As expected, this will most likely be used to make new botnets, and it leads me to wonder: will we soon need firewalls for Windows Embedded?
I am surprised there hasn't been more developed for CE yet. Being exceptionally mobile, they cross the firewall borders of institutions every day.
It's the same problem we have with disks, just smarter.
We get similar issues with laptops. All the filtering at the border doesn't matter so much once you bring in a laptop that was infected while outside and just got plugged into the network.
There are ways around this, of course, but they are difficult and not everyone implements them.
CE seems like fertile territory precisely because attackers KNOW it is mobile platform. An attacker could write generic PC code all the day and hit a laptop out of luck... still effective, but sloppy. Now, targetting a mobile only (for the most part) OS/platform seems more sinister.
The mom and pop's can't compete due to VOLUME. Walmart can buy at higher volumes. They can also hire more people (at low wages... who in turn can't afford to shop anywhere but Walmart). They also have more corporate backing to push them into places where they aren't wanted. To say that the consumers decide is a bit of a joke. It takes heavy sustained resistance to keep one out (as just happened in California), but Walmart can keep coming back again and again, plus they can advertise the shit out of their image and try to sway public opinion in the meantime.
Mom and Pops have a hard (if not impossible) time competing with that.
Slashdot talks about more things than just technology. It talks about things that geeks talk about. It covered the school shootings around the country and it also had great coverage of the 9/11 attacks.
A movie that is a hotbed of controversy is fair game as well.
Re:But why would non-geeks want to run Linux?
on
Linux for Non-Geeks
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· Score: 1
My parents have an old 98 machine that was decommissioned from my Dad's employer and he was allowed to have.
They don't own any other computer and buying a new one is too expensive.
The system has to be wiped and it won't run newer versions of windows and they want me to set it up.
I already told them that they are going to be set up with Linux. The cost matches and they are less likely to get virus infections and there are no Linux spyware apps (the bane of Windows support) that I know of.
They only want to be able to play mahjong, solitaire, get email, run spreadsheets, and get access to the web.
All of that can be accomplished with Linux.
I told them that they won't be able to walk into a store and buy software for their computer, but there are free/open source options for most things that they might want and there are web services (like H&R Block web tax) for some things that don't have equivalents.
I will also be able to remotely admin their system over their dial-up(remote desktop in Windows would be a bit too slow).
We have a consultant on hand for our Linux stuff that we hand picked. Should we need to tap some extra knowledge, he has been great and can bring in others (on his ticket) if that firm is stumped. It works well.
my experience across 8 years has been that commercial support from a specific vendor can be hit or miss. Sometimes great (really great... Cisco comes to mind). Sometimes really really bad.
At my old job, they still had to hire independent consultants for some Microsoft tasks.
Enable the built-in firewall in Windows XP before going online. This will resolve a lot of your problems.
Also go into the widnows update site (on another connected computer) and click the update options to the right. There is an option to turn on the catalog view (or something like that... in Linux right now). This will allow you to search for all the updates of a particular Windows platform.
Use this to download the patches and burn them to a CD... Use this CD to patch your system.
I say we should fully embrace this technology if and only if it is legistlated that instead of filling up landfills, these now useless pieces of garbage will only be disposed of by cramming them up the asses of the inventor(s) and the technology and the CEOs of every company that manufactures, distributes, or sells them.
Once there are no more takers, they would be outlawed.
Instead of a "Sunshine Law" we'll call it the "Where the Sun Don't Shine Law."
There are some really nice/creative feeds out there that push the limits of RSS.
Amazon for example has a TON of feeds showing what the current top sellers are in virtually every category. Those at the top of the list are the top sellers and so forth.
That's one interesting way of imbedding information into a channel without actually adding textual information. I could forsee a script that takes that (easily parsable) data and turns it into a regularly updated graph. The same thing could be done with screen scraping and the HTML page, but RSS is so much easier to deal with.
We have the local dining services create the week's menu as an RSS text file. It is a simple 10 minute cut and paste job and it appears in our portal almost as soon as it is updated... no more emails telling what the week's menu is and no need having to visit (yet another) web site for the info. I just log into my account (something I do daily) and it is right there.
NASA's earth observatory has a really cool RSS news feed. What I like about their feed is that the tiny (only allowed to be 144 pixel wide x 500 pixel high) image that is usually reserved for a site banner/icon has been co-opted as a snippet of their picture of the day. If you click on it, you are taken to the site with the full image.
I know of a couple of places that are starting to post team scores as rss feeds. I could forsee the ability to do play-by-plays with rss.
A lot of people are doing really cool things with RSS that are outside the bounds of simple headlines. You just have to think about them in a different way.
We have this problem at work. We run a student services portal that is bundled with other stuff by a third party company. One option for content is to include RSS feeds/channels. Currently it only supports/renders these RSS formats: 0.9x (RSS format), 0.9 (netscape simple RDF format), 1.0x (RDF format).
That's all fine and good, but there is a lot of content out there in newer (2.0) versions of RSS and now Atom that are not able to be rendered or are rendered poorly. This company has picked its "standard" and that's what we have to work with for now (although I am pushing for 2.0 RSS and Atom support).
Luckily, some 2.0 channels work fine (others crap out) if we just identify them as 0.9x channels, but we have to test them all (time consuming).
If there were some sort of standardization, then developers could adopt them without having to worry about 5 (or MORE) formats to have to deal with. Much better for the developers and thus the end-users.
In the meantime, I am looking at finding some way to munge various channels into the most feature-rich version that our software supports, but that is still a lot of overhead for something that would be simplified with just a tad bit of direction and standardization...
Think of what HTML would have been like if there weren't some semblance of order applied to it early on... we had problems enough with client specific tags as it was.
XP for home use is pretty stable especially if you reboot it nightly.
You don't have to do that with linux.
Run a test: Set up and use a linux and a windows xp system and never shut either down. I feel pretty strongly that the Linux under normal use will have a longer stability record than XP.
XP or its applications will lock up the OS so bad that you won't have other options than to reboot it. Now, applications may lock up your linux side, but you only have to either kill the application (there are tons of ways to do this) or restart the window manager... the OS will generally keep chugging along... and your uptime for Linux will be (my guess) at least 100 days longer than windows.
Is XP more stable? Yes. You don't have to reboot daily or weekly with it. Does it beat Linux? No way. It is more susceptible to viruses and external hacks. Linux has susceptiblity... I won't argue that, but XP has WAY MORE. Also, Linux's core OS is just more rock solid and the fact that it can separate the window manager from the OS allows it to more gracefully (if slower) handle problems that arise with the frontend than Windows can.
PS: Does anyone have an XP system that has had a multi-hundred day uptime? I have had a couple of Linux boxes that have had over 250 and I got tired of the distros that were on them so I took them down to try something different.
XP is fine with 128 MB of RAM by itself. Check Microsoft's own requirements for running OFFICE on top of XP.
You have to include 8 additional Megabytes for each application that you plan to run simultaneously.
Now, if you use the rule of microsoft doubling, that's 256 for a decently performing bace system on a Pentium III or higher with 16 Megabytes for each application that you are going to run simultaneously.
That would make it 256 + 48 (for word, excel, and Outlook - though outlook is a memory hog). That puts a usable/stable system at 304 MB!
Yes, Windows will run at 128, but with applications it does bog down and you have NO alternatives to make it faster other than addiing ram or upgrading the processor (more likely, both).
At least with Linux, you DO have a choice. Old hardware with less ram can use a lighter wieght desktop. Xfce is VERY zippy and comes with most distros AND is is pretty pleasant on the eyes and not hard for a user to grasp.
But Exchange/Outlook really is running well! Two things stand out (well having different mail views in OL2K3 is awesome - for example having a view of "follow up" items, or "unread" items separate from the folders they are in):
Virtual folders have been in Evolution forever. I have the same thing set up in Evolution and was shocked when I installed Outlook 2003 and they had it too. I think the interface is BUSY though. I hate the bars that break stuff out by date... it is distracting. The other stuff is interesting (but I have it in Evolution).
I don't know everything that the connector adds, but I am glad to get it... hopefully soon.
This isn't to say that Evolution doesn't have its rough edges. It DOES... but it is amazing for how relatively young it is. I have been using Outlook for years and it only recently got to be very usable. Evolution is a lot further in a shorter amount of time (love the RSS feed aggregator that is built in).
That's because people don't realize that half the stuff they do with their own technology ("that they paid for") is illegal under current law... they have sat quiet for too long.
Now those abilities will be hard-coded away from them. Congress won't stop it (they haven't yet) and besides they are in the hip-pocket of big business anyway.
When I tell people that the stuff they are doing... making full copies or even mixes of their CD collections and sharing them with friends is technically illegal under current law... they laugh. When I show them the law... check out the DMCA, they are shocked... but they figure no-one can stop them.
Now with the advent of DRM technology... someone can stop them (and perhaps report that they tried). It is kind of late to roll a lot of this stuff back just by voting with your dollars. That time has passed. I am afraid that it will take a LOT of messy court battles to iron this out.
Typical zealot response. It came in an email, it's for Windows, it's executable, so it must be a virus. No, I've seen these programs before. Cute little things like "elf bowling" or executable Flash greeting cards. Old people love them.
There are versions of these programs that are passed around that are virus and (more likely) spyware delivery vehicles. I urge all my clients to not run ANY application that gets sent to them in the mail because you never know what they contain.
Don't get me started. At the previous place I worked, the manager hated the idea of free software because it was free and open. He couldn't believe that anyone "good" would contribute software in this way. Therefore what was there had to stink.
Now I work at a different place with Linux/UNIX and I feel much better.
According to the announcements at Novell's Brainshare this past week, it looks like all but documentation will be taken care of:
1. support
Novell, IBM, and HP are teaming up to offer 3 pronged support options (including training) for Linux and the products that Enterprises will run on top of it.
2. installation
Not only will installation be covered, but so will migrations away from Windows (automagically... the demo is cool to watch) with the new version of Zenworks from Novell. Installation support is offered by Novell, HP and IBM.
3. deployment
Also covered by Zenworks with its new integration of Ximian's Red Carpet.
5. deploying updates
Again, Red Carpet and Zenworks offer solutions to this.
Yes, I am familiar with this function and I have had it fail as well. As you said " it's writing in resistance to failure that's hard."
Still, you can make a rock-solid OS and the users may still be "trying" at times. Getting people to click on a single icon can be like having a conversation with a frenchman through babelfish.
You give far too much credit to Windows and its users. I provide support for a web portal that requires a specific version and patch level of IE or Netscape (I didn't write it and it breaks because of a previous IE update). To give credit where it is due. Mac users, who are accustomed to being left out in the cold by software developers, generally find work arounds on their own and let us know about it. We never here from Linux users... my guess is that they figure if they found a way to use the system, other Linux users have as well.
Anyway, getting people to update their Windows browsers and operating system when this "breaks" is like pulling teeth. These are college students! They are SUPPOSED to be computer literate... the savior of tech mankind and all that junk.
Linux would be just as easy and just as hard for them.
Slashdot Mirror
I am surprised there hasn't been more developed for CE yet. Being exceptionally mobile, they cross the firewall borders of institutions every day.
It's the same problem we have with disks, just smarter.
We get similar issues with laptops. All the filtering at the border doesn't matter so much once you bring in a laptop that was infected while outside and just got plugged into the network.
There are ways around this, of course, but they are difficult and not everyone implements them.
CE seems like fertile territory precisely because attackers KNOW it is mobile platform. An attacker could write generic PC code all the day and hit a laptop out of luck... still effective, but sloppy. Now, targetting a mobile only (for the most part) OS/platform seems more sinister.
Scary stuff.
I thinkn this is the sane and complete answer.
If all users are valid users to the system, then either create the group or contact the admin to create the group for you.
Barring that, you shouldn't be doing it.
OK, I'll bite.
The mom and pop's can't compete due to VOLUME. Walmart can buy at higher volumes. They can also hire more people (at low wages... who in turn can't afford to shop anywhere but Walmart). They also have more corporate backing to push them into places where they aren't wanted. To say that the consumers decide is a bit of a joke. It takes heavy sustained resistance to keep one out (as just happened in California), but Walmart can keep coming back again and again, plus they can advertise the shit out of their image and try to sway public opinion in the meantime.
Mom and Pops have a hard (if not impossible) time competing with that.
Slashdot talks about more things than just technology. It talks about things that geeks talk about. It covered the school shootings around the country and it also had great coverage of the 9/11 attacks.
A movie that is a hotbed of controversy is fair game as well.
My parents have an old 98 machine that was decommissioned from my Dad's employer and he was allowed to have.
They don't own any other computer and buying a new one is too expensive.
The system has to be wiped and it won't run newer versions of windows and they want me to set it up.
I already told them that they are going to be set up with Linux. The cost matches and they are less likely to get virus infections and there are no Linux spyware apps (the bane of Windows support) that I know of.
They only want to be able to play mahjong, solitaire, get email, run spreadsheets, and get access to the web.
All of that can be accomplished with Linux.
I told them that they won't be able to walk into a store and buy software for their computer, but there are free/open source options for most things that they might want and there are web services (like H&R Block web tax) for some things that don't have equivalents.
I will also be able to remotely admin their system over their dial-up(remote desktop in Windows would be a bit too slow).
They are excited...
We have a consultant on hand for our Linux stuff that we hand picked. Should we need to tap some extra knowledge, he has been great and can bring in others (on his ticket) if that firm is stumped. It works well.
my experience across 8 years has been that commercial support from a specific vendor can be hit or miss. Sometimes great (really great... Cisco comes to mind). Sometimes really really bad.
At my old job, they still had to hire independent consultants for some Microsoft tasks.
Enable the built-in firewall in Windows XP before going online. This will resolve a lot of your problems.
Also go into the widnows update site (on another connected computer) and click the update options to the right. There is an option to turn on the catalog view (or something like that... in Linux right now). This will allow you to search for all the updates of a particular Windows platform.
Use this to download the patches and burn them to a CD... Use this CD to patch your system.
Jim
I say we should fully embrace this technology if and only if it is legistlated that instead of filling up landfills, these now useless pieces of garbage will only be disposed of by cramming them up the asses of the inventor(s) and the technology and the CEOs of every company that manufactures, distributes, or sells them.
Once there are no more takers, they would be outlawed.
Instead of a "Sunshine Law" we'll call it the "Where the Sun Don't Shine Law."
It's only fair.
It is decent and has archives. Check it out at http://www.thelinuxshow.com/ .
It is tax deductible. You can support them HERE. I did.
SuSe Linux's documentation that comes with the boxed editions purchased at fine computer and book stores near you is also very good.
No, I haven't yet. I am getting quite the education in XML and I know that XSLT is part of a good toolkit.
know of any good online resources?
There are some really nice/creative feeds out there that push the limits of RSS.
Amazon for example has a TON of feeds showing what the current top sellers are in virtually every category. Those at the top of the list are the top sellers and so forth.
That's one interesting way of imbedding information into a channel without actually adding textual information. I could forsee a script that takes that (easily parsable) data and turns it into a regularly updated graph. The same thing could be done with screen scraping and the HTML page, but RSS is so much easier to deal with.
We have the local dining services create the week's menu as an RSS text file. It is a simple 10 minute cut and paste job and it appears in our portal almost as soon as it is updated... no more emails telling what the week's menu is and no need having to visit (yet another) web site for the info. I just log into my account (something I do daily) and it is right there.
NASA's earth observatory has a really cool RSS news feed. What I like about their feed is that the tiny (only allowed to be 144 pixel wide x 500 pixel high) image that is usually reserved for a site banner/icon has been co-opted as a snippet of their picture of the day. If you click on it, you are taken to the site with the full image.
I know of a couple of places that are starting to post team scores as rss feeds. I could forsee the ability to do play-by-plays with rss.
A lot of people are doing really cool things with RSS that are outside the bounds of simple headlines. You just have to think about them in a different way.
We have this problem at work. We run a student services portal that is bundled with other stuff by a third party company. One option for content is to include RSS feeds/channels. Currently it only supports/renders these RSS formats: 0.9x (RSS format), 0.9 (netscape simple RDF format), 1.0x (RDF format).
That's all fine and good, but there is a lot of content out there in newer (2.0) versions of RSS and now Atom that are not able to be rendered or are rendered poorly. This company has picked its "standard" and that's what we have to work with for now (although I am pushing for 2.0 RSS and Atom support).
Luckily, some 2.0 channels work fine (others crap out) if we just identify them as 0.9x channels, but we have to test them all (time consuming).
If there were some sort of standardization, then developers could adopt them without having to worry about 5 (or MORE) formats to have to deal with. Much better for the developers and thus the end-users.
In the meantime, I am looking at finding some way to munge various channels into the most feature-rich version that our software supports, but that is still a lot of overhead for something that would be simplified with just a tad bit of direction and standardization...
Think of what HTML would have been like if there weren't some semblance of order applied to it early on... we had problems enough with client specific tags as it was.
XP for home use is pretty stable especially if you reboot it nightly.
You don't have to do that with linux.
Run a test: Set up and use a linux and a windows xp system and never shut either down. I feel pretty strongly that the Linux under normal use will have a longer stability record than XP. XP or its applications will lock up the OS so bad that you won't have other options than to reboot it. Now, applications may lock up your linux side, but you only have to either kill the application (there are tons of ways to do this) or restart the window manager... the OS will generally keep chugging along... and your uptime for Linux will be (my guess) at least 100 days longer than windows.
Is XP more stable? Yes. You don't have to reboot daily or weekly with it. Does it beat Linux? No way. It is more susceptible to viruses and external hacks. Linux has susceptiblity... I won't argue that, but XP has WAY MORE. Also, Linux's core OS is just more rock solid and the fact that it can separate the window manager from the OS allows it to more gracefully (if slower) handle problems that arise with the frontend than Windows can.
PS: Does anyone have an XP system that has had a multi-hundred day uptime? I have had a couple of Linux boxes that have had over 250 and I got tired of the distros that were on them so I took them down to try something different.
You have to include 8 additional Megabytes for each application that you plan to run simultaneously.
Now, if you use the rule of microsoft doubling, that's 256 for a decently performing bace system on a Pentium III or higher with 16 Megabytes for each application that you are going to run simultaneously.
That would make it 256 + 48 (for word, excel, and Outlook - though outlook is a memory hog). That puts a usable/stable system at 304 MB!
Yes, Windows will run at 128, but with applications it does bog down and you have NO alternatives to make it faster other than addiing ram or upgrading the processor (more likely, both).
At least with Linux, you DO have a choice. Old hardware with less ram can use a lighter wieght desktop. Xfce is VERY zippy and comes with most distros AND is is pretty pleasant on the eyes and not hard for a user to grasp.
Virtual folders have been in Evolution forever. I have the same thing set up in Evolution and was shocked when I installed Outlook 2003 and they had it too. I think the interface is BUSY though. I hate the bars that break stuff out by date... it is distracting. The other stuff is interesting (but I have it in Evolution).
I don't know everything that the connector adds, but I am glad to get it... hopefully soon.
This isn't to say that Evolution doesn't have its rough edges. It DOES... but it is amazing for how relatively young it is. I have been using Outlook for years and it only recently got to be very usable. Evolution is a lot further in a shorter amount of time (love the RSS feed aggregator that is built in).
That's because people don't realize that half the stuff they do with their own technology ("that they paid for") is illegal under current law... they have sat quiet for too long.
Now those abilities will be hard-coded away from them. Congress won't stop it (they haven't yet) and besides they are in the hip-pocket of big business anyway.
When I tell people that the stuff they are doing... making full copies or even mixes of their CD collections and sharing them with friends is technically illegal under current law... they laugh. When I show them the law... check out the DMCA, they are shocked... but they figure no-one can stop them.
Now with the advent of DRM technology... someone can stop them (and perhaps report that they tried). It is kind of late to roll a lot of this stuff back just by voting with your dollars. That time has passed. I am afraid that it will take a LOT of messy court battles to iron this out.
Larry Wall is a devout christian.
So is Donald Knuth.
There are versions of these programs that are passed around that are virus and (more likely) spyware delivery vehicles. I urge all my clients to not run ANY application that gets sent to them in the mail because you never know what they contain.
Don't get me started. At the previous place I worked, the manager hated the idea of free software because it was free and open. He couldn't believe that anyone "good" would contribute software in this way. Therefore what was there had to stink.
Now I work at a different place with Linux/UNIX and I feel much better.
1. support
Novell, IBM, and HP are teaming up to offer 3 pronged support options (including training) for Linux and the products that Enterprises will run on top of it.
2. installation
... the demo is cool to watch) with the new version of Zenworks from Novell. Installation support is offered by Novell, HP and IBM.
Not only will installation be covered, but so will migrations away from Windows ( automagically
3. deployment
Also covered by Zenworks with its new integration of Ximian's Red Carpet.
5. deploying updates
Again, Red Carpet and Zenworks offer solutions to this.
Yes, I am familiar with this function and I have had it fail as well. As you said " it's writing in resistance to failure that's hard."
Still, you can make a rock-solid OS and the users may still be "trying" at times. Getting people to click on a single icon can be like having a conversation with a frenchman through babelfish.
Ha Ha!
Sorry, couldn't resist. Big failure of passport is that you can't see which sites you have used it with. Or can you? I couldn't figure out how.
I would almost use it for that feature. Then again, that would be useful.
You give far too much credit to Windows and its users. I provide support for a web portal that requires a specific version and patch level of IE or Netscape (I didn't write it and it breaks because of a previous IE update). To give credit where it is due. Mac users, who are accustomed to being left out in the cold by software developers, generally find work arounds on their own and let us know about it. We never here from Linux users... my guess is that they figure if they found a way to use the system, other Linux users have as well.
Anyway, getting people to update their Windows browsers and operating system when this "breaks" is like pulling teeth. These are college students! They are SUPPOSED to be computer literate... the savior of tech mankind and all that junk.
Linux would be just as easy and just as hard for them.