re-releases, but quite a few released in the 286 era and before really had no throttling at all. I remember even on my 486 the original Wing Commander was unplayable. That's why programs like moslow were developed.
I doubt it. Those really old DOS games were *long* before accelerated 3D so any 3D driver vsync options will do absolutely nothing. Remember we're talking VGA or at best VESA video here, just to switching into these modes (if your card still supports them) will usually jump to a lower compatible vsync rate. Even so, many of the older games like the early Wing Commanders just ran as fast as the CPU would allow.
Odd, besides maybe a "groooumph" noise, I don't remember totoro actually saying anything.
XFree86 is certainly the most popular, but I was more thinking of the original "official" X11 implementation (which I *think* XFree86 forked from for licensing reasons).
This I think is the real problem. By the end of the day what counts is that a language be fairly easy to learn, use, and able to do what you need. Having some academic idea of lexical perfection really benefits no one but the professors applying for grant money. Indeed, the whole idea of a "perfect" language may be a bit of an illusion to begin with.
I think it's why simple but messy languages like Perl continue to be more popular than stuff like lisp. Just as in the real world none of the many "ideal" spoken/written languages developed by academia have ever really won out over the lexical hodge-podge of traditional languages.
Personally, I have trouble trusting any language where it's developers spend more time talking about the language syntax than they do talking about the project they're actually working on. To me, it's a sign the language's complexity may be hurting development more than any of it's supposed advantages are helping. Heck, even popular languages like C++ gets dangerously close to that sometimes.
In that case, I'd think you'd call this the glory days of X clones rather than the glory days of X itself.
maybe someone just happened to use your domain when coming up with a fake email. Domains with very common names tend to get a lot of that.
Also, the recent spate of mydoom clones not only forges from addresses, but also shuffles the name and domain. I'm getting tons of AV bounces from addresses that never even existed at my domain, and have also started seeing spam with similar user names.
Makes me wonder if, since these viruses are often suspected to be the work of spammers, if they actually use the random AV bounces as a way to collect addresses.
CNET's download.com is really bad for this. If you ever wonder how some of the ultra-crappy spyware-loaded apps get such a high rating, just look carefully. You'll see an endless stream of almost identical reviews singing it's praises intermixed with a few honest ones warning people it's a load of e-turds. I'm sure the number of downloads (which companies and news articles love to quote) is similarly inflated.
Really, it makes me wonder if there's some "service" out there that specializes in spamming reviews.
...so, what about those games that slip way past their release date, yet are *still* full of more bugs than a roach motel? Sometimes those long-missed release dates don't mean quality, but just that the company's made promises they can't deliver.
I'm for the "wait for it to hit the bargain bin model" myself. I find many games that sucked at $50 aren't so bad at $15, and by that time they run great on my not-so-cutting-edge hardware too.
Think so? Then, ask the author of VirtualDub why he had to remove asf file support.
Unfortunately, the "public" by and large has little reason to care. Any direct impact these megacorp antics may have is far too dilute by the time it filters down to ol' Joe Q.
Now, when media protection takes his fast-forward button away - that's the kind of thing that'll get his ire elevated.
Yes, they'll change so only big companies can file stupid patents. :-)
The only downside is it's not the know exploits that are the real danger - the really nefarious types who've found their own set of unknown pet exploits aren't going to waste them for something like this.
In essence, it would probably only show up fairly common exploits that should have been already patched. While not completely useless, it may give people a false sense of security. No one who's tried may have found an exploit yet, but how does that old saw go? "Absence of proof is not proof of absence"
What makes you say that? It's pretty much trivial to forge a packet with any source IP you like as long as you don't care about getting back a reply - it's not like an attacker needs any special access to your system what so ever. The only thing even a bit non-obvious is guessing the IP of the client, but in most cases even that's not very hard.
but would the sequence numbers be useful? Remember we have no connection yet - these are individual connection attempts doing the knocking. Shouldn't the initial sequence numbers be unpredictable on a good TCP/IP implementation?
"keep track of the IP"
Um, as I said "forged" - remember we're not establishing a connection, and if there's no need to get a packet back, then it's very easy to send a spoofed IP.