> On MacOS X, user processes pop up a dialog box asking for an administration password when installing new software.
And users react in one of two ways, if not both:
a) they routinely put in the password for everything b) they bitch about "this is stupid, why can't it be like windows where I never have to enter a password" and if they're really troublesome, they'll find a program that will enter their password FOR them
This is the same reason I roll my eyes at "Linux has user accounts and only one root so it is perfectly secure" posts. Most people would then run, day-to-day, as root. People would still install every trojan horsed piece of shit that comes along.
It doesn't matter how many locks you have if you hate unlocking them, so you leave them open.
> I can't wait to see what will happen soon after this.
I can tell you. Eventually, we'll be down to the following rules:
PERMIT port 80 to ANY dest PERMIT port 21 to ANY dest PERMIT port 25 to ISP-IP-RANGE PERMIT port 53 to ISP-IP-RANGE PERMIT port 110 to ISP-IP-RANGE PERMIT port 119 to ISP-IP-RANGE/* I think this is netnews */ ! note implicit deny all
(plus whatever else they decide to allow us... 22, 6669, etc)
Techies will scream to the ISP and be singled out as "potential hackers". Joe Average and L. User won't notice until it breaks something, at which point they'll run programs that promise to "unlock" or "enable" their 'net connection (much like the "speed up" programs today that just preload everything or open 50 simult sessions) that will tunnel everything over port 80.
Eventually, no ISP will offer DHCP-yourself-an-IP-and-go service. Instead, they will all be pushing "Connection enhancers" like the AOL client. These programs (Windows and Mac only, with the Windows client working better and the Mac client looking better. SOHO router? Linux? Welcome to shit creek, no paddles allowed) will install their own custom network/dial-up drivers and "monitor" your system for "unauthorized software."
Then someone will discover a vuln in these overengineered spyware suites and things will *really* get silly...
"The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers." -- Leia Organa to Darth Vader.
>> their infected pirated Windows boxes impact non-pirates everywhere."
> Umm except for that non-pirates can apply the patches which means they won't be infected
"Impact", not "infect".
> I'm on OS X and microsoft pirates not being able to patch hasn't hurt me any,
Oh really? What about slow 'net connections from all the worm traffic? What about all the infected emails that you get sent? What about the DDoS as wormed machines try to infect your machine?
Just because you haven't been infected, doesn't mean you're not affected.
> Alton's funky-ass approach to cooking somehow engages the geek mind?
Of course it does! It's scientific, it's systematic, it uses cool gadgets, it has nifty visual aids, a few running gags (W, the Angry French Chef) and it avoids just being a formula cooking show with a bunch of gimmick episodes: the faux morning show, Scrap Iron Chef, Down & Out in the Tropics, the muffin show.
Yes, IRC, along somewhat with newsgroups, form the sort of back streets and dirty alleys that people find sort of distasteful. And yes, pretty much anything you might care to want is there on IRC or USENET for the taking, whether copied games or copied media or porn.
Or, friends you never met, meeting nightly to commiserate and socialize, or to trade tips on their favorite games, or just to let common interests bring them together.
That's what this whole internet thing was built for in the first place - communication *between* *people*. (True, people at universities and in the military, but...) Not sitting passively in front of the computer having a corporate content pipe shoved down your throat.
Simple. DRM in BIOSes at the hardware level. Attacks on Linux via SCO etc at the OS level. FUD, loathing, and lock-in at the applications level. Patents, DRM, EULAs and DMCA at the legal level.
Remember the hidden APIs in Windows 3.x? They'll be at it again. Even better, Microsoft could put in "Trusted Computing safeguards" so they can Trust that only Microsoft's applications suite, IDE, etc will run. Bypass these safeguards, and it's charges under the DMCA and 20 years in max security prison as an evil godless communist hippie software pirate terrorist hacker for you, buddy!
Oh, and meanwhile they'll sue you for breaking the clause buried in the Longhorn EULA where you agree to only install Microsoft applications. Good luck in fighting off their army of rabid jackals with law degrees.
> People, Businesses, Universities, and others will not be able to afford to upgrade their systems to use Longhorn.
Can they afford not to? Since Office Longhorn will (because of Trusted Computing again) only run on Windows Longhorn, and will have incompatible file formats with any previous version, and after a certain date they'll only ship Longhorn, once you buy one new machine, you have to replace them all. (They've done it before, remember?) Intel, AMD, NVidia, and ATi, among others, will love them for forcing the installation of the latest CPUs and graphics cards even in the office. Intel and AMD, in particular, will be ecstatic to add the "features" to their CPUs that will help Microsoft to do all this.
Over the last few years, it's seemed Microsoft has this plan: Make consumers believe that lock-ups and crashes are normal consequences of owning a computer and not a result of poor OS design. Make them believe that viruses and other malware are normal consequences of surfing the internet and not a result of poor browser design. Make them believe that you really do need a 2 GHz chip to run the OS and a word processor (plus a top of the line graphics card for that paperclip). Make them believe that the only thing that can replace Windows, Office or Microsoft anything else is the next version, that nothing else is an "enterprise ready solution". In short, take credit for everything good that happens, and shift blame for everything bad onto something else.
And we here on/. know better than anything I said in the last paragraph. We can see what Microsoft is trying to do. Hell, they've told the world! One Microsoft Way. It's not just their business address, it's their business strategy. We know that Gates and his minions, along with the ??AA and Congress, have possibly already won this. Have possibly already crippled the most important technological advance in history - the general-purpose home computer - and turned it into a content pipe to drain our wallets while only letting us run what they allow us. On the machines we buy and pay for! We see what's happening, but we're the minority. (I for one have been in the minority all my life. one light, one mind, flashing in the dark, blinded by the silence of a thousand broken hearts...) And when we try to tell people about this, they think we're raving paranoid lunatics.
Maybe that's the clearest sign that Micros~1 has won.
Microsoft Windows Longhorn. Projected Release Date: 1984.
-- I have a 40GB 3COM NAS (3Com Office Connect Network Storage Server) which is a great device with just one problem: 40GB is not quite enough:-) Since it uses a normal 3,5" harddisk i'm wondering what it would take to change the HDs. I think there is a hidden partition on the disk that contains the OS for the box. -- I've been spending a bit of time hacking on a Tritton-made NAS, pulling the supplied 120 gb / 2 meg cache drive and replacing it with a 250 gb 8 meg cache drive.
First thing you should do is crack it open, pull the drive, and mount it in your local Linux box. (You *do* have a local Linux box, right? If not, the new Knoppix just came out...)
Use that to poke around the disk's partitions. If there is a hidden partition, no prob, you just have to partition the new drive similiarly and copy over the hidden one. Also note what filesystem the old drive is formatted for.
Get a scratch drive out, try formatting it in that fs, copy anything you found on the old one to the new one, pop it back in, and hope.
May be Tyrian, Duke3d, GTA1 and SimCity 2000. All the rest, while influencial and interesting at their time, either pale in comparision with modern games or have fatal flaws like outdated user interfaces.
You're citing Duke3d as a game which *doesn't* "pale in comparision with modern games"?
Yes, but I'm not going to tie up my main machine (P4 1.6@2.4, 9600xt, 1 gig memory, 330 gigs of disk) playing Tyrian.
I mean, that would be silly.
Although some of the obvious omissions from the list (Monkey Island 4 and Doom for instance) are *not* on that machine *because* they're on the main one.
Don't tell me what you're putting in my lunch box Don't tell me what you're feeding me today, Don't fill my head with trouble while I'm scarfin' down a cheese soufflé
I wanna be a new original creation: a cross between a moose, a monkey and a fig I'm ready Monsanto let me be your guinea pig
'Cos the seed we sew ain't good enough the earth we plow it ain't good enough the food we grow, well it's never been up to scratch
the geezer with the beard and all the angels made a few mistakes, I don't know why we don't need him anymore if we genetically modify
so don't tell me what you're puttin in my lunch box I got a crazy pioneering attitude don't bother me with labels
Gotta get a belly full of Frankenfood... Gotta get a belly full of Frankenfood... Gotta get a belly full of Frankenfood...
Be exactly eight characters in length. (isn't this LESS secure than variable length passwords?) Contain at least one upper case letter. Contain at lease one lower case letter. Contain at least one number. Contain NO names or dictionary words. Not be a password you have used in the last year.
Now I fully understand the need for security, but seriously, try to quickly come up with a password meeting the above criteria that you'll be able to remember!
Certainly.
'ygm6dfoH'.
Confused? Okay, I'll explain. I memorize a LOT of song lyrics. So I just took the song I'm listening to right now - Pop Will Eat Itself - Wise Up Sucker! - and typed out the lyric line I was on.
"...at the sound of the bell, an act you know so well, you give me sixteen different flavours of Hell, say it's love that you need, it's war that you got, but you want to live your life and 'to have' not 'to have not'..."
Need a number. Need eight characters.
"you give me sixteen different flavours of Hell" -> 'ygm6dfoH'. Easy. And I just associate the song with the site/machine/account/whatever.
Okay, so that one was easy, because I got handed the number and a capital letter.
Next song. Bad Religion - The Defense.
"...no peace (no peace), and no friends (no friends) / we trace the mortal edge (with no defense) / to state the obvious: this world is perilous for us / no sense (no sense) and no guide (no guide) / ain't it beautiful to be alive (yeah, right) / i won't resign before the struggle ends..."
Need eight characters, one digit, at least one of each case. "ain't it beautiful to be alive yeah right" -> 'aibtbayr' -> capitalize first letter, digitize last -> r becomes 2 -> 'Aibtbay2'.
There. Two passwords that follow the rules and are quite easy for me to remember.
He didn't say 'lousy', he said 'lossy'. Two different things.
And thank you for that sideways implication that only "Open Source zealot[s]" recognize that ogg is technically superior, both in terms of less-size-for-equal-quality and better-quality-for-equal-size, so your insular little mind can automatically dismiss anyone who brings these facts up as a 'zealot'.
At least you didn't misspell it "Open Sores." Guess we should be grateful for small mercies.
> [H]ave you played "Metroid:Zero Mission" for the GBA? Its the first game with redone graphics and such.
No, it's not. If it were, it would be something like Super Mario All Stars. M:0M is more like the Star Wars style Special Edition of NES Metroid; ie, "the technology (read: game engine) has advanced to the point where we can show you what 'really' happened".
Not that M:0M is a bad game, but it is not simply the first game with better graphics, as your post seems to imply.
Slashdot Mirror
> On MacOS X, user processes pop up a dialog box asking for an administration password when installing new software.
And users react in one of two ways, if not both:
a) they routinely put in the password for everything
b) they bitch about "this is stupid, why can't it be like windows where I never have to enter a password" and if they're really troublesome, they'll find a program that will enter their password FOR them
This is the same reason I roll my eyes at "Linux has user accounts and only one root so it is perfectly secure" posts. Most people would then run, day-to-day, as root. People would still install every trojan horsed piece of shit that comes along.
It doesn't matter how many locks you have if you hate unlocking them, so you leave them open.
> I happened across a few sites this week which used mozilla's own installer to load up some juicy spyware/adware[...] I [...] clicked yes
So go to about:config and turn off XPI. If there's something you need to install, explicitly turn it on, install, then turn it off.
Yes, it's a pain, but it's better than "[spending] 30 or so minutes with spybot, adware, and manual deletion."
> I can't wait to see what will happen soon after this.
/* I think this is netnews */
I can tell you. Eventually, we'll be down to the following rules:
PERMIT port 80 to ANY dest
PERMIT port 21 to ANY dest
PERMIT port 25 to ISP-IP-RANGE
PERMIT port 53 to ISP-IP-RANGE
PERMIT port 110 to ISP-IP-RANGE
PERMIT port 119 to ISP-IP-RANGE
! note implicit deny all
(plus whatever else they decide to allow us... 22, 6669, etc)
Techies will scream to the ISP and be singled out as "potential hackers". Joe Average and L. User won't notice until it breaks something, at which point they'll run programs that promise to "unlock" or "enable" their 'net connection (much like the "speed up" programs today that just preload everything or open 50 simult sessions) that will tunnel everything over port 80.
Eventually, no ISP will offer DHCP-yourself-an-IP-and-go service. Instead, they will all be pushing "Connection enhancers" like the AOL client. These programs (Windows and Mac only, with the Windows client working better and the Mac client looking better. SOHO router? Linux? Welcome to shit creek, no paddles allowed) will install their own custom network/dial-up drivers and "monitor" your system for "unauthorized software."
Then someone will discover a vuln in these overengineered spyware suites and things will *really* get silly...
"The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers."
-- Leia Organa to Darth Vader.
>> their infected pirated Windows boxes impact non-pirates everywhere."
> Umm except for that non-pirates can apply the patches which means they won't be infected
"Impact", not "infect".
> I'm on OS X and microsoft pirates not being able to patch hasn't hurt me any,
Oh really? What about slow 'net connections from all the worm traffic? What about all the infected emails that you get sent? What about the DDoS as wormed machines try to infect your machine?
Just because you haven't been infected, doesn't mean you're not affected.
Happiness derived from a life of living according to reason. Shouldn't be *too* hard to find *that* at a Uni.
Suggestion:
>> and it avoids just being a formula cooking show with a bunch of gimmick episodes
> And don't forget the classic Blair Witch parody, which was probably the only one ever that was funny.
ERROR: Uncaught thrown exception (Ambiguous backreference: "the only one ever")
The only gimmick ep or the only Blair Witch parody that was funny?
> Alton's funky-ass approach to cooking somehow engages the geek mind?
Of course it does! It's scientific, it's systematic, it uses cool gadgets, it has nifty visual aids, a few running gags (W, the Angry French Chef) and it avoids just being a formula cooking show with a bunch of gimmick episodes: the faux morning show, Scrap Iron Chef, Down & Out in the Tropics, the muffin show.
Yes, IRC, along somewhat with newsgroups, form the sort of back streets and dirty alleys that people find sort of distasteful. And yes, pretty much anything you might care to want is there on IRC or USENET for the taking, whether copied games or copied media or porn.
Or, friends you never met, meeting nightly to commiserate and socialize, or to trade tips on their favorite games, or just to let common interests bring them together.
That's what this whole internet thing was built for in the first place - communication *between* *people*. (True, people at universities and in the military, but...) Not sitting passively in front of the computer having a corporate content pipe shoved down your throat.
Yes, 99 was the first year C++ was used. I took it that year as well.
Yeah, but it's 5400 RPM. In a word: EWW.
But I can walk into a store and walk out with a terabyte of disk. I can't do that with anything else on that list.
> How does Microsoft Intend to Survive?
/. know better than anything I said in the last paragraph. We can see what Microsoft is trying to do. Hell, they've told the world! One Microsoft Way. It's not just their business address, it's their business strategy. We know that Gates and his minions, along with the ??AA and Congress, have possibly already won this. Have possibly already crippled the most important technological advance in history - the general-purpose home computer - and turned it into a content pipe to drain our wallets while only letting us run what they allow us. On the machines we buy and pay for! We see what's happening, but we're the minority. (I for one have been in the minority all my life. one light, one mind, flashing in the dark, blinded by the silence of a thousand broken hearts...) And when we try to tell people about this, they think we're raving paranoid lunatics.
Simple. DRM in BIOSes at the hardware level. Attacks on Linux via SCO etc at the OS level. FUD, loathing, and lock-in at the applications level. Patents, DRM, EULAs and DMCA at the legal level.
Remember the hidden APIs in Windows 3.x? They'll be at it again. Even better, Microsoft could put in "Trusted Computing safeguards" so they can Trust that only Microsoft's applications suite, IDE, etc will run. Bypass these safeguards, and it's charges under the DMCA and 20 years in max security prison as an evil godless communist hippie software pirate terrorist hacker for you, buddy!
Oh, and meanwhile they'll sue you for breaking the clause buried in the Longhorn EULA where you agree to only install Microsoft applications. Good luck in fighting off their army of rabid jackals with law degrees.
> People, Businesses, Universities, and others will not be able to afford to upgrade their systems to use Longhorn.
Can they afford not to? Since Office Longhorn will (because of Trusted Computing again) only run on Windows Longhorn, and will have incompatible file formats with any previous version, and after a certain date they'll only ship Longhorn, once you buy one new machine, you have to replace them all. (They've done it before, remember?) Intel, AMD, NVidia, and ATi, among others, will love them for forcing the installation of the latest CPUs and graphics cards even in the office. Intel and AMD, in particular, will be ecstatic to add the "features" to their CPUs that will help Microsoft to do all this.
Over the last few years, it's seemed Microsoft has this plan: Make consumers believe that lock-ups and crashes are normal consequences of owning a computer and not a result of poor OS design. Make them believe that viruses and other malware are normal consequences of surfing the internet and not a result of poor browser design. Make them believe that you really do need a 2 GHz chip to run the OS and a word processor (plus a top of the line graphics card for that paperclip). Make them believe that the only thing that can replace Windows, Office or Microsoft anything else is the next version, that nothing else is an "enterprise ready solution". In short, take credit for everything good that happens, and shift blame for everything bad onto something else.
And we here on
Maybe that's the clearest sign that Micros~1 has won.
Microsoft Windows Longhorn. Projected Release Date: 1984.
> 2GB of RAM and 1 terabyte of disk space
Hey, that's not the outlandish part. I've got 1 GB RAM here, and if I cared to drop about $500, I could lay my hands on a TB of disk.
The 4-6 GHz chip and the graphics card are the scary parts...
-- :-)
I have a 40GB 3COM NAS (3Com Office Connect Network Storage Server) which is a great device with just one problem: 40GB is not quite enough
Since it uses a normal 3,5" harddisk i'm wondering what it would take to change the HDs. I think there is a hidden partition on the disk that contains the OS for the box.
--
I've been spending a bit of time hacking on a Tritton-made NAS, pulling the supplied 120 gb / 2 meg cache drive and replacing it with a 250 gb 8 meg cache drive.
First thing you should do is crack it open, pull the drive, and mount it in your local Linux box. (You *do* have a local Linux box, right? If not, the new Knoppix just came out...)
Use that to poke around the disk's partitions. If there is a hidden partition, no prob, you just have to partition the new drive similiarly and copy over the hidden one. Also note what filesystem the old drive is formatted for.
Get a scratch drive out, try formatting it in that fs, copy anything you found on the old one to the new one, pop it back in, and hope.
If by funniest you mean horribly horribly disturbing and nauseating.
You're citing Duke3d as a game which *doesn't* "pale in comparision with modern games"?
Yes, but I'm not going to tie up my main machine (P4 1.6@2.4, 9600xt, 1 gig memory, 330 gigs of disk) playing Tyrian.
I mean, that would be silly.
Although some of the obvious omissions from the list (Monkey Island 4 and Doom for instance) are *not* on that machine *because* they're on the main one.
> It is now 2004. This is a operating system from 1998. WTF?
/mnt/win/games, ls.
I can tell you what the fuck, by ssh'ing over into my Lin/Win98 dual boot machine, cd
Duke3d, Fox Ranger, Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist, God of Thunder, GTA 1, Keen 1-6, Keen Dreams, Kilrathi Saga, King's Quest 6, Loom, Master of Magic, Monkey Island 1-3, Night Raid, Raptor, SimCity, SimCity 2000, Solar Winds 1 & 2, Space Quest 5, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Star Trek: Judgement Rites, Tyrian, Wing Commander: Kilrathi Saga, Wing Commander IV, Wing Commander: Prophecy, Wing Commander: Armada, Wing Commander: Academy, Wing Commander: Privateer, Wolf3d, Wolf3d: Spear of Destiny, and X-Wing Alliance.
All great games. All bought and paid for. And none of which I want to stop playing just because I've changed main machine OSes in the meantime.
> you just block the server where that image is coming from
Quite simple to defeat: they serve all their images, ads and content alike, from the same server.
Next?
>> Contain NO names or dictionary words.
> 'Aibtbay2'
And if the system triggers off on 'bay', digitize more characters from the end. 'Aibtba42'.
Certainly.
'ygm6dfoH'.
Confused? Okay, I'll explain. I memorize a LOT of song lyrics. So I just took the song I'm listening to right now - Pop Will Eat Itself - Wise Up Sucker! - and typed out the lyric line I was on.
"...at the sound of the bell, an act you know so well, you give me sixteen different flavours of Hell, say it's love that you need, it's war that you got, but you want to live your life and 'to have' not 'to have not'..."
Need a number. Need eight characters.
"you give me sixteen different flavours of Hell" -> 'ygm6dfoH'. Easy. And I just associate the song with the site/machine/account/whatever.
Okay, so that one was easy, because I got handed the number and a capital letter.
Next song. Bad Religion - The Defense.
"...no peace (no peace), and no friends (no friends) / we trace the mortal edge (with no defense) / to state the obvious: this world is perilous for us / no sense (no sense) and no guide (no guide) / ain't it beautiful to be alive (yeah, right) / i won't resign before the struggle ends
Need eight characters, one digit, at least one of each case.
"ain't it beautiful to be alive yeah right" -> 'aibtbayr' -> capitalize first letter, digitize last -> r becomes 2 -> 'Aibtbay2'.
There. Two passwords that follow the rules and are quite easy for me to remember.
He didn't say 'lousy', he said 'lossy'. Two different things.
And thank you for that sideways implication that only "Open Source zealot[s]" recognize that ogg is technically superior, both in terms of less-size-for-equal-quality and better-quality-for-equal-size, so your insular little mind can automatically dismiss anyone who brings these facts up as a 'zealot'.
At least you didn't misspell it "Open Sores." Guess we should be grateful for small mercies.
> [H]ave you played "Metroid:Zero Mission" for the GBA? Its the first game with redone graphics and such.
No, it's not. If it were, it would be something like Super Mario All Stars. M:0M is more like the Star Wars style Special Edition of NES Metroid; ie, "the technology (read: game engine) has advanced to the point where we can show you what 'really' happened".
Not that M:0M is a bad game, but it is not simply the first game with better graphics, as your post seems to imply.