No, 20 IE windows isn't excessive, just look at any porn site.:P
Seriously though, I often have about 5 - 10 IE windows open, and many other proggies open as well. Atm, I see 2 dos prompts, 3 instances of IE, 2 explorer folders, Xchat, Xircon (yes, I use different IRC clients for dcc sends and for chatting), and ICQ. The system tray is full of additionally good stuff such as VNC, weatherbug, and norton a/v (if you work in a computer shop, having a/v running all the time is something you learn to do.) Win2k after a week on a lowend celery with 192 megs of memory kinda crawls to an halt, and occasionally something will crash in a nasty way that makes the system seem to crawl. Weekly reboots are a must for me.
OTOH, if there is just 1 task for windows to do, 2k seems to do it fairly well. Just don't start opening/closing a ton of proggies, or the system starts to hurt.
Just my $.02
Re:Suggested Change to IP Laws
on
Ultima Revived
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· Score: 2
I'd say 5 years, and add if any later or derived versions still exist, its still under IP protection. Else, open it up for non-profit use.
Thus windows, linux, and a ton of apps wouldn't fall in the public domain. (Unless you want to see MS Linux that's based off a 5 year old kernal). However, the old dead games will still be around, and emulation of traditional consoles and games wouldn't be illegal (to hold the roms).
This would create a legal state of abandonware, with well defined boundries. With the quickly aging property of software, such a law would be in the best interests of what IP was meant to be: Giving temporary rights to an individual to encourage the creation of works that will benefit the entire public when the limited rights of the original IP holder expire.
Okay, dumb question, but does windows update include or not include the security fixes people so often mention here? I'm thinking of "critical update package" in particular.
LazyDawg writes (and was modded up to +5):... and just write pseudocode or a very detailed step-by-step description of what their code does. In the end script kiddies will have to learn to write their own leet tools, and may later on branch these skills into other areas.
I have to admit, I've never looked at bugtraq, and know jack about most exploits, but unless the exploit code includes a trojan/propigating method and the compileme.info file, I am assuming that the script kiddies need more then the exploit code to make a working virus/trojan/rootkit.
Sure, 99% of the script kiddies may be dumb, but the other 1% is the source of the tools, and the code. The exploit itself, once explained, is trivial to code, in my (admittedly ignorant) opinion. Code to take advantage of that exploit is not.
Different monitors act in different ways, as I learned from turning monitors sideways for playing games with MAME. Some have little distortion, some have a ton of it.
I'm not sure about weather or not magnification/low resolution would be a problem. I've noticed that sending a real player file that's encoded at around 2 megs/minute to my older 25" set noticeably reduces the artifacts that are viewable, and smoothes out the image (at least with anime, maybe I should try a "real" movie someday), but divx/avi still have noticeable artifacts occasionally, due to (I'm assuming) real media compressing large areas of the same color better. The lower resolution of the TV also helps some games, especially emulated consoles, the game looks more "real", while on the computer screen, the high resolution actually hurts some emulated console games. Now if the lens is exact, then there will be pixilization problems, however, if there is a certain amount of imperfection (blurryness), I'm guessing a lot of games would be playable, and vids would be okay.
I was thinking something similar, but have a delayed write to the hard drive. After all, a lot of writes aren't permanant, and the trick would be to only archive the data to the hard drive after it has existed on the RAM drive for awhile.
It needs a good hack. 1st one would be to mirror the hard drive in RAM. 2nd one would be the delayed write to the hard drive. Of course, with the delayed write, unexpected power failures would result in data loss.
Sure, war may drive technological change, but do we really want to be benefitting from death and distruction? Especially when we have a peaceful alternative that has resulted in faster internet connection speeds, the acceptance of DVDs, and the spread of the internet itself?
Yes, I'm talking about porn. Wanting free, anonymous porn everywhere has resulted in widespread internet access, even if its dialup to a local number at unlimited rates (in the US). Wanting high-quality pirated porn movies has resulted in the spread of broadband. And for viewing porn in the privacy of your own home, nothing beats DVDs, especially since they won't wear away the tape if you pause and keep viewing the same few minutes of certain "adult" videos.
Sure, you can talk about war all you want, but porn will drive further technological changes. Voice recognition software is perfect for hands-free browsing and other computer usage. Interactive movies will be another idea driven by porn. And don't even ask about what fully interactive virtual reality would be good for.;)
As the Dead Kennedy's sang "Kinky sex makes the world go round!"
50 Karma is 50 Karma, it doesn't get any better, so why not burn some of it and keep myself warm?
Jon Katz - Now not only qualified to discuss geek angst as an expert, and not only the leading authority of zeitgeist of our times, he can also do movie reviews.
Seriously though, if slashdot is going to do movie reviews, presumably based on the idea that "geeks like movies", how long is it until we see Katz degenerate into reviewing takeout pizza, video games, or acne cream, all things the stereotypical geek would like to know about?
Why not stick to "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." You can't be all things to everyone. The usefulness of the majority of websites is specialization. If you try to do everything, you generally end up doing a shallow pass of all subjects, which benefits no one but the most casual of users.
So, who wants to bet when we'll see the first virus that finds a security hole to gain Administrator's rights, uses that hole to install itself, then patches that hole, leaving the user with only a normal user account, effectively locking them out of their own computer?
OTOH, since windows has to be registered on a reinstall, this should be a fun time for Microsoft.;)
I actually used it to find the band and title of songs after hearing an unidentified snippet on the radio. Thank god, since lyrics.ch has been shut down, now I can't identify any songs that I heard but wasn't told the title. This should boost cd sales.
Under windows, I have a modified hosts file that blocks out the more common ad servers. Since images are rather ugly, I use eDexter to display a blank image for me.
So, imagine the simple version of this (assuming I have javascript turned on, which is wrong, and assuming I use IE instead of Opera as my browser).
The IE script (which probably breaks other browsers, but...) checks to see if the ad image has arrived. It finds one. Maybe it goes further and checks to see if the image came from the ad server. It asks windows what's the ip addy is, and windows tells it 127.0.0.1, so everything checks out.
As long as it relies on simple ad banners, it fails. More complicated scripts could present a challenge, but a challenge that will be quickly solved if the ad checker becomes widespread.
On the other hand, thanks. Forgot that I haven't installed eDexter on the laptop yet. Need to conserve my 33.6k PCMIA modem's bandwidth, y'know.
Unless you have more information concerning the Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CS, I believe that the upper limit on the hard drive is 2.1 Gb. The machine came with a 810 mb drive, and I've seen the same model with 1.4 Gb drives. I've also seen replacement drives at 2.0 Gb.
MrEfficient writes: I'm still using Windows 95 here at work and my system is really bogged down with only 64 mb of ram (mostly because of the apps I use, not the OS).
I'll agree, it has to be the apps. Win95b is zippy on my p75 laptop with 16 megs of memory. Added bersirc, miranda icq, editpad, opera, and a lightweight freeware word processor I found, and its adequate for most of my needs. I'm thinking of throwing linux on there in a bit, but find myself hesitating because of several reasons. One is bloat. For coexistance, linux would have to be installed in under 400 megs of hard disk space (including swap) to give win95 room. Also, considering its an old Toshiba 400CS, there might be hardware incompatabilities. Then there is the entire issue of doing a network install over a pcmia card from a cd drive presented as an ftp file source. Would I get a usable linux system complete with gui that would run at a reasonable speed? Maybe. It would require hunting down a wm with a small footprint, then rebuilding the kernal with all of the unneeded things removed. I'm not saying I won't do it someday, I'm just saying that someday won't be soon.
Building 1+ GHz Athlon-based systems for a living, I am familiar with a large amount of athlon based systems on several motherboards, (computer grunt gives one interesting knowledge).
Now even though we use the default OEM heatsink, which sucks, I've never seen an Athlon system with a properly installed processor overheat. This includes systems that are in older, forced air-heated homes with several pets (ewww, cat-hair is evil). The OEM heatsink is probably one of the poorer heatsinks, an Athlon under heavy load can reach 60C, and at idle on an operating system like win98, it doesn't even reach a low of 50C. Win2k and linux systems do better on idle, because of the HALT instructions sent to the CPU by the OS.
Please note that the temperature measurements were done using the the sensor on the motherboard. And 60C is still 35C cooler then the top limit Athlon sets for their TBirds.
Even if the encryption is unbreakable, the DMCA doesn't apply, since its unproven if the mp3 is made from data decrypted by the user from the mp3, or if the mp3 is made by using the audio/digital out on the cd player.
Remember, we haven't degraded into automatically assuming everyone is guilty (yet).
Slow down, trollboy. Just because you don't know anyone who has bought a licensed version of windows doesn't mean nobody has. Its like me denying the existance of elephants because I've never seen one.
Now take a deep breath, and repeat after me: "Linux is not the solution to every problem." There, that better? Oh, wait, you don't believe me? Here, let me show you a glimps into an alternative world where Microsoft runs GPL code and the Linux distros are for-profit companies.
Slashdot - Alternative World Posting.
Yet another linux worm has been found today, this one, like many others, primarily being spread by people with 2 or 3 year old distro versions, who are too lazy to patch their systems, or have pirated their versions and don't have any official support. Some of these people don't even know that they are running web servers, and most of them have improperly configured firewalls or none at all. Unfortunately, if these poor people could just run windows, with its easy "Windows Update", and a nice, simple graphical installation tool that can detect most hardware, and has 3rd party support for almost all hardware, the world would be a better place.
Get the point? Consider nimda a vulnerability that affects unpatched machines that are often configured with additional services that the user doesn't need. The only reason why windows was the platform targetted and not linux is that windows is the dominate end-user OS. Linux wouldn't solve anything.
OTOH, I paid for my copy of win98SE, and have an option to install a licensed copy of win2k from work. The software I use on the win32 platform is primarily free, such as TinyFirewall, VNC, Putty and Openoffice. My system has the latest patches, and the firewall is (hopefully) properly configured.;) I haven't had to buy additional software so that windows would continue to run.
The systems we sell at work all include a licensed copy of win**, and come complete with the latest, updated version of an anti-virus software package. The subscription for updates runs for a year, and then, IIRC, is renewable for another year for just $3.65. Even without using anti-virus software for over 3 years, I've never had a virus (I later installed a copy of antivirus software when I had to xfer files from work to home - better safe then sorry, especially when some files are from customers who might be infected).
So, anyways, the purpose of this post is (a) any unpatched, misconfigured system is open to viruses and worms, (b) windows doesn't require thousands of dollars of software to be usable, (c) people do pay for windows, and (d) viruses, for the average informed windows user is not a threat.
Take 30 minutes out of your day to automate most of this process, and to write a simple script to do changes. Have it scan for bandwidth-wasting viruses (or all viruses - some ISPs have this on their mail servers and will block viruses at the smtp server). When it finds nimda or its kin, block that user to all sites except an ftp/http site with the patches, the info, and a short, simple explanation why their service has been cut (also throw in the number of a good computer store that will do in-house calls if you want). Really, I don't think you'd have to disable the pop3 server, and that way, you can send them an email explaining the reasons again. So either you get a call asking why the customer has no access, or else the customer reads the email, adds the patches, and goes back to the http site and runs the script that scans him again and reactivates the full account.
Okay, its above the call of duty. But it doesn't take that much time, and it would be the ISP I would recommend to friends.
Yep, I am.;) Seriously though, if you are going to skip doing work, spend a day or two in the gimp and make some images for the game, last time I played, it was in serious need of more images.
The BSD license (IIRC) specifically notes that you must give credit for the code. Therefore, passing off *BSD code as your own is just as wrong as passing off GPL code as your own.
In short (and yes, this is a flame), get a clue before you post, and maybe you won't look like an idiot.
Yep, designing an entire game is probably more effort then you want to put into a school project.
OTOH, ever thought about doing a game port? Nethack is GPL'ed, and while the text version would suck on a playstation (trust me, text on most TV is icky), there is a version with isometric tiles that looks pretty nice, and, due to being a deriviative of nethack, is under the GPL with the source code available. Just do a google search for "Eagle Eye Nethack" and you should find it.
Of course, I'm biased. I want a good game ported to another platform. Plus, since you save some time by porting an existing game, you have time to add more tiles to the game, which eagle eye nethack desperately needs.
Slashdot Mirror
No, 20 IE windows isn't excessive, just look at any porn site.
Seriously though, I often have about 5 - 10 IE windows open, and many other proggies open as well. Atm, I see 2 dos prompts, 3 instances of IE, 2 explorer folders, Xchat, Xircon (yes, I use different IRC clients for dcc sends and for chatting), and ICQ. The system tray is full of additionally good stuff such as VNC, weatherbug, and norton a/v (if you work in a computer shop, having a/v running all the time is something you learn to do.) Win2k after a week on a lowend celery with 192 megs of memory kinda crawls to an halt, and occasionally something will crash in a nasty way that makes the system seem to crawl. Weekly reboots are a must for me.
OTOH, if there is just 1 task for windows to do, 2k seems to do it fairly well. Just don't start opening/closing a ton of proggies, or the system starts to hurt.
Just my $.02
I'd say 5 years, and add if any later or derived versions still exist, its still under IP protection. Else, open it up for non-profit use.
Thus windows, linux, and a ton of apps wouldn't fall in the public domain. (Unless you want to see MS Linux that's based off a 5 year old kernal). However, the old dead games will still be around, and emulation of traditional consoles and games wouldn't be illegal (to hold the roms).
This would create a legal state of abandonware, with well defined boundries. With the quickly aging property of software, such a law would be in the best interests of what IP was meant to be: Giving temporary rights to an individual to encourage the creation of works that will benefit the entire public when the limited rights of the original IP holder expire.
Just my $.02
Okay, dumb question, but does windows update include or not include the security fixes people so often mention here? I'm thinking of "critical update package" in particular.
Anyone know?
LazyDawg writes (and was modded up to +5):
I have to admit, I've never looked at bugtraq, and know jack about most exploits, but unless the exploit code includes a trojan/propigating method and the compileme.info file, I am assuming that the script kiddies need more then the exploit code to make a working virus/trojan/rootkit.
Sure, 99% of the script kiddies may be dumb, but the other 1% is the source of the tools, and the code. The exploit itself, once explained, is trivial to code, in my (admittedly ignorant) opinion. Code to take advantage of that exploit is not.
Just my $.02
Different monitors act in different ways, as I learned from turning monitors sideways for playing games with MAME. Some have little distortion, some have a ton of it.
I'm not sure about weather or not magnification/low resolution would be a problem. I've noticed that sending a real player file that's encoded at around 2 megs/minute to my older 25" set noticeably reduces the artifacts that are viewable, and smoothes out the image (at least with anime, maybe I should try a "real" movie someday), but divx/avi still have noticeable artifacts occasionally, due to (I'm assuming) real media compressing large areas of the same color better. The lower resolution of the TV also helps some games, especially emulated consoles, the game looks more "real", while on the computer screen, the high resolution actually hurts some emulated console games. Now if the lens is exact, then there will be pixilization problems, however, if there is a certain amount of imperfection (blurryness), I'm guessing a lot of games would be playable, and vids would be okay.
Just my $.02
I was thinking something similar, but have a delayed write to the hard drive. After all, a lot of writes aren't permanant, and the trick would be to only archive the data to the hard drive after it has existed on the RAM drive for awhile.
It needs a good hack. 1st one would be to mirror the hard drive in RAM. 2nd one would be the delayed write to the hard drive. Of course, with the delayed write, unexpected power failures would result in data loss.
Sure, war may drive technological change, but do we really want to be benefitting from death and distruction? Especially when we have a peaceful alternative that has resulted in faster internet connection speeds, the acceptance of DVDs, and the spread of the internet itself?
Yes, I'm talking about porn. Wanting free, anonymous porn everywhere has resulted in widespread internet access, even if its dialup to a local number at unlimited rates (in the US). Wanting high-quality pirated porn movies has resulted in the spread of broadband. And for viewing porn in the privacy of your own home, nothing beats DVDs, especially since they won't wear away the tape if you pause and keep viewing the same few minutes of certain "adult" videos.
Sure, you can talk about war all you want, but porn will drive further technological changes. Voice recognition software is perfect for hands-free browsing and other computer usage. Interactive movies will be another idea driven by porn. And don't even ask about what fully interactive virtual reality would be good for.
As the Dead Kennedy's sang "Kinky sex makes the world go round!"
50 Karma is 50 Karma, it doesn't get any better, so why not burn some of it and keep myself warm?
Jon Katz - Now not only qualified to discuss geek angst as an expert, and not only the leading authority of zeitgeist of our times, he can also do movie reviews.
Seriously though, if slashdot is going to do movie reviews, presumably based on the idea that "geeks like movies", how long is it until we see Katz degenerate into reviewing takeout pizza, video games, or acne cream, all things the stereotypical geek would like to know about?
Why not stick to "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." You can't be all things to everyone. The usefulness of the majority of websites is specialization. If you try to do everything, you generally end up doing a shallow pass of all subjects, which benefits no one but the most casual of users.
Just my $.02
An example:
100 MHz [Intel Pentium] (166.3 MIPS, 3.30 SPECint95, 2.59 SPECfp95 on Xxpress 1M L2)
So, who wants to bet when we'll see the first virus that finds a security hole to gain Administrator's rights, uses that hole to install itself, then patches that hole, leaving the user with only a normal user account, effectively locking them out of their own computer?
OTOH, since windows has to be registered on a reinstall, this should be a fun time for Microsoft.
I actually used it to find the band and title of songs after hearing an unidentified snippet on the radio. Thank god, since lyrics.ch has been shut down, now I can't identify any songs that I heard but wasn't told the title. This should boost cd sales.
Slashdot: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. And now, movie reviews!
Okay, I understood the sci-fi & fantasy movie reviews, but it looks like we are degrading into reviewing *any* movie.
Under windows, I have a modified hosts file that blocks out the more common ad servers. Since images are rather ugly, I use eDexter to display a blank image for me.
So, imagine the simple version of this (assuming I have javascript turned on, which is wrong, and assuming I use IE instead of Opera as my browser).
The IE script (which probably breaks other browsers, but...) checks to see if the ad image has arrived. It finds one. Maybe it goes further and checks to see if the image came from the ad server. It asks windows what's the ip addy is, and windows tells it 127.0.0.1, so everything checks out.
As long as it relies on simple ad banners, it fails. More complicated scripts could present a challenge, but a challenge that will be quickly solved if the ad checker becomes widespread.
On the other hand, thanks. Forgot that I haven't installed eDexter on the laptop yet. Need to conserve my 33.6k PCMIA modem's bandwidth, y'know.
Unless you have more information concerning the Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CS, I believe that the upper limit on the hard drive is 2.1 Gb. The machine came with a 810 mb drive, and I've seen the same model with 1.4 Gb drives. I've also seen replacement drives at 2.0 Gb.
A reply is appreciated.
Don't forget, it heals the sick and raises the dead.
MrEfficient writes: I'm still using Windows 95 here at work and my system is really bogged down with only 64 mb of ram (mostly because of the apps I use, not the OS).
I'll agree, it has to be the apps. Win95b is zippy on my p75 laptop with 16 megs of memory. Added bersirc, miranda icq, editpad, opera, and a lightweight freeware word processor I found, and its adequate for most of my needs. I'm thinking of throwing linux on there in a bit, but find myself hesitating because of several reasons. One is bloat. For coexistance, linux would have to be installed in under 400 megs of hard disk space (including swap) to give win95 room. Also, considering its an old Toshiba 400CS, there might be hardware incompatabilities. Then there is the entire issue of doing a network install over a pcmia card from a cd drive presented as an ftp file source. Would I get a usable linux system complete with gui that would run at a reasonable speed? Maybe. It would require hunting down a wm with a small footprint, then rebuilding the kernal with all of the unneeded things removed. I'm not saying I won't do it someday, I'm just saying that someday won't be soon.
Just my two cents.
Well, if your IE users were running IE 6.0, the exploit doesn't work.
Just another reason to stay up to date.
Building 1+ GHz Athlon-based systems for a living, I am familiar with a large amount of athlon based systems on several motherboards, (computer grunt gives one interesting knowledge).
Now even though we use the default OEM heatsink, which sucks, I've never seen an Athlon system with a properly installed processor overheat. This includes systems that are in older, forced air-heated homes with several pets (ewww, cat-hair is evil). The OEM heatsink is probably one of the poorer heatsinks, an Athlon under heavy load can reach 60C, and at idle on an operating system like win98, it doesn't even reach a low of 50C. Win2k and linux systems do better on idle, because of the HALT instructions sent to the CPU by the OS.
Please note that the temperature measurements were done using the the sensor on the motherboard. And 60C is still 35C cooler then the top limit Athlon sets for their TBirds.
Even if the encryption is unbreakable, the DMCA doesn't apply, since its unproven if the mp3 is made from data decrypted by the user from the mp3, or if the mp3 is made by using the audio/digital out on the cd player.
Remember, we haven't degraded into automatically assuming everyone is guilty (yet).
Slow down, trollboy. Just because you don't know anyone who has bought a licensed version of windows doesn't mean nobody has. Its like me denying the existance of elephants because I've never seen one.
Now take a deep breath, and repeat after me: "Linux is not the solution to every problem." There, that better? Oh, wait, you don't believe me? Here, let me show you a glimps into an alternative world where Microsoft runs GPL code and the Linux distros are for-profit companies.
Slashdot - Alternative World Posting.
Yet another linux worm has been found today, this one, like many others, primarily being spread by people with 2 or 3 year old distro versions, who are too lazy to patch their systems, or have pirated their versions and don't have any official support. Some of these people don't even know that they are running web servers, and most of them have improperly configured firewalls or none at all. Unfortunately, if these poor people could just run windows, with its easy "Windows Update", and a nice, simple graphical installation tool that can detect most hardware, and has 3rd party support for almost all hardware, the world would be a better place.
Get the point? Consider nimda a vulnerability that affects unpatched machines that are often configured with additional services that the user doesn't need. The only reason why windows was the platform targetted and not linux is that windows is the dominate end-user OS. Linux wouldn't solve anything.
OTOH, I paid for my copy of win98SE, and have an option to install a licensed copy of win2k from work. The software I use on the win32 platform is primarily free, such as TinyFirewall, VNC, Putty and Openoffice. My system has the latest patches, and the firewall is (hopefully) properly configured.
The systems we sell at work all include a licensed copy of win**, and come complete with the latest, updated version of an anti-virus software package. The subscription for updates runs for a year, and then, IIRC, is renewable for another year for just $3.65. Even without using anti-virus software for over 3 years, I've never had a virus (I later installed a copy of antivirus software when I had to xfer files from work to home - better safe then sorry, especially when some files are from customers who might be infected).
So, anyways, the purpose of this post is (a) any unpatched, misconfigured system is open to viruses and worms, (b) windows doesn't require thousands of dollars of software to be usable, (c) people do pay for windows, and (d) viruses, for the average informed windows user is not a threat.
Just my $.02
I'd say you went beyond the call of duity;
Take 30 minutes out of your day to automate most of this process, and to write a simple script to do changes. Have it scan for bandwidth-wasting viruses (or all viruses - some ISPs have this on their mail servers and will block viruses at the smtp server). When it finds nimda or its kin, block that user to all sites except an ftp/http site with the patches, the info, and a short, simple explanation why their service has been cut (also throw in the number of a good computer store that will do in-house calls if you want). Really, I don't think you'd have to disable the pop3 server, and that way, you can send them an email explaining the reasons again. So either you get a call asking why the customer has no access, or else the customer reads the email, adds the patches, and goes back to the http site and runs the script that scans him again and reactivates the full account.
Okay, its above the call of duty. But it doesn't take that much time, and it would be the ISP I would recommend to friends.
Yep, I am.
*Grin*
The BSD license (IIRC) specifically notes that you must give credit for the code. Therefore, passing off *BSD code as your own is just as wrong as passing off GPL code as your own.
In short (and yes, this is a flame), get a clue before you post, and maybe you won't look like an idiot.
They were both birds.
Seriously though, sorry, at work and was eating. In a rush.
Yep, designing an entire game is probably more effort then you want to put into a school project.
OTOH, ever thought about doing a game port? Nethack is GPL'ed, and while the text version would suck on a playstation (trust me, text on most TV is icky), there is a version with isometric tiles that looks pretty nice, and, due to being a deriviative of nethack, is under the GPL with the source code available. Just do a google search for "Eagle Eye Nethack" and you should find it.
Of course, I'm biased. I want a good game ported to another platform. Plus, since you save some time by porting an existing game, you have time to add more tiles to the game, which eagle eye nethack desperately needs.
Just my $.02