So if I'm using a friend's computer (and he has Internet Explorer installed because he's dumb enough to use Windows) and I accidentally click on ShopAtHome or something like that, then I am subject to the $1000 dollar fine for installing (or "causing to be installed" as legalese often says) software that falls under this category?
I sincerely hope that this thing will hit the earth and bring about a cataclysm of biblical proportions that makes Noah's flood look like a Phoenix, Arizona in mid-day during the summer, and bringing about the end of all things.
Hopefully, the Earth will be knocked out of its comfortable orbit, with its axis swinging at a different angle, and its distance being somewhat different from the sun, so that all the oceans will dry up, the atmosphere will blow away, all plant life will turn to dust, and all animal life will wither and die in massive clouds of smoke that will cover the Earth after the impact. Afterwards, Earth will be about as full of life as the surface of Mercury.
All historical achievements, all things accomplished by man, all things discovered, learned, studied, and developed over thousands of years, all political changes that were brought about by the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, all things great and small, all religions, and even love, will mean absolutely nothing after this happens... because nobody and nothing will be here to even know that they once existed.
Why would I hope for such a terrible thing to happen? Because life is a pile of shit, and I can't wait to be put out of my misery.
They captured the rover right when it landed and put it into a Star Trek style holodeck, where the landscapes we see are made up. They've been doing this to all the other equipment that we've sent there over the years, so they can avoid what they believe is an oncoming invasion, by showing us that Mars is not a habitable place.
Mars is actually quite nice, though. Its sky is green, not red as you see in the pictures, and its landscape is quite lovely, with red grass and red leaves on all the trees. Martian cities are built in huge self-contained buildings, isolated from one another by thousands of miles of thick forests, but connected by a vast network of underground tunnels which host train-like transportation vehicles.
If we found out, they fear, we will go over there, build lots of stuff all over the place, rape and pillage the environment, fill it with pollution and smog, and royally screw the circle of life as they know it. So they play tricks on our probes.
So first they edge their competition out of the browser market, then they tie IE into the OS so tightly that a crash in IE can crash the computer, and then they make IE so vulnerable that just using it is hazardous to the typical computer's health, and now they want to CHARGE users to fix it?
Microsoft is beginning to remind me of the INS. This kind of unreasonable reasoning is, in fact, quite similar to that which occurs in government bureaucracies. Allow me to explain: When I moved to the U.S. from Europe, I had to go through this government disaster called the INS. As it turns out, at the time that my paperwork was being processed by that disorganization, there were some people working there who shredded documents belonging to about 80,000 U.S. immigrants. They did this because there was a huge backlog in paperwork processing, so some wise guy decided that by shredding the documents instead of filing them, he could make it look like his company was making improvements. This was eventually caught, and I believe that criminal charges were filed.
But that didn't exactly help me. I was one of those 80,000 people. The result of this shredding was that after going through the process, which takes years by the way, nearly all of the paperwork from my file was shredded. As a result, the INS got "confused" in a way very similar to that of a computer running Windows, when the operating system is suddenly deleted in mid-operation. It took quite a few years to finally get a hold of someone deep enough in the disorganization who had the power to do something about it.
Here's the part relevant to this story: When they discovered that my file was shredded, they told me that as a result of the INS's errors, I would have to pay a fine of over 1,000 dollars to get the process back on track.
In other words, they create a disorganization so big that putting some stamps on some pieces of papers takes years, then they shred my papers, then they make me wait years (and if I hadn't fought tooth and nail, they would never have acknowledged that they screwed up), and then, I had to pay a fine to fix it.
So, yes, to people who put a system like that into effect, it makes a whole lot of sense to make a browser so crufty and full of holes that it won't hold water even when submerged, and then to charge people for bloated layers of crufty software that is supposed to fix it, except for hundreds of corner cases that malware authors can use to work around it. And, did I mention that they'll charge you for the priviledge? I suggest trying free software instead. It's so much less painful.
In other words, if I send an email to my mother to tell her Merry Christmas, and I send it from Yahoo!, then the crap that Yahoo! appends to the email causes my email to become spam under this rule.
I think that really sucks.
________________________________________________ __
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/
No mention is made of what happens when a brick in the middle of the cube needs to be replaced and the whole thing needs to be disassembled.
Someone else already mentioned that the article does discuss this... But I think what would look really cool in a corporate datacenter would be memory "cartridges" (for lack of a better word) like those seen in the memory bay of 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000 computer. Glass-looking cartriges that can be inserted and removed at will. You could have rows of walls with these cartridges on both sides. One can be removed and another installed, and the RAID-like setup will automatically rebuild the data at RAM-like speeds.
I don't like this FASB hogwash. If you look at the way most of our accounting standards are put together, an "expense" is some transaction that reduces net income. What's going to happen when corporations start putting together their financial statements? All I can say is that it will make all kinds of "weird" stuff happen to the numbers, and the final net income number will be understated by some arbitrary number that means nothing, in my opinion.
I'm opposed to this simply because it's an additional "exception" in the rules that must be handled. Worse yet, there is no number that you can get off any other financial papers... You must estimate the value of the stock options, which means that the FASB has created yet another way for creative accountants to play shady games with the numbers. Sure, it'll look official enough, and all your earnings will be understated.
I wouldn't be surprised if this value is deducted after taxes, just to add insult to injury, but honestly I haven't kept up to date on this as much lately so I don't know where it goes on the income statement...
But seriously... What's wrong with showing how much money you really made, and then disclosing stock options in a footnote?
Over the past 9,500 years or so, NASA, in conjunction with Starfleet, has been monitoring the lives of species around the universe. As we all know, the universe is a small space, compared to other universes that we've visited recently. This smallness makes it easy for us to monitor the lives of all these species. Why, it only takes about five minutes from the moment a supernova happens until we get notification that another life-supporting planet has been blown to smitherines.
And, according to all this data, which NASA stores in a MySQL database, species that are "trapped" on a single planet, as it were, are simply more likely to be destroyed in a planet-destroying accident, just as a people, like, say, the Italians, are more likely to go extinct if their entire country just suddenly sinks into a giant sinkhole and crumbles into the ocean...
Yes, the proof is all there, and there is a lot of evidence to compare against. Or, rather, that's my way of saying that a troll has been posted on/.'s main page. What happened to all the SCO stories? At least those made me laugh.
Bill Gates died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St.Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"
St. Peter answered, "Those are Software Vulnerability Clocks. Every computer program on Earth has a Software Vulnerability Clock. Every time a program is compromised due to a bug in the code, the hands on that program's clock will move.
"Oh," said Bill, "which clock is that?"
"That's the UNICOS clock. The hands have never moved, indicating that it was never compromised by an attacker."
"Incredible," said Bill. "And which clock is that one?"
St. Peter responded, "That's the OpenBSD clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that the "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!" was compromised only two times in this operating system's life."
"Where's Internet Explorer's clock?" asked Bill.
"That's in Jesus' office. He's using it to drive the generators, which provide power for our celestial copy of Las Vegas."
I must say that it is very refreshing to see Microsoft finally start to take some serious action to help combat this rampant problem.
Let's look at past trends. Whenever Microsoft buys a company, they take its product, and over time, make it increasingly worse, or decreasingly better, depending on your point of view. Take speedisk, for example. Microsoft bought that and turned it into defrag... And it promptly turned into a piece of junk, in my opinion. (Well, this whole post is my opinion, but the last sentence was more so.)
The question I pose is this: Will this anti-spyware actually be effective anymore, or will it lose its effectiveness due to various reasons, such as:
Since this is Microsoft we're talking about, it will probably be integrated into the OS kernel, or some other place where it doesn't belong. This means that it will be included with every copy of Windows. All the spyware makers have to do is figure out its weaknesses, and find ways to work around it. Voila... spyware will continue to get through.
Due to the above, Microsoft will release patches. But knowing Microsoft, these will be few and far between.
Since this spyware engine will be included with Windows, other spyware removal makers will simply go out of business, a la Netscape... Oh, wait.
Even if Microsoft releases patches to stay ahead of the spyware makers, the latter parties will probably be more agile than Microsoft, to borrow a treasured piece of marketroidspeak. This means that they will release new spyware faster than Microsoft can release patches, a la virus authors being faster than McAfee and the like.
Oh well... I have to give 'em credit for trying. But I really think that the key to solving these problems begins with making better software in the first place. I'm not even talking about completely auditing and fixing every bug in Windows, a la OpenBSD... But there are literally thousands of settings, some great in their scope, and some small and obscure. Many are scattered throughout the registry; others are scattered in the 2GB+ that make up the Windows directory in the "default install" (as if there's any other install). Microsoft does not provide a coherent interface to modify these settings, and for a company with some $60+BILLION(USD) to throw around, I think I am entitled to ask for something better.
Therefore, the scope of this post greatly exceeds the specific problem of spyware, though it be a big problem, and addresses some of the larger issues surrounding the misconfiguration of Windows in its default install and the difficulty of reconfiguring it with saner settings.
Soon we'll need licenses just to use the Internet.
I think there was a story here a few years ago. Turns out that somebody already thought of that. The idea was to reduce the impact of viruses, spam, and other malware by making sure that only knowledgeable users can access the Internet.
Of course, you and I know that whatever body provides those licenses will be run by bureaucrats and other idiots who will license lusers and keep licenses away from those "evil hackers" (like the ones who made up that Linux thing that other evil hackers use to take control of banks and governments).
Encrypted swap certainly sounds cool, but doesn't that slow things down a lot when paging to disk? Encryption takes time, unless you have an encryption accelerator...
Why not, instead, make a plugin for gaim that specifies pages as in-memory only, without paging to disk. I'm pretty sure Linux supports this, and other OSes probably do as well. Memory is getting cheaper these days, and it's probably worth the extra cost to keep everything in memory, especially if you're talking about illegal activities. (And why are you performing such activities unless they're paying well enough that you can afford the extra RAM?)
See, temp files on disk can be cracked with enough computing power, if someone in the CIA is really pissed at you and has your computer. But if it's in memory and never gets placed on a disk, you're in the clear...
But no matter what you do, the safety of this is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Suppose you're talking to someone about a notorious crime you've just commited. You tell them all the details, and they have proof that it's you at the time of the conversation. This is obviously someone you trust, or you wouldn't tell them all this stuff. But what happens? Unbeknownst to either of you, the DEA has installed a bug in his computer that essentially videotapes everything that goes to the display. Now, you've got videotape evidence of everything you've said, plus proof that it was really you at the time it was videotaped. Encryption shmencryption, you'll be behind bars.
Therefore, don't commit crimes. If you do, don't talk about it. If you do, make darn sure that nobody's listening. And be prepared to pay for your crime, because with your luck, you'll probably get caught.
Ok, so it's not crimes you're talking about, it's this girl you're seeing that you don't want your parents to know about, because you know she's a troublemaker... Substitute "sex" for "crime" above, and substitute "parents" for "police"... By the way, when she gets pregnant, they WILL find out.:-(
Can you expand on what you did to cause the user account or computer to basicly be wiped and started from scratch?
I installed it. Then, I went into the preferences and tried to set it up the way I wanted. When I finished, the browser got all weird on me, and the hard drive started to grind as if to destroy the surface of its platters. I tried to reboot, but whenever the user account came up, before even trying to launch Mozilla, the hard drive would begin to grind as described above. The computer would become slow and unresponsive, and it would be impossible even to kill the process.
On another occasion, a bunch of files disappeared mysteriously.
To make a long story short, each time I tried to install this thing, something BAD would happen.
"Ooooh, it doesn't work for me, I can't be bothered to read the fricking docs and figure out how to make it work, it's trash and you shouldn't use it.. "
A very wise/.er once said something along these lines:
When someone goes to the mailing lists and says, "How can I get sound to work on Linux?", he always gets flamed and told to RTFM, even if he says, "I already RTFMed, and I still cannot figure it out."
But if he goes on the mailing lists and writes, "Linux iz th3 suxx0rzzz because X doesn't work.", he will get 1000 replies from people all over the world eager to help him in any way possible to get the machine working correctly.
Unfortunately, the same does not hold for the Mozilla community.
I don't understand why, a minute ago, when I clicked on Read More, so I could post my reply to this (I know a lot about this subject), the damn/. thing said "Nothing to see here. Moving right along." There was no story, no reply button, nothing.
So you idiots won't get to see what I was going to say about this subject.
...
Ok, ok. I'll say what I was gonna say. Combine strained silicon with 0.13 micron, super cooling, and, say, 1 volt, with a simpler instruction set, where each instruction is executed in, say, four clocks, and you could get the equivalent of 8 ghz performance (say, if you extrapolate the performance of current 2 ghz Intel processors) out of a processor running at, say, 2 ghz. That is my estimate.
Actually, I think the most ridiculous thing about today's processors is the fact that their instruction set is so damn complicated that the processor spends a ton of time just decoding the instructions. Why not, instead, simplify the instruction set, based on studies of patterns of code produced by contemporary compilers, and increase the speed of execution without having to increase the clock, strain the silicon, etc...
Believe it or not, I know of a computer that was built in the late 70's that could multiply numbers faster than today's fastest Pentiums can. It was a 4-bit computer, with a 16-bit instruction set, and each instruction had within it two instructions and a sub-instruction. The computer was dirt slow, but the instruction set was designed according to the needed software patterns, so that things got executed FAST. The guy who built that computer was a true hacker, not the contemporary h4x0rz that invent the psychopath instruction sets of today's processors.
I think there should be a worldwide police force. Let's call it Earthpol. This organization will have the right to use any methods necessary to catch any kind of criminal. Basically, they will be above any law in any country, and will be able to commit any crime that nonmembers of their organization cannot commit. Also, they will serve as police, prosecutor, judge, and jury. People will be arrested and immediately sentenced. The minimum mandatory sentence for any crime is 40 years in solitary confinement. This organization will go around and terrorize people, demanding payment for "protection" services. Those who do not pay will be arrested for some crime. Earthpol will not have any burden of proof. All will be considered guilty until proven innocent, and will NOT be given any chance to prove themselves innocent, or to make any attempt to do so.
It was obvious from the beginning that Oracle would win this. Not that I'm on Oracle's side. Actually, I am quite opposed to Oracle.
Oracle is the suxx0rz.
This is because that dude who's in charge of Oracle wanted to do all kinds of evil things, like issue federal ID cards to everybody, and stuff like that. This is evil because it allows the government to track you and stuff. But he didn't care, because it would mean profits for his company.
In other words, chip away at American freedoms by making it yet easier for the government to control you; all that for a little bit of temporary profits by one greedy corporation.
That is why I *H*A*T*E* Oracle.
Oracle is the suxx0rz.
I was hoping that PeopleSoft would win this, not only to give Oracle the finger, but also to make sure that there is enough competition in the industry. If Oracle can buy everybody out, then it will have too much power as an organization. All we need is Oracle to buy all the database and business software vendors out there, and then Microsoft to buy Oracle, and that will mean that Microsoft will control our lives until we die.
I hope Europe will allow software patents, provided that the U.S. simultaneously disallows them, and retroactively cancels all software patents ever issued.
This will do two good things:
It will totally screw up the state of software innovation in Europe.
It will allow the U.S. to overtake Europe in software innovation.
Which means it will be bad for Europe's economy.
And good for the U.S.'s economy.
Basically, because I *H*A*T*E* Europe, that would be good news.
FireFox, on the other hand, is quite a nice piece of work, though it is not as refined as Opera.
But Mozilla, as I said, is a bloated piece of trash, and before you mod this Troll, read why I think so harshly of this piece of work.
On numerous occasions, I tried to install Mozilla for people. I have been following its development, and each time there was a release of some type or another, I tried it. Unfortunately, the software never quite worked correctly. On many computers, it screwed things up so badly that the entire user account had to be blown off, or worse, the entire computer had to be reinstalled. Not to mention the fact that it is slow, huge, and slow.
I think that such a browser, if installed in some mobile device, will cause that device to meltdown.
How many people are going to click "no" when IE asks them if they want to run a signed AOL control?
Oh yeah? How many people will click "no" to this:
Warning - Internet Explorer
You are about to install an ActiveX control titled, "Spam adware spyware popup malware VIRUS that will DELETE ALL YOUR FILES and transfer all your money electronically to Nigeria. Are you sure you want to run this control?"
...
I'd bet if a window came up and asked that, 99% of the users would click "Yes"... What can you do? I don't know where the world is coming to.
Uh, HELLO?!?!??!!?!?! The RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft will lobby (and get passed) federal legislation which will require the courts to assume anybody guilty of pirating intellectual property if the RIAA, MPAA, or Microsoft claim, or claim to claim, that the individual's credit card was used to process the transaction.
Thus, you might never even listen to music, but some "Niggerian" as you stated will buy a song, upload it to a file sharing network, and the next thing you know...
It's a clear black night. You just got home from a nice first date with a lady you met at work. You took her to a nice casual dinner, where you talked about your respective jobs, career plans, hobbies, and other things, while having a nice dinner. Everything seemed to go well, and she was receptive to having a second date in the near future. You dropped her off at home, and are now entering your house. Fifteen minutes later, you fall soundly asleep in your comfortable bed.
Suddenly, at 3:00 am, you hear a knocking on the door. "PO-LICE! SEARCH WARRANT!"
**##B*A*M##**
The front door is busted to splinters as ten swat officers and six police dogs enter your house, smashing up everything in sight. Before you can even open your eyes, they yank you out of bed and yell, "YOU'RE UNDER ARREST FOR MUSIC PIRACY!"
Two months later, you're standing in front of the judge during your sentencing hearing. 60 years mandatory sentence, without the possibility of parole.
You know you didn't pirate "Oops I did it again," that some Niggerian, using a credit card generator, bought that song, uploaded it to kazaa or whatever, and got you arrested. That doesn't matter now, because you're spending the rest of your life in a room that is too short for you to stand in and too narrow for you to lie down in, made of hard stones, without even a bed to lie on.
Slashdot Mirror
What's next, thousand-dollar fines for viewing /.?
Hopefully, the Earth will be knocked out of its comfortable orbit, with its axis swinging at a different angle, and its distance being somewhat different from the sun, so that all the oceans will dry up, the atmosphere will blow away, all plant life will turn to dust, and all animal life will wither and die in massive clouds of smoke that will cover the Earth after the impact. Afterwards, Earth will be about as full of life as the surface of Mercury.
All historical achievements, all things accomplished by man, all things discovered, learned, studied, and developed over thousands of years, all political changes that were brought about by the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, all things great and small, all religions, and even love, will mean absolutely nothing after this happens... because nobody and nothing will be here to even know that they once existed.
Why would I hope for such a terrible thing to happen? Because life is a pile of shit, and I can't wait to be put out of my misery.
Yes, it must quite definitely be aliens.
They captured the rover right when it landed and put it into a Star Trek style holodeck, where the landscapes we see are made up. They've been doing this to all the other equipment that we've sent there over the years, so they can avoid what they believe is an oncoming invasion, by showing us that Mars is not a habitable place.
Mars is actually quite nice, though. Its sky is green, not red as you see in the pictures, and its landscape is quite lovely, with red grass and red leaves on all the trees. Martian cities are built in huge self-contained buildings, isolated from one another by thousands of miles of thick forests, but connected by a vast network of underground tunnels which host train-like transportation vehicles.
If we found out, they fear, we will go over there, build lots of stuff all over the place, rape and pillage the environment, fill it with pollution and smog, and royally screw the circle of life as they know it. So they play tricks on our probes.
Yup, the Diebold machines were definitely used to compromise election results. How else could Kerry win California?
I'm glad they brought back the ability to type a path in the file dialog, with search-ahead. This was sorely lacking in GNOME lately.
Microsoft is beginning to remind me of the INS. This kind of unreasonable reasoning is, in fact, quite similar to that which occurs in government bureaucracies. Allow me to explain: When I moved to the U.S. from Europe, I had to go through this government disaster called the INS. As it turns out, at the time that my paperwork was being processed by that disorganization, there were some people working there who shredded documents belonging to about 80,000 U.S. immigrants. They did this because there was a huge backlog in paperwork processing, so some wise guy decided that by shredding the documents instead of filing them, he could make it look like his company was making improvements. This was eventually caught, and I believe that criminal charges were filed.
But that didn't exactly help me. I was one of those 80,000 people. The result of this shredding was that after going through the process, which takes years by the way, nearly all of the paperwork from my file was shredded. As a result, the INS got "confused" in a way very similar to that of a computer running Windows, when the operating system is suddenly deleted in mid-operation. It took quite a few years to finally get a hold of someone deep enough in the disorganization who had the power to do something about it.
Here's the part relevant to this story: When they discovered that my file was shredded, they told me that as a result of the INS's errors, I would have to pay a fine of over 1,000 dollars to get the process back on track.
In other words, they create a disorganization so big that putting some stamps on some pieces of papers takes years, then they shred my papers, then they make me wait years (and if I hadn't fought tooth and nail, they would never have acknowledged that they screwed up), and then, I had to pay a fine to fix it.
So, yes, to people who put a system like that into effect, it makes a whole lot of sense to make a browser so crufty and full of holes that it won't hold water even when submerged, and then to charge people for bloated layers of crufty software that is supposed to fix it, except for hundreds of corner cases that malware authors can use to work around it. And, did I mention that they'll charge you for the priviledge? I suggest trying free software instead. It's so much less painful.
In other words, if I send an email to my mother to tell her Merry Christmas, and I send it from Yahoo!, then the crap that Yahoo! appends to the email causes my email to become spam under this rule.
I think that really sucks.
_______________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/
Someone else already mentioned that the article does discuss this... But I think what would look really cool in a corporate datacenter would be memory "cartridges" (for lack of a better word) like those seen in the memory bay of 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000 computer. Glass-looking cartriges that can be inserted and removed at will. You could have rows of walls with these cartridges on both sides. One can be removed and another installed, and the RAID-like setup will automatically rebuild the data at RAM-like speeds.
I'm opposed to this simply because it's an additional "exception" in the rules that must be handled. Worse yet, there is no number that you can get off any other financial papers... You must estimate the value of the stock options, which means that the FASB has created yet another way for creative accountants to play shady games with the numbers. Sure, it'll look official enough, and all your earnings will be understated.
I wouldn't be surprised if this value is deducted after taxes, just to add insult to injury, but honestly I haven't kept up to date on this as much lately so I don't know where it goes on the income statement...
But seriously... What's wrong with showing how much money you really made, and then disclosing stock options in a footnote?
And, according to all this data, which NASA stores in a MySQL database, species that are "trapped" on a single planet, as it were, are simply more likely to be destroyed in a planet-destroying accident, just as a people, like, say, the Italians, are more likely to go extinct if their entire country just suddenly sinks into a giant sinkhole and crumbles into the ocean...
Yes, the proof is all there, and there is a lot of evidence to compare against. Or, rather, that's my way of saying that a troll has been posted on /.'s main page. What happened to all the SCO stories? At least those made me laugh.
In addition to storing corporate data, they play rap music and scratch records.
When are they coming out with Snoop Dogg Storage Bricks?
Bill Gates died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St.Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"
St. Peter answered, "Those are Software Vulnerability Clocks. Every computer program on Earth has a Software Vulnerability Clock. Every time a program is compromised due to a bug in the code, the hands on that program's clock will move.
"Oh," said Bill, "which clock is that?"
"That's the UNICOS clock. The hands have never moved, indicating that it was never compromised by an attacker."
"Incredible," said Bill. "And which clock is that one?"
St. Peter responded, "That's the OpenBSD clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that the "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!" was compromised only two times in this operating system's life."
"Where's Internet Explorer's clock?" asked Bill.
"That's in Jesus' office. He's using it to drive the generators, which provide power for our celestial copy of Las Vegas."
Let's look at past trends. Whenever Microsoft buys a company, they take its product, and over time, make it increasingly worse, or decreasingly better, depending on your point of view. Take speedisk, for example. Microsoft bought that and turned it into defrag... And it promptly turned into a piece of junk, in my opinion. (Well, this whole post is my opinion, but the last sentence was more so.)
The question I pose is this: Will this anti-spyware actually be effective anymore, or will it lose its effectiveness due to various reasons, such as:
- Since this is Microsoft we're talking about, it will probably be integrated into the OS kernel, or some other place where it doesn't belong. This means that it will be included with every copy of Windows. All the spyware makers have to do is figure out its weaknesses, and find ways to work around it. Voila... spyware will continue to get through.
- Due to the above, Microsoft will release patches. But knowing Microsoft, these will be few and far between.
- Since this spyware engine will be included with Windows, other spyware removal makers will simply go out of business, a la Netscape... Oh, wait.
- Even if Microsoft releases patches to stay ahead of the spyware makers, the latter parties will probably be more agile than Microsoft, to borrow a treasured piece of marketroidspeak. This means that they will release new spyware faster than Microsoft can release patches, a la virus authors being faster than McAfee and the like.
Oh well... I have to give 'em credit for trying. But I really think that the key to solving these problems begins with making better software in the first place. I'm not even talking about completely auditing and fixing every bug in Windows, a la OpenBSD... But there are literally thousands of settings, some great in their scope, and some small and obscure. Many are scattered throughout the registry; others are scattered in the 2GB+ that make up the Windows directory in the "default install" (as if there's any other install). Microsoft does not provide a coherent interface to modify these settings, and for a company with some $60+BILLION(USD) to throw around, I think I am entitled to ask for something better.Therefore, the scope of this post greatly exceeds the specific problem of spyware, though it be a big problem, and addresses some of the larger issues surrounding the misconfiguration of Windows in its default install and the difficulty of reconfiguring it with saner settings.
But hey, I give 'em credit for trying.
I think there was a story here a few years ago. Turns out that somebody already thought of that. The idea was to reduce the impact of viruses, spam, and other malware by making sure that only knowledgeable users can access the Internet.
Of course, you and I know that whatever body provides those licenses will be run by bureaucrats and other idiots who will license lusers and keep licenses away from those "evil hackers" (like the ones who made up that Linux thing that other evil hackers use to take control of banks and governments).
Why not, instead, make a plugin for gaim that specifies pages as in-memory only, without paging to disk. I'm pretty sure Linux supports this, and other OSes probably do as well. Memory is getting cheaper these days, and it's probably worth the extra cost to keep everything in memory, especially if you're talking about illegal activities. (And why are you performing such activities unless they're paying well enough that you can afford the extra RAM?)
See, temp files on disk can be cracked with enough computing power, if someone in the CIA is really pissed at you and has your computer. But if it's in memory and never gets placed on a disk, you're in the clear...
But no matter what you do, the safety of this is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Suppose you're talking to someone about a notorious crime you've just commited. You tell them all the details, and they have proof that it's you at the time of the conversation. This is obviously someone you trust, or you wouldn't tell them all this stuff. But what happens? Unbeknownst to either of you, the DEA has installed a bug in his computer that essentially videotapes everything that goes to the display. Now, you've got videotape evidence of everything you've said, plus proof that it was really you at the time it was videotaped. Encryption shmencryption, you'll be behind bars.
Therefore, don't commit crimes. If you do, don't talk about it. If you do, make darn sure that nobody's listening. And be prepared to pay for your crime, because with your luck, you'll probably get caught.
Ok, so it's not crimes you're talking about, it's this girl you're seeing that you don't want your parents to know about, because you know she's a troublemaker... Substitute "sex" for "crime" above, and substitute "parents" for "police"... By the way, when she gets pregnant, they WILL find out. :-(
I installed it. Then, I went into the preferences and tried to set it up the way I wanted. When I finished, the browser got all weird on me, and the hard drive started to grind as if to destroy the surface of its platters. I tried to reboot, but whenever the user account came up, before even trying to launch Mozilla, the hard drive would begin to grind as described above. The computer would become slow and unresponsive, and it would be impossible even to kill the process.
On another occasion, a bunch of files disappeared mysteriously.
To make a long story short, each time I tried to install this thing, something BAD would happen.
A very wise /.er once said something along these lines:
When someone goes to the mailing lists and says, "How can I get sound to work on Linux?", he always gets flamed and told to RTFM, even if he says, "I already RTFMed, and I still cannot figure it out."
But if he goes on the mailing lists and writes, "Linux iz th3 suxx0rzzz because X doesn't work.", he will get 1000 replies from people all over the world eager to help him in any way possible to get the machine working correctly.
Unfortunately, the same does not hold for the Mozilla community.
So you idiots won't get to see what I was going to say about this subject.
...
Ok, ok. I'll say what I was gonna say. Combine strained silicon with 0.13 micron, super cooling, and, say, 1 volt, with a simpler instruction set, where each instruction is executed in, say, four clocks, and you could get the equivalent of 8 ghz performance (say, if you extrapolate the performance of current 2 ghz Intel processors) out of a processor running at, say, 2 ghz. That is my estimate.
Actually, I think the most ridiculous thing about today's processors is the fact that their instruction set is so damn complicated that the processor spends a ton of time just decoding the instructions. Why not, instead, simplify the instruction set, based on studies of patterns of code produced by contemporary compilers, and increase the speed of execution without having to increase the clock, strain the silicon, etc...
Believe it or not, I know of a computer that was built in the late 70's that could multiply numbers faster than today's fastest Pentiums can. It was a 4-bit computer, with a 16-bit instruction set, and each instruction had within it two instructions and a sub-instruction. The computer was dirt slow, but the instruction set was designed according to the needed software patterns, so that things got executed FAST. The guy who built that computer was a true hacker, not the contemporary h4x0rz that invent the psychopath instruction sets of today's processors.
I think there should be a worldwide police force. Let's call it Earthpol. This organization will have the right to use any methods necessary to catch any kind of criminal. Basically, they will be above any law in any country, and will be able to commit any crime that nonmembers of their organization cannot commit. Also, they will serve as police, prosecutor, judge, and jury. People will be arrested and immediately sentenced. The minimum mandatory sentence for any crime is 40 years in solitary confinement. This organization will go around and terrorize people, demanding payment for "protection" services. Those who do not pay will be arrested for some crime. Earthpol will not have any burden of proof. All will be considered guilty until proven innocent, and will NOT be given any chance to prove themselves innocent, or to make any attempt to do so.
I'd bet you that MSIE version 12, the second one available for Win, Mac, Linux, QNX, FreeBSD, and AmigaOS, will make it into sarge, too.
It was obvious from the beginning that Oracle would win this. Not that I'm on Oracle's side. Actually, I am quite opposed to Oracle.
Oracle is the suxx0rz.
This is because that dude who's in charge of Oracle wanted to do all kinds of evil things, like issue federal ID cards to everybody, and stuff like that. This is evil because it allows the government to track you and stuff. But he didn't care, because it would mean profits for his company.
In other words, chip away at American freedoms by making it yet easier for the government to control you; all that for a little bit of temporary profits by one greedy corporation.
That is why I *H*A*T*E* Oracle.
Oracle is the suxx0rz.
I was hoping that PeopleSoft would win this, not only to give Oracle the finger, but also to make sure that there is enough competition in the industry. If Oracle can buy everybody out, then it will have too much power as an organization. All we need is Oracle to buy all the database and business software vendors out there, and then Microsoft to buy Oracle, and that will mean that Microsoft will control our lives until we die.
Microsoft is the suxx0rz, too.
This will do two good things:
- It will totally screw up the state of software innovation in Europe.
- It will allow the U.S. to overtake Europe in software innovation.
- Which means it will be bad for Europe's economy.
- And good for the U.S.'s economy.
Basically, because I *H*A*T*E* Europe, that would be good news.FireFox, on the other hand, is quite a nice piece of work, though it is not as refined as Opera.
But Mozilla, as I said, is a bloated piece of trash, and before you mod this Troll, read why I think so harshly of this piece of work.
On numerous occasions, I tried to install Mozilla for people. I have been following its development, and each time there was a release of some type or another, I tried it. Unfortunately, the software never quite worked correctly. On many computers, it screwed things up so badly that the entire user account had to be blown off, or worse, the entire computer had to be reinstalled. Not to mention the fact that it is slow, huge, and slow.
I think that such a browser, if installed in some mobile device, will cause that device to meltdown.
How many people are going to click "no" when IE asks them if they want to run a signed AOL control?
Oh yeah? How many people will click "no" to this:
...
I'd bet if a window came up and asked that, 99% of the users would click "Yes"... What can you do? I don't know where the world is coming to.
Uh, HELLO?!?!??!!?!?! The RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft will lobby (and get passed) federal legislation which will require the courts to assume anybody guilty of pirating intellectual property if the RIAA, MPAA, or Microsoft claim, or claim to claim, that the individual's credit card was used to process the transaction.
Thus, you might never even listen to music, but some "Niggerian" as you stated will buy a song, upload it to a file sharing network, and the next thing you know...
It's a clear black night. You just got home from a nice first date with a lady you met at work. You took her to a nice casual dinner, where you talked about your respective jobs, career plans, hobbies, and other things, while having a nice dinner. Everything seemed to go well, and she was receptive to having a second date in the near future. You dropped her off at home, and are now entering your house. Fifteen minutes later, you fall soundly asleep in your comfortable bed.
Suddenly, at 3:00 am, you hear a knocking on the door. "PO-LICE! SEARCH WARRANT!"
**## B*A*M ##**
The front door is busted to splinters as ten swat officers and six police dogs enter your house, smashing up everything in sight. Before you can even open your eyes, they yank you out of bed and yell, "YOU'RE UNDER ARREST FOR MUSIC PIRACY!"
Two months later, you're standing in front of the judge during your sentencing hearing. 60 years mandatory sentence, without the possibility of parole.
You know you didn't pirate "Oops I did it again," that some Niggerian, using a credit card generator, bought that song, uploaded it to kazaa or whatever, and got you arrested. That doesn't matter now, because you're spending the rest of your life in a room that is too short for you to stand in and too narrow for you to lie down in, made of hard stones, without even a bed to lie on.
All that because the RIAA owns your soul.