Let's face it, Anonymous Cowards have only proved how innessential they are over the last week. Every post gets at least thirty "ESR isn't rich anymore," and "Use VA stock to wipe your ass" posts. All these posts are saying how Linux is going down, blah blah blah.
So let's look at other markets besides Linux.
Intel, January 3, it was $87, now it's $110.50. Intel is struggling. They can't get their stock very high. They might as well be out of business.
AMD, January 3 it was $31, now it's $66. That's more than double. You had better using Athlons, K6s. Anyone who doesn't is diluting themselves. (Ok, so that remark is true.:))
UPS, January 3, $67+, now it's $55. Federal Express, $42.93+ to $37.25. Shipping packages is obviously a dead market. Anyone who is still shipping packages is a dolt.
Eastman Kodak, January 3, $64.56+, now $61.50. Taking pictures is mildly waning. Take them if you want, but I'm using my eyes still.
It's all pointless. Things go down, they go up (the side which none of the trolls mention). If you are investing for the short term (four months), you are much more likely to get hurt. If you go for the long run (invested the day after the '87 hiccup), you're still way ahead of the game. Personally, I'll blame Clinton for all of this. If the marvelous economy is his doing, so is this downfall of our entire economy (for the weekend at least).
Anyway, time to bump the threshold up to 1 or 2. That takes care of the idiots. There really are fewer and fewer relevant posts in the 0 or -1 arena.
Nope, can't use Windows. Microsoft's stock was up at 120 around January, and now it's collapsed to 74. There is no sense in using something with a stock like this. Apple's been steadily increasing though. There has ben a bit of a drop since March, but nothing big. Everyone go out and get iMacs, now.
Your experiment is flawed in that people won't be very motivated to send that email to you. If I saw it, I'd just think, "Hmm, who cares?" and move on. But a major thing like sending your passwords and stuff to whoever@whoever.com, now that will piss people off (motivate them) and they will fix it, report it, etc.
Well, I think the first sign that this was something bad was from the original article on ZDNet:
The headline subtext: Microsoft engineers placed a password in server software that could be used to gain illicit access to hundreds of thousands of Internet sites worldwine.
Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Thursday that its engineers included in some of its Internet software a secret password...
The manager of Microsoft's security-response center, Steve Lipner, acknowledged the online-security risk in an interview...
By using the so-called back door, a hacker may be able to gain access to key Web-site management files, which could in turn provide a road map to such things as customer credit-card numbers, said security experts who discovered the password.
When you have Microsoft calling it a secret password and an online security risk, I guess people figured it was just that. They assume at least Microsoft did look into it before letting their security-response center manager go to the presses. Then ZD and the experts who discovered it were the ones that stretched it to "hundreds of thousands" of servers and that whole credit-card scheme. Everything with these folks has to end in credit card fraud.
This is how I figure people (including ESR) went to calling it a backdoor. But many of the arguments of closed vs open source regarding security/privacy still stand. We have seen things like Blizzard secretly sending your email and stuff from the registry when you mis-type the CD key. These sort of things can very easily be put into programs, and there's little way to find out except to sniff and the like (not to mention you'll get sued for disassembling it and other freakin' EULA/reverse-engineering crimes). It could happen in the Linux kernel, GCC, Apache, etc., but of all the thousands of eyes looking at the code, someone will find it quicker than someone will find it in closed programs. Someone will become curious about how a specific piece works, gcc will become more strict and error out, etc. Eventually someone will fall into the malicious code. Then it's snip-snip and it's all good again. Not to mention with many projects using CVS and the like, it's not hard to go back and see just who it was that submitted the code, unlike Microsoft's "as-yet-unidentified person."
Because my TVs weigh a lot. It makes it harder to take it wherever I go (the caching side, travel anywhere and read mail, etc) or take it from one room to another (online via wireles lan pcmcia card or somethin). I've got plenty of stationary computer-type things already.
Except modems are quickly becoming useless for gaming. I live in a town where if you draw a circle about 3 miles around my apartment, you have dsl or cable modems. Lucky for me, GTE and MediaOne have no clue if/when either DSL or cable modems will arrive. Anyway, playing many games with my 56k modem is futile. General public servers are overrun with higher speed folk, and well, you stand a much less chance of winning. No matter what the game, what part of the world the server is in, I see the same thing. A group of people with 50ms pings going against a bunch of people with 300ms pings. If you can find that rare server with other modemers, keep it well guarded.;)
How do all these various devices stack up? Seeing how it's going to be a cold day in hell, or 2016, before web pads will exist (besides at these trade shows), do any of them have something like the ability to just download a bunch of stuff, web pages, email, etc and view it elsewhere? Sure it'd be heavenly to have a PCMCIA card i could plug something into, but that just never exists without driving the cost up a few thousand. Those ones that are really wide, are they any good for this? It would seem web browsing would be much easer on those than the palm-like, narrow ones. Heck, they've even ported BSDs and stuff to some of the pads, just text mode, no X server yet.
I'm a bitter old man and want to browse the web from a nice comfy couch. Is there anything, a laptop just seems like overkill for something simple like this...
Regardless of who we blame after the fact, we cannot prevent these increasingly dangerous mistakes, which can harm bystanders.
It's the list server's fault!! And we need waiting periods before lists can go active, and posting locks to prevent children from getting to them. This was just a simple, innocent mail admin. It's not his fault he didn't set up a config file right. ICANN needs to sue the creators of the server so this sort of thing doesn't kill any more children.
I have heard this too, and seen "Fix UDP Masq bugs" in kernel updates. I'm no kernel expert, but many UDP games work fine now (Halflife, UT, etc).
I've seen a lot of people complain about Linux's Masquerading, and that BSD's NAT work is much better. Is there anyone else in the know that can compare them? Does 2.4's Netfilter make Linux better in this regard?
I'd do it, but I'm waiting for the ext3 patch to be ported to 2.3. I can't give it up.:)
Heh, the first step is, "Have the newest 2.0.x kernel sources..." Is it a little outdated?
Many games work quite easily nowadays with no modifying of the IP Masq setup. I've played Halflife, Tribes, Soldier of Fortune, Unreal Tournament just fine. Some things though need redirecting (it seems game companies slowly are getting smarter about this). Myth 1 and 2 were this way, a little sniffing and "ipmasqadm autofw -A -c tcp 6321 -r tcp 3453 3453 -u". This tells the firewall when someone goes out on port TCP/6321 (Myth's user logon), remember their internal IP and redirect port 3453 to them. For these, you're just left at one user per firewall. The games expect to connect at only port 3453 or whatever. They need reprogramming.
There is a mail list talking about this, nat-peer-games. There isn't much traffic nowadays (21 for the year), but it was frequented by Activision folk in the early days. Somewhere around the archives there is detailed information on programming with UDP and how to properly write games that allow multiple people to use it on one NAT/IP Masq box.
There used to be a web site listing several prorgams and their needed ports for redirecting at http://www.tsmservices.com/masq/, but the web server is down now. It seems many new games (especially FPS) allow multiple people (I know Tribes does, it even allows copies of the same CD to be played on servers), but more frequently the servers do some CD key check. So you'll need to buy multiple copies of games.;)
What is it with Netscape and the back button? When I don't care, it goes back just fine and boxes I put stuff in are restored. But those few times I put something really valuable, that potential 5-point post, it erases everything? I mean, what's up with that, huh?
It's not that complicated. I've used my own bookmark system for over a year, and whenever I want to add/search/etc something, I just hit Alt-N in Netscape to pop open a new window at my home page. Netscape's bookmarks are now just my form of Slashdot's submission queue. When I see something I want to keep, I bookmark it. When Netscape's bookmark list gets to be about the height of my monitor, I go through and decide if I really want to keep something and put it in the MySQL database. Netscape's little bookmark bar thing provides another way for getting to the really common sites instantly.
I used Netscape's bookmarks until about the time I had a couple hundred. By then I got tired of the huge menus, forgetting which folder something was in, etc. Most importantly, was I wanted to be able to get to bookmarks when I was on a different computer. Naturally, I turned to MySQL and PHP and came up with a simple Yahoo-esque thing as well. It's very simple and very me-centric, but it gets the job done. A snapshot is available if you really want a look. Everything I need 95% of the time is there, search yahoo, google, ftpsearch, deja, latest news from Slashdot/KDE, my own top 10, linux stocks, my modem's current speed/ip. And I dare say, it shows of my web page makin talent (note the colors).:) It's got all the nifty features like caching (ala Google), tells me how many times a site has been down (easy deleting, "delete from Bookmarks where down_times > 5"), etc.
Anyway, my point is I guess just sit down on night and do it. You get much more enjoyment and use out of something you put your own hard work into.
Tell, where are web pads (let alone ones under $200)? The only things I have been able to find are things like Palmpads. They're still hand-held, so web browsing would be quite tedious (not to mention the price). There is a forum on Ask Slashdot way back on Monday if anyone has real leads. There's many interesting possible devices, especially from the Transmeta announcement, yet nothing reasonable and available today. These companies often go overboard like the Qbe which is an entire computer in a tablet (starting at $4000).
Just give me something I can plug either a CAT5 cable, or better a PCMCIA card (for possible wireless lanning), and surf the web. I don't need it to bake pizzas and clean my bathroom. Keep it simple dammit. When these people overprice themselves like that Qbe, I'd rather spend the money on two moderate real laptops.
I'd say at most a device like this should be $500. But like some in the AS forum talk about, it must be durable enough to stand abuse.
Well, I was over at SecurityFocus and saw a listing in the headlines, "MS admits planting secret password." It's a link to the ZDNet article. Maybe the MS guy slipped and what he really meant was, "it's just a silly string some programmer put it. It does nothing bad to your system. Well, until someone makes that memo I sent out yesterday public."
There's nothing up on microsoft.com about it yet either, which also strikes me as strange.
Why is this strange? For all major mistakes like this, Microsoft has a Standard Operating Procedure. First, it does not exit. This will buy about 16 hours as 99% of reporters just accept what comes out the mouth of those they interview. Second, blame this evil rumor on those damned Linux hippies. Those kids are always up to no good. Source code only leeds to trouble. Third, someone will eventually double-check the bug, so come out with a minor fix. "Well, it's installed that way by default, but you should really check the permissions on this or that yourself." Finally, if people still don't leave you alone, put a nice innocent blurb in the bug database, "Delete the file. Disabling this security feature could render your entire universe unstable. One person did it in their basement and a wormhole was created sucking him and two pals and a singer driving by the street. Hey, if that's the life you want to lead, it's your decision. Our web server still kicks ass of any other closed source competition. Apache doesn't count because it's run by hippies." Or something like that.;)
There's been many a bug discussed over the last few years here on Slashdot. Pretty much every time there's 10-14 days from the time it's mentioned on Bugtraq or other security web site to the time Microsoft admits to it, because they must follow this SOP.
Heh, maybe I could put together some posts about Open Source and Columbine and sell them to ya. It'll have to be more than $1/point though. Slashdot is a virtual community, so why not?
Ah yes, the general public. These are the same people that heard for six straight months that the Columbine kids played Doom. Therefore, overclocking leads to Doom, Doom leads to killing classmates. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm gonna have to write a letter to my congressman to have this stopped. It's killing our children!
Back in those days, motherboards only had the two jumpers for multiplier settings. Then you had to go and wire a couple pins under the cpu socket to activate the third set and get multipliers up to like 7. 83.3 * 3.5 was the limit those motherboard makers put on the boards.
These kids nowadays, lemme tell ya. They just go into their fancy, schmancy BIOS and select a new setting from a purty menu. It's just not right, I tell ya. It's just not right...
Well, seeing as technical stuff with computers are pretty much a male thing, of course they overclock them. But don't get me wrong, women have their competitive side as well. You have people like Julia Childs or Martha Stewart finding new ways to make me a better pie, or make some ornament out of pine cones, dirt and a pretty piece of lace. If Martha can IPO from that, you could too.
Trust me, if only one company in the US made resistors, you would see them suing people for filing them down.:) The current market has this overall sense that whatever the big companies want, they get. So we have this DVD thing, only blessed companies can make a player, and you can only watch your country's movies. All software EULAs are terribly overridden with "If you do anything but what this company says you will die!" So it's only natural Intel joins in and says, "You will pay what I want you to pay for what speed I decide you should have." The sad thing is most mopes just allow it. There is no huge outcry that things you buy are actually yours to do with what you want.
The thing with automobiles is they were invented long before this mindset came into play, back in the day when buying something meant it was yours. But, when some new type of car is invented, a flying one maybe, you can rest assured opening the hood will cause several black helicopters to pull up beside you and shoot you down. All they would have to do is say out one oriface, "It's for your own safety. We can't have these crackpots souping up their Carplanes. They'll run into you and kill you! Oh and take your Carplane to an authorized dealer every 2 days for proper tuneup." (Threaten, demonize, destroy.)
So, once you askew your mindset to this way of thinking, of course it is "ripping off" Intel. Intel is this innocent, benevolent computer maker. They just want to earn an honest buck. When you go buy that Celeron/300 and run it at 500, Intel loses bazillions. If you keep it up they will go out of business. Then we will not have ANY computers. How would you like that, huh? (Oh yes, going to the furthest extreme is also a useful argument for your side.)
Slashdot Mirror
Let's face it, Anonymous Cowards have only proved how innessential they are over the last week. Every post gets at least thirty "ESR isn't rich anymore," and "Use VA stock to wipe your ass" posts. All these posts are saying how Linux is going down, blah blah blah.
:))
So let's look at other markets besides Linux.
Intel, January 3, it was $87, now it's $110.50. Intel is struggling. They can't get their stock very high. They might as well be out of business.
AMD, January 3 it was $31, now it's $66. That's more than double. You had better using Athlons, K6s. Anyone who doesn't is diluting themselves. (Ok, so that remark is true.
UPS, January 3, $67+, now it's $55. Federal Express, $42.93+ to $37.25. Shipping packages is obviously a dead market. Anyone who is still shipping packages is a dolt.
Eastman Kodak, January 3, $64.56+, now $61.50. Taking pictures is mildly waning. Take them if you want, but I'm using my eyes still.
It's all pointless. Things go down, they go up (the side which none of the trolls mention). If you are investing for the short term (four months), you are much more likely to get hurt. If you go for the long run (invested the day after the '87 hiccup), you're still way ahead of the game. Personally, I'll blame Clinton for all of this. If the marvelous economy is his doing, so is this downfall of our entire economy (for the weekend at least).
Anyway, time to bump the threshold up to 1 or 2. That takes care of the idiots. There really are fewer and fewer relevant posts in the 0 or -1 arena.
Nope, can't use Windows. Microsoft's stock was up at 120 around January, and now it's collapsed to 74. There is no sense in using something with a stock like this. Apple's been steadily increasing though. There has ben a bit of a drop since March, but nothing big. Everyone go out and get iMacs, now.
Your experiment is flawed in that people won't be very motivated to send that email to you. If I saw it, I'd just think, "Hmm, who cares?" and move on. But a major thing like sending your passwords and stuff to whoever@whoever.com, now that will piss people off (motivate them) and they will fix it, report it, etc.
Well, I think the first sign that this was something bad was from the original article on ZDNet:
The headline subtext: Microsoft engineers placed a password in server software that could be used to gain illicit access to hundreds of thousands of Internet sites worldwine.
Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Thursday that its engineers included in some of its Internet software a secret password...
The manager of Microsoft's security-response center, Steve Lipner, acknowledged the online-security risk in an interview...
By using the so-called back door, a hacker may be able to gain access to key Web-site management files, which could in turn provide a road map to such things as customer credit-card numbers, said security experts who discovered the password.
When you have Microsoft calling it a secret password and an online security risk, I guess people figured it was just that. They assume at least Microsoft did look into it before letting their security-response center manager go to the presses. Then ZD and the experts who discovered it were the ones that stretched it to "hundreds of thousands" of servers and that whole credit-card scheme. Everything with these folks has to end in credit card fraud.
This is how I figure people (including ESR) went to calling it a backdoor. But many of the arguments of closed vs open source regarding security/privacy still stand. We have seen things like Blizzard secretly sending your email and stuff from the registry when you mis-type the CD key. These sort of things can very easily be put into programs, and there's little way to find out except to sniff and the like (not to mention you'll get sued for disassembling it and other freakin' EULA/reverse-engineering crimes). It could happen in the Linux kernel, GCC, Apache, etc., but of all the thousands of eyes looking at the code, someone will find it quicker than someone will find it in closed programs. Someone will become curious about how a specific piece works, gcc will become more strict and error out, etc. Eventually someone will fall into the malicious code. Then it's snip-snip and it's all good again. Not to mention with many projects using CVS and the like, it's not hard to go back and see just who it was that submitted the code, unlike Microsoft's "as-yet-unidentified person."
Because my TVs weigh a lot. It makes it harder to take it wherever I go (the caching side, travel anywhere and read mail, etc) or take it from one room to another (online via wireles lan pcmcia card or somethin). I've got plenty of stationary computer-type things already.
Except modems are quickly becoming useless for gaming. I live in a town where if you draw a circle about 3 miles around my apartment, you have dsl or cable modems. Lucky for me, GTE and MediaOne have no clue if/when either DSL or cable modems will arrive. Anyway, playing many games with my 56k modem is futile. General public servers are overrun with higher speed folk, and well, you stand a much less chance of winning. No matter what the game, what part of the world the server is in, I see the same thing. A group of people with 50ms pings going against a bunch of people with 300ms pings. If you can find that rare server with other modemers, keep it well guarded. ;)
How do all these various devices stack up? Seeing how it's going to be a cold day in hell, or 2016, before web pads will exist (besides at these trade shows), do any of them have something like the ability to just download a bunch of stuff, web pages, email, etc and view it elsewhere? Sure it'd be heavenly to have a PCMCIA card i could plug something into, but that just never exists without driving the cost up a few thousand. Those ones that are really wide, are they any good for this? It would seem web browsing would be much easer on those than the palm-like, narrow ones. Heck, they've even ported BSDs and stuff to some of the pads, just text mode, no X server yet.
I'm a bitter old man and want to browse the web from a nice comfy couch. Is there anything, a laptop just seems like overkill for something simple like this...
Regardless of who we blame after the fact, we cannot prevent these increasingly dangerous mistakes, which can harm bystanders.
It's the list server's fault!! And we need waiting periods before lists can go active, and posting locks to prevent children from getting to them. This was just a simple, innocent mail admin. It's not his fault he didn't set up a config file right. ICANN needs to sue the creators of the server so this sort of thing doesn't kill any more children.
yeah.
# for Dialpad.com
:)
ipmasqadm autofw -A -r tcp 51210 51210 -h 10.0.0.2
ipmasqadm autofw -A -r udp 51200 51201 -h 10.0.0.2
This is the simple, forward-it-to-one-box approach, but it works. You can pass the microphone around for multiple users.
I have heard this too, and seen "Fix UDP Masq bugs" in kernel updates. I'm no kernel expert, but many UDP games work fine now (Halflife, UT, etc).
:)
I've seen a lot of people complain about Linux's Masquerading, and that BSD's NAT work is much better. Is there anyone else in the know that can compare them? Does 2.4's Netfilter make Linux better in this regard?
I'd do it, but I'm waiting for the ext3 patch to be ported to 2.3. I can't give it up.
Heh, the first step is, "Have the newest 2.0.x kernel sources..." Is it a little outdated?
;)
Many games work quite easily nowadays with no modifying of the IP Masq setup. I've played Halflife, Tribes, Soldier of Fortune, Unreal Tournament just fine. Some things though need redirecting (it seems game companies slowly are getting smarter about this). Myth 1 and 2 were this way, a little sniffing and "ipmasqadm autofw -A -c tcp 6321 -r tcp 3453 3453 -u". This tells the firewall when someone goes out on port TCP/6321 (Myth's user logon), remember their internal IP and redirect port 3453 to them. For these, you're just left at one user per firewall. The games expect to connect at only port 3453 or whatever. They need reprogramming.
There is a mail list talking about this, nat-peer-games. There isn't much traffic nowadays (21 for the year), but it was frequented by Activision folk in the early days. Somewhere around the archives there is detailed information on programming with UDP and how to properly write games that allow multiple people to use it on one NAT/IP Masq box.
There used to be a web site listing several prorgams and their needed ports for redirecting at http://www.tsmservices.com/masq/, but the web server is down now. It seems many new games (especially FPS) allow multiple people (I know Tribes does, it even allows copies of the same CD to be played on servers), but more frequently the servers do some CD key check. So you'll need to buy multiple copies of games.
Sometimes... But usually when that happens, it re-submits the now blank fields and voila.
hit your back button after the preview...
What is it with Netscape and the back button? When I don't care, it goes back just fine and boxes I put stuff in are restored. But those few times I put something really valuable, that potential 5-point post, it erases everything? I mean, what's up with that, huh?
It's not that complicated. I've used my own bookmark system for over a year, and whenever I want to add/search/etc something, I just hit Alt-N in Netscape to pop open a new window at my home page. Netscape's bookmarks are now just my form of Slashdot's submission queue. When I see something I want to keep, I bookmark it. When Netscape's bookmark list gets to be about the height of my monitor, I go through and decide if I really want to keep something and put it in the MySQL database. Netscape's little bookmark bar thing provides another way for getting to the really common sites instantly.
I used Netscape's bookmarks until about the time I had a couple hundred. By then I got tired of the huge menus, forgetting which folder something was in, etc. Most importantly, was I wanted to be able to get to bookmarks when I was on a different computer. Naturally, I turned to MySQL and PHP and came up with a simple Yahoo-esque thing as well. It's very simple and very me-centric, but it gets the job done. A snapshot is available if you really want a look. Everything I need 95% of the time is there, search yahoo, google, ftpsearch, deja, latest news from Slashdot/KDE, my own top 10, linux stocks, my modem's current speed/ip. And I dare say, it shows of my web page makin talent (note the colors). :) It's got all the nifty features like caching (ala Google), tells me how many times a site has been down (easy deleting, "delete from Bookmarks where down_times > 5"), etc.
Anyway, my point is I guess just sit down on night and do it. You get much more enjoyment and use out of something you put your own hard work into.
Tell, where are web pads (let alone ones under $200)? The only things I have been able to find are things like Palmpads. They're still hand-held, so web browsing would be quite tedious (not to mention the price). There is a forum on Ask Slashdot way back on Monday if anyone has real leads. There's many interesting possible devices, especially from the Transmeta announcement, yet nothing reasonable and available today. These companies often go overboard like the Qbe which is an entire computer in a tablet (starting at $4000).
Just give me something I can plug either a CAT5 cable, or better a PCMCIA card (for possible wireless lanning), and surf the web. I don't need it to bake pizzas and clean my bathroom. Keep it simple dammit. When these people overprice themselves like that Qbe, I'd rather spend the money on two moderate real laptops.
I'd say at most a device like this should be $500. But like some in the AS forum talk about, it must be durable enough to stand abuse.
Well, I was over at SecurityFocus and saw a listing in the headlines, "MS admits planting secret password." It's a link to the ZDNet article. Maybe the MS guy slipped and what he really meant was, "it's just a silly string some programmer put it. It does nothing bad to your system. Well, until someone makes that memo I sent out yesterday public."
There's nothing up on microsoft.com about it yet either, which also strikes me as strange.
;)
Why is this strange? For all major mistakes like this, Microsoft has a Standard Operating Procedure. First, it does not exit. This will buy about 16 hours as 99% of reporters just accept what comes out the mouth of those they interview. Second, blame this evil rumor on those damned Linux hippies. Those kids are always up to no good. Source code only leeds to trouble. Third, someone will eventually double-check the bug, so come out with a minor fix. "Well, it's installed that way by default, but you should really check the permissions on this or that yourself." Finally, if people still don't leave you alone, put a nice innocent blurb in the bug database, "Delete the file. Disabling this security feature could render your entire universe unstable. One person did it in their basement and a wormhole was created sucking him and two pals and a singer driving by the street. Hey, if that's the life you want to lead, it's your decision. Our web server still kicks ass of any other closed source competition. Apache doesn't count because it's run by hippies." Or something like that.
There's been many a bug discussed over the last few years here on Slashdot. Pretty much every time there's 10-14 days from the time it's mentioned on Bugtraq or other security web site to the time Microsoft admits to it, because they must follow this SOP.
Heh, maybe I could put together some posts about Open Source and Columbine and sell them to ya. It'll have to be more than $1/point though. Slashdot is a virtual community, so why not?
I've overclocked my CPU. Now how do I get the FPS from vim? I can already see an improvement in the speed in which I program things.
Ah yes, the general public. These are the same people that heard for six straight months that the Columbine kids played Doom. Therefore, overclocking leads to Doom, Doom leads to killing classmates. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm gonna have to write a letter to my congressman to have this stopped. It's killing our children!
Back in those days, motherboards only had the two jumpers for multiplier settings. Then you had to go and wire a couple pins under the cpu socket to activate the third set and get multipliers up to like 7. 83.3 * 3.5 was the limit those motherboard makers put on the boards.
These kids nowadays, lemme tell ya. They just go into their fancy, schmancy BIOS and select a new setting from a purty menu. It's just not right, I tell ya. It's just not right...
Well, seeing as technical stuff with computers are pretty much a male thing, of course they overclock them. But don't get me wrong, women have their competitive side as well. You have people like Julia Childs or Martha Stewart finding new ways to make me a better pie, or make some ornament out of pine cones, dirt and a pretty piece of lace. If Martha can IPO from that, you could too.
Trust me, if only one company in the US made resistors, you would see them suing people for filing them down. :) The current market has this overall sense that whatever the big companies want, they get. So we have this DVD thing, only blessed companies can make a player, and you can only watch your country's movies. All software EULAs are terribly overridden with "If you do anything but what this company says you will die!" So it's only natural Intel joins in and says, "You will pay what I want you to pay for what speed I decide you should have." The sad thing is most mopes just allow it. There is no huge outcry that things you buy are actually yours to do with what you want.
The thing with automobiles is they were invented long before this mindset came into play, back in the day when buying something meant it was yours. But, when some new type of car is invented, a flying one maybe, you can rest assured opening the hood will cause several black helicopters to pull up beside you and shoot you down. All they would have to do is say out one oriface, "It's for your own safety. We can't have these crackpots souping up their Carplanes. They'll run into you and kill you! Oh and take your Carplane to an authorized dealer every 2 days for proper tuneup." (Threaten, demonize, destroy.)
So, once you askew your mindset to this way of thinking, of course it is "ripping off" Intel. Intel is this innocent, benevolent computer maker. They just want to earn an honest buck. When you go buy that Celeron/300 and run it at 500, Intel loses bazillions. If you keep it up they will go out of business. Then we will not have ANY computers. How would you like that, huh? (Oh yes, going to the furthest extreme is also a useful argument for your side.)