What they're saying is that somebody amassed a lot of coins on a single account but wasn't able to transfer them out. Just $1000 worth. The coins are there, and the transactions can be rolled back. Mostly.
I hope that is the case - if they can't fix this then it's a huge blow to a very interesting experiment.
"Incoming data from from multiple sources via the fast core of the Internet can sometimes clump closely together when multiple sources happen to transmit data around the same time."
More like technology for idiots.
It's simple. TCP/IP has a built-in backoff mechanism. It works wonderfully when two or three TCP (and other similar, more or less polite) streams compete for bandwidth. The mechanism is stream-based and not port-based, so when one app (one port) has 200-300 active streams, you're SoL no matter how polite those streams are. I guess one can approach the "BitTorrent corporation" with some crackpot idea about breaking TCP, but I wouldn't do it, unless you like to be laughed out of rooms.
What may work is a port-based backoff mechanism on top of the existing stream-based one, but no app vendor is going to be able to help you with that. Or get QoS configured on your router. Alternatively, just get your roommate to use BT traffic throttling. It's there for a reason.
The Amazon DRM lock-in is largely a myth. You hook the Kindle up to your computer with the supplied bog standard USB cable and it appears as external storage. Drop.txt and unprotected.mobi files on there, and they're instantly readable. (.mobi is well-documented, has free software support, and supports rich formatting.)
The e-books on Amazon are reasonably priced: that is, significantly cheaper than the paperback version. Technical books not so much: for example, "Advanced Windows Debugging" will set you back $38 for the Kindle version vs. $52 for the hardcopy.
The whispernet functionality is awesome. Of course, they just HAD to go with one of the proprietary US carriers which means your SOL abroad. What that means is, you can still buy books on Amazon, download them to your computer and copy them over via USB. The on-Kindle store and other wireless functionality only works in North America.
It's not perfect of course: the screen should be larger, the device should be lighter, and it would be really good if it didn't look like a consumer device designed in the Soviet Union. This borders on nitpicking though - the awesomeness of not having to decide what my reading material will be on my next trip based on the freaking size of the book far outweighs the shortcomings. But then again, I travel quite a lot, so maybe others people won't be wowed by this.
My biggest gripe so far is the page turning speed: it's fast enough, but it still feels wrong. You click, and a second or two later the new page appears. It's like if it took two seconds for your stuff to show up after you opened your desk drawer.
PDF support would be nice - I haven't found a tool that does even a passable job at pdf-to-mobi conversion.
The built-in dictionary is great. English is my second language and I love to be able to click a line and instantly (well, it will take the mandatory second or two) get a page with the definitions for all the words in it.
All in all, warmly recommended. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, and I do miss the bookness of books: the paper, the fonts, the feel, even the smell. It does, however, work for me. YMMV.
Ok, so the original scenario is that the functionality used by iReboot (editing boot configuration data) requires admin or system-level privileges. As an ordinary user, you're not getting these privileges without an UAC prompt on Vista.
What the devs have done is not exactly rocket science: they created a service that exposes some interface towards unprivileged apps to access the formerly UAC-protected functionality (changing the default boot OS in the Vista boot loader).
When they're done highfiving themselves maybe they should pause one sec and think about what they've really done: any app running as an ordinary user can now make a call to their service and muck around with the BCD.
FAIL.
While you're at it guys, why don't you wrap the entire Win32 API in your service and expose it to the user-level apps? No more pesky user access control. Everyone runs as LocalSystem. Hoorray!
What they should have done is simple and their basic idea is right: split the app into two. Have the systray icon run as a regular, unelevated piece of code. When the user selects an OS from the menu that they present, THEN do the elevation (by launching the high-privileged process) and make changes to the BCD. This way you're not exposing anything to the outside world. You also don't have a constantly running service eating up resources. A new process is only launched (and an UAC prompt is presented) when a system change must be made. Simple and clean.
Seriously - the "new graphics card" is a joke. It's two 8800 GTx cards in SLI. There are two old G92 processors, on two separate PCBs, with a leafblower holding them together. I guess if you want SLI with the minimum amount of fuss, this is the way to go - but come on. Where is the new silicon?
Same goes for the 790i. It's neat that it can do DDR3 (ho-hum) or that it can run 1600Mhz FSB CPUs (which you'd expect from a recent chipset). Let's face it - it's a very minor improvement over the 780i which itself did little to improve upon the 680i.
Props to Asus for the nice motherboard - it's nice to see such an innovative northbridge/southbridge cooling solution. Other than that, I don't think there's much to see here.
I don't mean to be a party-pooper but article sounds like the author got overexcited once or twice during the writing process. I just don't get what the enthusiasm is all about.
No there isn't. Carriers in the EU have been typically too small to try and claim exclusivity in the first place. With Vodaphone and T-Mobile that's changed recently, but Nokia is still doing its best to maintain its brand and the carrier-independence of their products. They've been - fairly successfully - doing the same in the US as well. The iPhone precedent sure isn't helping their cause though.
I think a lot of people criticizing the iPhone at the moment still haven't made the leap from "this is a phone. It does X,Y,Z" to "this is a fully-fledged computer, masquerading as a phone" - with all that that implies
No, too many people did. Like the valet that brought my car up when I was checking out from a hotel on Sunday. "Hey, you got the iPhone! Do you really think it will make laptops go away?"
The iPhone is not the first convergence device, nor is it unique in any aspect. I don't know why people would think it is. It's just really very well done - but phones have been pretty much full-fledged computers for a while now. The first one I owned was the Nokia 7650.
And if I did have to live without a laptop for a week, I'd take an Imate JasJar or some other QWERTY WinMo phone over the iPhone without batting an eye.
(Yup, mod me troll, I just endorsed Microsoft product.)
It was a simple prank I'm sure. Applications can get listed on the Windows Marketplace with next to no approval process. You need to self-certify the software as something that "works with vista" and then inclusion in the catalog should be largely automatic. Someone's day in Redmond probably starts with clicking Accept and Reject next to new listings, and this one slipped through. Not a big deal I think.
This pretty much rendered Windows useless (explorer, file open / save dialogs and the IE7 addressbar were not working) if you had software installed for HP cameras, HP scanners, or any HP DeskJet printer that included a card reader.
Courtesy of JSI FAQ:
You experience one or more of the following strange behaviors:
- You are unable to open special folders, like My Documents or My Pictures.
- Some 3rd party applications hang when accessing My Documents.
- Office files won't open in Microsoft Office if they are stored in My Documents.
- Entering an address into Internet Explorer's address bar does nothing.
- The Send TO context menu has no effect.
- The plus (+) sign on a folder in Windows Explorer does nothing.
- Opening a file via an applications File / Open menu causes the application to hang.
This behavior is caused by a new VERCLSID.EXE binary, which validates shell extensions before Explorer.exe, the Windows Shell, can use them. VERCLSID.EXE is installed by the MS06-015 (908531) security update.
The following 3rd party applications cause VERCLSID.EXE to hang:
Hewlett-Packard's Share-to-Web Namespace Daemon ("%ProgramFiles%\hewlett-packard\hp share-to-web\Hpgs2wnd.exe), auto-started from the Registry Run key and the Startup menu, which ships with:
HP PhotoSmart software
Any HP DeskJet printer that includes a card reader
HP Scanners
Some HP CD-DVD RWs
HP Cameras
Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall which has a feature that prompts when Explorer launches VERCLSID.EXE, but you can configure it not to prompt.
To workaround this behavior, add the HP shell extension to the VERCLSID.EXE white list:
A CA is in control over a small part of the process that makes it possible for them (or anyone having a copy of their private key) to perform a MITM attack on any web browser without the user having a clue. You're right, done on a large scale it'd be caught quickly but if the attacker is being careful and only spoofs a few people he's interested in: nobody will ever know. After all, when was the last time you compared your favorite HTTPS site's certificate to the one you saw during your previous visit? Do you verify Windows updates manually, making sure that signatures that appear to be from Microsoft are, in fact, from Microsoft? Does your email client throw up a warning if your POP/IMAP/Exchange/whatever server has a new, valid certificate?
And the problem I'm trying to highlight here is that having any sort of central trust component pretty much makes the system worthless for exchanging information that you want to keep secret from everyone, if "everyone" includes the most resourceful governments of the world.
How do I know that the public key I'm presented with belongs to you and not some man-in-the-middle? Clearly you don't want a central agent (like a CA) be in control of trust, because the problem here is the central control over encryption in the 1st place.
A workable solution would be to accept public keys like you do with SSH. Once you have a connection you can verify the thumbprint (or babbleprint) with the other party using your voice, and move on to sensitive discussions if the keys check out. You'd only need to do this upon the initial connection, or when the keys change for some reason.
Wuhudutoomhum? You're mixing up what little knowledge you have.
The same thing will work in x64 if you go the extra step and bother to sign the driver that allows for this trick.
It is worth noting however that - while the trick is extremely simple - it doesn't really get you much. Turning off the protection flag on a process? Big deal. The interesting DRM stuff is in the kernel anyway. Turning ON the protection flag on something with malicious intent? Well now that the cat's out of the bag anyone can turn off that flag again just as easily... and like the docs say, the system can (and does) rely on the fact that the protected flag is only turned on for specially signed code. Turn on the flag for a non-MS signed process and watch calls to CreateThread, LoadLibrary, and God knows what else fail with weird error codes. Pretty useless, wouldn't you say?
This is just a silly hack with little-to-no practical use.
There's nothing in this "article" that the discussion related to the original bugging story did not already cover in much greater detail. No news is better than crappy news, slashdot.
They (Lufthansa) have AC outlets in business class (and of course in first), it accepts a European or a non-grounded US plug. They even have USB outlets for charging a PDA...
They also have a CAT-5 connector right next to the USB port. It does not seem to be hooked up to anything meaningful though.
The technology is satellite based. If they're using geostationary satellites (and I don't see why they wouldn't) then you have to deal with a fair bit of latency. Your ping goes to the satellite, then to the ground, then to the satellite, then to the plane. This is 4x an Earth-satellite distance, and geostationary satellites are on an orbit about 35,000 kilometers high.
35,000 x 4 = 140,000 kilometers. Even the light can only cover 299700 kilometers per second - there you have your.5 second delay.
You should try to get a refund for your $30 then.:)
For what it's worth, they were *supposed* to have Internet flying in to New York from Frankfurt as well. WiFi worked, and I got the pages served from the onboard portal, but clicking the purchase link (that takes you to a server on the ground) resulted in "Page cannot be displayed" errors. Or "The operation timed out" errors in Firefox. Of course, the stewardess could not really help me. I told her that even though their onboard WiFi is up, the satellite link seems to be down. She said they'd be showing a movie very soon on how to use the Internet.
So yes, the technology is there, and sometimes it works. And when it does, it's great. When it doesn't - well, they'd better have an onboard network admin as well.
...is exactly what the DVD-CCA is doing with this suit.
Sure, right now it's not a real issue. But imagine a consumer-level device that works in a similar manner. Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, etc. It will come, sooner or later.
THEN they will have a real problem on their hands, with nobody buying DVDs, just paying a 24-hour rental fee and then returning them, while keeping the content on their media boxes (made by Kaleidascape or not) forever.
So this lawsuit is not about current problems... but it has serious implications for the future. At least that's what the DVD-CCA thinks.
Me, I couldn't care less. I've built my networked home media system quite some time ago.
Slashdot Mirror
RTFA?
What they're saying is that somebody amassed a lot of coins on a single account but wasn't able to transfer them out. Just $1000 worth. The coins are there, and the transactions can be rolled back. Mostly.
I hope that is the case - if they can't fix this then it's a huge blow to a very interesting experiment.
Technology for mortals?
/. get back to actual nerd stuff?
"Incoming data from from multiple sources via the fast core of the Internet can sometimes clump closely together when multiple sources happen to transmit data around the same time."
More like technology for idiots.
It's simple. TCP/IP has a built-in backoff mechanism. It works wonderfully when two or three TCP (and other similar, more or less polite) streams compete for bandwidth. The mechanism is stream-based and not port-based, so when one app (one port) has 200-300 active streams, you're SoL no matter how polite those streams are. I guess one can approach the "BitTorrent corporation" with some crackpot idea about breaking TCP, but I wouldn't do it, unless you like to be laughed out of rooms.
What may work is a port-based backoff mechanism on top of the existing stream-based one, but no app vendor is going to be able to help you with that. Or get QoS configured on your router. Alternatively, just get your roommate to use BT traffic throttling. It's there for a reason.
Now can
The Amazon DRM lock-in is largely a myth. You hook the Kindle up to your computer with the supplied bog standard USB cable and it appears as external storage. Drop .txt and unprotected .mobi files on there, and they're instantly readable. (.mobi is well-documented, has free software support, and supports rich formatting.)
The e-books on Amazon are reasonably priced: that is, significantly cheaper than the paperback version. Technical books not so much: for example, "Advanced Windows Debugging" will set you back $38 for the Kindle version vs. $52 for the hardcopy.
The whispernet functionality is awesome. Of course, they just HAD to go with one of the proprietary US carriers which means your SOL abroad. What that means is, you can still buy books on Amazon, download them to your computer and copy them over via USB. The on-Kindle store and other wireless functionality only works in North America.
It's not perfect of course: the screen should be larger, the device should be lighter, and it would be really good if it didn't look like a consumer device designed in the Soviet Union. This borders on nitpicking though - the awesomeness of not having to decide what my reading material will be on my next trip based on the freaking size of the book far outweighs the shortcomings. But then again, I travel quite a lot, so maybe others people won't be wowed by this.
My biggest gripe so far is the page turning speed: it's fast enough, but it still feels wrong. You click, and a second or two later the new page appears. It's like if it took two seconds for your stuff to show up after you opened your desk drawer.
PDF support would be nice - I haven't found a tool that does even a passable job at pdf-to-mobi conversion.
The built-in dictionary is great. English is my second language and I love to be able to click a line and instantly (well, it will take the mandatory second or two) get a page with the definitions for all the words in it.
All in all, warmly recommended. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, and I do miss the bookness of books: the paper, the fonts, the feel, even the smell. It does, however, work for me. YMMV.
Ok, so the original scenario is that the functionality used by iReboot (editing boot configuration data) requires admin or system-level privileges. As an ordinary user, you're not getting these privileges without an UAC prompt on Vista.
What the devs have done is not exactly rocket science: they created a service that exposes some interface towards unprivileged apps to access the formerly UAC-protected functionality (changing the default boot OS in the Vista boot loader).
When they're done highfiving themselves maybe they should pause one sec and think about what they've really done: any app running as an ordinary user can now make a call to their service and muck around with the BCD.
FAIL.
While you're at it guys, why don't you wrap the entire Win32 API in your service and expose it to the user-level apps? No more pesky user access control. Everyone runs as LocalSystem. Hoorray!
What they should have done is simple and their basic idea is right: split the app into two. Have the systray icon run as a regular, unelevated piece of code. When the user selects an OS from the menu that they present, THEN do the elevation (by launching the high-privileged process) and make changes to the BCD. This way you're not exposing anything to the outside world. You also don't have a constantly running service eating up resources. A new process is only launched (and an UAC prompt is presented) when a system change must be made. Simple and clean.
Seriously - the "new graphics card" is a joke. It's two 8800 GTx cards in SLI. There are two old G92 processors, on two separate PCBs, with a leafblower holding them together. I guess if you want SLI with the minimum amount of fuss, this is the way to go - but come on. Where is the new silicon?
Same goes for the 790i. It's neat that it can do DDR3 (ho-hum) or that it can run 1600Mhz FSB CPUs (which you'd expect from a recent chipset). Let's face it - it's a very minor improvement over the 780i which itself did little to improve upon the 680i.
Props to Asus for the nice motherboard - it's nice to see such an innovative northbridge/southbridge cooling solution. Other than that, I don't think there's much to see here.
I don't mean to be a party-pooper but article sounds like the author got overexcited once or twice during the writing process. I just don't get what the enthusiasm is all about.
No there isn't. Carriers in the EU have been typically too small to try and claim exclusivity in the first place. With Vodaphone and T-Mobile that's changed recently, but Nokia is still doing its best to maintain its brand and the carrier-independence of their products. They've been - fairly successfully - doing the same in the US as well. The iPhone precedent sure isn't helping their cause though.
I think a lot of people criticizing the iPhone at the moment still haven't made the leap from "this is a phone. It does X,Y,Z" to "this is a fully-fledged computer, masquerading as a phone" - with all that that implies
No, too many people did. Like the valet that brought my car up when I was checking out from a hotel on Sunday. "Hey, you got the iPhone! Do you really think it will make laptops go away?"
The iPhone is not the first convergence device, nor is it unique in any aspect. I don't know why people would think it is. It's just really very well done - but phones have been pretty much full-fledged computers for a while now. The first one I owned was the Nokia 7650.
And if I did have to live without a laptop for a week, I'd take an Imate JasJar or some other QWERTY WinMo phone over the iPhone without batting an eye.
(Yup, mod me troll, I just endorsed Microsoft product.)
It was a simple prank I'm sure. Applications can get listed on the Windows Marketplace with next to no approval process. You need to self-certify the software as something that "works with vista" and then inclusion in the catalog should be largely automatic. Someone's day in Redmond probably starts with clicking Accept and Reject next to new listings, and this one slipped through. Not a big deal I think.
Isn't this "First College to Deploy 802.11n Network" instead?
I know it's early but c'mon.
pHansReiser->pMissingWife->pExLover->Confess();
Since you claim to be a C++ programmer, the above might help.
This pretty much rendered Windows useless (explorer, file open / save dialogs and the IE7 addressbar were not working) if you had software installed for HP cameras, HP scanners, or any HP DeskJet printer that included a card reader.
h ell Extensions\Cached" /V "{A4DF5659-0801-4A60-9607-1C48695EFDA9} {000214E6-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} 0x401" /T REG_DWORD /F /D 1
Courtesy of JSI FAQ:
You experience one or more of the following strange behaviors:
- You are unable to open special folders, like My Documents or My Pictures.
- Some 3rd party applications hang when accessing My Documents.
- Office files won't open in Microsoft Office if they are stored in My Documents.
- Entering an address into Internet Explorer's address bar does nothing.
- The Send TO context menu has no effect.
- The plus (+) sign on a folder in Windows Explorer does nothing.
- Opening a file via an applications File / Open menu causes the application to hang.
This behavior is caused by a new VERCLSID.EXE binary, which validates shell extensions before Explorer.exe, the Windows Shell, can use them. VERCLSID.EXE is installed by the MS06-015 (908531) security update.
The following 3rd party applications cause VERCLSID.EXE to hang:
Hewlett-Packard's Share-to-Web Namespace Daemon ("%ProgramFiles%\hewlett-packard\hp share-to-web\Hpgs2wnd.exe), auto-started from the Registry Run key and the Startup menu, which ships with:
HP PhotoSmart software
Any HP DeskJet printer that includes a card reader
HP Scanners
Some HP CD-DVD RWs
HP Cameras
Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall which has a feature that prompts when Explorer launches VERCLSID.EXE, but you can configure it not to prompt.
To workaround this behavior, add the HP shell extension to the VERCLSID.EXE white list:
1. Open a CMD.EXE window.
2. Type the following command and press Enter:
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\S
3. Shutdown and restart your computer.
NOTE: If you find other COM controls or shell extensions that cause this behavior, you can add them to the white list.
A CA is in control over a small part of the process that makes it possible for them (or anyone having a copy of their private key) to perform a MITM attack on any web browser without the user having a clue. You're right, done on a large scale it'd be caught quickly but if the attacker is being careful and only spoofs a few people he's interested in: nobody will ever know. After all, when was the last time you compared your favorite HTTPS site's certificate to the one you saw during your previous visit? Do you verify Windows updates manually, making sure that signatures that appear to be from Microsoft are, in fact, from Microsoft? Does your email client throw up a warning if your POP/IMAP/Exchange/whatever server has a new, valid certificate?
And the problem I'm trying to highlight here is that having any sort of central trust component pretty much makes the system worthless for exchanging information that you want to keep secret from everyone, if "everyone" includes the most resourceful governments of the world.
How do I know that the public key I'm presented with belongs to you and not some man-in-the-middle? Clearly you don't want a central agent (like a CA) be in control of trust, because the problem here is the central control over encryption in the 1st place.
A workable solution would be to accept public keys like you do with SSH. Once you have a connection you can verify the thumbprint (or babbleprint) with the other party using your voice, and move on to sensitive discussions if the keys check out. You'd only need to do this upon the initial connection, or when the keys change for some reason.
Wuhudutoomhum? You're mixing up what little knowledge you have.
The same thing will work in x64 if you go the extra step and bother to sign the driver that allows for this trick.
It is worth noting however that - while the trick is extremely simple - it doesn't really get you much. Turning off the protection flag on a process? Big deal. The interesting DRM stuff is in the kernel anyway. Turning ON the protection flag on something with malicious intent? Well now that the cat's out of the bag anyone can turn off that flag again just as easily... and like the docs say, the system can (and does) rely on the fact that the protected flag is only turned on for specially signed code. Turn on the flag for a non-MS signed process and watch calls to CreateThread, LoadLibrary, and God knows what else fail with weird error codes. Pretty useless, wouldn't you say?
This is just a silly hack with little-to-no practical use.
You don't know much about this stuff, do you? This is what a problem landing looks like:
2 3249,223248,223247,223246
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?id=2
I'm not sure I get what you infer. Are you saying there should be a statue of limitations to the idiocy of your average /. user?
One of the most uninformative articles ever to hit Slashdot.
"Oh, so now more apps will be competing for that single HW NIC?" Wow. Computerworld, insightful as ever.
An undisclosed somebody is threatening to sue a poor little blogger over something. Come on. This is not news. Where are the facts?
There's nothing in this "article" that the discussion related to the original bugging story did not already cover in much greater detail. No news is better than crappy news, slashdot.
Way to steal Microsoft's thunder!
Well, ping and tracert measure round-trip time. So it is plane->satellite->ground->satellite->plane.
They (Lufthansa) have AC outlets in business class (and of course in first), it accepts a European or a non-grounded US plug. They even have USB outlets for charging a PDA...
They also have a CAT-5 connector right next to the USB port. It does not seem to be hooked up to anything meaningful though.
The technology is satellite based. If they're using geostationary satellites (and I don't see why they wouldn't) then you have to deal with a fair bit of latency. Your ping goes to the satellite, then to the ground, then to the satellite, then to the plane. This is 4x an Earth-satellite distance, and geostationary satellites are on an orbit about 35,000 kilometers high.
.5 second delay.
35,000 x 4 = 140,000 kilometers. Even the light can only cover 299700 kilometers per second - there you have your
You should try to get a refund for your $30 then. :)
For what it's worth, they were *supposed* to have Internet flying in to New York from Frankfurt as well. WiFi worked, and I got the pages served from the onboard portal, but clicking the purchase link (that takes you to a server on the ground) resulted in "Page cannot be displayed" errors. Or "The operation timed out" errors in Firefox. Of course, the stewardess could not really help me. I told her that even though their onboard WiFi is up, the satellite link seems to be down. She said they'd be showing a movie very soon on how to use the Internet.
So yes, the technology is there, and sometimes it works. And when it does, it's great. When it doesn't - well, they'd better have an onboard network admin as well.
...is exactly what the DVD-CCA is doing with this suit.
Sure, right now it's not a real issue. But imagine a consumer-level device that works in a similar manner. Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, etc. It will come, sooner or later.
THEN they will have a real problem on their hands, with nobody buying DVDs, just paying a 24-hour rental fee and then returning them, while keeping the content on their media boxes (made by Kaleidascape or not) forever.
So this lawsuit is not about current problems... but it has serious implications for the future. At least that's what the DVD-CCA thinks.
Me, I couldn't care less. I've built my networked home media system quite some time ago.