This stunt really proves nothing. Virus writers are not motivated by money and they are not deterred by jail time.
Virus writers do what they do, for two reasons:
1. Notoriety inside small groups of virus writers.
2. Genuine interest in reverse engineering flawed software.
This stunt may motivate some virus writers to step up to the plate, but it won't motivate the ones that are saving their ammunition.
Very few virus writers care about taking out little targets. Big systems with a large public face are the best targets - Mac OS isn't really one of them yet.
I'm a free market kind of guy, so I don't normally like regulation. In areas where a free market does not exist (like Broadband monopolies) then regulation is a MUST.
Government regulation can fix this without difficulty. It's called, in the corporate world, an SLA. A Service Level Agreement defines exactly how much bandwidth you are guaranteed to get, how it will be provisioned, and how often the service will go down. Any deviation from the SLA results in monetary penalties against the ISP.
The government already provides something similar with dial-tone service. The only way to ensure that ISPs don't pull any funny business is to legislate an SLA. -ted
It's about fucking time. Every time we buy a lab full of macs, I have to order as many two-button mice. I've got a stack of one button mice sitting in my office that no one wants.
OK, maybe creative type people aren't so grounded in reality, but religious wackos are way, WAY worse. Take a look at most of the problems in the world today - almost all of them are caused, or made worse, by religious fanaticism.
One of my clients is moving their practice to a completely paperless system. A key part of that system is signature capture. Medical and legal documents are pretty useless without a signature.
I couldn't find one single signature capture device that could embed signatures into an open-office document.
Some of my clients are ditching tape backup for on-line, off-site, backup services. These services require the installation of a software "client" on the server that stores the data. Guess how many of these services run on Linux? Not so many.
These examples illustrate the problem most businesses have with Linux. Linux is great for stand-alone boxes where interoperability is not a factor (databases, web-servers, proxy servers, firewalls - etc). It doesn't look so compelling when you consider compatibility with lots of devices and services.
Businesses look at aquisition costs, and recurring costs of technology, but they also look at the cost of "incompatibility". Not being able to do something, sometimes, costs way more than buying software licenses.
The barriers to Linux these days are not technological barriers, they are mass market standardization and acceptance barriers. For Linux to really shine in the business world some things about Linux will have to change. It will upset the Linux "purists" but the business community will demand it.
Linux is about choice - but that's what the business community doesn't want. They don't want to have to choose a window manager, or a distribution, or even a web browser. The business community wants all of that choosen for them, and a reasonable level of certanty, that most vendors they want to work with, will support their standard configuration.
How can we even start to improve high schools in America if we can't even agree on what should be taught?
High schools will continue to fail their students when "liberal" boards of education decide to teach evolutionary theory while backwoods podunk boards of education decide that "creationism" should be taught in science class.
A national panel of educators, scientists, researchers, and business representatives needs to decide what is needed by today's kids to succeed in life.
Education is too important to leave to the whim of local school boards. Parents should not have the option of sending their kids to "non-accredited" institutions - or worse - home schooling.
Too many people in this country have been taught the "Adam and Eve" fairytale, that calculus and algebra aren't necessary for a good job, and history classes are only good if you want to teach it.
Green Day's newest album title "Idiot America" seems so appropriate these days.
Lots of posts here focus on the "internet" side of downloadable movies. Even with my 10 Mbps cable modem, downloading movies this way sucks.
My cable company, cablevision, has an on-demand service that works very well. They also have a high-def on-demand service that works equally as well. Since getting both of these services, my wife and I have stopped going to the video store (and canceled our netflix subscription).
Granted, the selection isn't great, but that will change with time. Once all cable companies roll these services out to every customer and provide the same selection as the "rental" guys - the days of rental will be over.
Who in their right mind wants to either drive to the store, or pre-select the movies they want to watch? When my wife and I get in the mood to watch a movie, we just scroll through the list and pick one. No hassle.
When we see a movie we think is worth adding to the collection, we buy it (that doesn't happen very often these days).
The next bastion of entertainment to fall will be movie theaters. It's only a matter of time until first run movies will be shown via on-demand services. Imagine....no more $20 box of popcorn, no more sticky seats, and no more loud, obnoxious viewers.
Sure, there will always be teen-agers that want to get out of the house to support theaters....but think of all the people that want to go see movies that can't or won't (the disabled, parents with young kids, the elderly, those that can't drive...etc). Their money is just as green as everyone else's.
The first two types are connected to networks that were built with taxpayer assistance. Thanks to that, the services (and associated charges) comming over those wires are REGULATED by federal, state, and local laws.
The last type is connected to a network that was built by private companies with private sector dollars. That network is "slightly" regulated in that the cable company is given a monopoly on the township for a limited time span.
The way I see it, if a private company owns the network - they should decide what services will be provided on that network.
If consumers and federal/state/local governments do not like the options given to them by those private networks, they should make it a priority to fund (via tax dollars) a public network that can be run according to need.
Take the city of brotherly love - Philadelphia, PA for example. The city is tired of waiting for private cellular phone companies to provide wireless internet service, so the city is looking at building their own. Why shouldn't the government compete with the private sector? Especially in situations where the private sector is falling GROSSLY short on services, but collecting a king's ransom?
Capitalists claim competition is a key driver of efficiency in markets (they are right) - but why can't the government be a player in that market?
Software should NEVER be allowed to install itself! I'm sure some genius at MS thought it would be a great way to lure developers into using ActiveX instead of Java.
The proper behavior would be to have a user find a download, click the download to put it somewhere on the hard drive, then have the user "double-click" the file to install the software. This would totally prevent drive-by downloads.
Cisco has always been a security company. My favorite quote from the article:
"Cisco isn't known as a security company,"
Really? IOS doesn't have any security features built in? What exactly are my PIX firewalls doing for me?
Security isn't something you can buy from a vendor and just roll out over a weekend. Security must be present at every layer of your network. Routers, firewalls, switches, servers, desktops, operating systems, applications, user accounts, and even peripherals must be scrutinzed for security these days. Cisco realizes this, and is taking steps to secure "their" part - the network part.
Now if we could just get some software guys in Redmond to check their input buffers...
I don't care if a system has 10 patches a year or 10,000 patches a year. I need a way to distribute those patches easily.
Redhat has an OK system, but Microsoft has a nice tool (software update services) that allows me to download the patches in one place and push them out to all the machines on my network. This will only get better when MS releases the next update to this tool (windows update services).
I haven't seen a similar thing from any of the linux vendors.
Sure, there are tons of third party products to add this feature to Linux, but that's a pain - and it's another product to buy. Each distribution needs to find a way to centrally automate patch management and installation. This should be part of ANY linux distribution by default.
The only way to slow down this nonsense is to put a limit on the amount of messages a single account can send in one day.
This would accomplish two goals:
1. (Obvious) it would limit the amount of crap-mail spewed out by ISP's compromised customers.
2. It will encourage joe six-pack to clean up his infected machine. When Joe wants to send and email and he can't (because a bot has used up his allowance) he'll be forced to actually clean up his infected machine.
I'm really upset that all the hammers in my toolbox could be used to blugeon someone to death. By failing to install technology that can prevent the misuse of hammers, these hammer manufacturers have not done their due diligence. There are no safety interlocks and no owner recognition systems on hammers. This clearly shows no reasonable effort has been made to prevent the malicious use of this tool!
I'm also upset that illegal drugs are transported into this country on cars, trucks, and boats. The manufacturers of these products have NOT taken any steps in the design of their products to prevent the transportation of contraband. Clearly car, truck, and boat manufacturers must be taken to task for this irresponsible behavior!
Seriously, personal responsibility in this country is gone. Anything you do can be blamed on someone else. The legal system is OUT OF CONTROL in the US. I don't blame the attorneys. I blame the legislators and judges who lack the common sense to kill these stupid laws.
My dad used to work on communication satellites for Lockheed Martin aerospace. They used to radiation harden integrated circuits by designing them on GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) material instead of plain old silicon.
My guess is these guys will be re-designing standard routers with GaAs ICs.
If down-time is that critical, then you should be running redundant clustered systems. This way your server is ALWAYS available even if one goes down.
Dell overnights me parts - plenty of time to recover one node in a clustered system.
The parts guarantee ensures that my server investment will last 3 years. A server built around parts that won't be available next year can not give you the same guarantee.
-ted
These bozos can't even predict the present...
on
In the Year 2020
·
· Score: 1
The CIA's intelligence gathering ability at the PRESENT time sucks - why would their future predictions be any better?
Central Intelligence Agency - now there's a contradiction in terms.
but anyone with a computer can get on the internet.
Kidding aside, why does the general population expect computing to be "easy"? Society (in general) expects professionally trained people to operate aircraft, perform surgery, put out fires, construct, plumb and wire homes, use a firearm, and to operate a motor vehicle.
Why don't people think it takes some training to safely and securely operate a computer system and network?
We (the computer industry) are to blame. We've spent the last 25 years shouting at the top of our lungs, with every new product release: "this computer is EASY to use - anyone with half a brain can do it!".
Microsoft and Apple are both guilty of this.
The time has come for the computer industry to shift its focus from "easy to use systems" to educating its customers about safety and security.
I can't tell you how many small business owners i've seen that have their entire livelyhoods resting on computer systems that aren't backed up regularly, have inadequate virus/spyware protection, lack high-security firewalls and VPNs for remote access. They think they can "admin" their own systems, and often times are burned in the process.
Sure, you can raise your fist and yell at Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and whomever else you want to blame; but ultimately the safe operation of your systems is YOUR responsibility. If you can't do that then hire a professional who can. God knows there are enough of them looking for work.
There are lots of companies that supply OEMs in my area. Companies like Minta, ZT Group, Stars Micro, and Eastern Data. These companies will gladly set you up with a Net 30 terms account.
Companies like this are great for commodity parts like hard drives, CPUs, and memory.
Building mission critical systems from motherboards that won't be available next year is NOT a good idea.
For systems like that, I either use Intel boards (3 year warranty), or I buy complete systems from Dell. I've even bought stripped down Dell NAS boxes and upgraded the CPU, memory, and hard drives to save some money.
Rolling your own systems makes sense for workstations, but for mission critical servers, i'd only buy from a vendor that can guarantee that parts will be available for the service life of the machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Each craft will reach its final altitude by utilizing proprietary lifting gas technology
Floating? That's VC bait if i've ever seen it.
Next we'll be praising the virtues of pedestrian ambulatory technologies otherwise known as "walking".
-ted
This should work well:
http://www.datadev.com/v94.html
-ted
This stunt really proves nothing. Virus writers are not motivated by money and they are not deterred by jail time.
Virus writers do what they do, for two reasons:
1. Notoriety inside small groups of virus writers.
2. Genuine interest in reverse engineering flawed software.
This stunt may motivate some virus writers to step up to the plate, but it won't motivate the ones that are saving their ammunition.
Very few virus writers care about taking out little targets. Big systems with a large public face are the best targets - Mac OS isn't really one of them yet.
-ted
I'm a free market kind of guy, so I don't normally like regulation. In areas where a free market does not exist (like Broadband monopolies) then regulation is a MUST.
Government regulation can fix this without difficulty. It's called, in the corporate world, an SLA. A Service Level Agreement defines exactly how much bandwidth you are guaranteed to get, how it will be provisioned, and how often the service will go down. Any deviation from the SLA results in monetary penalties against the ISP.
The government already provides something similar with dial-tone service. The only way to ensure that ISPs don't pull any funny business is to legislate an SLA.
-ted
It's about fucking time. Every time we buy a lab full of macs, I have to order as many two-button mice. I've got a stack of one button mice sitting in my office that no one wants.
-ted
OK, maybe creative type people aren't so grounded in reality, but religious wackos are way, WAY worse. Take a look at most of the problems in the world today - almost all of them are caused, or made worse, by religious fanaticism.
-ted
They should also include players of Evercrack and the Sims.
-ted
One of my clients is moving their practice to a completely paperless system. A key part of that system is signature capture. Medical and legal documents are pretty useless without a signature.
I couldn't find one single signature capture device that could embed signatures into an open-office document.
Some of my clients are ditching tape backup for on-line, off-site, backup services. These services require the installation of a software "client" on the server that stores the data. Guess how many of these services run on Linux? Not so many.
These examples illustrate the problem most businesses have with Linux. Linux is great for stand-alone boxes where interoperability is not a factor (databases, web-servers, proxy servers, firewalls - etc). It doesn't look so compelling when you consider compatibility with lots of devices and services.
Businesses look at aquisition costs, and recurring costs of technology, but they also look at the cost of "incompatibility". Not being able to do something, sometimes, costs way more than buying software licenses.
The barriers to Linux these days are not technological barriers, they are mass market standardization and acceptance barriers. For Linux to really shine in the business world some things about Linux will have to change. It will upset the Linux "purists" but the business community will demand it.
Linux is about choice - but that's what the business community doesn't want. They don't want to have to choose a window manager, or a distribution, or even a web browser. The business community wants all of that choosen for them, and a reasonable level of certanty, that most vendors they want to work with, will support their standard configuration.
-ted
So, do we love the FCC today or do we still hate them?
-ted
How can we even start to improve high schools in America if we can't even agree on what should be taught?
High schools will continue to fail their students when "liberal" boards of education decide to teach evolutionary theory while backwoods podunk boards of education decide that "creationism" should be taught in science class.
A national panel of educators, scientists, researchers, and business representatives needs to decide what is needed by today's kids to succeed in life.
Education is too important to leave to the whim of local school boards. Parents should not have the option of sending their kids to "non-accredited" institutions - or worse - home schooling.
Too many people in this country have been taught the "Adam and Eve" fairytale, that calculus and algebra aren't necessary for a good job, and history classes are only good if you want to teach it.
Green Day's newest album title "Idiot America" seems so appropriate these days.
-ted
Lots of posts here focus on the "internet" side of downloadable movies. Even with my 10 Mbps cable modem, downloading movies this way sucks.
My cable company, cablevision, has an on-demand service that works very well. They also have a high-def on-demand service that works equally as well. Since getting both of these services, my wife and I have stopped going to the video store (and canceled our netflix subscription).
Granted, the selection isn't great, but that will change with time. Once all cable companies roll these services out to every customer and provide the same selection as the "rental" guys - the days of rental will be over.
Who in their right mind wants to either drive to the store, or pre-select the movies they want to watch? When my wife and I get in the mood to watch a movie, we just scroll through the list and pick one. No hassle.
When we see a movie we think is worth adding to the collection, we buy it (that doesn't happen very often these days).
The next bastion of entertainment to fall will be movie theaters. It's only a matter of time until first run movies will be shown via on-demand services. Imagine....no more $20 box of popcorn, no more sticky seats, and no more loud, obnoxious viewers.
Sure, there will always be teen-agers that want to get out of the house to support theaters....but think of all the people that want to go see movies that can't or won't (the disabled, parents with young kids, the elderly, those that can't drive...etc). Their money is just as green as everyone else's.
-ted
I have three types of cable coming in to my house:
1. Powerlines
2. Non-Twisted Copper
3. Coaxial cable
The first two types are connected to networks that were built with taxpayer assistance. Thanks to that, the services (and associated charges) comming over those wires are REGULATED by federal, state, and local laws.
The last type is connected to a network that was built by private companies with private sector dollars. That network is "slightly" regulated in that the cable company is given a monopoly on the township for a limited time span.
The way I see it, if a private company owns the network - they should decide what services will be provided on that network.
If consumers and federal/state/local governments do not like the options given to them by those private networks, they should make it a priority to fund (via tax dollars) a public network that can be run according to need.
Take the city of brotherly love - Philadelphia, PA for example. The city is tired of waiting for private cellular phone companies to provide wireless internet service, so the city is looking at building their own. Why shouldn't the government compete with the private sector? Especially in situations where the private sector is falling GROSSLY short on services, but collecting a king's ransom?
Capitalists claim competition is a key driver of efficiency in markets (they are right) - but why can't the government be a player in that market?
-ted
Software should NEVER be allowed to install itself! I'm sure some genius at MS thought it would be a great way to lure developers into using ActiveX instead of Java.
The proper behavior would be to have a user find a download, click the download to put it somewhere on the hard drive, then have the user "double-click" the file to install the software. This would totally prevent drive-by downloads.
-ted
Cisco has always been a security company. My favorite quote from the article:
"Cisco isn't known as a security company,"
Really? IOS doesn't have any security features built in? What exactly are my PIX firewalls doing for me?
Security isn't something you can buy from a vendor and just roll out over a weekend. Security must be present at every layer of your network. Routers, firewalls, switches, servers, desktops, operating systems, applications, user accounts, and even peripherals must be scrutinzed for security these days. Cisco realizes this, and is taking steps to secure "their" part - the network part.
Now if we could just get some software guys in Redmond to check their input buffers...
-ted
I don't care if a system has 10 patches a year or 10,000 patches a year. I need a way to distribute those patches easily.
Redhat has an OK system, but Microsoft has a nice tool (software update services) that allows me to download the patches in one place and push them out to all the machines on my network. This will only get better when MS releases the next update to this tool (windows update services).
I haven't seen a similar thing from any of the linux vendors.
Sure, there are tons of third party products to add this feature to Linux, but that's a pain - and it's another product to buy. Each distribution needs to find a way to centrally automate patch management and installation. This should be part of ANY linux distribution by default.
-ted
I just got off the phone with my symantec rep, and he says any corporate edition anti-virus product 9.0.1.1000 or newer is not affected.
Anyone with a valid license can go to Symantec's fileconnect website and download the newest version.
-ted
The only way to slow down this nonsense is to put a limit on the amount of messages a single account can send in one day.
This would accomplish two goals:
1. (Obvious) it would limit the amount of crap-mail spewed out by ISP's compromised customers.
2. It will encourage joe six-pack to clean up his infected machine. When Joe wants to send and email and he can't (because a bot has used up his allowance) he'll be forced to actually clean up his infected machine.
-ted
I'm really upset that all the hammers in my toolbox could be used to blugeon someone to death. By failing to install technology that can prevent the misuse of hammers, these hammer manufacturers have not done their due diligence. There are no safety interlocks and no owner recognition systems on hammers. This clearly shows no reasonable effort has been made to prevent the malicious use of this tool!
I'm also upset that illegal drugs are transported into this country on cars, trucks, and boats. The manufacturers of these products have NOT taken any steps in the design of their products to prevent the transportation of contraband. Clearly car, truck, and boat manufacturers must be taken to task for this irresponsible behavior!
Seriously, personal responsibility in this country is gone. Anything you do can be blamed on someone else. The legal system is OUT OF CONTROL in the US. I don't blame the attorneys. I blame the legislators and judges who lack the common sense to kill these stupid laws.
-ted
My dad used to work on communication satellites for Lockheed Martin aerospace. They used to radiation harden integrated circuits by designing them on GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) material instead of plain old silicon.
My guess is these guys will be re-designing standard routers with GaAs ICs.
-ted
If down-time is that critical, then you should be running redundant clustered systems. This way your server is ALWAYS available even if one goes down.
Dell overnights me parts - plenty of time to recover one node in a clustered system.
The parts guarantee ensures that my server investment will last 3 years. A server built around parts that won't be available next year can not give you the same guarantee.
-ted
The CIA's intelligence gathering ability at the PRESENT time sucks - why would their future predictions be any better?
Central Intelligence Agency - now there's a contradiction in terms.
-ted
but anyone with a computer can get on the internet.
Kidding aside, why does the general population expect computing to be "easy"? Society (in general) expects professionally trained people to operate aircraft, perform surgery, put out fires, construct, plumb and wire homes, use a firearm, and to operate a motor vehicle.
Why don't people think it takes some training to safely and securely operate a computer system and network?
We (the computer industry) are to blame. We've spent the last 25 years shouting at the top of our lungs, with every new product release: "this computer is EASY to use - anyone with half a brain can do it!".
Microsoft and Apple are both guilty of this.
The time has come for the computer industry to shift its focus from "easy to use systems" to educating its customers about safety and security.
I can't tell you how many small business owners i've seen that have their entire livelyhoods resting on computer systems that aren't backed up regularly, have inadequate virus/spyware protection, lack high-security firewalls and VPNs for remote access. They think they can "admin" their own systems, and often times are burned in the process.
Sure, you can raise your fist and yell at Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and whomever else you want to blame; but ultimately the safe operation of your systems is YOUR responsibility. If you can't do that then hire a professional who can. God knows there are enough of them looking for work.
-ted
There are lots of companies that supply OEMs in my area. Companies like Minta, ZT Group, Stars Micro, and Eastern Data. These companies will gladly set you up with a Net 30 terms account.
Companies like this are great for commodity parts like hard drives, CPUs, and memory.
Building mission critical systems from motherboards that won't be available next year is NOT a good idea.
For systems like that, I either use Intel boards (3 year warranty), or I buy complete systems from Dell. I've even bought stripped down Dell NAS boxes and upgraded the CPU, memory, and hard drives to save some money.
Rolling your own systems makes sense for workstations, but for mission critical servers, i'd only buy from a vendor that can guarantee that parts will be available for the service life of the machine.
-ted
Uggh, I can't take any more featureitis from Motorola. My last two motorola phones had all kinds of software problems:
T720 Phones that would ring and hang when you answer them.
(T720) Black-screen hang during charging that requires a reboot.
V710 phones that would crash during MP3 playback and require pulling the battery off of the phone to stop playback.
Hey motorola, how about STABLE phones first - then gee whiz features?
-ted
OK, so it isn't exactly "flat", but at 16" of depth for a 61" TV, it's damn close.
Fed with the same HD signal, I have yet to see ANY tube TV beat out a good rear-projection DLP image.
My Samsung DLP is brighter than even SONY's WEGA line of HD tube TVs.
Another DLP bonus - no burn-in, no fade, no convergence or demag issues as well.
-ted