Re:Location, location
on
Port-A-Nuke
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The Army was planning on developing portable reactors in the 50's. I believed the idea "lost steam" when the had a few incedents. Not quite portable but mobile, the Army had three small test reactors in the 60's. The air force used smaller reactors to power remote radar stations during the early cold war also.
Could Kazza be used for legitimate uses? Sure it could. But is it? Not a chance in hell.
100% bullshit. I used Kazza for nothing but the downloading of amature racing videos. I now have at least 10GB of them. I would never have been able to find these "browsing" the internet. Yes there is a lot of copyrighted material on P2P but I doubt you yourself have ever looked for other things or you would not make the statement of Not a chance in Hell.
Not that I am actually downloading it but there is tons of amature porn and clips of porn (advertising for web sites), the whole purpose of these is free distribution and for advertising. I've also seen Linux iso's and thousands of amature photos (both porn and not porn).
Every single vehicle sold in the US is capable of exceeding the highest of posted speed limits. That does not make the car makers liable if everyone decided to drive fast, the individuals breaking the law would be punished when they are caught. The RIAA/MPAA wants existing laws that already are in place to prosecute violators to be changed so they can be more eficient and attack in groups of thousands or millions at a time. To them, it does not matter that a percentage of those attacked are not actually doing anything wrong but will lose the service anyway.
Spreading the codec to as many platforms as possible only helps them
Wake up man. If they only sold a codec then that would apply. They sell many other products. In BillG's perfect world, you would be required to have a MS product to use any other MS product. Since they have such large installed userbase, they CAN and DO practice this. Ever see a version of MS Office, IE, Outlook for anything other then a MS operating system (Some Apple versions being the exception but other conditions made that occur). Many of MS's new enhancements to software require other MS products in the backend to work or work to higher level. Sure, you can use Outlook without Exchange but you do not get many of the features. You can use the security features of the new MS Office version coming down the line IF you have an AD environment and the requires MS backend to support it. The list goes on and on.. Did you forget what happened in 2000? This was the whole point of Judge Jackson's and various states suggesting MS should be split apart as a remedy for the monopoly verdict. Market forces and competition are severly warped when a monopoly exists.
Whoa.. It is not hard at all to dispute a cc charge. All you have to do is call the CC company and tell them what charges are bogus. At that point, the charge is placed in a hold status and you can go about your business as usual. It is now up to the merchant that charged you to prove you bought some service from them. I would guess in a true fraud case, you are done at that point as I doubt a real bogus charge could be proven. This is no different for an online or offline purchase.
Not the same exact deal I referenced as it is gone now (like I had stated) but much better then the one the original poster cut and pasted. It was only $599. Again, the deals change every few days, the amount of memory, HD space, XP Pro-home, monitor options, with or without speakers etc.. change but they can always be found in the "Outrageous deals" of the small business site for Dell. If you are really interested in tracking these, I suggest a deals site like slickdeals.net or dealnews.com.
As I mentioned in a different post. I do not own a Dell and I have no intention of buying one. Although I do suggest them to others that do not want to white box it themselves. It helps me out as I do not have to be the 24x7 support for them and they are getting a computer at a good price without me having to get involved other then showing them what to get and where to get it. I have personally ordered for or with 30 different people from the small business section of Dell on these type of deals and they seem to be happy and I am very happy to not be supporting 30 peoples computers that I would have had to put together for them XX years ago for a few bucks. To keep things in persepctive here as this is getting off topic.. I was just pointing out to the original grandfather poster that the example Dell used for a reference was a very bad example and it seems everyone jumped on it as informative and insightful.
No, they are not refurbished. If you look at he outrageous deals on a daily basis, you will see them, different on a weekly basis. I do not own a Dell and would not buy one so I am not defending them in any way. Of course I recommend many people go this route as it save me from being the tech support if I do a white box for them.
Apple requires the use of their own unit to play the music you purchase online. There are many companies selling music online, more then what the diehard iTunes users would like you to admit too for some reason and many have been doing for longer then iTunes has been around. None of these companies have hardware or other services to fall back on and appear to think they can make it without the hardware sales. I'll admit, MS has an advantage of bundling everything under the sun to smooth out the costs but the other companies do not and they are still in business. What is Apple doing wrong that they are making no money from iTunes? Either that claim is false, Apple is doing something very wrong, or every other company fooled the investors and is doomed to fail (possible I guess). Negotiating deals with record companies to bring content online is something that every one of those companies had to do.
You just do not know how to shop at Dell. You need to go to the small business section and select "Outrageous Deals". The deals change a few times a week but they blow away the "Home" section of Dell plus they also provide free shipping. That same Dell you referenced was less then $700 from the small business section earlier in the week with an 80GB drive, free printer, free shipping, XP Pro, and a 17in LCD.
Not to knock your compare but since you specifically chose to compare to a Dell, I thought I'd bring it up.
Not quite. I believe they are coasting here also. The quality of constuction of thier printers seems to be going down hill also. Everything I've seen since around the 4000 and on is getting cheaper and cheaper. I was unboxing some 4200's and I broke the back door off of one of them when the plastic bag it was shipped in got caught on it as I was pulling it off. The front door on another unit pulled off and the spring went flying when I was removing the HP orange tape they put on it to keep things closed in transit (anyone who ever unpacked an HP printer knows what tape I am talking about). The newer HP printers have more features and are faster but they sure seem to be lacking the rock hard construction they used to have. I believe the days of the million plus page counts of the 5si with little to no maintenance on whatever paper you decide to feed it are gone. As someone else further up stated, HP's days are numbered. HP is no longer thinking any more then the next quarters numbers and the firing of three executives earlier this month shows that big time. You can only coast on a name so long. A quote contained in the link above: "You have to be concerned about the leadership at Hewlett-Packard, every quarter, it seems to be a different explanation for what went wrong."
Well what companies and people need to come to terms with is that just because your company does not make a certain feature or function does not mean someone else will not. This applies to hardware, software, security and functionality.
Playing different regions games on your Xbox, PS2 or a DVD movie, hell, the whole chipping concept, using your Xbox joystick on your computer and visa versa, ripping DVD's, coping cd's, using a CueCat to scan your own barcodes, using a standalone email device with a different internet provider bypassing the monthly fee, ink jet refill kits, taking apart and reusing a disposible digital camera, pringles can for an antennea, using your wireless card as an access point, using GMail storage as a filesystem, changing hard coded default passwords, overclocking your MB or processor, removing resistor R232 from your cd burner to make it a 16x model instead of an 8x, flashing bios to get extra functionality of the next model, soldering a jumper to enable an extra feature. People will always attempt to bypass, modify, or extend the functionality of something. All it takes is one smart person to figure it out and let others know. I look at things from a different prespective. I do not view it as a company "letting" you do something with your hardware, Example with the TIVO. Almost everything you stated about the TIVO I believe was figured out by people hacking (I don't follow the TIVO so I may be wrong here). Was an email sent to support asking how to install a larger drive and they responded back? I assume someone figured it out themselves and let others know about it. Unless they post an armed gaurd standing next to my TIVO, I can use the same proceedure to upgrade mine also regardless if they approve or not. If they change the system making previous methods no longer work, someone else will figure out the new way to get it going on the future models also. Yes mod ability can help sales but certain vendor actions can wipe out sales also. I have suggested and purchased several Linksys routers based on what I know about the firmware upgrade capability. If they take that away or change it, I will no longer suggest them and get something else. A company that does not understand that concept is either blind or made a business decision to balance the potential increase in cost of production with the potential loses from tampering. An end user that wants to use some of the hacks but disagrees with others has an opinion on what is enough, every company has an opinion on what is enough and when to take action.
Sorry for the runons and spelling but it is a really nice day out and I can not enjoy it from my KB!!
We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back.
You give companies too much credit. If a company wanted something to really be hack friendly, there would be no complaints when it was hacked. They are not hack friendly if they complain about hacks. Your script kiddy comment is pretty lame. If the company made a product that someone with no skillz can hack it then the company got what they deserved. They choose to cut corners on security/development/testing or choose the wrong method to deliver the product to the users, either way it was a specific decision made by the company to maximize profits and they got burned. Any company can develop an encryption system in about 5 minutes and sell it for $50 a user. Imagine the profit that company can make until some script kiddy realizes it is only ROT15 and hacks it. It happens all the time with software and hardware. It is not always hacker friendly on purpose, it is cost cutting and/or a questionable business model. Remeber the CueCat?
Wireless phone companies and makers (Cellular and cordless phones) started with and to some extent still use this exact business model. They were using analog signal totally unencrypted for anyone with a radio scanner to hear, cellular in the 860mhz region and cordless in the 49mhz and 900mhz region. These devices started to catch on and get a foothold. Suddenly the consumers started to wake up and realize anyone with a scanner or a UHF TV tuner could pick up these signals. Yes, on purpose, they chose to use something very unsecure, made no real attempt to make it known it was unsecure [1]. How did they fix it? Went to congress. Congress eventually gave them what they wanted and banned the cellular region from new scanner radios and made it illegal for people to knowingly listen to cellular and cordless freqs. The phone making companies knew all along these transmissions were open to anyone with a radio that picked up those bands, they chose to ignore it, not develop anything or use readily available technology at the time to encode or encrypt it because it would have cost them more money. They were not hacker friendly, just trying to make more money. To this day, analog cordless and wireless phone signals are still able to be picked up by anyone in plain form, although it illegal to do it (yeah, that is the only thing preventing it). Luckily for the most part, analog has been replaced on the cordless side with digital and digital spread spectrum and wireless has gone almost all digital with various methods of encryption and encoding. With that, it takes more then a consumer radio to eavesdrop now.
Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out? The only reason companies make and sell products is to make money. If they think it will sell, they will produce it.
[1] I have never seen an analog cordless phone that mentions that it is easy to eavesdrop on. Many claim 65000 codes, extra privacy or security features, prevention of unauthorized use etc.. but they are all refering to the code needed to get a dialtone from the base station, not to hear the actual conversation in progress. It appears to be on purspoe that these security descriptions are very vague.
there's something wrong with the Windows and/or Linux filesystems.
What exactly are you refering to with Linux filesystems? Linux has many different choices of file systems to choose from and each has advantages and disadvantages.
As far as I know, none of the existing filesystems for Linux can mount your Gmail storage space so I'd say you missed the entire point of the story headline and the article itself. Or maybe I did..
Why not? I had a subscription to MobiTV with my Sprint cell phone and used it quite often. I only cancelled because my phone was a little older and I only got roughly 1-2FPS. Even at that rate it was watchable but not worth $10/month. I currently use 1KTV with Sprint (slideshow based) but it is much cheaper, free actually as Sprint credits me up to $5/month for download content. Watching my own content on a portable device seems like the next logical step. The iPod is a personal audio player and nothing more, if you only want audio for the things you do, that is great. It should not be too hard to understand that someone way actually want to watch video also.
I am a firm believer in the man with the most tools and logs wins but I call bull on your "real admin" claim referencing your local machine registry entry. Reboots in a local Windows machine logs in a large or small domain are pretty much useless and FAR FAR FAR down the list of something an admin is going to worry about. You can already tell by looking in the local PC logs when a machine has been rebooted by the starting of other services. Things much more useful are logs from the domain, your antivirus servers, your software update servers, all of these and many others tell you the status of a Windows PC and when it was and was not seen and all PC's are accessible from a centralized location. Taking the host OS out of the loop, you can use various other methods of logging like when a switch port joins or leaves the bridge, network scans, or something as simple as the DHCP logs.
Another point. Everywhere I have ever worked, the PC's are shut off when not in use anyway, if the IT dept needs them for something (updates, verify something on the machine etc), they are woken up. In your case, if a PC is already off, booting it with portable media is not going to update the Windows logs. Maybe I am missing something here.
I think the point was the person could not get a straight answer from the support group. I have numerous issues with this exact thing. Nothing is more frustrating then a tech support telling you "they are working on the problem" when you know they have NO IDEA what is really going on. I've had them tell me that before even asking who I was and where I lived. I called Comcast and Verizon every month for 3 years straight trying to get a date when broadband would be in my area. Every freaking month for years I heard "Soon" or "Next Month". Finally Comcast came in but now even 3 years after that Verizon is still not in the area. Six years ago they started telling me next month and soon and it is still not here. To this day, I still get promotions in the mail that claim it is available but it is actually not. It is not some strange local issue of why it is not at my house, it is not available anywhere within miles from where I live. Why does Verizon even have a support desk? The person could have told me, "I really have no idea."
ability to scan their machine for tradable files and then get them for sharing.
I really doubt a list of file names would stand up in court. I can name files whatever I want, the RIAA or someone working for the RIAA has acknowlwdged releasing bogus files themselves as a P2P deterent in the past. Without controlled detailed logs, and after downloading enough of or the complete track to determine if it was legitimate, the RIAA can not prove you actually were offering up a song. Remeber that P2P is shared too so they have to ensure and PROVE they got this file from you and only you. Again, a list of file names is NOT going to get the RIAA some type of multimillion dollar settlement. It appears it is getting them $1000-5000 from people now though.
It may take some time but eventually an accused file swapper will take this defensive route. For all we know, this may have already been attempted and resulted in one of the cases the RIAA "let go".
But if 90% of the world is using MS products, then it is the UN that won't be able to do business with them
There are many US courts and government organizations that still require electonic reports and submissions be in Word Perfect X.X format. A simple "save as" Wordperfect version from MS Word does not convert them correctly for many of them either. Same holds true for non WYSIWYG things like data structures, databases, charts, forms etc.. They require a specific format from a very specific program.
The ultimate goal should be an open standard, not one companies standard. Today, and more so years ago, an open standard did not exist. Maybe that will change.
I was debating throwing down some money for perpetual streaming internet radio and downloadable songs, and ended up giving it up because every one of those services is locked into a player that I can't freaking stand.
Confused on this one, are we talking about the player needed to listen to Rhapsody or a player needed when you pay 79 cents to download a song? When you buy a song from Rhapsody, it gets burned to a cd, you need an extra step of converting to another medium from there but it will play on any media player at that point. I am not saying the Rhapsody online player application (that runs in Windows only) could not be improved some but I find it very odd you felt inclined to not use a specific subscription based unlimited streaming service strickly because of the interface that you did not really ever use. Streaming and non streaming each has pluses and minuses but they are two completely different models of delivering and paying for music.
At the same time, all the offerings suck.
Care to sight some examples? I've only used Rhapsody so I can not compare it to other services. What exactly do you feel is missing? Maybe we have different tastes. Your claim of millions is not true as Rhapsody does not claim that and if you are turned off about "weeding through crap", I have no idea how you are searching for something that all that comes up is crap. It is not like they have a flat list of several hundred thousand song you have to go through manually to find one you want.
Bottom line, some people like streaming services and some don't. It appears you do not and are trying to talk others out of that based on very little facts or experience with a single one of them. You are not comparing Apples to Oranges;) IMHO, this is far from you current mod of "Interesting".
I assume this is the typical with spam also. The spammer gets paid to send spam, regardless of the outcome of the spam click thru.. You lose with junk mail, the seller loses because of low clickthru, owners of abused systems lose, but the spammer wins.
And this is NO different then Apple losing money or breaking even (depending on who is claiming these facts) on its iTMS. Eventually, something has to happen to this the whole iTunes system as you can only sell and convince people to buy so much hardware and upgrades to hardware before the system reaches a saturation point. Then what happens to the existing hardware and songs you bought over the years? It may not happen but sounds way to much like a dead end vendor lock-in to me.
Not to by unfair to MS but.. Although they did not mention specific viruses and spyware that this user had, there is NOT many pieces of viruses and spyware that are only specific to Win98, they generally work across all of the W32 platforms. Fully patched, 2000 and XP included. Ten hours to clean and repair seems excessive unless there were other issues.
On a side note.. I read the dead tree version of the Washington Post. There were no less then three more scattered in the same business as this articles referenced article. The top two articles on the front page of the business section were W32 virus, spyware and XP-SP2 related. Maybe the non geek type are finally starting to realize there really is a problem with something not being updated and maintained and the simple plugging the computer in and leaving it alone is NOT going to work anymore. People are now seeing the simplicity of "Where do you want to go today" is not really as simple as it was made out to be after all.
I try to read on in his document but I keep coming to "0wned" and I realize that I am not dealing with a professional. I suppose his intended audience (Bugtraq) might be familiar with how 31337 he is but I just can't believe he would bother to spend the time writing up a "paper" with those stupid misspellings.
Regardless of the presentation method, the point they are getting across is the same. Security lists have many "elite" and "old school" style posters and groups that present situations, exploits, and bug reports. You can agree with or complain about the style not being as business professional as some others but they are taken just as serious as one that would be written by someone that writes presidential speeches. Ignoring all elitist style exploits or security issues that come up because you did not think it was presented in a professional enough manner is not a very good idea. Of course, in a few days someone will have converted the same information to plain english and posted it somewhere else so you can use that. IMHO, the elitist ones are often more technically detailed in the initial posts then a blurb that has been through the PR department.
Well obviously we disagree in principle but I feel everyone can read the entire thread and article comments. Posting the same exact thing multiple times seems a little odd. I have absolutly no issue or doubts about the content of your post and I believe it is important and very relevent, I am just pointing out that you posted the same exact thing four seperate times, that IS the definition of redundant and the fact it was posted so many times would fit many peoples definition of troll regardless of the content. Imagine the noise if everyone went on that mission for everything they thought was important. No tin foil hats here, there is no cult trying to silence your facts. Some people just do not want to read them over and over again as it makes any followup or logical discussion about the topic hard to follow when they are spread across four completely different threads.
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The Army was planning on developing portable reactors in the 50's. I believed the idea "lost steam" when the had a few incedents. Not quite portable but mobile, the Army had three small test reactors in the 60's. The air force used smaller reactors to power remote radar stations during the early cold war also.
Could Kazza be used for legitimate uses? Sure it could. But is it? Not a chance in hell.
100% bullshit. I used Kazza for nothing but the downloading of amature racing videos. I now have at least 10GB of them. I would never have been able to find these "browsing" the internet. Yes there is a lot of copyrighted material on P2P but I doubt you yourself have ever looked for other things or you would not make the statement of Not a chance in Hell.
Not that I am actually downloading it but there is tons of amature porn and clips of porn (advertising for web sites), the whole purpose of these is free distribution and for advertising. I've also seen Linux iso's and thousands of amature photos (both porn and not porn).
Every single vehicle sold in the US is capable of exceeding the highest of posted speed limits. That does not make the car makers liable if everyone decided to drive fast, the individuals breaking the law would be punished when they are caught. The RIAA/MPAA wants existing laws that already are in place to prosecute violators to be changed so they can be more eficient and attack in groups of thousands or millions at a time. To them, it does not matter that a percentage of those attacked are not actually doing anything wrong but will lose the service anyway.
Spreading the codec to as many platforms as possible only helps them
Wake up man.
If they only sold a codec then that would apply. They sell many other products. In BillG's perfect world, you would be required to have a MS product to use any other MS product. Since they have such large installed userbase, they CAN and DO practice this.
Ever see a version of MS Office, IE, Outlook for anything other then a MS operating system (Some Apple versions being the exception but other conditions made that occur). Many of MS's new enhancements to software require other MS products in the backend to work or work to higher level. Sure, you can use Outlook without Exchange but you do not get many of the features. You can use the security features of the new MS Office version coming down the line IF you have an AD environment and the requires MS backend to support it. The list goes on and on..
Did you forget what happened in 2000? This was the whole point of Judge Jackson's and various states suggesting MS should be split apart as a remedy for the monopoly verdict. Market forces and competition are severly warped when a monopoly exists.
Once the codec spec is developed and mature, the only thing the original company has to do from then on out is collect royalties from those using it.
Whoa.. It is not hard at all to dispute a cc charge.
All you have to do is call the CC company and tell them what charges are bogus. At that point, the charge is placed in a hold status and you can go about your business as usual. It is now up to the merchant that charged you to prove you bought some service from them. I would guess in a true fraud case, you are done at that point as I doubt a real bogus charge could be proven. This is no different for an online or offline purchase.
Not the same exact deal I referenced as it is gone now (like I had stated) but much better then the one the original poster cut and pasted. It was only $599. Again, the deals change every few days, the amount of memory, HD space, XP Pro-home, monitor options, with or without speakers etc.. change but they can always be found in the "Outrageous deals" of the small business site for Dell. If you are really interested in tracking these, I suggest a deals site like slickdeals.net or dealnews.com.
As I mentioned in a different post. I do not own a Dell and I have no intention of buying one. Although I do suggest them to others that do not want to white box it themselves. It helps me out as I do not have to be the 24x7 support for them and they are getting a computer at a good price without me having to get involved other then showing them what to get and where to get it. I have personally ordered for or with 30 different people from the small business section of Dell on these type of deals and they seem to be happy and I am very happy to not be supporting 30 peoples computers that I would have had to put together for them XX years ago for a few bucks. To keep things in persepctive here as this is getting off topic.. I was just pointing out to the original grandfather poster that the example Dell used for a reference was a very bad example and it seems everyone jumped on it as informative and insightful.
No, they are not refurbished. If you look at he outrageous deals on a daily basis, you will see them, different on a weekly basis. I do not own a Dell and would not buy one so I am not defending them in any way. Of course I recommend many people go this route as it save me from being the tech support if I do a white box for them.
Apple requires the use of their own unit to play the music you purchase online. There are many companies selling music online, more then what the diehard iTunes users would like you to admit too for some reason and many have been doing for longer then iTunes has been around. None of these companies have hardware or other services to fall back on and appear to think they can make it without the hardware sales. I'll admit, MS has an advantage of bundling everything under the sun to smooth out the costs but the other companies do not and they are still in business. What is Apple doing wrong that they are making no money from iTunes? Either that claim is false, Apple is doing something very wrong, or every other company fooled the investors and is doomed to fail (possible I guess). Negotiating deals with record companies to bring content online is something that every one of those companies had to do.
You just do not know how to shop at Dell. You need to go to the small business section and select "Outrageous Deals". The deals change a few times a week but they blow away the "Home" section of Dell plus they also provide free shipping. That same Dell you referenced was less then $700 from the small business section earlier in the week with an 80GB drive, free printer, free shipping, XP Pro, and a 17in LCD.
Not to knock your compare but since you specifically chose to compare to a Dell, I thought I'd bring it up.
Not quite. I believe they are coasting here also. The quality of constuction of thier printers seems to be going down hill also. Everything I've seen since around the 4000 and on is getting cheaper and cheaper. I was unboxing some 4200's and I broke the back door off of one of them when the plastic bag it was shipped in got caught on it as I was pulling it off. The front door on another unit pulled off and the spring went flying when I was removing the HP orange tape they put on it to keep things closed in transit (anyone who ever unpacked an HP printer knows what tape I am talking about). The newer HP printers have more features and are faster but they sure seem to be lacking the rock hard construction they used to have. I believe the days of the million plus page counts of the 5si with little to no maintenance on whatever paper you decide to feed it are gone.
As someone else further up stated, HP's days are numbered. HP is no longer thinking any more then the next quarters numbers and the firing of three executives earlier this month shows that big time. You can only coast on a name so long. A quote contained in the link above:
"You have to be concerned about the leadership at Hewlett-Packard, every quarter, it seems to be a different explanation for what went wrong."
Well what companies and people need to come to terms with is that just because your company does not make a certain feature or function does not mean someone else will not. This applies to hardware, software, security and functionality.
Playing different regions games on your Xbox, PS2 or a DVD movie, hell, the whole chipping concept, using your Xbox joystick on your computer and visa versa, ripping DVD's, coping cd's, using a CueCat to scan your own barcodes, using a standalone email device with a different internet provider bypassing the monthly fee, ink jet refill kits, taking apart and reusing a disposible digital camera, pringles can for an antennea, using your wireless card as an access point, using GMail storage as a filesystem, changing hard coded default passwords, overclocking your MB or processor, removing resistor R232 from your cd burner to make it a 16x model instead of an 8x, flashing bios to get extra functionality of the next model, soldering a jumper to enable an extra feature. People will always attempt to bypass, modify, or extend the functionality of something. All it takes is one smart person to figure it out and let others know. I look at things from a different prespective. I do not view it as a company "letting" you do something with your hardware, Example with the TIVO. Almost everything you stated about the TIVO I believe was figured out by people hacking (I don't follow the TIVO so I may be wrong here). Was an email sent to support asking how to install a larger drive and they responded back? I assume someone figured it out themselves and let others know about it. Unless they post an armed gaurd standing next to my TIVO, I can use the same proceedure to upgrade mine also regardless if they approve or not. If they change the system making previous methods no longer work, someone else will figure out the new way to get it going on the future models also. Yes mod ability can help sales but certain vendor actions can wipe out sales also. I have suggested and purchased several Linksys routers based on what I know about the firmware upgrade capability. If they take that away or change it, I will no longer suggest them and get something else.
A company that does not understand that concept is either blind or made a business decision to balance the potential increase in cost of production with the potential loses from tampering. An end user that wants to use some of the hacks but disagrees with others has an opinion on what is enough, every company has an opinion on what is enough and when to take action.
Sorry for the runons and spelling but it is a really nice day out and I can not enjoy it from my KB!!
We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back.
You give companies too much credit. If a company wanted something to really be hack friendly, there would be no complaints when it was hacked. They are not hack friendly if they complain about hacks. Your script kiddy comment is pretty lame. If the company made a product that someone with no skillz can hack it then the company got what they deserved. They choose to cut corners on security/development/testing or choose the wrong method to deliver the product to the users, either way it was a specific decision made by the company to maximize profits and they got burned. Any company can develop an encryption system in about 5 minutes and sell it for $50 a user. Imagine the profit that company can make until some script kiddy realizes it is only ROT15 and hacks it. It happens all the time with software and hardware. It is not always hacker friendly on purpose, it is cost cutting and/or a questionable business model. Remeber the CueCat?
Wireless phone companies and makers (Cellular and cordless phones) started with and to some extent still use this exact business model. They were using analog signal totally unencrypted for anyone with a radio scanner to hear, cellular in the 860mhz region and cordless in the 49mhz and 900mhz region. These devices started to catch on and get a foothold. Suddenly the consumers started to wake up and realize anyone with a scanner or a UHF TV tuner could pick up these signals. Yes, on purpose, they chose to use something very unsecure, made no real attempt to make it known it was unsecure [1]. How did they fix it? Went to congress. Congress eventually gave them what they wanted and banned the cellular region from new scanner radios and made it illegal for people to knowingly listen to cellular and cordless freqs. The phone making companies knew all along these transmissions were open to anyone with a radio that picked up those bands, they chose to ignore it, not develop anything or use readily available technology at the time to encode or encrypt it because it would have cost them more money. They were not hacker friendly, just trying to make more money. To this day, analog cordless and wireless phone signals are still able to be picked up by anyone in plain form, although it illegal to do it (yeah, that is the only thing preventing it). Luckily for the most part, analog has been replaced on the cordless side with digital and digital spread spectrum and wireless has gone almost all digital with various methods of encryption and encoding. With that, it takes more then a consumer radio to eavesdrop now.
Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out?
The only reason companies make and sell products is to make money. If they think it will sell, they will produce it.
[1] I have never seen an analog cordless phone that mentions that it is easy to eavesdrop on. Many claim 65000 codes, extra privacy or security features, prevention of unauthorized use etc.. but they are all refering to the code needed to get a dialtone from the base station, not to hear the actual conversation in progress. It appears to be on purspoe that these security descriptions are very vague.
Storage is Storage. ...Unless they didn't actually want/expect people to use that gig of space.
The same thing many have gone through with "unlimited internet access" and "unlimited bandwidth".
there's something wrong with the Windows and/or Linux filesystems.
What exactly are you refering to with Linux filesystems? Linux has many different choices of file systems to choose from and each has advantages and disadvantages.
As far as I know, none of the existing filesystems for Linux can mount your Gmail storage space so I'd say you missed the entire point of the story headline and the article itself.
Or maybe I did..
Why not?
I had a subscription to MobiTV with my Sprint cell phone and used it quite often. I only cancelled because my phone was a little older and I only got roughly 1-2FPS. Even at that rate it was watchable but not worth $10/month. I currently use 1KTV with Sprint (slideshow based) but it is much cheaper, free actually as Sprint credits me up to $5/month for download content. Watching my own content on a portable device seems like the next logical step. The iPod is a personal audio player and nothing more, if you only want audio for the things you do, that is great. It should not be too hard to understand that someone way actually want to watch video also.
most companies with any real admin would log it,
I am a firm believer in the man with the most tools and logs wins but I call bull on your "real admin" claim referencing your local machine registry entry. Reboots in a local Windows machine logs in a large or small domain are pretty much useless and FAR FAR FAR down the list of something an admin is going to worry about. You can already tell by looking in the local PC logs when a machine has been rebooted by the starting of other services. Things much more useful are logs from the domain, your antivirus servers, your software update servers, all of these and many others tell you the status of a Windows PC and when it was and was not seen and all PC's are accessible from a centralized location. Taking the host OS out of the loop, you can use various other methods of logging like when a switch port joins or leaves the bridge, network scans, or something as simple as the DHCP logs.
Another point. Everywhere I have ever worked, the PC's are shut off when not in use anyway, if the IT dept needs them for something (updates, verify something on the machine etc), they are woken up.
In your case, if a PC is already off, booting it with portable media is not going to update the Windows logs.
Maybe I am missing something here.
I think the point was the person could not get a straight answer from the support group. I have numerous issues with this exact thing. Nothing is more frustrating then a tech support telling you "they are working on the problem" when you know they have NO IDEA what is really going on. I've had them tell me that before even asking who I was and where I lived. I called Comcast and Verizon every month for 3 years straight trying to get a date when broadband would be in my area. Every freaking month for years I heard "Soon" or "Next Month". Finally Comcast came in but now even 3 years after that Verizon is still not in the area. Six years ago they started telling me next month and soon and it is still not here. To this day, I still get promotions in the mail that claim it is available but it is actually not. It is not some strange local issue of why it is not at my house, it is not available anywhere within miles from where I live. Why does Verizon even have a support desk? The person could have told me, "I really have no idea."
ability to scan their machine for tradable files and then get them for sharing.
I really doubt a list of file names would stand up in court. I can name files whatever I want, the RIAA or someone working for the RIAA has acknowlwdged releasing bogus files themselves as a P2P deterent in the past.
Without controlled detailed logs, and after downloading enough of or the complete track to determine if it was legitimate, the RIAA can not prove you actually were offering up a song. Remeber that P2P is shared too so they have to ensure and PROVE they got this file from you and only you. Again, a list of file names is NOT going to get the RIAA some type of multimillion dollar settlement. It appears it is getting them $1000-5000 from people now though.
It may take some time but eventually an accused file swapper will take this defensive route. For all we know, this may have already been attempted and resulted in one of the cases the RIAA "let go".
But if 90% of the world is using MS products, then it is the UN that won't be able to do business with them
There are many US courts and government organizations that still require electonic reports and submissions be in Word Perfect X.X format. A simple "save as" Wordperfect version from MS Word does not convert them correctly for many of them either.
Same holds true for non WYSIWYG things like data structures, databases, charts, forms etc.. They require a specific format from a very specific program.
The ultimate goal should be an open standard, not one companies standard. Today, and more so years ago, an open standard did not exist. Maybe that will change.
I was debating throwing down some money for perpetual streaming internet radio and downloadable songs, and ended up giving it up because every one of those services is locked into a player that I can't freaking stand.
;)
Confused on this one, are we talking about the player needed to listen to Rhapsody or a player needed when you pay 79 cents to download a song? When you buy a song from Rhapsody, it gets burned to a cd, you need an extra step of converting to another medium from there but it will play on any media player at that point. I am not saying the Rhapsody online player application (that runs in Windows only) could not be improved some but I find it very odd you felt inclined to not use a specific subscription based unlimited streaming service strickly because of the interface that you did not really ever use. Streaming and non streaming each has pluses and minuses but they are two completely different models of delivering and paying for music.
At the same time, all the offerings suck.
Care to sight some examples? I've only used Rhapsody so I can not compare it to other services. What exactly do you feel is missing? Maybe we have different tastes.
Your claim of millions is not true as Rhapsody does not claim that and if you are turned off about "weeding through crap", I have no idea how you are searching for something that all that comes up is crap. It is not like they have a flat list of several hundred thousand song you have to go through manually to find one you want.
Bottom line, some people like streaming services and some don't. It appears you do not and are trying to talk others out of that based on very little facts or experience with a single one of them. You are not comparing Apples to Oranges
IMHO, this is far from you current mod of "Interesting".
I assume this is the typical with spam also. The spammer gets paid to send spam, regardless of the outcome of the spam click thru.. You lose with junk mail, the seller loses because of low clickthru, owners of abused systems lose, but the spammer wins.
And this is NO different then Apple losing money or breaking even (depending on who is claiming these facts) on its iTMS. Eventually, something has to happen to this the whole iTunes system as you can only sell and convince people to buy so much hardware and upgrades to hardware before the system reaches a saturation point. Then what happens to the existing hardware and songs you bought over the years? It may not happen but sounds way to much like a dead end vendor lock-in to me.
Not to by unfair to MS but..
Although they did not mention specific viruses and spyware that this user had, there is NOT many pieces of viruses and spyware that are only specific to Win98, they generally work across all of the W32 platforms. Fully patched, 2000 and XP included. Ten hours to clean and repair seems excessive unless there were other issues.
On a side note.. I read the dead tree version of the Washington Post. There were no less then three more scattered in the same business as this articles referenced article. The top two articles on the front page of the business section were W32 virus, spyware and XP-SP2 related. Maybe the non geek type are finally starting to realize there really is a problem with something not being updated and maintained and the simple plugging the computer in and leaving it alone is NOT going to work anymore. People are now seeing the simplicity of "Where do you want to go today" is not really as simple as it was made out to be after all.
I try to read on in his document but I keep coming to "0wned" and I realize that I am not dealing with a professional. I suppose his intended audience (Bugtraq) might be familiar with how 31337 he is but I just can't believe he would bother to spend the time writing up a "paper" with those stupid misspellings.
Regardless of the presentation method, the point they are getting across is the same. Security lists have many "elite" and "old school" style posters and groups that present situations, exploits, and bug reports. You can agree with or complain about the style not being as business professional as some others but they are taken just as serious as one that would be written by someone that writes presidential speeches. Ignoring all elitist style exploits or security issues that come up because you did not think it was presented in a professional enough manner is not a very good idea. Of course, in a few days someone will have converted the same information to plain english and posted it somewhere else so you can use that.
IMHO, the elitist ones are often more technically detailed in the initial posts then a blurb that has been through the PR department.
Well obviously we disagree in principle but I feel everyone can read the entire thread and article comments. Posting the same exact thing multiple times seems a little odd.
I have absolutly no issue or doubts about the content of your post and I believe it is important and very relevent, I am just pointing out that you posted the same exact thing four seperate times, that IS the definition of redundant and the fact it was posted so many times would fit many peoples definition of troll regardless of the content. Imagine the noise if everyone went on that mission for everything they thought was important. No tin foil hats here, there is no cult trying to silence your facts. Some people just do not want to read them over and over again as it makes any followup or logical discussion about the topic hard to follow when they are spread across four completely different threads.