Reading the comments in this thread have reminded me why I've always loved/. - the community makes me think and nod and smile. Thanks for starting the fire. Best wishes!
I'd say yes - in my experience folks don't enter the infosec industry trained as a security engineer. Or at least up to this point, that's rare. Instead, most security teams (including the one I work on) are built with sysadmins, network engineers, code monkeys, web developers and dba's (and a few blackhat script kiddies) that have a particular passion for defending data, networks and endpoints.
Unfortunately, with this decade's increased focus on security I fear we'll soon have a glut of paper CISSP's that only got into infosec because "those guys make a lot of money", not because they were any good at it, or were particularly passionate about the subject. CISSP is quickly becoming this generation's MSCE.
But I digress. For those of us hiring security professionals, we are always struggling to find quality folks with decent experience and passion. We end up recruiting at the local 2600 meeting as much as colleges or Careerbuilder.
Okay, then I won't charge you for the Bootcamp Beta. Though if you want to post your credit card number, expiration date, name, and security code, I'll gladly take them. Also, if you only run software that works 100% do you mostly run software written in HAL/S?
Good gravy, you've taken this very personally. Please reread my comment. If I wasn't clear - it doesn't seem to me that Apple cares very much that their Windows software works all that well. Itunes (now in v7), my example, is non-beta, but is still prone to excessive memory usage, locking up, etc. and has been that way for nearly all Windows releases. It doesn't speak well of them that they cannot manage to get bugs ironed out of their non-beta software, and my hope was that they would put a little more effort into ironing out the bugs in Bootcamp. It's taken them nearly a year to get it to (IMHO) a barely functional state. They're slow to make it work how it should.
Apple doesn't have a lot of experience coding for their competitors' platforms. Strange, isn't it.
Funny - Microsoft doesn't seem to have much problem with that. Office for the Mac works beautifully. Strange, isn't it? But it's likely Apple will share your arrogant attitude, and ignore their customer's requests, and that's my fear. Why bother making a quality product? We'll shortchange them, give them poorly-written code, force them to switch back to OSX out of frustration.
What's wrong with that? Apple wants someone to use their product more? It's a childish attitude. Make a quality product, stop being lazy and sloppy, or don't make it at all. Grow up, Apple.
Okay, and every company that sells PCs with Windows preloaded ships drivers that work well? If you're this up in arms about Apple shipping beta Windows XP drivers that don't work as well as their OS X counterparts, what do you think about the actual final version drivers that are shipped preloaded on Windows based computers?
My personal experience - every Wintel PC I've bought or built in the last ten years has had working device drivers out of the box, for everything that was onboard. Maybe you haven't used a Windows box since installing QEMM was necessary. Things have changed.
(more than I can say about my Macbook, BTW. The OSX wireless ethernet drivers were broken out of the box - and it took dozens of calls to Apple to get them to realize it and fix them. They worked fine on the same PC in Windows. So, glad they made them work in Windows, but again, doesn't say much for their craftsmanship, for lack of a better word)
And I bet it splashed juice everywhere.
Took a few tries to get the stains out, yeah:)
So, in order to sell a piece of software, it should have less bugs than the free beta version. That should be modded: (+liek infinity, Insightful)
Not sure if you're a dyed-in-the-wool Apple fanboy - your attitude would seem to indicate that - but yes, it's sad that an observation like that would be necessary. Simply a statement about Apple's poor effort in making Bootcamp appear to us, the consumer, as a product worth buying (in the future, if necessary). I hope they work a bit harder at it. Sorry to have gotten your panties in a bunch.
Sorry, but I'm not paying a cent for Bootcamp til they make it work 100%. For a bunch of guys that brag about how much better their product is than Windows, they certainly code their Windows-based stuff poorly. Itunes on Windows uses more juice than nearly every other application I run.
Back to Bootcamp... it took almost a solid year for them to release a build of the Windows drivers that actually made use of all of the system's hardware... until then, the two-finger trackpad drag didn't work (and it's still sub-par to the responsiveness of the OSX drivers)... opening the onboard camera blew the OS up...
Even now, running the latest code, when you bring Windows back from hibernate on a Macbook, the trackpad doesn't work at all and a reboot is required to bring it back. It's been tolerable because it's a beta, but put a price tag on it and we have a different situation. They're going to have to put a lot more effort into making a quality product if they want us to shell out for it.
This has been stated a few times in this discussion, but it's worth repeating: most organizations (mine included) do not filter web access solely to prevent employees from wasting 'work' time. That's lame. I like to periodically check Slashdot, Digg, etc. as much as the next person. There's no harm in it; on the contrary, I can usually find content that helps me do my job as a IT security engineer more effectively.
Organizations usually filter web access to mitigate risk and guard against liability. Please reread that sentence. They're (usually) not doing it to demoralize their employees or create a joyless, slave-driver atmosphere. I approve/deny requests to remove URL filters for our company, and I have to answer these same questions every day - how harmful is going to a few entertainment sites a few times a day? Or the ability to listen to streaming media from the web? None are inherently harmful.
But if you're checking out the latest hot chick in FHM or Maxim when an uptight person walks by and gets offended by the material? What about a site promoting hate crimes? The organization implements blocks to try to prevent from getting entangled in a troublesome situation. Bandwidth considerations are also an issue. I get asked all the time to unblock XM's streaming site. Trust me, I'd love to listen to it too - but a few dozen people streaming media would eat our available bandwidth to the web fairly quickly - and prevent legitimate business-related traffic.
Most importantly, organizations have to protect their proprietary, sensitive material. If you're working with export controlled information, you have a legal responsibility to prevent non-approved individuals from even glancing at it. So we have to control access to desktop sharing sites (like gotoassist), online storage vendors (like yousendit), and public newsgroups and forums. We have to get pretty draconian - that's due diligence. We especially need to limit end-users' use of portable media (thumbdrives and so forth). Do these solutions provide 100% coverage? Obviously not. But we need to do everything we can, or the government fines start rolling in.
The most significant threat is in the form of web-based exploits against company assets. Attacker crafts a WMF (or fill in the vuln of the week - Powerpoint, Excel, PNG) file with a trojan embedded into it and places it on a Myspace page and spams the URL out to thousands of people. Joe Employee opens it up and IE renders the file and he gets infected. If you have good antivirus filtering on your proxy servers, or an IPS between you and the web, you've partially eliminated that risk, but most companies don't have that, and they instead block access to sites that commonly host malware in that way.
I'm sure there are lazy admins and ignorant executives out there that enforce "all work, eight hours a day, no breaks" policies. They should be thrown into a sweatshop. But claiming you should get full, unfiltered access from your office PC is just foolish - and the company that allows it is itching for a lawsuit or an office full of botnet-owned zombie PC's.
as an owner of both supported mobile devices (the ipod video and the psp) i found it a noble gesture, but ultimately it fails. here's why:
first, it costs $25 to even enable the feature. their ceo says it's to help pay for the licensing costs... i guess, but it's still too pricey for a simple add-on. divide that number by five and i might consider it. especially when i have to buy a separate license for every PC i run the software from. it should be tied to the device's media access key, IMHO.
you can't convert stuff you've already transferred over from your tivo to the mobile format. i use my PC as a backup for my tivo - as the DVR runs out of room i move stuff over to the PC and stream it from there if i want to watch it. so the ~30 shows sitting on my PC are gone off my tivo and I can't re-transfer them.
i can't convert-on-demand. i have to go into the preferences and turn on mobile conversion, and then transfer a show from the tivo. wrong, guys, i should be able to right click on a show from the list and convert on the fly.
i can't convert to both ipod and psp formats at once. true, i'm a gadget nerd and few probably own both devices, but give me the option instead of leaving it out. i don't get why software developers continually forget that more options = happier consumersx.
the psp has a 480x272 widescreen. i should be able to render my tivo recordings at that resolution, but output from this app is max 320x240. which will look sad and grainy on my psp.
they still haven't fixed long transfer times. there's no reason at all that it should take an hour to copy a 1GB file from my tivo to my PC on my 100mbit LAN.
the transfers take a long time, so if my connection dies during a transfer or i lose power, the software should allow resuming of transfers. nope. restart it and walk away for another hour.
the featureset is tolerable for your average user, but i don't think those are the people downloading this application. consider it statistically - how many people own a Tivo and have a home network? out of those, how many bother to try to transfer shows off of the DVR to their PC? out of those, how many want to convert them for use on one of these two portable devices? the small group of users that fit into this category are likely schmoes like me that shake their head at sub-par functionality.
bottom line is, it feels like tivo rushes this type of thing out the door and risks distancing themselves from the only people who are still rooting for them. writers have been sounding their death knell for a while now. where's the series 3 box? are there enough compelling features to push me to upgrade to it, if it ever comes out? what are their engineers and developers doing in their spare time, then, since we haven't seen a new product in eons? do they really not have the available time to write a five star product instead of a weak little three star app that almost cuts it?
fortunately i run mostly windows still so i won't complain about the lack of full OSX support, although i have tried their version of tivo desktop for OSX and it won't even start up on my macbook.
remember, with two free applications (directshowdump and videora/pspvideo9) you can strip out the DRM and render the video at whatever size you want for your portable devices. don't shell out $25 for a DRM-crippled, slow, clunky, low-res solution.
don't forget:
a. 1. symantec just got stuck with a $1 billion tax bill. they need a whole lot of settlement cash, and quickly. i bet they've got dozens of guys leafing through all of their patents (and those of the piles of companies they've absorbed) trying to find stuff that's lawsuit-worthy.
and who better to sue than the most famous, most settlement-happy software company in the world?
and i bet more of these patent lawsuits are locked and loaded, too, for when this one finishes up.
Good call. I would mod you up if I hadn't posted.:)
It may be a bit of a stretch, as I'm not sure the software and transfer of information in question is "waving your beliefs in other people's faces" so much as a targeted political party seeking to know how you feel about controversial issues.
That group finding out you disagree with the death penalty may not be the same as upsetting your next door neighbor. That said, the side you bring up is often left out in a political debate - a desire to not piss off everyone around you, which is a rare point of view in this forum. I like that you brought it up.
Apparently us liberals are now terrified of anyone knowing our opinions. Yeah, it's bad that there are no privacy concerns in the terms of use, and I'm not surprised that Republicans are trying to hide their underhanded methods of stealing information.
But crap, they aren't getting my social, or the combination to my luggage (12345). Don't you WANT the government to know how you feel on the issues? Isn't that the point of a democratic society? And your boss? Your church? Why be so afraid to think what you think?
I don't know, I guess I can see some people wanting that information private. That can't be the majority view, though...
Tell me how they afford week long downtimes everytime another M$ worm comes out.
This is a key point - downtimes from worms have been reduced to next to nothing because of the security measures that are implemented in organizations. An organization with no security measures in place would probably be miserable and get absolutely nothing done, though, if they had a mostly Windows architecture.
We pay for it one way or the other, though. But simply replacing everything overnight is so completely out of the ballpark of the realm of possibility that it's not even worth being brought up. This is why I assumed you'd never been in a large organization - because, if you had, you'd know that your suggestion of "everyone use Linux" would get you laughed out of the room.
I love all the "fuck you" I'm getting from M$ shills and fanboys. They are all so angry because their stuff does not work and everyone knows it.
I think you might be incorrectly assuming that we're "M$ shills and fanboys". Just because I help administer a Windows environment doesn't mean I enjoy it, or that I'm a fan of Windows. I'm not.
This is the reason, by the way, I assumed you were a younger kid living in your parent's basement. My apologies for the assumption. You might be more successful and convincing in your arguments if you didn't use phrases that kids like that normally use, e.g. "M$", and assume that because someone supports a Windows environment, they're a Microsoft fanboy. For the majority of us, it's just a job, and we're about as excited about supporting Windows as you would be.
Most business functions can be switched to another platform tomorrow, and for those that can't, like I said, it's not like we haven't done this before.
I would disagree with 'most business functions can be switched to another platform tomorrow'. Possibly in small-to-medium businesses (sub-1000 people), but not in larger organizations - too much capital has gone into the systems that are currently in place for them to drop everything and switch client and server OS's and applications in a short period of time.
In any case - I'm also hoping for a transition to a safer, more secure platform that's just as useful to the enterprise. We'll see if Vista is as hole-ridden as the last two versions... fortunately our organization moves so slowly it won't matter until 2010:)
You're right. Microsoft wrote the last decade of Windows releases with little to no regard for security. Unfortunately most large businesses run some form of them - most on Wormfest 2000 or XP.
So what do we do? My guess is "ok, everyone boot this linux install disc" won't fly, and neither would "here, use this mac mini with none of the software you need, now we're broke from replacing all our hardware". That was what the parent seemed to be suggesting. My apologies if I misinterpreted. The 'Linux or Mac fanboy' comment came from reading some of his other posts in this thread.
So we're faced with responding to this threat, and the result has been to block as many avenues of attack as we can (and there are plenty in Win2K) and patch, patch, patch so that we can protect as much as possible.
It's not the users. Think about it and tell me why you have never heard of such problems in places that use Macs. Don't tell me that it's because graphic designers are better behaved or know more about computers than the rest of us. Well, they do know better than to use computers that need and Administrator like you.
You've never heard of problems in those places because they're four man design shops. You've clearly never been in an enterprise environment. They don't run Macs. They can't afford your overpriced, underpowered machines when they have to be deployed to fifty thousand users. Not that I'm thrilled about Windows, but it's the real world, not your fantasy dream world where everyone runs Debian. You either live in it or sit in your basement and call Microsoft "M$".
I don't know if you're a Linux or a Mac fanboy - from the other comments you've posted in this article, it could go either way. You're right - security would be easier in an environment where everyone ran Linux on the desktop. Then we could all use LDAP for directory and IMAP for mail and we could safely run sendmail from our workstations. But large corporations don't work that way, unfortunately, and if you want a job in this environment, you come to terms with that. Change comes slowly in the enterprise.
Because if we didn't, the same thing would happen eighty times a year instead of once. You do as much as you can. It won't be perfect, but it helps. In most cases it's the difference between a business staying afloat and going under.
Disclaimer: I work on the security team for a rather large (Fortune 5) corporation.
I would say, compare the environment of the public internet to how it was ten years ago. Would you place your unpatched Windows machine directly on the public internet now? You have (roughly) ten minutes before another infected machine exploits one of the dozen out-of-the-box vulnerabilities that will allow them to run anything it wants on your PC. Not the case ten years ago.
Unfortunately, what was once a rather quiet suburb filled with geeks posting to Usenet and using Mosaic is now a post-nuclear, disease filled demilitarized zone where so many infected systems simply sit and try to infect others that a defenseless machine (or a network of them) is doomed.
Trying to manage security in this environment is a much more difficult job than it ever has been, and every month that goes by makes it more difficult. We shudder on the second Tuesday of every month at what new terrifying vulnerability Microsoft will tell us is in their product that's deployed on a hundred thousand machines on our network. We plead with other IT teams (networking, server admins, client admins) to implement our tools and software and protect the environment, but most of them get pushed to the back burner, either because it's "too invasive", i.e. it annoys the end user too much; or it costs too much; or they just don't have the time.
Then MS05-039 is released. We plead and plead for the patches to be distributed right away because of how severe the threat is. But users like the submitter can't stand to have their PC rebooted unless it's the absolute perfect time. Plus, we have 1700+ applications to test compatibility with the patch on, on hundreds of different PC environments. And it requires a service pack we don't have deployed everywhere, again, because it's too invasive.
Then Zotob.E gets into the environment, and shuts down large sites in a matter of minutes. Then people scream even louder! Where is security? Why didn't they prevent this?
Because no one takes security seriously until it's too late.
From a security admin's perspective, we never have enough resources or management support to fully defend against even the most prevalent threats. Because security (and, as most admins know, IT in general) is underfunded. Because of (very real) scenarios like I described above, we have much more support than we did, and things are improving.
I guess my point is, step into our shoes for a few days. We don't enjoy being draconian - we like Google Groups as much as anyone else! But there are so many attack vectors that we have to be concerned about to protect the environment - and it only takes one. One of my co-workers is fond of the saying, "the hackers only have to be lucky once - you have to be lucky all of the time."
I guarantee every IT admin reading this is thinking, well, if you did this instead of that, if you had two hundred guys on your security team, with all of them testing patches, while listening to every end user complaint and rectifying their situation immediately, you could stay out of the end-user's way! Trust me - we know. We wish our teams were as stacked as they should be. Heck, we wish it wasn't necessary at all to have to defend against stuff like WMF, where any end-user clicking on a link from their IM buddy could get exploited in a second... we wish it wasn't like this. We wish things could go back to how they were ten years ago. The reality is, this is the internet we built and we are fighting to protect our assets from.
Then ask to have it removed. Most security groups will not be so strict as to refuse a request for legitimate work-related access to sites like that. I would bet that they have a process in place to review a 'remove this block' type of request and make exceptions.
Keep in mind... just because you use Google Groups to find obscure manuals or whatever, doesn't mean that the new marketing intern won't use it to hit up alt.binaries. Most security groups don't employ so-called 'draconian' policies without reason.
"you saying this says more about you than you actually playing these games."
You're right. That was really my point: the DS and the PSP are built for different crowds, different gamers with different interests. I don't want to raise a dog, I want to drive 200mph down a highway and knock other cars off the road. The DS is not the system for me in that respect - and that's OK. That's the beauty of the gaming environment nowadays - there's plenty of titles around for everyone, no matter what you like to play. And who knows? I might enjoy Nintendogs if I gave it a chance. I was surprised as heck that my wife liked Burnout.
But my other point is that I hope this won't turn into another DS vs. PSP article. People always make this stuff about one system vs. another, who will win, yada yada... it's not like that for gamers who appreciate that some people buy systems for different reasons and enjoy different genres.
As a previous DS owner, I realized a month or two after I bought it that the only reason I'd done so was, simply, I'm a Nintendo fanboy at heart. The console is an innovative idea but for someone who liked the genres that I do, the DS just didn't have the software when I got it in December '04. It didn't when I sold it in February '05. It still doesn't. It won't by the end of the year. A handful of decent titles (WarioWare, Mario 64, Mario Kart, Castlevania) that are all just ports of old games, with the exception of Castlevania... and I couldn't justify holding onto a system for a single good game for one year. My attention span is far too short.
(don't get me started on Metroid Prime: Hunters, what an abomination)
So I sold it back and got a PSP. Sure, the PSP wasn't leaps ahead software-wise when it was released and so far it still isn't. It's also got mostly ports of PS2 titles. But by the end of October I'll have Madden '06, GTA: Liberty City Stories and Burnout: Legends. Next year I'll have Street Fighter Alpha 3. Right now I have a web browser and a very good portable media device on top of the games (with really weak volume, IMHO, or my hearing just sucks).
Slashdot readers and gaming site writers want to make it a one-or-the-other confrontational thing between the two systems, and I guess to a point they compete... but I feel like it's almost apples/oranges. They're not meant for the same target audience, like Nintendo has been saying for years. There's a group of people that will buy the 360 and the PS3, probably Sony/Microsoft's target audience of MTV-addicted ADD kids... and there's a group that'll buy the Revolution, and there'll be some overlap, but it'll be people like me who still have a place in their heart for Zelda / Metroid / Mario titles and people that believe in Nintendo's conceptual vision.
That said... right now Nintendo's conceptual vision doesn't really line up with what I want to play. That's all. If I still owned a DS, right now I'd probably be really excited about Nintendogs and Electroplankton. And I doubt I could look at myself in the mirror without crying.:)
I know Capcom is releasing the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Cube (i think it's out for the PS2). But maybe the first 3 or 4 (3 is, IMHO, the peak of the series), it'd be excellent to play those portable. 2 and 3, anyway, they just never get old.
I was looking for a pad for just the same purpose. Everyone keeps hyping USB console pad adapters, but I personally like keeping my console pads and my PC pads separate.
The only thing I use my PC gamepad for is emulators, so that was critical in buying one. I have to recommend the Logitech Dual Action out of the ones you listed - cheap, durable, easy to set up, feels great, durable (I throw mine around a lot)... did I mention durable?
The included software is teh suck so I didn't bother with it. XP found it fine without them. Pick up a few of these and enjoy. EB had em for $10 last I checked.
I've been putting around the matrix-in-a-matrix idea since Wed. night... and it seemed to make the most sense, but then I read this interview
with Keanu and he pretty much shoots down both the matrix-in-a-matrix idea and the Neo-is-a-program idea. While it's nice to have confirmation, it still leaves me wondering how he stopped the Sentinals, which I think is really the key to figuring out what's going on.
My theory originally was matrix-in-a-matrix. But now I'm forced to evaluate other possibilities... only thing I can think of is that Neo has some control over the machines he didn't have before. That's either because:
(1) Smith left some 'imprint' on him, in the same way he had an imprint on Smith, and their 'connection' makes it so that Neo can control the machines. This may be how he saves Zion in Revolutions...
(2) another poster in the previous
discussion mentioned the 'neo wireless' thing - that Neo can be simultaenously conscious in the matrix & the real world, and that somehow that gives him the ability to stop the machines... or
(3) some program in the Matrix (Persephone, the Architect, Smith) - or simply the fact that he's the One - changed him in the real world (remember the Architect commenting on how "the process has altered your consciousness"?). Now, in the real world, Neo is superhuman because of it. (that one's lame tho).
I gotta say that one of the sweetest things that I think is coming out of this one is the fact that the reason Neo is able to beat the machines and will eventually win is because he makes choices and doesn't accept that purpose/destiny/fate drives him to a predetermined goal, that his choices are what take him to the end he meets. It seems that every 'sentient' program in the matrix continually goes on about how purpose is all that matters - because a program, naturally, is written for one purpose and that's all it knows. Kinda spiffy.
The article talks about how they used Netstumbler on the Ipaq... so of course that sparked my interest. I googled around and couldn't find a PalmOS 802.11b sniffer... and I'd love to play with my Visor/Xircom Wireless combo in the same way.
Anyone know of / developing a PalmOS 802.11b sniffer?
Or, you could just click into the field in your Internet Time dialog box (where it has time.windows.com and time.nist.gov) and type in the NTP server you'd like to use and click Update Now. Pointed it to my firewall and it worked fine. No sense in doing something the hard way. Especially if you're the pinnacle of laziness like me.:)
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Reading the comments in this thread have reminded me why I've always loved /. - the community makes me think and nod and smile. Thanks for starting the fire. Best wishes!
I'd say yes - in my experience folks don't enter the infosec industry trained as a security engineer. Or at least up to this point, that's rare. Instead, most security teams (including the one I work on) are built with sysadmins, network engineers, code monkeys, web developers and dba's (and a few blackhat script kiddies) that have a particular passion for defending data, networks and endpoints.
Unfortunately, with this decade's increased focus on security I fear we'll soon have a glut of paper CISSP's that only got into infosec because "those guys make a lot of money", not because they were any good at it, or were particularly passionate about the subject. CISSP is quickly becoming this generation's MSCE.
But I digress. For those of us hiring security professionals, we are always struggling to find quality folks with decent experience and passion. We end up recruiting at the local 2600 meeting as much as colleges or Careerbuilder.
Funny - Microsoft doesn't seem to have much problem with that. Office for the Mac works beautifully. Strange, isn't it? But it's likely Apple will share your arrogant attitude, and ignore their customer's requests, and that's my fear. Why bother making a quality product? We'll shortchange them, give them poorly-written code, force them to switch back to OSX out of frustration.
What's wrong with that? Apple wants someone to use their product more? It's a childish attitude. Make a quality product, stop being lazy and sloppy, or don't make it at all. Grow up, Apple.
My personal experience - every Wintel PC I've bought or built in the last ten years has had working device drivers out of the box, for everything that was onboard. Maybe you haven't used a Windows box since installing QEMM was necessary. Things have changed.
(more than I can say about my Macbook, BTW. The OSX wireless ethernet drivers were broken out of the box - and it took dozens of calls to Apple to get them to realize it and fix them. They worked fine on the same PC in Windows. So, glad they made them work in Windows, but again, doesn't say much for their craftsmanship, for lack of a better word)
Took a few tries to get the stains out, yeah
Not sure if you're a dyed-in-the-wool Apple fanboy - your attitude would seem to indicate that - but yes, it's sad that an observation like that would be necessary. Simply a statement about Apple's poor effort in making Bootcamp appear to us, the consumer, as a product worth buying (in the future, if necessary). I hope they work a bit harder at it. Sorry to have gotten your panties in a bunch.
Sorry, but I'm not paying a cent for Bootcamp til they make it work 100%. For a bunch of guys that brag about how much better their product is than Windows, they certainly code their Windows-based stuff poorly. Itunes on Windows uses more juice than nearly every other application I run.
Back to Bootcamp... it took almost a solid year for them to release a build of the Windows drivers that actually made use of all of the system's hardware... until then, the two-finger trackpad drag didn't work (and it's still sub-par to the responsiveness of the OSX drivers)... opening the onboard camera blew the OS up...
Even now, running the latest code, when you bring Windows back from hibernate on a Macbook, the trackpad doesn't work at all and a reboot is required to bring it back. It's been tolerable because it's a beta, but put a price tag on it and we have a different situation. They're going to have to put a lot more effort into making a quality product if they want us to shell out for it.
"Polarize the main deflector, Mister Data"
- Star Trek
"Shields still up? It's a trap!"
- Star Wars
"She's hot... too bad she's Cylon"
- BSG
This has been stated a few times in this discussion, but it's worth repeating: most organizations (mine included) do not filter web access solely to prevent employees from wasting 'work' time. That's lame. I like to periodically check Slashdot, Digg, etc. as much as the next person. There's no harm in it; on the contrary, I can usually find content that helps me do my job as a IT security engineer more effectively.
Organizations usually filter web access to mitigate risk and guard against liability. Please reread that sentence. They're (usually) not doing it to demoralize their employees or create a joyless, slave-driver atmosphere. I approve/deny requests to remove URL filters for our company, and I have to answer these same questions every day - how harmful is going to a few entertainment sites a few times a day? Or the ability to listen to streaming media from the web? None are inherently harmful.
But if you're checking out the latest hot chick in FHM or Maxim when an uptight person walks by and gets offended by the material? What about a site promoting hate crimes? The organization implements blocks to try to prevent from getting entangled in a troublesome situation. Bandwidth considerations are also an issue. I get asked all the time to unblock XM's streaming site. Trust me, I'd love to listen to it too - but a few dozen people streaming media would eat our available bandwidth to the web fairly quickly - and prevent legitimate business-related traffic.
Most importantly, organizations have to protect their proprietary, sensitive material. If you're working with export controlled information, you have a legal responsibility to prevent non-approved individuals from even glancing at it. So we have to control access to desktop sharing sites (like gotoassist), online storage vendors (like yousendit), and public newsgroups and forums. We have to get pretty draconian - that's due diligence. We especially need to limit end-users' use of portable media (thumbdrives and so forth). Do these solutions provide 100% coverage? Obviously not. But we need to do everything we can, or the government fines start rolling in.
The most significant threat is in the form of web-based exploits against company assets. Attacker crafts a WMF (or fill in the vuln of the week - Powerpoint, Excel, PNG) file with a trojan embedded into it and places it on a Myspace page and spams the URL out to thousands of people. Joe Employee opens it up and IE renders the file and he gets infected. If you have good antivirus filtering on your proxy servers, or an IPS between you and the web, you've partially eliminated that risk, but most companies don't have that, and they instead block access to sites that commonly host malware in that way.
I'm sure there are lazy admins and ignorant executives out there that enforce "all work, eight hours a day, no breaks" policies. They should be thrown into a sweatshop. But claiming you should get full, unfiltered access from your office PC is just foolish - and the company that allows it is itching for a lawsuit or an office full of botnet-owned zombie PC's.
as an owner of both supported mobile devices (the ipod video and the psp) i found it a noble gesture, but ultimately it fails. here's why:
- first, it costs $25 to even enable the feature. their ceo says it's to help pay for the licensing costs... i guess, but it's still too pricey for a simple add-on. divide that number by five and i might consider it. especially when i have to buy a separate license for every PC i run the software from. it should be tied to the device's media access key, IMHO.
- you can't convert stuff you've already transferred over from your tivo to the mobile format. i use my PC as a backup for my tivo - as the DVR runs out of room i move stuff over to the PC and stream it from there if i want to watch it. so the ~30 shows sitting on my PC are gone off my tivo and I can't re-transfer them.
- i can't convert-on-demand. i have to go into the preferences and turn on mobile conversion, and then transfer a show from the tivo. wrong, guys, i should be able to right click on a show from the list and convert on the fly.
- i can't convert to both ipod and psp formats at once. true, i'm a gadget nerd and few probably own both devices, but give me the option instead of leaving it out. i don't get why software developers continually forget that more options = happier consumersx.
- the psp has a 480x272 widescreen. i should be able to render my tivo recordings at that resolution, but output from this app is max 320x240. which will look sad and grainy on my psp.
- they still haven't fixed long transfer times. there's no reason at all that it should take an hour to copy a 1GB file from my tivo to my PC on my 100mbit LAN.
- the transfers take a long time, so if my connection dies during a transfer or i lose power, the software should allow resuming of transfers. nope. restart it and walk away for another hour.
the featureset is tolerable for your average user, but i don't think those are the people downloading this application. consider it statistically - how many people own a Tivo and have a home network? out of those, how many bother to try to transfer shows off of the DVR to their PC? out of those, how many want to convert them for use on one of these two portable devices? the small group of users that fit into this category are likely schmoes like me that shake their head at sub-par functionality.bottom line is, it feels like tivo rushes this type of thing out the door and risks distancing themselves from the only people who are still rooting for them. writers have been sounding their death knell for a while now. where's the series 3 box? are there enough compelling features to push me to upgrade to it, if it ever comes out? what are their engineers and developers doing in their spare time, then, since we haven't seen a new product in eons? do they really not have the available time to write a five star product instead of a weak little three star app that almost cuts it?
fortunately i run mostly windows still so i won't complain about the lack of full OSX support, although i have tried their version of tivo desktop for OSX and it won't even start up on my macbook.
remember, with two free applications (directshowdump and videora/pspvideo9) you can strip out the DRM and render the video at whatever size you want for your portable devices. don't shell out $25 for a DRM-crippled, slow, clunky, low-res solution.
don't forget: a. 1. symantec just got stuck with a $1 billion tax bill. they need a whole lot of settlement cash, and quickly. i bet they've got dozens of guys leafing through all of their patents (and those of the piles of companies they've absorbed) trying to find stuff that's lawsuit-worthy.
and who better to sue than the most famous, most settlement-happy software company in the world?
and i bet more of these patent lawsuits are locked and loaded, too, for when this one finishes up.
Good call. I would mod you up if I hadn't posted. :)
It may be a bit of a stretch, as I'm not sure the software and transfer of information in question is "waving your beliefs in other people's faces" so much as a targeted political party seeking to know how you feel about controversial issues.
That group finding out you disagree with the death penalty may not be the same as upsetting your next door neighbor. That said, the side you bring up is often left out in a political debate - a desire to not piss off everyone around you, which is a rare point of view in this forum. I like that you brought it up.
(disclaimer: insane leftist psycho)
Apparently us liberals are now terrified of anyone knowing our opinions. Yeah, it's bad that there are no privacy concerns in the terms of use, and I'm not surprised that Republicans are trying to hide their underhanded methods of stealing information.
But crap, they aren't getting my social, or the combination to my luggage (12345). Don't you WANT the government to know how you feel on the issues? Isn't that the point of a democratic society? And your boss? Your church? Why be so afraid to think what you think?
I don't know, I guess I can see some people wanting that information private. That can't be the majority view, though...
Tell me how they afford week long downtimes everytime another M$ worm comes out.
This is a key point - downtimes from worms have been reduced to next to nothing because of the security measures that are implemented in organizations. An organization with no security measures in place would probably be miserable and get absolutely nothing done, though, if they had a mostly Windows architecture.
We pay for it one way or the other, though. But simply replacing everything overnight is so completely out of the ballpark of the realm of possibility that it's not even worth being brought up. This is why I assumed you'd never been in a large organization - because, if you had, you'd know that your suggestion of "everyone use Linux" would get you laughed out of the room.
I love all the "fuck you" I'm getting from M$ shills and fanboys. They are all so angry because their stuff does not work and everyone knows it.
I think you might be incorrectly assuming that we're "M$ shills and fanboys". Just because I help administer a Windows environment doesn't mean I enjoy it, or that I'm a fan of Windows. I'm not.
This is the reason, by the way, I assumed you were a younger kid living in your parent's basement. My apologies for the assumption. You might be more successful and convincing in your arguments if you didn't use phrases that kids like that normally use, e.g. "M$", and assume that because someone supports a Windows environment, they're a Microsoft fanboy. For the majority of us, it's just a job, and we're about as excited about supporting Windows as you would be.
Most business functions can be switched to another platform tomorrow, and for those that can't, like I said, it's not like we haven't done this before.
:)
I would disagree with 'most business functions can be switched to another platform tomorrow'. Possibly in small-to-medium businesses (sub-1000 people), but not in larger organizations - too much capital has gone into the systems that are currently in place for them to drop everything and switch client and server OS's and applications in a short period of time.
In any case - I'm also hoping for a transition to a safer, more secure platform that's just as useful to the enterprise. We'll see if Vista is as hole-ridden as the last two versions... fortunately our organization moves so slowly it won't matter until 2010
You're right. Microsoft wrote the last decade of Windows releases with little to no regard for security. Unfortunately most large businesses run some form of them - most on Wormfest 2000 or XP.
So what do we do? My guess is "ok, everyone boot this linux install disc" won't fly, and neither would "here, use this mac mini with none of the software you need, now we're broke from replacing all our hardware". That was what the parent seemed to be suggesting. My apologies if I misinterpreted. The 'Linux or Mac fanboy' comment came from reading some of his other posts in this thread.
So we're faced with responding to this threat, and the result has been to block as many avenues of attack as we can (and there are plenty in Win2K) and patch, patch, patch so that we can protect as much as possible.
It's not the users. Think about it and tell me why you have never heard of such problems in places that use Macs. Don't tell me that it's because graphic designers are better behaved or know more about computers than the rest of us. Well, they do know better than to use computers that need and Administrator like you.
You've never heard of problems in those places because they're four man design shops. You've clearly never been in an enterprise environment. They don't run Macs. They can't afford your overpriced, underpowered machines when they have to be deployed to fifty thousand users. Not that I'm thrilled about Windows, but it's the real world, not your fantasy dream world where everyone runs Debian. You either live in it or sit in your basement and call Microsoft "M$".
I don't know if you're a Linux or a Mac fanboy - from the other comments you've posted in this article, it could go either way. You're right - security would be easier in an environment where everyone ran Linux on the desktop. Then we could all use LDAP for directory and IMAP for mail and we could safely run sendmail from our workstations. But large corporations don't work that way, unfortunately, and if you want a job in this environment, you come to terms with that. Change comes slowly in the enterprise.
Because if we didn't, the same thing would happen eighty times a year instead of once. You do as much as you can. It won't be perfect, but it helps. In most cases it's the difference between a business staying afloat and going under.
Disclaimer: I work on the security team for a rather large (Fortune 5) corporation.
I would say, compare the environment of the public internet to how it was ten years ago. Would you place your unpatched Windows machine directly on the public internet now? You have (roughly) ten minutes before another infected machine exploits one of the dozen out-of-the-box vulnerabilities that will allow them to run anything it wants on your PC. Not the case ten years ago.
Unfortunately, what was once a rather quiet suburb filled with geeks posting to Usenet and using Mosaic is now a post-nuclear, disease filled demilitarized zone where so many infected systems simply sit and try to infect others that a defenseless machine (or a network of them) is doomed.
Trying to manage security in this environment is a much more difficult job than it ever has been, and every month that goes by makes it more difficult. We shudder on the second Tuesday of every month at what new terrifying vulnerability Microsoft will tell us is in their product that's deployed on a hundred thousand machines on our network. We plead with other IT teams (networking, server admins, client admins) to implement our tools and software and protect the environment, but most of them get pushed to the back burner, either because it's "too invasive", i.e. it annoys the end user too much; or it costs too much; or they just don't have the time.
Then MS05-039 is released. We plead and plead for the patches to be distributed right away because of how severe the threat is. But users like the submitter can't stand to have their PC rebooted unless it's the absolute perfect time. Plus, we have 1700+ applications to test compatibility with the patch on, on hundreds of different PC environments. And it requires a service pack we don't have deployed everywhere, again, because it's too invasive.
Then Zotob.E gets into the environment, and shuts down large sites in a matter of minutes. Then people scream even louder! Where is security? Why didn't they prevent this?
Because no one takes security seriously until it's too late.
From a security admin's perspective, we never have enough resources or management support to fully defend against even the most prevalent threats. Because security (and, as most admins know, IT in general) is underfunded. Because of (very real) scenarios like I described above, we have much more support than we did, and things are improving.
I guess my point is, step into our shoes for a few days. We don't enjoy being draconian - we like Google Groups as much as anyone else! But there are so many attack vectors that we have to be concerned about to protect the environment - and it only takes one. One of my co-workers is fond of the saying, "the hackers only have to be lucky once - you have to be lucky all of the time."
I guarantee every IT admin reading this is thinking, well, if you did this instead of that, if you had two hundred guys on your security team, with all of them testing patches, while listening to every end user complaint and rectifying their situation immediately, you could stay out of the end-user's way! Trust me - we know. We wish our teams were as stacked as they should be. Heck, we wish it wasn't necessary at all to have to defend against stuff like WMF, where any end-user clicking on a link from their IM buddy could get exploited in a second... we wish it wasn't like this. We wish things could go back to how they were ten years ago. The reality is, this is the internet we built and we are fighting to protect our assets from.
Then ask to have it removed. Most security groups will not be so strict as to refuse a request for legitimate work-related access to sites like that. I would bet that they have a process in place to review a 'remove this block' type of request and make exceptions. Keep in mind... just because you use Google Groups to find obscure manuals or whatever, doesn't mean that the new marketing intern won't use it to hit up alt.binaries. Most security groups don't employ so-called 'draconian' policies without reason.
"you saying this says more about you than you actually playing these games." You're right. That was really my point: the DS and the PSP are built for different crowds, different gamers with different interests. I don't want to raise a dog, I want to drive 200mph down a highway and knock other cars off the road. The DS is not the system for me in that respect - and that's OK. That's the beauty of the gaming environment nowadays - there's plenty of titles around for everyone, no matter what you like to play. And who knows? I might enjoy Nintendogs if I gave it a chance. I was surprised as heck that my wife liked Burnout. But my other point is that I hope this won't turn into another DS vs. PSP article. People always make this stuff about one system vs. another, who will win, yada yada... it's not like that for gamers who appreciate that some people buy systems for different reasons and enjoy different genres.
As a previous DS owner, I realized a month or two after I bought it that the only reason I'd done so was, simply, I'm a Nintendo fanboy at heart. The console is an innovative idea but for someone who liked the genres that I do, the DS just didn't have the software when I got it in December '04. It didn't when I sold it in February '05. It still doesn't. It won't by the end of the year. A handful of decent titles (WarioWare, Mario 64, Mario Kart, Castlevania) that are all just ports of old games, with the exception of Castlevania... and I couldn't justify holding onto a system for a single good game for one year. My attention span is far too short.
:)
(don't get me started on Metroid Prime: Hunters, what an abomination)
So I sold it back and got a PSP. Sure, the PSP wasn't leaps ahead software-wise when it was released and so far it still isn't. It's also got mostly ports of PS2 titles. But by the end of October I'll have Madden '06, GTA: Liberty City Stories and Burnout: Legends. Next year I'll have Street Fighter Alpha 3. Right now I have a web browser and a very good portable media device on top of the games (with really weak volume, IMHO, or my hearing just sucks).
Slashdot readers and gaming site writers want to make it a one-or-the-other confrontational thing between the two systems, and I guess to a point they compete... but I feel like it's almost apples/oranges. They're not meant for the same target audience, like Nintendo has been saying for years. There's a group of people that will buy the 360 and the PS3, probably Sony/Microsoft's target audience of MTV-addicted ADD kids... and there's a group that'll buy the Revolution, and there'll be some overlap, but it'll be people like me who still have a place in their heart for Zelda / Metroid / Mario titles and people that believe in Nintendo's conceptual vision.
That said... right now Nintendo's conceptual vision doesn't really line up with what I want to play. That's all. If I still owned a DS, right now I'd probably be really excited about Nintendogs and Electroplankton. And I doubt I could look at myself in the mirror without crying.
I know Capcom is releasing the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Cube (i think it's out for the PS2). But maybe the first 3 or 4 (3 is, IMHO, the peak of the series), it'd be excellent to play those portable. 2 and 3, anyway, they just never get old.
I was looking for a pad for just the same purpose. Everyone keeps hyping USB console pad adapters, but I personally like keeping my console pads and my PC pads separate. The only thing I use my PC gamepad for is emulators, so that was critical in buying one. I have to recommend the Logitech Dual Action out of the ones you listed - cheap, durable, easy to set up, feels great, durable (I throw mine around a lot)... did I mention durable? The included software is teh suck so I didn't bother with it. XP found it fine without them. Pick up a few of these and enjoy. EB had em for $10 last I checked.
Go figure. An OS that gets faster with each version.
SPOILERS - but you already knew that.
I've been putting around the matrix-in-a-matrix idea since Wed. night... and it seemed to make the most sense, but then I read this interview with Keanu and he pretty much shoots down both the matrix-in-a-matrix idea and the Neo-is-a-program idea. While it's nice to have confirmation, it still leaves me wondering how he stopped the Sentinals, which I think is really the key to figuring out what's going on.
My theory originally was matrix-in-a-matrix. But now I'm forced to evaluate other possibilities... only thing I can think of is that Neo has some control over the machines he didn't have before. That's either because:
(1) Smith left some 'imprint' on him, in the same way he had an imprint on Smith, and their 'connection' makes it so that Neo can control the machines. This may be how he saves Zion in Revolutions...
(2) another poster in the previous discussion mentioned the 'neo wireless' thing - that Neo can be simultaenously conscious in the matrix & the real world, and that somehow that gives him the ability to stop the machines... or
(3) some program in the Matrix (Persephone, the Architect, Smith) - or simply the fact that he's the One - changed him in the real world (remember the Architect commenting on how "the process has altered your consciousness"?). Now, in the real world, Neo is superhuman because of it. (that one's lame tho).
I gotta say that one of the sweetest things that I think is coming out of this one is the fact that the reason Neo is able to beat the machines and will eventually win is because he makes choices and doesn't accept that purpose/destiny/fate drives him to a predetermined goal, that his choices are what take him to the end he meets. It seems that every 'sentient' program in the matrix continually goes on about how purpose is all that matters - because a program, naturally, is written for one purpose and that's all it knows. Kinda spiffy.
The article talks about how they used Netstumbler on the Ipaq... so of course that sparked my interest. I googled around and couldn't find a PalmOS 802.11b sniffer... and I'd love to play with my Visor/Xircom Wireless combo in the same way.
Anyone know of / developing a PalmOS 802.11b sniffer?
Well you COULD hack your registry, yes.
:)
Or, you could just click into the field in your Internet Time dialog box (where it has time.windows.com and time.nist.gov) and type in the NTP server you'd like to use and click Update Now. Pointed it to my firewall and it worked fine. No sense in doing something the hard way. Especially if you're the pinnacle of laziness like me.