Last May, my ISP address was harvested. So were many others I talk to (no wonder they added Yahoo's bulk filtering). 10 spam a day there now, from 0 before.
Another address received very little spam for something like 5 years. It and another were hit by email viruses and a few months later the spam picked up. Now I've been forced to turn on SpamAssassin (which gets every one, mainly with IP and URL checks).
My DNS contact addresses are routinely spidered. I change them every few months, and I'm re-added. (I'm a.org! If I had money, I'd be a.com!). My.ca addresses (personal as well as standard aliases like info) are commonly nailed as well.
Recently, one of my mailing lists looks like it was spidered. Luckily I used an alias for it and SA gets it all (I didn't even notice until a few weeks later cleaning out the junk)
Not to mention the time I've lost... I had to setup rules for the bulk/SA tagged messages which slip past Apple's filter. Another set of rules for marking most junk read. A few hours there testing that stuff out. Before I had SA available to me, I had to use the multiple aliases/procmail filtering (which is still there for idiots like AV Tech Direct, but losing impact quickly) and spend time updating that. Since SA gets it all, I haven't updated as quickly.
So, easily 20+ a day when I'd be lucky to get 1/week a year ago.
Personally, I think quality started slipping when Apple moved to Quanta instead of building at their own plant. The TiBooks had various issues too (who is stupid enough to PAINT a notebook?, seized hinges, etc). Not that the powerbooks are bad machines, but it just seems that the G4 line has had a higher than normal rate of failure.
Support for my beige G3 (1997-99 or so) was dropped only recently. Officially it stops at 10.2 (one release out), although XPostFacto allows 10.3 to run. In fact 10.3 runs much better than 10.2 ever did.
So what about my setup? I have an LCD monitor which also has a composite video in. That's connected to a VCR which is the TV tuner. Would I count because I'm viewing TV, or not count because the primary purpose of both devices isn't TV (computer monitor, and playback of tapes). What if I disconnect the coax from the vcr?
I often have to repeat queries with different sets of keywords to solve what I'm looking for. For example, to search for something related to my operating system, I could search for "MacOS X", "Mac OS X", "10.3", "Panther", "Apple", etc. Or maybe it's a similar problem on linux, but I haven't used that as a keyword so I never see it.
Google is in the business of organizing information. If it can improve my search, go for it.
I've been burned by upgrades before, so now I won't upgrade unless I need to.
One of my workstations is an upgraded G3, made in 1997. While I wouldn't exactly run Final Cut on it, it still does everything I want. There's no justification to upgrade it based on what I'm using it for. Apple no longer supports it, and the only reason it currently runs 10.3 is because it wouldn't take any of my 10.2 discs. FWIW, it has an early logic board which doesn't support slave IDE devices properly. It ran without a CD drive for quite a while.
My main system though is a more recent TiBook. While I would have had to upgrade at some point, one of the reasons for buying it was that I was surrounded by newer machines. Now, I'm starting to think replacement again (second rev G5 notebook though)
What happens if you lose the CD? Half of my CD's are burned to replace lost or damaged media.
I was always under the impression that the license is the COA, not the CD (if you're audited, you can't point to a stack of cd's).
Finally, what exactly are they accomplishing? They may gain some revenue assuming the user is actually willing to pay for it, but it's not like they need the money.
I thought Apple bought them at approximately the same time they didn't renew their license. Apple probably wanted the hardware people - if they waited too long, the people would have been long gone. The shareholders made some money, some jobs were saved - would you prefer that Apple just left them to find their own way?
I feel for the clone companies, but Apple was bleeding money. If they didn't do what they did, we would have no Apple today. The clone companies had a good deal going - low R&D expenses, high profit - at Apple's expense. Risk is part of the deal though. If Apple went under, the clones would quickly go with them. Like any franchise, you're only as strong as the parent.
Apple needed become profitable quickly to start rebuilding and it still took years to be in a position to challenge Microsoft - OS X took an extra year for 10.0, wasn't usable until 10.1, and didn't start resembling old Macs 10.2. 10.3 was the first time they could start adding toys to a core OS. iPods, Mini's and other hardware doesn't design itself. Only over the last 2 or so years has Apple finally been moving where they need to be.
I'm sure that if someone was to approach Apple today about licensing the machines, in a way that was profitable for both sides that they would talk (HP iPods for example). But given high R&D costs (which the clone companies weren't even paying), low margins and low volume, I can't see it happening.
What would have been interesting is a "BYOR" machine (bring your own rom). MOve the rom from an old Mac into the new one, everything else is included. Just don't static zap them on the way.
On top of that, the clones weren't expanding the marketshare of the Mac. Instead they were taking Mac sales away from Apple. (Mac users were buying them instead of an Apple Mac, rather than PC users moving to the mac). Limited marketshare can only be split so many ways.
IIRC though, Apple bought PowerComputing which was one of the largest clone companies. Umax moved into other things (and maybe that would explain why their drivers are garbage?). Motorola these days is only concerned with cell phones (my joke about spinning off FreeScale is that now they have to actually do something!)
Apple had an entirely different bus (NuBus, along with variations like the CommSlot, Processor Direct, etc). You physically couldn't plug another device in.
With the move to PCI, all that's required are drivers. Sometimes vendors create different firmware so the can charge an extra $50 for the "Mac version". I have a generic D-link network card in my G3, using Apple's 8139 driver. D-link used to have a driver for it, but it's no longer on their site.
The only application I saw that required Mac ROM's were emmulators. These were legally Apple's property so they couldn't be distributed with the program itself.
What created the IBM clones: Microsoft was willing to sell their OS to anyone who wanted it. The BIOS was reverse engineered by Compaq. The other parts were off the shelf. Mix the three, and IBM loses control of their machine. It's not that IBM allowed them, they just didn't have control of the parts to say no.
What prevented Mac clones: Apple used a common processor (the 68K series, later PPC), but that's about it. - Apple owned the ROMS. If you wanted one, you needed to get it from them, and only them.The OS wouldn't run without it. (I thought someone made their own clones, and was shutdown because they didn't license the ROM). - Apple controlled the OS. Again, you had to get it from them. The roms could have been cloned, but without an OS there wasn't much point.
About the only way to make a Mac clone was to find a used logic board and build around that.
IIRC, the system tells employees how full flights are, so that their ticket purchases don't impact normal fares (Buy a ticket only if the seat wasn't already sold).
WestJet hired an Air Canada employee. He still had access to the system (I forget why, possibly because he still was permitted to buy tickets). WestJet used his login to scrape the site, against the employee's contract/NDA, using the data to run competing flights.
Don't you love how marketers think? "Hmm... if I could just get through all those blockers, imagine the large market share just waiting to find out about (Online drugs|OEM Software|Body part enhancement|etc)! They don't know what they're missing!"
Or the popular "If they haven't bought it the first 50 times, maybe they'll buy it next time?" (the reason I'm repeatedly spammed by avtechdirect, for example)
Zone your HVAC system. Different areas need different amounts of heating/cooling. No use cooling the basement in order to cool the upstairs bedrooms at night. There are various systems (electronically controlled vents, water-based systems with separate pumps, etc). If necessary, install the vents now and rezone as your budget permits.
Look into home automation. You can use occupancy sensors to decide if a room needs to be heated (you used zoning, right?), turn off lights when nobody is in the room, do weird things when someone shouldn't be in the room (the best was an alarm system which made all lights blink), etc.
Conduit in the walls. Ideally you'll want one box per wall to start. Your headend will handle distribution of phones/ethernet/coax/multi-room audio/etc. Leave space for wall mounting.
Don't forget electrical. Give yourself lots of outlets and avoid placing too many on a single circuit. You can even go as far as setting up hallway lights on a separate board, powered by a UPS. You mention places for things like routers. Keep these outlets on a separate breaker so things don't go down when you change a lightbulb.
I agree with denying admin logins, but I can't think of any of my clients where this has actually worked - home users (visit 3 months later and they're back using admin and IE), small businesses (their apps need admin access according to tech support), larger businesses (poor head office management - everything from the login script to web apps want admin).
I recently setup a bunch of machines at an internet cafe to self image. The image is stored on a second partition, and I played with the boot loader config to alternately boot normally/reimage. When booted normally, the second partition is hidden (and is in ext2 which windows can't natively mount)
Reboot the machine, wait 7 minutes, and you're back to a clean image. Machines are rebooted at least daily.
Of course, if you want to preserve data, you're screwed:)
Hate to reply to my own post, but one of my clients/suppliers has two machines with a KVM at each desk. One for external (web/mail), the other for internal tasks (accounting/etc). Two separate networks that do not talk. Only one has internet.
In theory, nothing should take down the internal systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see here...
.org! If I had money, I'd be a .com!). My .ca addresses (personal as well as standard aliases like info) are commonly nailed as well.
Last May, my ISP address was harvested. So were many others I talk to (no wonder they added Yahoo's bulk filtering). 10 spam a day there now, from 0 before.
Another address received very little spam for something like 5 years. It and another were hit by email viruses and a few months later the spam picked up. Now I've been forced to turn on SpamAssassin (which gets every one, mainly with IP and URL checks).
My DNS contact addresses are routinely spidered. I change them every few months, and I'm re-added. (I'm a
Recently, one of my mailing lists looks like it was spidered. Luckily I used an alias for it and SA gets it all (I didn't even notice until a few weeks later cleaning out the junk)
Not to mention the time I've lost...
I had to setup rules for the bulk/SA tagged messages which slip past Apple's filter. Another set of rules for marking most junk read. A few hours there testing that stuff out. Before I had SA available to me, I had to use the multiple aliases/procmail filtering (which is still there for idiots like AV Tech Direct, but losing impact quickly) and spend time updating that. Since SA gets it all, I haven't updated as quickly.
So, easily 20+ a day when I'd be lucky to get 1/week a year ago.
It's already a portable hard drive. Essential if you want to backup a windows box before you wipe it.
(if that isn't justification for a 60 gig, I don't know what would be)
Personally, I think quality started slipping when Apple moved to Quanta instead of building at their own plant. The TiBooks had various issues too (who is stupid enough to PAINT a notebook?, seized hinges, etc). Not that the powerbooks are bad machines, but it just seems that the G4 line has had a higher than normal rate of failure.
Well, if your model is basically getting people under NDA's who can't talk to talk, don't be suprized when you run into legal issues.
It's one thing to research, but NDA's exist for a reason.
Support for my beige G3 (1997-99 or so) was dropped only recently. Officially it stops at 10.2 (one release out), although XPostFacto allows 10.3 to run. In fact 10.3 runs much better than 10.2 ever did.
So what about my setup? I have an LCD monitor which also has a composite video in. That's connected to a VCR which is the TV tuner. Would I count because I'm viewing TV, or not count because the primary purpose of both devices isn't TV (computer monitor, and playback of tapes). What if I disconnect the coax from the vcr?
I often have to repeat queries with different sets of keywords to solve what I'm looking for. For example, to search for something related to my operating system, I could search for "MacOS X", "Mac OS X", "10.3", "Panther", "Apple", etc. Or maybe it's a similar problem on linux, but I haven't used that as a keyword so I never see it.
Google is in the business of organizing information. If it can improve my search, go for it.
For this reason, I tended not to create a robots.txt file. At minimum, sensitive sites wouldn't go in it.
.htaccess files, assuming it wasn't a passworded site to begin with.
If anything, I'd block googlebot/others in
I've been burned by upgrades before, so now I won't upgrade unless I need to.
One of my workstations is an upgraded G3, made in 1997. While I wouldn't exactly run Final Cut on it, it still does everything I want. There's no justification to upgrade it based on what I'm using it for. Apple no longer supports it, and the only reason it currently runs 10.3 is because it wouldn't take any of my 10.2 discs. FWIW, it has an early logic board which doesn't support slave IDE devices properly. It ran without a CD drive for quite a while.
My main system though is a more recent TiBook. While I would have had to upgrade at some point, one of the reasons for buying it was that I was surrounded by newer machines. Now, I'm starting to think replacement again (second rev G5 notebook though)
What happens if you lose the CD? Half of my CD's are burned to replace lost or damaged media.
I was always under the impression that the license is the COA, not the CD (if you're audited, you can't point to a stack of cd's).
Finally, what exactly are they accomplishing? They may gain some revenue assuming the user is actually willing to pay for it, but it's not like they need the money.
Apple usually releases stand alone updaters. Download it and install the package.
What about including dummy patches? Ones that have absolutely no effect but appear to patch things?
(seriously, no "I thought MS already did that" or similar comments)
Mike Markkula, John Scully, and Michael Scott?
(Scully is stretching it, while I really had to look for Michael Scott)
I thought Apple bought them at approximately the same time they didn't renew their license. Apple probably wanted the hardware people - if they waited too long, the people would have been long gone. The shareholders made some money, some jobs were saved - would you prefer that Apple just left them to find their own way?
I feel for the clone companies, but Apple was bleeding money. If they didn't do what they did, we would have no Apple today. The clone companies had a good deal going - low R&D expenses, high profit - at Apple's expense. Risk is part of the deal though. If Apple went under, the clones would quickly go with them. Like any franchise, you're only as strong as the parent.
Apple needed become profitable quickly to start rebuilding and it still took years to be in a position to challenge Microsoft - OS X took an extra year for 10.0, wasn't usable until 10.1, and didn't start resembling old Macs 10.2. 10.3 was the first time they could start adding toys to a core OS. iPods, Mini's and other hardware doesn't design itself. Only over the last 2 or so years has Apple finally been moving where they need to be.
I'm sure that if someone was to approach Apple today about licensing the machines, in a way that was profitable for both sides that they would talk (HP iPods for example). But given high R&D costs (which the clone companies weren't even paying), low margins and low volume, I can't see it happening.
True, but you already had bought the ROM.
What would have been interesting is a "BYOR" machine (bring your own rom). MOve the rom from an old Mac into the new one, everything else is included. Just don't static zap them on the way.
On top of that, the clones weren't expanding the marketshare of the Mac. Instead they were taking Mac sales away from Apple.
(Mac users were buying them instead of an Apple Mac, rather than PC users moving to the mac). Limited marketshare can only be split so many ways.
IIRC though, Apple bought PowerComputing which was one of the largest clone companies. Umax moved into other things (and maybe that would explain why their drivers are garbage?). Motorola these days is only concerned with cell phones (my joke about spinning off FreeScale is that now they have to actually do something!)
And on the powerbooks you get a PCMCIA/Cardbus/whatever slot as well. It's not like that works only with Airport.
From what I understand the airport slot is a modified cardbus. Airport cards are basically lucent orinocos.
No. You're confusing a number of things.
Apple had an entirely different bus (NuBus, along with variations like the CommSlot, Processor Direct, etc). You physically couldn't plug another device in.
With the move to PCI, all that's required are drivers. Sometimes vendors create different firmware so the can charge an extra $50 for the "Mac version". I have a generic D-link network card in my G3, using Apple's 8139 driver. D-link used to have a driver for it, but it's no longer on their site.
The only application I saw that required Mac ROM's were emmulators. These were legally Apple's property so they couldn't be distributed with the program itself.
What created the IBM clones:
Microsoft was willing to sell their OS to anyone who wanted it. The BIOS was reverse engineered by Compaq. The other parts were off the shelf. Mix the three, and IBM loses control of their machine. It's not that IBM allowed them, they just didn't have control of the parts to say no.
What prevented Mac clones:
Apple used a common processor (the 68K series, later PPC), but that's about it.
- Apple owned the ROMS. If you wanted one, you needed to get it from them, and only them.The OS wouldn't run without it.
(I thought someone made their own clones, and was shutdown because they didn't license the ROM).
- Apple controlled the OS. Again, you had to get it from them. The roms could have been cloned, but without an OS there wasn't much point.
About the only way to make a Mac clone was to find a used logic board and build around that.
IIRC, the system tells employees how full flights are, so that their ticket purchases don't impact normal fares (Buy a ticket only if the seat wasn't already sold).
WestJet hired an Air Canada employee. He still had access to the system (I forget why, possibly because he still was permitted to buy tickets). WestJet used his login to scrape the site, against the employee's contract/NDA, using the data to run competing flights.
Hosts doesn't work when the content and ads are served from the same machine.
Don't you love how marketers think?
"Hmm... if I could just get through all those blockers, imagine the large market share just waiting to find out about (Online drugs|OEM Software|Body part enhancement|etc)! They don't know what they're missing!"
Or the popular "If they haven't bought it the first 50 times, maybe they'll buy it next time?" (the reason I'm repeatedly spammed by avtechdirect, for example)
Zone your HVAC system. Different areas need different amounts of heating/cooling. No use cooling the basement in order to cool the upstairs bedrooms at night. There are various systems (electronically controlled vents, water-based systems with separate pumps, etc). If necessary, install the vents now and rezone as your budget permits.
Look into home automation. You can use occupancy sensors to decide if a room needs to be heated (you used zoning, right?), turn off lights when nobody is in the room, do weird things when someone shouldn't be in the room (the best was an alarm system which made all lights blink), etc.
Conduit in the walls. Ideally you'll want one box per wall to start. Your headend will handle distribution of phones/ethernet/coax/multi-room audio/etc. Leave space for wall mounting.
Don't forget electrical. Give yourself lots of outlets and avoid placing too many on a single circuit. You can even go as far as setting up hallway lights on a separate board, powered by a UPS.
You mention places for things like routers. Keep these outlets on a separate breaker so things don't go down when you change a lightbulb.
I agree with denying admin logins, but I can't think of any of my clients where this has actually worked - home users (visit 3 months later and they're back using admin and IE), small businesses (their apps need admin access according to tech support), larger businesses (poor head office management - everything from the login script to web apps want admin).
I recently setup a bunch of machines at an internet cafe to self image. The image is stored on a second partition, and I played with the boot loader config to alternately boot normally/reimage. When booted normally, the second partition is hidden (and is in ext2 which windows can't natively mount)
:)
Reboot the machine, wait 7 minutes, and you're back to a clean image. Machines are rebooted at least daily.
Of course, if you want to preserve data, you're screwed
Hate to reply to my own post, but one of my clients/suppliers has two machines with a KVM at each desk. One for external (web/mail), the other for internal tasks (accounting/etc). Two separate networks that do not talk. Only one has internet.
In theory, nothing should take down the internal systems.