I see a lot of people moaning at the idiocy of all this, and yet, why is it happening?`
In Slashdot comments people never tire to cite famous people like Ghandi (each MS bashing article has it), but why is the one about liberty and temporary safety missing here?
... with "free" of course meaning that authorities freely access any information about anyone.
Don't think that only data from non-americans is collected, it is data from anyone coming in via an European airline.
It's disappointing to see that the American public doesn't give a damn, and even more that the European Parliament is likely to give in to another US bullying.
How do you come from "noting that the slides produced by engineers to report on the wing damage were so confusing that 'a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation'" to "PowerPoint Makes You Dumb"?
We have seen so much bullshit in plain text / html /.rtf /.pdf (and this story goes right along), but would anyone state that "vi / tex / Acrobat makes you dumb"?
Crypto API is designed to give your applications a consistent and secure way to encrypt data by asymetric encryption. Support in hardware is designed to speed this process up.
It might be used instead of PGP to encrypt your home directory, you can use it to securely communicate over networks, you can use it to generate great passwords.
That it's there is a good thing (tm), but someone might use it to keep stuff from you.
"Welcome to the real world".
Re:Microsoft is going to become Apple?
on
Phoenix's BIOS Roadmap
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You need to remember that CSS is designed with the corporate network in mind, not the home user.
TRUST
Trust? I don't trust either of these two companies to do anything but take over computer applications and hardware forcing people to use them to "protect" their investments.
That's not the point. When you are running a big network, you can now detect when someone connects a device to your network that is not trusted by your organization in a simple and consistent way. You may even automatically drop it from the networ by discarding the traffic it generates, or similar things.
Manageability
In other words, we are going to give you a unique fingerprint that can be traced back to you. You better not try anything funny with our digitally signed OSs
We had that with the Pentium, and it had a way to disable it. Again, for a company this is very handy, no more different management tools for different servers (HP, Compaq, etc.), just a single interface.
Is Microsoft taking over the BIOS?
No, they are forcing us to use them. They are also forcing us to have our computers be traced back to us.
You act as if you had a great insight into the workings of a product that's not even available. From the article it sounds like there will be enhancements that benefit corporate customers, and doubly those deploying windows.
If you are not in this group, fine, just buy another board, or buy the board, and _don't install Windows_.
Crypto API is about strong encryption and non-pseudo-random-number-generators, and it also isn't new but has been around since NT4. see: Crypto API.
I thought hardware support would just speed up those functions, so disabling it wouldn't disable the features (which were around years before this hardware), just make them slower.
Not Affected Software: Microsoft Windows Me Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Microsoft Windows NT Server, Terminal Services Edition Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Windows Server 2003
And even in 2000 there has been a patch for months.
Well, I admin about a 150 Windows servers since the days of the late NT 4 (SP 5 and upwards), and I can't remember a MS patch that actually broke anything.
Besides, of course you do not run Windows Update on servers at all, because they generally shouldn't have someone using a browser on them.
Try SMS for automated deployment of tested patches to any number of servers, anywhere on your network. When you want, how you want.
The number of major-collateral-damage internet worms that have struck becasue of unpatched or unfixed problems in Microsoft OSes in the last two to four years.
And of course that's like blaming your car manufacturer for your accident when he "neglected to check tire pressure and brakes" for you.
The average end user did not have a proper understanding of the need to keep his machine up to date, but he has now. If that means he will turn the automatic update warning on again on his Windows box depends on how afraid he is that Microsoft somehow gets him for his pirated copy of the OS.
Corporate admins on the hand should have known better all the time, and those bitching the loudest about MS are easily identfied as the worst of their kind. Keeping an MS environment up to date is not difficult if you know the basics, MS provides several alternatives for differently sized organizations and budgets.
The cost my company accepts for patching our 2000 odd Windows PCs is marginal to the worst case. In fact it's so automated that I review the updates every Thursday, that will be deployed every Tuesday. We are patched a week after an exploit is discovered (and MS Security Bulletin keeps you very up to date, I have yet to see a hole that has been exploited sooner than a month after official MS bulletin release), we use Virus Scanners on Desktops as well as App-level Firewalls and transparent scanning of all email and web traffic, and we keep virus definitions up to date by automatic jobs. IT staff just monitors the smooth operation.
That's really not much if you know what to do, not different than with any ohter OS that deserves its name.
NSA has developed and distributed configuration guidance for Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 in the form of configuration guides. These guides are currently being used throughout the government and by numerous entities as a security baseline for their Windows systems.
To assist our Windows XP user community, NSA has developed security configuration guidance for Windows XP, with the cooperation of other government agencies and industry partners who provided their expertise and extensive technical review. The configuration guide for Microsoft Windows XP is being posted on the NSA web site and is presented in two parts: ".INF" file and the configuration guide.
The "designed for" logo does not mean that Microsoft supports a given product. The logo is given to software (or hardware) that meets certain requirements which are freely available.
In short software needs to fulfill requirements in Windows compatibility (Multi-Tasking, Fast User Switiching, etc), Installation / Removal Requirements (use Windows Installer, the Windows packet manager), Data and Settings Management (stores application relevant data in the registry and so forth)
For those to lazy to read through the documents, here a short summary (for the designed for WinXP logo):
1. The software does run on Windows (I'm not kidding).
2. It does not kill your OS, or your data (at least not as a "primary function")
3. Any kernel mode drivers must pass a compatibility testing (e.g. not cause blue screens)
4. Any device drivers must pass the HCT (Hardware Compatibily Test)
5. Perform Windows version checking
6. Support Fast User Switching and Remote Desktop
7. Support Multi-Tasking and not prevent Multi-Tasking
8. Use proper mechanism to add/replace dlls
9. Allow migration to newer versions of Windows
10. Doesn't replace other dlls with older versions
11. Do not require a reboot inappropriately (only required when installing a Windows Service Pack or a GINA)
12. Install in the proper folder by default
13. Install any file that is not fit for side-by-side execution in proper locations
14. Support "Add / Remove Programs" controll panel
15. Support Single User / Multi User installs
16. Support Autorun on DVDs or CDs
17. Store configuration data in the registry and user created data in a proper location
18. Support running with limited credentials (do not require admin privileges unneccessarily)
19. Handle missing rights gracefully (don't crash)
Because you dont know UNIX and you dont want to learn it either but you DO want stability that UNIX will give you, thus MacOsX is best choice for you.
So, is MacOsX threatening Linux on the desktop? Think about it, if you do want an alternative to a Windows desktop, you can basically have Linux, BSD and MacOsX. The first two require fundamental understanding of computers and their internal workings, not to mention of the OS itself.
Most people do not want to know "technical stuff" about their computer, so why should the masses adopt something other than Win or OsX?
Check Gamefront Magazine (German). Sony denied the claims of that Japanese newspaper, calling them a misunderstanding. Sony, IBM and Toshiba are developing a shared broadband network, no OS.
After all, every person I know which is interested in computers, programming, things digital are lazy. It is nice to say, "hey, line 10 is your problem, you can't asume the string will be terminated. Do this, and recompile", and wait for the computer to finish the hard work.
If you spot a problem inside a car's motor you have to crawl around, lift heavy things, get yourself dirty, hurt yourself with tools and parts with sharp edges and generally waste much time on not-brainwork.
For me the most interesting part is figuring out and solving a problem in theory. If in practice that means I have to do routine tasks for many hours, I usually don't do it at all.
That's the difference between recompilling code and reassembling a motor.
There goes the revenue I'm sure they were hoping to get off online gamers. How much do you want to bet future games won't work like this? Or even have any LAN support at all.
IMHO the opposite might as well be true. There is nothing to earn from LAN playing, there never has been a price aside that of the equipment you need (think of the GameBoy link cable, or ethernet adapters for PCs), and people wouldn't accept one.
Microsoft hasn't planned an XBOX online service (AFAIK), and even if they have, they would be planning to earn from MMO games like World Of Warcraft & Co.
With this tool we see the first Hacker development, and many others will follow. This will make the XBox immensly popular among hackers (which is a small crowd) and, even better, among all the wannabes and normal gamers and parents looking for the coolest machine(which is a huge crowd).
I don't understand how Microsoft can think that it is a good idea to have "normal" PC hardware in the Xbox.
Simple: MS wants the XBox to become as popular as possible. If it can be canibalized, hacked, tweaked, improved, whatever, it will become a beloved toy of the cool hacker type guys. Everyone wants to be a cool hacker type guy, so everyone will want a XBox.
In an interview with the German magazine "Focus", a MS representative explained that the XBox wasn't viewed as a cash cow (like Windows), but rather as a means to get more popular.
Slashdot Mirror
... and don't forget about that, either! It's not "Line-Ux".
I see a lot of people moaning at the idiocy of all this, and yet, why is it happening?`
In Slashdot comments people never tire to cite famous people like Ghandi (each MS bashing article has it), but why is the one about liberty and temporary safety missing here?
... with "free" of course meaning that authorities freely access any information about anyone.
Don't think that only data from non-americans is collected, it is data from anyone coming in via an European airline.
It's disappointing to see that the American public doesn't give a damn, and even more that the European Parliament is likely to give in to another US bullying.
How do you come from "noting that the slides produced by engineers to report on the wing damage were so confusing that 'a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation'" to "PowerPoint Makes You Dumb"?
.rtf / .pdf (and this story goes right along), but would anyone state that "vi / tex / Acrobat makes you dumb"?
We have seen so much bullshit in plain text / html /
Please, no more...
Crypto API is designed to give your applications a consistent and secure way to encrypt data by asymetric encryption. Support in hardware is designed to speed this process up.
It might be used instead of PGP to encrypt your home directory, you can use it to securely communicate over networks, you can use it to generate great passwords.
That it's there is a good thing (tm), but someone might use it to keep stuff from you.
"Welcome to the real world".
TRUST
That's not the point. When you are running a big network, you can now detect when someone connects a device to your network that is not trusted by your organization in a simple and consistent way. You may even automatically drop it from the networ by discarding the traffic it generates, or similar things.
Manageability
We had that with the Pentium, and it had a way to disable it. Again, for a company this is very handy, no more different management tools for different servers (HP, Compaq, etc.), just a single interface.
Is Microsoft taking over the BIOS?
You act as if you had a great insight into the workings of a product that's not even available. From the article it sounds like there will be enhancements that benefit corporate customers, and doubly those deploying windows.
If you are not in this group, fine, just buy another board, or buy the board, and _don't install Windows_.
Crypto API is about strong encryption and non-pseudo-random-number-generators, and it also isn't new but has been around since NT4. see: Crypto API.
I thought hardware support would just speed up those functions, so disabling it wouldn't disable the features (which were around years before this hardware), just make them slower.
No, please look beyond the FUD.
From the article:
Affected Software:
Microsoft Windows 2000
Not Affected Software:
Microsoft Windows Me
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server, Terminal Services Edition
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Server 2003
And even in 2000 there has been a patch for months.
I did, and I saw that it was a flaw in a SINGLE version of Windows (2000) namely, which has been patched for month.
What's your point again?
Well, I admin about a 150 Windows servers since the days of the late NT 4 (SP 5 and upwards), and I can't remember a MS patch that actually broke anything.
Besides, of course you do not run Windows Update on servers at all, because they generally shouldn't have someone using a browser on them.
Try SMS for automated deployment of tested patches to any number of servers, anywhere on your network. When you want, how you want.
The number of major-collateral-damage internet worms that have struck becasue of unpatched or unfixed problems in Microsoft OSes in the last two to four years.
And of course that's like blaming your car manufacturer for your accident when he "neglected to check tire pressure and brakes" for you.
The average end user did not have a proper understanding of the need to keep his machine up to date, but he has now. If that means he will turn the automatic update warning on again on his Windows box depends on how afraid he is that Microsoft somehow gets him for his pirated copy of the OS.
Corporate admins on the hand should have known better all the time, and those bitching the loudest about MS are easily identfied as the worst of their kind. Keeping an MS environment up to date is not difficult if you know the basics, MS provides several alternatives for differently sized organizations and budgets.
The cost my company accepts for patching our 2000 odd Windows PCs is marginal to the worst case. In fact it's so automated that I review the updates every Thursday, that will be deployed every Tuesday. We are patched a week after an exploit is discovered (and MS Security Bulletin keeps you very up to date, I have yet to see a hole that has been exploited sooner than a month after official MS bulletin release), we use Virus Scanners on Desktops as well as App-level Firewalls and transparent scanning of all email and web traffic, and we keep virus definitions up to date by automatic jobs. IT staff just monitors the smooth operation.
That's really not much if you know what to do, not different than with any ohter OS that deserves its name.
NT-XP is fundamentally broken.
Oh please, don't overload us with FACTS!
That's no help at all if arbitrary users can elevate themselves to administrator priveleges
Yes, they can, if they got the Administrator password, they can't if they haven't. Like they can in every other OS.
You shouldn't try to counter FUD with FUD, that would make you look like an uninformed zealot.
From the NSA Homepage(emphasis mine):
NSA has developed and distributed configuration guidance for Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 in the form of configuration guides. These guides are currently being used throughout the government and by numerous entities as a security baseline for their Windows systems.
To assist our Windows XP user community, NSA has developed security configuration guidance for Windows XP, with the cooperation of other government agencies and industry partners who provided their expertise and extensive technical review. The configuration guide for Microsoft Windows XP is being posted on the NSA web site and is presented in two parts: ".INF" file and the configuration guide.
The "designed for" logo does not mean that Microsoft supports a given product. The logo is given to software (or hardware) that meets certain requirements which are freely available.
In short software needs to fulfill requirements in Windows compatibility (Multi-Tasking, Fast User Switiching, etc), Installation / Removal Requirements (use Windows Installer, the Windows packet manager), Data and Settings Management (stores application relevant data in the registry and so forth)
For those to lazy to read through the documents, here a short summary (for the designed for WinXP logo):
1. The software does run on Windows (I'm not kidding).
2. It does not kill your OS, or your data (at least not as a "primary function")
3. Any kernel mode drivers must pass a compatibility testing (e.g. not cause blue screens)
4. Any device drivers must pass the HCT (Hardware Compatibily Test)
5. Perform Windows version checking
6. Support Fast User Switching and Remote Desktop
7. Support Multi-Tasking and not prevent Multi-Tasking
8. Use proper mechanism to add/replace dlls
9. Allow migration to newer versions of Windows
10. Doesn't replace other dlls with older versions
11. Do not require a reboot inappropriately (only required when installing a Windows Service Pack or a GINA)
12. Install in the proper folder by default
13. Install any file that is not fit for side-by-side execution in proper locations
14. Support "Add / Remove Programs" controll panel
15. Support Single User / Multi User installs
16. Support Autorun on DVDs or CDs
17. Store configuration data in the registry and user created data in a proper location
18. Support running with limited credentials (do not require admin privileges unneccessarily)
19. Handle missing rights gracefully (don't crash)
Most people do not want to know "technical stuff" about their computer, so why should the masses adopt something other than Win or OsX?
Check Gamefront Magazine (German). Sony denied the claims of that Japanese newspaper, calling them a misunderstanding. Sony, IBM and Toshiba are developing a shared broadband network, no OS.
After all, every person I know which is interested in computers, programming, things digital are lazy. It is nice to say, "hey, line 10 is your problem, you can't asume the string will be terminated. Do this, and recompile", and wait for the computer to finish the hard work.
If you spot a problem inside a car's motor you have to crawl around, lift heavy things, get yourself dirty, hurt yourself with tools and parts with sharp edges and generally waste much time on not-brainwork.
For me the most interesting part is figuring out and solving a problem in theory. If in practice that means I have to do routine tasks for many hours, I usually don't do it at all.
That's the difference between recompilling code and reassembling a motor.
Thanks.
There goes the revenue I'm sure they were hoping to get off online gamers. How much do you want to bet future games won't work like this? Or even have any LAN support at all.
IMHO the opposite might as well be true. There is nothing to earn from LAN playing, there never has been a price aside that of the equipment you need (think of the GameBoy link cable, or ethernet adapters for PCs), and people wouldn't accept one.
Microsoft hasn't planned an XBOX online service (AFAIK), and even if they have, they would be planning to earn from MMO games like World Of Warcraft & Co. With this tool we see the first Hacker development, and many others will follow. This will make the XBox immensly popular among hackers (which is a small crowd) and, even better, among all the wannabes and normal gamers and parents looking for the coolest machine(which is a huge crowd).
Merry XMas, Mr. Gates
I don't understand how Microsoft can think that it is a good idea to have "normal" PC hardware in the Xbox.
Simple: MS wants the XBox to become as popular as possible. If it can be canibalized, hacked, tweaked, improved, whatever, it will become a beloved toy of the cool hacker type guys. Everyone wants to be a cool hacker type guy, so everyone will want a XBox.
In an interview with the German magazine "Focus", a MS representative explained that the XBox wasn't viewed as a cash cow (like Windows), but rather as a means to get more popular.