A "Linux user" could be anything from a hardcore Gentoo-compiling mad man of a Linux user to somebody who uses a phone or other device which has embedded Linux.
A point that is not actually made in TFA. I was talking with my father-in-law the other day, and we were discussing my software-engineering job, and that I use Linux preferentially simply because it's so much more reliable and "commercial grade" despite it's being free.
He announces to me that "Well, that's all fine and dandy, but I'm never going to bother learning that...". So I pointed to the Dish DVR under his TV and the Linksys router next to his Windows PC, and indicated that he was already using it more than he was using Windows!
This is a point that TFA didn't cover at all. The desktop is losing its dominant position.
I used an AT&T UNIX PC, made and sold by AT&T, in 1982. 25 years later, Unix/Linux on the desktop still isn't mainstream. Sorry, guys.
Depends on what you mean by "mainstream". I have 6 kids, 6 computers. 2 of them are Macs running OS X which is definitely "Unix/Linux on the desktop". Also, my laptop is (right now) running Fedora Core 6 on my Dell Inspiron E1505. Wireless, suspend/resume, flash reader, widescreen X11, dual screen, Synaptics touchpad, etc. all works fine, down to the buttons on the front for media control.
Yes, it DID take a good workday to get it all set up - about the same amount of time as it takes to set up Windows. Macintosh takes the prize here - setting up a new MacOS takes about 20 minutes plus one reboot to get all the updates.
A related story from a former Geek Squad employee details the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
Ever since Best Buy opened here locally a few years ago, they've been on my crap list. Their handling of extended warranties is shady, their salesmen tend to be pushy, and their prices are high. Their "intranet" fiasco is more icing on the cake - I've long made it a point to avoid Best Buy!
So, when I want service, I go local. When I'm buying cheap hardware, I go to Circuit City or Office Depot.
During the 3 hours when the sun will shine here, I emerge from my igloo to play the government required hour of hockey.
BZZZZZZTT!!!!
I call BS. Canadians don't play hockey. They play this thing called "curling", with these big metal things called "Curling Irons" - not to be confused with a US Curling Iron which, despite it's name, isn't used to curl iron, but is actually used to curl hair.
A Canadian "Curling Iron" is also not the same as a 30 Iron used in US golf.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to work on a VAX VMS system. It was an 11/750, shaped like an oversized washing machine, and took up an entire room with all its cabling, Hard Disk stack, RAM box, and a huge multiplexer.
Although it was a thunderously loud, kilowatt-sucking machine with the processing power of an 80286, it had a number of features that are simply not available until you start ponying up some serious cash:
1) Dynamic memory remapping - when memory failed, it would "fix" the bad parts with checksum or by reloading the data in the memory from disk, and remap the addresses to another chip that wasn't failed. It would VM out as needed if/when it simply ran out.
2) File versioning - you could "bring back" previous copies of any file in the system simply by specifying its revision NN times back. EG: "edit myfile.txt" could be replaced with "edit myfile.txt:1" to see the previous edition. This was simply awesome and I've not seen this elsewhere.
3) Automated clustering - simply by connecting several of these machines together with a fairly simple serial adapter, they would immediately "recognize" each other and start sharing loads as needed. I don't know how many of these could be clustered together, what the limits were, but the fact that it was so simple to set up and it "just worked" was simply amazing.
ECC RAM doesn't hold a candle to #1. I'm unaware of a production-ready filesystem that can match #2 above, and #3 is simply in another league.
Why hasn't this technology persisted to this day? DEC/Compaq/HP screwed the pooch on this one.
Which would then lead to a conversation how this very well could be the eventual future of all cell phones.
Begin conversation...
Locally, there's an Internet Service Provider called "ClearWire" that uses WiMAX to deliver ISP packets. It's real slick, too. When you buy service, you get a box about the size of your average router, with a power brick and an ethernet port.
Take it home, plug it in (power, computer) and go. It delivers DHCP address to your computer, and you're online in about 12 seconds. It really is about as easy as it gets. Even better, there's no phone cable to plug in, no antennas to point, nothing, Plug in, start using.
Combine this black box with VOIP and shrink it so it fits inside your cellphone, and you have an instant cellular provider competitor. Give it time, but it won't be long before this happens.
What we're seeing here folks is a diversifying technological ecosystem. Windows does not "fit all", and neither does Linux. (Though arguably, Linux does fit lots more than Windows does)
Linux will never replace Windows, because nothing else ever will. Windows is an artifact of a time when having a single platform was more important for development than having the best platform. Now that the industry is maturing, the needs are rapidly becoming commodities behind standards-based interfaces (TCP, XML, etc) while the platform itself is becoming less and less relevant. The Internet met a need that Microsoft simply couldn't provide, and now the cat is out of the bag. Vista is Microsoft's attempt to lock users in before erosion gets too bad, and it's pretty evident how well that's going.
Windows' market share will slowly erode, slowly being beaten by an increasing number of products, services, and wares on an increasing number of platforms.
Then they can look at iTunes selling tracks for $1.29 (without DRM), and suddenly realise that $1 of every track they buy is going to middle men who aren't providing any service of value to them.
Except that those "middle men" really DO provide service of immense value... they filter out the crap. And let me assure you, there's lots and LOTS of that crap out there. And much of what they do is help train marginal artists into much better (or even great) artists.
Even though it's not a shining example of talent, note sometime the difference between American Idol contestants early in the season, and compare that to how the very same artist performs at the end. The differences can be stark.
I'm not saying that *IAA doesn't have their collective heads up their behinds on the issue of how to deal with the Internet, but it's really disingenuous to imply that they provide no value at all. Whether it's truly $1 per song (to you) is a matter that the marketplace will ultimately decide.
Because you miss my point? Read up what target disk mode is.
So you STILL missed my point - THE SENSITIVE DATA PART and the laptop is being handed to another staffer. I *can't* use "target disk mode" since I don't want to hand off the HDD or its data to the new user of the system. I don't want to use USB drives or something else.
I want to swap out the drive.
Physically swapping drives on Macs is a pain. I don't like this, and enjoy changing HDD or swapping out RAM with a single screw when I buy Dell.
TFA is a complete and utter waste of time to read. It doesn't make sense to itself. It's something like:
Microsoft doesn't care about Linux because people are starting to use it more and more, but not as much in America and America is going to hell in a handbasket so Microsoft really doesn't care if Linux eats their lunch if they do it slower and that helps Microsoft get to the corporations with Ubuntu in their back pocket. /TRIPE.
One of the things that buggers me about online security is that it's an "all or nothing" game. All it takes to defeat most security systems is a SINGLE compromise.
A single memory buffer problem can frequently lead to 100% system compromise. A single firewall penetration frequently means total access to the network. Can a security system be devised that requires multiple compromises to effect a system compromise?
Passwords actually strike me as quite a good security method. A good password is difficult to guess by a person or by a machine and is very simple to implement, leaving less margin for error in the technology.
I'd agree. It's an excellent example of the 80/20 rule: 20% of the effort satisfies 80% of the time. But the best is undisputed: public-key cryptography. Implementations are easy to come by. Why not combine the two into a three-stage authentication chain?
1) I'd carry what is basically a USB device that contains my public key. Think $10 flash drive.
2) I issue a request for some secured, hosted content, along with my public key, perhaps via the browser.
3) Public key contains within it the authentication server in question, and the private key is held by the authentication server.
4) Authentication server contacts me directly for the passphrase to include in encrypting the response, on another channel. (EG: SMS text message?)
With this schema, compromise of any single point does not result in a breach of security:
A) My USB widget only contains my PUBLIC key, which cannot be used to authenticate requests. If I use it on a compromised host, the attacker would only gain my public key.
B) The authentication server has only PRIVATE keys, and without the public key, it's useless.
C) The content host only ever has my public key. without the private key, the public key is useless.
D) My cell phone only has my passphrase. Even if compromised, only the passphrase is revealed, and without the private key / authentication server, this is worthless.
Can this schema be improved? Sure! Have at it! And, I'm certain that this schema has some inherent flaws. First off, it's more complicated to set up. But is it possible to have a good quality online security that can continue to function until there have been multiple compromises, not just one?
I wouldn't suggest that Miller actually changes it's name to Duff, simply that they release a brand of Duff beer, based on Miller or something like that.
Also, if you don't mind me asking, in what episode do you figure that Simpsons "jumped the shark"?
Re:This is my single biggest push to free software
on
Vista is Watching You
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This "phone home" crap is the single biggest thing that is driving me to consider open-source alternative operating systems and software.
Phone home is DRIVING you? To CONSIDER open-source? And you are considering these as ALTERNATIVEs? Sounds to me like you are squarely locked up in proprietary land, and that, generally, you like it there. But you need to fit in around here, so you use words like "crap" to add weight to your otherwise meaningless stanzas.
Put your money where your mouth is. If you like the open stuff, use it. Otherwise, you're just so much hot air, and heated air comes rather cheap around here.
And here's a great example: It's really all come down to games for me. If my games would all run on Linux I'd be there tomorrow.
Why DOESN'T 7-11 become Kwik-E mart? Nationwide? It would turn the gazillions of shows that will be on independent TV stations and YouTube for the next 30 years into walking, talking, joking advertisements for a nationwide, popular chain! And, it would turn a nationwide chain of convenience stores into a real-life, living, touch-it advertisement for one of the most popular TV show franchises ever!
Pacific Bell became SBC which became ATT in less than 5 years. Somehow, the company has maintained its identity throughout. So why can't a well-off nationwide chain like 7-11? If they rebranded some generic beer (think Miller) as "Duff Beer", it'd be a shoe-in!
I love the Simpsons, it's been an indelible part of our family culture for years. Seriously - why not?
You miss my point. Utterly. No, I don't want to go packing around a USB or firewire HDD along with my laptop. No, I don't want to split my (usually near full) HDD into a clusterfsck of partitions. I want to take ALL my (often sensitive) data, VMs, and code out of the computer and keep it somewhere safe for a year or so "just in case", but use the computer with 100% impunity in the meantime with fresh, new, data and O/S.
To do this, Apple==(Pain In The A$$) while Dell==(So Easy It's Pathetic)
With IBM/Lenovo and Dell laptops (and probably many others), the drive can be accessed with one or two screws and they slide out of the chassis, even on their smallest+thinnest models.
This is particularly useful when "recycling" a laptop that's being replaced. I get a new laptop every 2-3 years to get the latest features and performance stuff, and when I do, I pull the HDD out of the old laptop and set it aside, as a "just in case" if I discover some important data that I forgot.
Using Dell laptops at our company, this is a VERY painless process - it takes seconds to pull the old HDD, stick in the new one, and start loading Windows. Why wouldn't Apple do this?
anything designed by a man can also be broken by a manm
eventually
the only remedy for human antisocial activity is human social activity. no technology will change that fact. and if you think it can augment those who intend good, then you're right but you must also bear in mind that it can also augment those who intend evil
So why do you lock your car? Front door? Why do you have a PIN for your bankcard? Why do you have a password?
You're looking at security as a black/white scenario where any potential breach is considered equivalent to any other. But, like all of life, it's shades of grey, with a relative risk evaluated against the costs of implementation and use. Utimately, security comes down to a cost/benefits analysis, and the appropriate degree and implementations of security is what's important.
Security == restriction. No restrictions cause rampant abuse. Too many restrictions prevent important things from happening. The trick is to find a reasonable balance point in the middle.
Is it worth the price of distributing SSL certificates to improve security for EMail of roving employees? (I think so) Is it worth the price of requiring roving employees to set up a VPN to access company resources? (I think not)
At its heart, the science of Information Technology will grow and consume all other industries. Biology is a form of information technology - the information contained in the DNA/RNA and mitochondria define the outcome of the biological organism - they are the software that comprises us.
It's not written in a language easily understood by humanity, but once the concepts of how things really work together are clearly understood, it won't be long before a high-level language can be developed to define the requested behavior and structures can then be "compiled" into an organism.
This is the fusion of biology and information technology commonly called the technology singularity and which, I'm convinced, is happening all around us.
Slow at first, growing towards advancing rapidly. I see it in software, networks, information technology, science, medical technology, and manufacturing. It's amazing, exciting, and thrillingly dangerous all at once. I honestly thing that we'll either pull it off, and move beyond evolution to create an entirely new form of life, or destroy ourselves and regress to bacteria, rodents, insect life.
Since, in the sentence given, I talk about it having the 6th largest economy in the world against nations, it might be inferred that I was referring to the size of its economy. Had you been interested in my point rather than finding some nit to pick, this would have been more clear.
But Texas is pretty cool, too. Texas is alot like California in one respect - both belong to a handful of states that have themselves been sovereign republics independent of the US Federal Govt, giving them a legal leg to stand on for telling the feds to "stick it".
Texas even takes this one step further - it has its own power grid! While California shares electrical power with Nevada, Oregon, Washington, etc. on a shared power grid, and the east coast does the same, Texas has its own independent power grid.
I've never been to California, and I know that it's not perfect, but a good portion of their newer laws make a ton of sense, and should probably be implemented nationwide.
As a Californian, I can acknowledge some deficiencies that my state can exhibit. But I'm very proud to be a Californian. This is another example of why this is so.
California has led the United States for at least the last 50 years. It's the single largest exporter of culture worldwide. It's huge on manufacturing, agriculture, aerospace, information technology, and tourism. It's the largest state in the United States, and has the 6th largest economy in the world.
California passed the stem cell research law, working to stem (pun intended) the tide of highly qualified US genetic researchers going oversees. When the Federal Govt stood down, California stood up and took its place.
So what happens when a technically savvy bunch of folks with a point to make starts off by hijacking Microsoft Update to zombiate millions of PCs,
What makes you think they have to hijack MS Update? It seems to be a problem right now, today. Anybody who thinks this is something new is clueless. It's a problem right now, today.
A few things that can help:
1) Stop using systems that are inherently flaky. (EG: MS Windows) Move on to something that's proven to be resistant to viruses and the like. MacOSX, Linux, BSD, and other *nix variants are a good bet for the immediate future, but I'd wager that the best bet would be to revive DEC VMS! The security on that system is just simply awesome, and its reliability is second to none. Get somebody with chutzpah like Steve Jobs to make it work, and it would. Very well.
2) Demand basic, reasonable security policies in force at ISPs. The federal govt should require that ISPs should use basic technologies to ensure that packets appear to come from the right network, malformed packets are rejected, etc. and it should also provide reasonable initial funding so that they can comply with this law without undue hardship.
Another interesting thought - computers have gotten complex enough that the average person can no longer maintain them. So what if there was a way that the average person could outsource this administration to somebody else? There's quite a few ways this might work:
A) The "pool service" model - some local techie shop periodically accesses your computer (either physically or remotely) and performs a routine maintenance, fixing security holes, ensuring updates are done, performing backups, etc.
B) The "terminal" model - rather than store all your data/files on your local machine, your local machine becomes a dummy terminal, and you access your data and programs remotely. Something like the "terminal" that was common on mini and mainframes in the 1980s. Think Google office? This may be where Microsoft goes with their 'Windows Live' service, and where Linux goes routinely with X11.
C) The "Updater" model - almost in place now, you pay a subscription fee to have software downloaded automagically that takes care of security issues. The main point here is that for this to work, it has to provide a strong assurance of quality, which this does not.
Other than the fact that your way turns both into a single return (for error checking) is there any particular difference? Both get the job done, both result in a fully updated CentOS. (or RHEL or Scientific Linux or Fedora Core) And, what kind of error-checking are you going to meaningfully get on a system reboot?
Pedanticism for its own sake is wasteful. There are many, many, MANY ways to skin a cat. But in the end, the only thing that matters is whether the cat has skin on it when you are done. And, a cat-skinner gets paid based on how many cats get skinned, not on how he goes about it.
Re:That's all very well...
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Pimp Your XP
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· Score: 1
I took Vista off and installed XP Pro SP2 because Vista felt like I was trying to jog in a swimming pool. XP runs like a dream, even using Adobe Premiere and Sonar 6 at the same time.
I really, REALLY don't get this.
I routinely run 2, 3, or even 4 copies of an O/S on my dual-core laptop simultaneously I have 2 GB of RAM, I have a SATA HDD, it's not anything particularly special. Yet somehow, on my Linux laptop, I'll have Linux (Host O/S) Windows 2000, MacOSX, and Windows XP running SIDE BY SIDE on the same machine, along with a few apps, (OpenOffice, KMail, a few XTerms, gimp, firefox, mozilla, konqueror, acrobat, our in-house software product, and abiword) without any particular problem whatsoever using VMWare player.
With multiple desktops of applications running side-by-side.
What's more is that I can suspend my Fedora Core 6 laptop by closing the screen, and then resume in under 5 seconds after opening it up again, complete with network access!
I don't get it. OSs should not suck so bad. Why not demand something that actually works FOR you?
That's an extremely common view (as said in your comment title), but it's not true. Bob is your television, and you are Jack. I don't care how much cybernetics has progressed, we're not televisions yet, and we as human beings can't assimilate, store, and regurgitate digital content with any kind of quality.
But it's not hard to create a rig that does.
Both are analog holes. If it's not a digital copy, it's not a quality copy,
Many audiophiles would disagree with you, and would argue that analog presents the best "true" copy. Anyway, we're talking about the grey/black market, in which quality matters much less than price.
Do you want to pirate an mpeg of some guy taping his television screen, or do you want to bittorrent the actual dvd contents?
See above points - it's not some guy with a camcorder of his TV, it's the "pro-sumer" guy who has good quality equipment that can kill DRM.
Police can make it difficult to commit crimes (and not get caught), but they'll never make it impossible. Therefore we police are futile. When will they learn?"
You are completely missing the point. For 200 years, merely PRINTING "Copyright NNNN - all rights reserved" has resulted in a reasonable protection for copyright holders. So why is it that all of a sudden, new technology is needed to enforce what is, at its core, a human problem?
Look at copyright laws circa 1975, when the Xerox copier was really starting to take hold for an EXCELLENT parallel.
No argument. We should be thankful that they have as difficult a time picking a DRM standard as they do. Fragmentation impedes their progress in locking everything down: CDs versus DVDs for instance.
A statement which largely undermines the rest of your post. Are you arguing that DRM is effective? Are you arguing that it's effective but bad? Are you arguing that it's good? Your point suddenly becomes unclear.
I simply argue that it's ineffective. Some DRM can be useful to discourage blatant piracy, but relying on it excessively is just dumb.
Slashdot Mirror
A "Linux user" could be anything from a hardcore Gentoo-compiling mad man of a Linux user to somebody who uses a phone or other device which has embedded Linux.
A point that is not actually made in TFA. I was talking with my father-in-law the other day, and we were discussing my software-engineering job, and that I use Linux preferentially simply because it's so much more reliable and "commercial grade" despite it's being free.
He announces to me that "Well, that's all fine and dandy, but I'm never going to bother learning that...". So I pointed to the Dish DVR under his TV and the Linksys router next to his Windows PC, and indicated that he was already using it more than he was using Windows!
This is a point that TFA didn't cover at all. The desktop is losing its dominant position.
I used an AT&T UNIX PC, made and sold by AT&T, in 1982. 25 years later, Unix/Linux on the desktop still isn't mainstream. Sorry, guys.
Depends on what you mean by "mainstream". I have 6 kids, 6 computers. 2 of them are Macs running OS X which is definitely "Unix/Linux on the desktop". Also, my laptop is (right now) running Fedora Core 6 on my Dell Inspiron E1505. Wireless, suspend/resume, flash reader, widescreen X11, dual screen, Synaptics touchpad, etc. all works fine, down to the buttons on the front for media control.
Yes, it DID take a good workday to get it all set up - about the same amount of time as it takes to set up Windows. Macintosh takes the prize here - setting up a new MacOS takes about 20 minutes plus one reboot to get all the updates.
A related story from a former Geek Squad employee details the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
Ever since Best Buy opened here locally a few years ago, they've been on my crap list. Their handling of extended warranties is shady, their salesmen tend to be pushy, and their prices are high. Their "intranet" fiasco is more icing on the cake - I've long made it a point to avoid Best Buy!
So, when I want service, I go local. When I'm buying cheap hardware, I go to Circuit City or Office Depot.
During the 3 hours when the sun will shine here, I emerge from my igloo to play the government required hour of hockey.
BZZZZZZTT!!!!
I call BS. Canadians don't play hockey. They play this thing called "curling", with these big metal things called "Curling Irons" - not to be confused with a US Curling Iron which, despite it's name, isn't used to curl iron, but is actually used to curl hair.
A Canadian "Curling Iron" is also not the same as a 30 Iron used in US golf.
And you call yourself a Canadian!
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to work on a VAX VMS system. It was an 11/750, shaped like an oversized washing machine, and took up an entire room with all its cabling, Hard Disk stack, RAM box, and a huge multiplexer.
Although it was a thunderously loud, kilowatt-sucking machine with the processing power of an 80286, it had a number of features that are simply not available until you start ponying up some serious cash:
1) Dynamic memory remapping - when memory failed, it would "fix" the bad parts with checksum or by reloading the data in the memory from disk, and remap the addresses to another chip that wasn't failed. It would VM out as needed if/when it simply ran out.
2) File versioning - you could "bring back" previous copies of any file in the system simply by specifying its revision NN times back. EG: "edit myfile.txt" could be replaced with "edit myfile.txt:1" to see the previous edition. This was simply awesome and I've not seen this elsewhere.
3) Automated clustering - simply by connecting several of these machines together with a fairly simple serial adapter, they would immediately "recognize" each other and start sharing loads as needed. I don't know how many of these could be clustered together, what the limits were, but the fact that it was so simple to set up and it "just worked" was simply amazing.
ECC RAM doesn't hold a candle to #1. I'm unaware of a production-ready filesystem that can match #2 above, and #3 is simply in another league.
Why hasn't this technology persisted to this day? DEC/Compaq/HP screwed the pooch on this one.
Which would then lead to a conversation how this very well could be the eventual future of all cell phones.
Begin conversation...
Locally, there's an Internet Service Provider called "ClearWire" that uses WiMAX to deliver ISP packets. It's real slick, too. When you buy service, you get a box about the size of your average router, with a power brick and an ethernet port.
Take it home, plug it in (power, computer) and go. It delivers DHCP address to your computer, and you're online in about 12 seconds. It really is about as easy as it gets. Even better, there's no phone cable to plug in, no antennas to point, nothing, Plug in, start using.
Combine this black box with VOIP and shrink it so it fits inside your cellphone, and you have an instant cellular provider competitor. Give it time, but it won't be long before this happens.
What we're seeing here folks is a diversifying technological ecosystem. Windows does not "fit all", and neither does Linux. (Though arguably, Linux does fit lots more than Windows does)
Linux will never replace Windows, because nothing else ever will. Windows is an artifact of a time when having a single platform was more important for development than having the best platform. Now that the industry is maturing, the needs are rapidly becoming commodities behind standards-based interfaces (TCP, XML, etc) while the platform itself is becoming less and less relevant. The Internet met a need that Microsoft simply couldn't provide, and now the cat is out of the bag. Vista is Microsoft's attempt to lock users in before erosion gets too bad, and it's pretty evident how well that's going.
Windows' market share will slowly erode, slowly being beaten by an increasing number of products, services, and wares on an increasing number of platforms.
Go standards!
Then they can look at iTunes selling tracks for $1.29 (without DRM), and suddenly realise that $1 of every track they buy is going to middle men who aren't providing any service of value to them.
Except that those "middle men" really DO provide service of immense value... they filter out the crap. And let me assure you, there's lots and LOTS of that crap out there. And much of what they do is help train marginal artists into much better (or even great) artists.
Even though it's not a shining example of talent, note sometime the difference between American Idol contestants early in the season, and compare that to how the very same artist performs at the end. The differences can be stark.
I'm not saying that *IAA doesn't have their collective heads up their behinds on the issue of how to deal with the Internet, but it's really disingenuous to imply that they provide no value at all. Whether it's truly $1 per song (to you) is a matter that the marketplace will ultimately decide.
Because you miss my point? Read up what target disk mode is.
So you STILL missed my point - THE SENSITIVE DATA PART and the laptop is being handed to another staffer. I *can't* use "target disk mode" since I don't want to hand off the HDD or its data to the new user of the system. I don't want to use USB drives or something else.
I want to swap out the drive.
Physically swapping drives on Macs is a pain. I don't like this, and enjoy changing HDD or swapping out RAM with a single screw when I buy Dell.
Why is this so hard to understand?
TFA is a complete and utter waste of time to read. It doesn't make sense to itself. It's something like:
/TRIPE.
Microsoft doesn't care about Linux because people are starting to use it more and more, but not as much in America and America is going to hell in a handbasket so Microsoft really doesn't care if Linux eats their lunch if they do it slower and that helps Microsoft get to the corporations with Ubuntu in their back pocket.
One of the things that buggers me about online security is that it's an "all or nothing" game. All it takes to defeat most security systems is a SINGLE compromise.
A single memory buffer problem can frequently lead to 100% system compromise. A single firewall penetration frequently means total access to the network. Can a security system be devised that requires multiple compromises to effect a system compromise?
Passwords actually strike me as quite a good security method. A good password is difficult to guess by a person or by a machine and is very simple to implement, leaving less margin for error in the technology.
I'd agree. It's an excellent example of the 80/20 rule: 20% of the effort satisfies 80% of the time. But the best is undisputed: public-key cryptography. Implementations are easy to come by. Why not combine the two into a three-stage authentication chain?
1) I'd carry what is basically a USB device that contains my public key. Think $10 flash drive.
2) I issue a request for some secured, hosted content, along with my public key, perhaps via the browser.
3) Public key contains within it the authentication server in question, and the private key is held by the authentication server.
4) Authentication server contacts me directly for the passphrase to include in encrypting the response, on another channel. (EG: SMS text message?)
With this schema, compromise of any single point does not result in a breach of security:
A) My USB widget only contains my PUBLIC key, which cannot be used to authenticate requests. If I use it on a compromised host, the attacker would only gain my public key.
B) The authentication server has only PRIVATE keys, and without the public key, it's useless.
C) The content host only ever has my public key. without the private key, the public key is useless.
D) My cell phone only has my passphrase. Even if compromised, only the passphrase is revealed, and without the private key / authentication server, this is worthless.
Can this schema be improved? Sure! Have at it! And, I'm certain that this schema has some inherent flaws. First off, it's more complicated to set up. But is it possible to have a good quality online security that can continue to function until there have been multiple compromises, not just one?
Although I doubt you'll read this, I'll try.
I wouldn't suggest that Miller actually changes it's name to Duff, simply that they release a brand of Duff beer, based on Miller or something like that.
Also, if you don't mind me asking, in what episode do you figure that Simpsons "jumped the shark"?
This "phone home" crap is the single biggest thing that is driving me to consider open-source alternative operating systems and software.
Phone home is DRIVING you? To CONSIDER open-source? And you are considering these as ALTERNATIVEs? Sounds to me like you are squarely locked up in proprietary land, and that, generally, you like it there. But you need to fit in around here, so you use words like "crap" to add weight to your otherwise meaningless stanzas.
Put your money where your mouth is. If you like the open stuff, use it. Otherwise, you're just so much hot air, and heated air comes rather cheap around here.
And here's a great example: It's really all come down to games for me. If my games would all run on Linux I'd be there tomorrow.
Seriously, folks...
Why DOESN'T 7-11 become Kwik-E mart? Nationwide? It would turn the gazillions of shows that will be on independent TV stations and YouTube for the next 30 years into walking, talking, joking advertisements for a nationwide, popular chain! And, it would turn a nationwide chain of convenience stores into a real-life, living, touch-it advertisement for one of the most popular TV show franchises ever!
Pacific Bell became SBC which became ATT in less than 5 years. Somehow, the company has maintained its identity throughout. So why can't a well-off nationwide chain like 7-11? If they rebranded some generic beer (think Miller) as "Duff Beer", it'd be a shoe-in!
I love the Simpsons, it's been an indelible part of our family culture for years. Seriously - why not?
Because Macs had target disk mode for ages?
You miss my point. Utterly. No, I don't want to go packing around a USB or firewire HDD along with my laptop. No, I don't want to split my (usually near full) HDD into a clusterfsck of partitions. I want to take ALL my (often sensitive) data, VMs, and code out of the computer and keep it somewhere safe for a year or so "just in case", but use the computer with 100% impunity in the meantime with fresh, new, data and O/S.
To do this, Apple==(Pain In The A$$) while Dell==(So Easy It's Pathetic)
Why, I ask?
With IBM/Lenovo and Dell laptops (and probably many others), the drive can be accessed with one or two screws and they slide out of the chassis, even on their smallest+thinnest models.
This is particularly useful when "recycling" a laptop that's being replaced. I get a new laptop every 2-3 years to get the latest features and performance stuff, and when I do, I pull the HDD out of the old laptop and set it aside, as a "just in case" if I discover some important data that I forgot.
Using Dell laptops at our company, this is a VERY painless process - it takes seconds to pull the old HDD, stick in the new one, and start loading Windows. Why wouldn't Apple do this?
there is no technological fix
... like a safe
for a social problem
like theft
anything designed by a man can also be broken by a manm
eventually
the only remedy for human antisocial activity is human social activity. no technology will change that fact. and if you think it can augment those who intend good, then you're right but you must also bear in mind that it can also augment those who intend evil
So why do you lock your car? Front door? Why do you have a PIN for your bankcard? Why do you have a password?
You're looking at security as a black/white scenario where any potential breach is considered equivalent to any other. But, like all of life, it's shades of grey, with a relative risk evaluated against the costs of implementation and use. Utimately, security comes down to a cost/benefits analysis, and the appropriate degree and implementations of security is what's important.
Security == restriction. No restrictions cause rampant abuse. Too many restrictions prevent important things from happening. The trick is to find a reasonable balance point in the middle.
Is it worth the price of distributing SSL certificates to improve security for EMail of roving employees? (I think so) Is it worth the price of requiring roving employees to set up a VPN to access company resources? (I think not)
At its heart, the science of Information Technology will grow and consume all other industries. Biology is a form of information technology - the information contained in the DNA/RNA and mitochondria define the outcome of the biological organism - they are the software that comprises us.
It's not written in a language easily understood by humanity, but once the concepts of how things really work together are clearly understood, it won't be long before a high-level language can be developed to define the requested behavior and structures can then be "compiled" into an organism.
This is the fusion of biology and information technology commonly called the technology singularity and which, I'm convinced, is happening all around us.
Slow at first, growing towards advancing rapidly. I see it in software, networks, information technology, science, medical technology, and manufacturing. It's amazing, exciting, and thrillingly dangerous all at once. I honestly thing that we'll either pull it off, and move beyond evolution to create an entirely new form of life, or destroy ourselves and regress to bacteria, rodents, insect life.
Either way, we aren't in Kansas, anymore.
I ran an AMD Athlon in an Asus MB as a Linux server for 4 years with no trouble (other than noticing that mplayer didn't work right).
WTF kind of "server" are you running where mplayer would even be installed? What, were you serving X11?
Come on, man. The word "server" should actually mean something...
Since, in the sentence given, I talk about it having the 6th largest economy in the world against nations, it might be inferred that I was referring to the size of its economy. Had you been interested in my point rather than finding some nit to pick, this would have been more clear.
But Texas is pretty cool, too. Texas is alot like California in one respect - both belong to a handful of states that have themselves been sovereign republics independent of the US Federal Govt, giving them a legal leg to stand on for telling the feds to "stick it".
Texas even takes this one step further - it has its own power grid! While California shares electrical power with Nevada, Oregon, Washington, etc. on a shared power grid, and the east coast does the same, Texas has its own independent power grid.
I've never been to California, and I know that it's not perfect, but a good portion of their newer laws make a ton of sense, and should probably be implemented nationwide.
As a Californian, I can acknowledge some deficiencies that my state can exhibit. But I'm very proud to be a Californian. This is another example of why this is so.
California has led the United States for at least the last 50 years. It's the single largest exporter of culture worldwide. It's huge on manufacturing, agriculture, aerospace, information technology, and tourism. It's the largest state in the United States, and has the 6th largest economy in the world.
California passed the stem cell research law, working to stem (pun intended) the tide of highly qualified US genetic researchers going oversees. When the Federal Govt stood down, California stood up and took its place.
California passed the "million roofs" law providing needed backing for solar energy statewide.
And on, and on, and on. California is a neat place, full of movers and shakers from the north (like Bruce Perens) to the south (like Lockheed)
So what happens when a technically savvy bunch of folks with a point to make starts off by hijacking Microsoft Update to zombiate millions of PCs,
What makes you think they have to hijack MS Update? It seems to be a problem right now, today. Anybody who thinks this is something new is clueless. It's a problem right now, today.
A few things that can help:
1) Stop using systems that are inherently flaky. (EG: MS Windows) Move on to something that's proven to be resistant to viruses and the like. MacOSX, Linux, BSD, and other *nix variants are a good bet for the immediate future, but I'd wager that the best bet would be to revive DEC VMS! The security on that system is just simply awesome, and its reliability is second to none. Get somebody with chutzpah like Steve Jobs to make it work, and it would. Very well.
2) Demand basic, reasonable security policies in force at ISPs. The federal govt should require that ISPs should use basic technologies to ensure that packets appear to come from the right network, malformed packets are rejected, etc. and it should also provide reasonable initial funding so that they can comply with this law without undue hardship.
Another interesting thought - computers have gotten complex enough that the average person can no longer maintain them. So what if there was a way that the average person could outsource this administration to somebody else? There's quite a few ways this might work:
A) The "pool service" model - some local techie shop periodically accesses your computer (either physically or remotely) and performs a routine maintenance, fixing security holes, ensuring updates are done, performing backups, etc.
B) The "terminal" model - rather than store all your data/files on your local machine, your local machine becomes a dummy terminal, and you access your data and programs remotely. Something like the "terminal" that was common on mini and mainframes in the 1980s. Think Google office? This may be where Microsoft goes with their 'Windows Live' service, and where Linux goes routinely with X11.
C) The "Updater" model - almost in place now, you pay a subscription fee to have software downloaded automagically that takes care of security issues. The main point here is that for this to work, it has to provide a strong assurance of quality, which this does not.
Man, got windy on this post. Hope you enjoyed it!
Don't you mean:
yum -y update && shutdown -r now
Other than the fact that your way turns both into a single return (for error checking) is there any particular difference? Both get the job done, both result in a fully updated CentOS. (or RHEL or Scientific Linux or Fedora Core) And, what kind of error-checking are you going to meaningfully get on a system reboot?
Pedanticism for its own sake is wasteful. There are many, many, MANY ways to skin a cat. But in the end, the only thing that matters is whether the cat has skin on it when you are done. And, a cat-skinner gets paid based on how many cats get skinned, not on how he goes about it.
I took Vista off and installed XP Pro SP2 because Vista felt like I was trying to jog in a swimming pool. XP runs like a dream, even using Adobe Premiere and Sonar 6 at the same time.
I really, REALLY don't get this.
I routinely run 2, 3, or even 4 copies of an O/S on my dual-core laptop simultaneously I have 2 GB of RAM, I have a SATA HDD, it's not anything particularly special. Yet somehow, on my Linux laptop, I'll have Linux (Host O/S) Windows 2000, MacOSX, and Windows XP running SIDE BY SIDE on the same machine, along with a few apps, (OpenOffice, KMail, a few XTerms, gimp, firefox, mozilla, konqueror, acrobat, our in-house software product, and abiword) without any particular problem whatsoever using VMWare player.
With multiple desktops of applications running side-by-side.
What's more is that I can suspend my Fedora Core 6 laptop by closing the screen, and then resume in under 5 seconds after opening it up again, complete with network access!
I don't get it. OSs should not suck so bad. Why not demand something that actually works FOR you?
That's an extremely common view (as said in your comment title), but it's not true. Bob is your television, and you are Jack. I don't care how much cybernetics has progressed, we're not televisions yet, and we as human beings can't assimilate, store, and regurgitate digital content with any kind of quality.
But it's not hard to create a rig that does.
Both are analog holes. If it's not a digital copy, it's not a quality copy,
Many audiophiles would disagree with you, and would argue that analog presents the best "true" copy. Anyway, we're talking about the grey/black market, in which quality matters much less than price.
Do you want to pirate an mpeg of some guy taping his television screen, or do you want to bittorrent the actual dvd contents?
See above points - it's not some guy with a camcorder of his TV, it's the "pro-sumer" guy who has good quality equipment that can kill DRM.
Police can make it difficult to commit crimes (and not get caught), but they'll never make it impossible. Therefore we police are futile. When will they learn?"
You are completely missing the point. For 200 years, merely PRINTING "Copyright NNNN - all rights reserved" has resulted in a reasonable protection for copyright holders. So why is it that all of a sudden, new technology is needed to enforce what is, at its core, a human problem?
Look at copyright laws circa 1975, when the Xerox copier was really starting to take hold for an EXCELLENT parallel.
No argument. We should be thankful that they have as difficult a time picking a DRM standard as they do. Fragmentation impedes their progress in locking everything down: CDs versus DVDs for instance.
A statement which largely undermines the rest of your post. Are you arguing that DRM is effective? Are you arguing that it's effective but bad? Are you arguing that it's good? Your point suddenly becomes unclear.
I simply argue that it's ineffective. Some DRM can be useful to discourage blatant piracy, but relying on it excessively is just dumb.