Despite Microsoft's press releases to the contrary, Windows machines are not secure and need decent firewall and antivirus software. I see others have already mentioned the Kerio firewall, so I'll just add that it can be easily extended with Sponge's excellent, freely available filters. (I'm using set 2, but there are versions that are both more or less rigorous). I've also AVG Antivirus installed it seems to work well enough.
Some other useful free utilities:
Tclockex
A small utility that greatly increases the usefullness of the system tray clock. You can have the date as well as the time, as well as a resource monitor that lets you know at a glance how the system is doing.
AboutTime"
A little applet that sets the system clock from a list of time servers. Works well and unobtrusively.
7-zip
An easy to use explorer plug-in that understands most kinds of compressed files.
CDex
A great tool for ripping / converting CDs and mp3s.
X-teq>
A very powerful utility that lets you change pretty much everything that's changeable in Windows. Allows you to set Windows update registration done, which would only be useful to pirates and won't be mentioned here.
The Proxomitron
A web proxy that strips out ads, pop-ups and other garbage.
I'm more familiar with Redhat, but I have no doubt Mandrake will come out of the box with programs that are functionally equivalent to the ones listed here.
My wife gave it to me for Xmas years ago, and I still have it sitting next to me on my notepad. I use it all the time - for quick stuff it's easier than popping open another xterm and starting vi.
It's not the most expensive pen in the world - about $40 retail for the 10k version I have. FWIW, I do really like how it writes, especially with the medium tip. Anything with less friction and my bad handwriting quickly degenerates into illegibility.
Seriously though, a little lobbying is just fine in my book as long as that lobbying is truly an education of lawmakers on the issues and solutions to problems. The problem becomes when individual companies have such power and control as to dominate the lobbying process with money and resources so as to eclipse all other concerns.
Lobbying is just one facet of the plutocracy that is modern America, where everyone is equally entitled to all the democracy money can buy. Any semblance of truth or justice is long since dead, replaced by product placement, focus groups, and other such means of manipulating public opinion. So as a result, we have a near total lack of accountability for big business, a corrupt, power-grabbing government that convinces us to go to war by filling the air with stupid, obvious lies, and by an equally corrupt media which uncritically parrots everything handed to it.
So uh, yeah, lobbying is a problem. Here we have Microsoft, manipulating the UN into pulling back from a policy that would be hugely beneficial to dozens of poorer member states. This sort of thing happens everywhere these days, so it's not particularly surprising. Although when they do happen, I can't help but wonder about the machinations that must go on behind the scenes...
OS and office software is rapidly becoming commoditized. I'm sure even Microsoft knows that with the rate of improvement with free software, it's only a matter of time before $AVERAGE_USER gets wise and its monopolies dry up.
What to do? Well, Microsoft's only chance is to use its current (illegaly attained) monopoly power to grab control of the PC hardware platform. It's easy: "hey AMD, we're not too sure we feel like coming out with a 64-bit version of Windows. Oh sorry, would hurt your bottom line?"
This is the final battle between the open and the closed, IMHO. If Microsoft wins, they'll have dominion over all the land, and software will only interoperate on their say-so, and only if you've paid the rent on the computer you naively think you own. But if enough people come to understand that they have free alternatives, Microsoft is dead meat.
Incidentally, this is why I use linux and recommend it to all my reasonably knowledgeable friends. It's more solid, obviously, but the real reason for me is (I admit it) political. I am opposed to Microsoft's reprehensible business tactics and it is my fondest wish that enough people come to their senses before it's too late.
About the most expensive distruction of computer equipment I've ever accomplished was to realize I'd wired the KVM between my workstation and server wrong and swapped all the cables with both computers running. I honestly had no idea this could be bad, not even when neither machine would respond to the keyboard or mouse. No problem, I thought, I'll reboot. So I did and and both halted with keyboard / mouse errors.
But there is another issue here, one that is hardly ever mentioned and that's the coining of the term "innovation." This word, which was hardly used at all until two or three years ago, feels to me like a propaganda campaign and a successful one at that, dominating discussion in the computer industry. I think Microsoft did this intentionally, for they are the ones who seem to continually use the word. But what does it mean? And how is it different from what we might have said before? I think the word they are replacing is "invention." Bill Shockley invented the transistor, Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce invented the integrated circuit, Ted Hof invented the microprocessor. Of course others claimed to have done those same three things, but the goal was always invention. Only now we innovate, which is deliberately vague but seems to stop somewhere short of invention. Innovators have wiggle room. They can steal ideas, for example, and pawn them off as their own. That's the intersection of innovation and sharp business.
Propaganda is the idea that saying the word makes it true, that it somehow undoes the corporate culture of law-breaking and dirty tricks. But it only works with the uninformed - people who understand the issues and the history know they're full of shit.
Yes if you choose to believe in the sanctity of individuals, which as a strict Cartesian I do.
Having read pretty much all of Descartes' philosophical work, I still don't understand what you could possibly mean. His big idea was Dualism (e.g. separation of Mind and Body), which was compelling at the time because it accounted for the growing body of scientific truth while preserving the world of ideas for God.
But then science won that battle, and there's no longer any need for Dualism or any of its unpleasant implications. For example, as a strict Cartesian you would have to believe that your body is a mere machine and only loosely coupled to your mind. Is *your* body just a machine? It's even worse for animals - they don't have rational thought so they're nothing more than automatons? Is your dog a robot?
That's just a start. Let's just say that strict Cartesians would have to hold a lot of positions that would not be popular among sane people today.
An obvious attempt to find a new channel that more closely couples the advertisements and the content. I can see how the marketer-droids at the Times would want this, since with normal webpages it's so easy to run proxies that strip all the ads out. But here you have to endure entire commercials before you can even get to the menu. I bet half the people who look at it are going to shitcan the thing right there, never to try it again.
It kind of defeats the purpose of finding new eyeballs for ads if the implementation is so cumbersome and painful that it drives people away. Will these people ever learn?
Q. Have these events created a serious public perception problem about Microsoft on the issue of security?
A. Microsoft's reputation for doing great software research is very strong, and people are looking to us now and saying, "no other software company has solved this; you, Microsoft, need to solve it." We're rising to that challenge. The expectation they have of us is very high.
I know he's just excreting the usual spin, but how can he keep a straight face?
The truth is, every other mainstream OS has solved the security problem better than Microsoft. Most other OSes, especially *nix ones, have a philosophy of least privelege. But not Windows - its big "innovation" is to bundle the (insecure) web browser directly into the OS and enabling all sorts of nifty auto-executing controls so that drooling little kiddies all over the world can pass the time by bringing random network-connected Windows machines to their knees.
The usual refrain from Microsoft and its apologists is that its software is attacked so much because it's so popular. No. It's attacked so much because it's so easy to do.
This will all be blindingly obvious to most readers of/., but just for the record:
Don't use your personal email address for anything online. Don't post to usenet with it, don't use it to register for anything, don't ever use it where there's any chance of it being sold to a third party or picked up by a web crawler. Use a free throwaway web-based account like hotmail or yahoo, that's what they're for. I have a verizon.net primary email address, and I've never received a single piece of spam from it.
However, I still have a forward-only email address from my university circa 1992. Back then, there was no spam and that address has to be on every spammer's list on the planet. I still get a legitimate email every year or two, but spam outnumbers these by at least 10,000 to 1. SpamAssassin does a surprisingly good job of identifying the garbage.
I also use a proxy to surf the web, as well as a large hosts file that reroutes requests to adservers to 127.0.0.1:80, combined with a utility that returns a transparent 1x1 gif to any request on port 80. And of course I use mozilla to block pop-ups and whatnot. I'm so used to surfing in this way that I always recoil in horror when I have to use IE on a naked, unprotected box. How on earth can anyone stand it?
As for more traditional types of spam such as telemarketers, there's the national do not call list. It's free, so there's nothing to lose. You'll also want to check out the many excellent resources at the Junkbusters website. One of the most useful features is a Junkbusters Declare page, which builds custom form letters for you that you can use to opt out of Direct Marketing Association junkmail, as well as telling your financial institutions, etc., not to sell your name to third parties. I used it, it's painless, and my privacy is protected.
Of course, it would be much better if we didn't have to jump through hoop after hoop just to get through the day without being pestered by morons.
If we want to fight this patent battle the solution is not to sit back, wait until a patent comees out, then bitch about it. We need to be pro-active.
But if the EFF and/or FSF argue that software patents are an illegitimate attempt to appropriate obvious or inevitable innovations of the computer using public, they can't then turn around and participate in the same evil scheme without undermining their own position.
Actually it was coined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to start his own computer company. "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products."
Agreed. It's never a good idea to underestimate Microsoft. They are extremely competitive, and as you point out have a history of doing whatever it takes to own the marketplace.
However, their business tactics are so well understood nowadays (embrace & extend standards, strongarm competitors, force upgrades through deliberate incompatibilities, etc.) that many organizations now realize the overriding importance of open communication protocols and file formats, the current FUD campaign against linux notwithstanding. Money does talk, and too many people understand that the more choice you have, the lower your costs will be.
On such a purely open playing field, Microsoft is dead. Their only hope is to break interopability even further with incompatible file formats that can't be reverse engineered (such as Office's new "open" XML format coupled with the sponsoring of super-DMCA legislation) and by controlling the traditionally open PC hardware specification (the technology formerly known as Palladium).
I just can't see people and orgainizations going along with these obviously self-serving initiatives, not to mention the increasingly desperate ones that are sure to follow linux's rise on the desktop. At some point, nearly everyone will realize the benefits of free software, open hardware, and open protocols.
M$ software will only run on Trusted Computers. RIAA music will only play on Trusted Computers. MPAA(?) movies will only play on Trusted Computers. M$ & Friends will pressure other software companies to require Trusted Computers, under the name of Security or Reliability or Legal-clarity.
Security for whom? Security for MS, which will have yet another way to lock competitors out of the marketplace. Security for Disney et al., who will have a level of control over digital media undreamed of even a few years ago. And security for the various three letter agencies, which presumably will have full access to all of these Trusted Computers.
Option two is that non-Trusted computers could be made illegal, there is a draft of a proposal to make this law in USA. Will it happen? The RIAA, M$, and MPAA will claim it's necessary to prevent the growing "piracy" trend.
The Pentagon is not free from oversight by Congress.
The problem is once you have all the dirt on everyone, all the time, you can start gaming the system. How would Congress go about controlling TIA (or whatever it gets renamed to), when you can just have a quiet talk to political opponents prior to any resolution that would place restrictions on it? Failing any kind of meaningful oversight, how would we know that even token legislation was being followed? And even if by some miracle TIA (or whatever) was banned, what's to stop it from getting implemented anyway?
It's not obvious that democracy can survive the level of surveillance made possible by TIA and its inevitably more powerful successors.
It's crazy days we're living in. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were a horrific tragedy, but look at all the terrible things we've allowed to happen in its wake. Technology v. privacy was getting to be a real problem anyway, but Jeez the timing...
Ah, I remember when 386's and 486's where top-notch stuff and hideously expensive..
I have a 486/100 (with 16mb 30-pin simms, w00t!) doing a great job as a firewall for my home network. I also have a p233 that'll be a mail & ldap server as soon as I get around to dropping a drive in it.
Basically, old computers and switches and nics and stuff are so cheap now you can really learn a lot about tcp/ip networking for next to no money. I think I have less than $100 invested in my home network, most of which was for network cards and a switch.
Ok, I accept that he's a good guy. But that's what worries me - he starts a new job and ditches it within a couple of months. Why? What else could it be, other than the gov't has plans for its own citizens that he finds morally unacceptable?
Bad bad bad. Now the original config is unbootable, a bad thing when you're monkeying around with the kernel. What you do is edit the kernel Makefile and add something to the extraversion parameter, i.e.:
EXTRAVERSION = -smp_raid
Then you'll have two entries under/lib/modules, 2.4.20 and 2.4.20-smp_raid. Make the appropriate entries in/etc/lilo.conf and you can boot either one. Disabling a stock, working kernel config is lunacy. Using extraversion is obviously the safer method, that's what it's for. This is all mentioned in the kernel HOWTO, iirc.
I use nt at work, linux at home, and I don't do ads. Bottom line, WE control what happens on our computers. Let's not forget that we have this power, or that we're going to have to fight to keep it.
Re:Hard to find good books
on
Linux Server Hacks
·
· Score: 3, Informative
You and me both. I've used unix and linux for 10 years and I still compulsively buy *nix books, even though many tread the same tired ground. Two of the best for experienced users:
Linux in a Nutshell (3rd ed.). Hands down, the best linux reference on the planet.
Unix Power Tools (2nd ed.). The best unix (linux) book ever made. It's a bit heavy on tools that aren't overly popular on linux (csh, etc.) but many of the articles are superb examples of the unix problem solving paradigm. With all the hyperlinks in the margins, it's nearly impossible to read more than a couple of pages in a row.
Speaking of compulsively buying O'Reilly books, I recently picked up Linux Server Hacks and Building Secure Servers with Linux, by Mick Bauer. Can't comment too much on the former, because I'm still reading the latter. Always liked Bauer though. Much common sense.
Are all users of computers technical? Should they be? Would a technically-inclined individual's response to a GUI be apropos to how your grandmother would interact with a computer?
How the default configuration behaves is very important, and is exactly the way many people will see most of the features in a GUI.
But that's the problem. Whatever nontechnical users happen to be familiar with is the one true way, and all others are broken / wrong / stupid / etc. All the reviewer demonstrated to me is that she's more used to XP's interface than anything else.
Preference for the familiar is pretty much true for all computer users. Even for us geeks, our preference for bsd v linux, bash v tcsh, vi v emacs, or gnome v kde depends more on what we're used to than any supposedly objective criteria.
Me: linux, bash, vi, gnome. Naturally I'm right about what's best for me, so it must be best for you, too... Gee, maybe I should be an interface reviewer too!
The terrorist attacks were a horrible atrocity, and a year and a half later I still can't understand how anyone could willingly commit such a awful crime against humanity.
It's bad enough that 3000 innocents were killed, but the real legacy of the attacks may well be the ongoing erosion of our civil rights by those in power, e.g. the Patriot Act and its forthcoming descendents (Patriot II, TIA, etc.).
What I've been worrying about lately is: how do democracies die? I think using some emergency to convince voters to give up their constitutionally guaranteed civil rights is a great start. It's like the Communist hysteria of the 50's, only potentially worse because of all the technology that can be brought to bear.
The intersection of technology and surveillance was something that needed to be looked at before 9/11 ever happened, but now... I just hope people come to their senses by the time the next election rolls around.
Slashdot Mirror
Despite Microsoft's press releases to the contrary, Windows machines are not secure and need decent firewall and antivirus software. I see others have already mentioned the Kerio firewall, so I'll just add that it can be easily extended with Sponge's excellent, freely available filters. (I'm using set 2, but there are versions that are both more or less rigorous). I've also AVG Antivirus installed it seems to work well enough.
Some other useful free utilities:
Tclockex
A small utility that greatly increases the usefullness of the system tray clock. You can have the date as well as the time, as well as a resource monitor that lets you know at a glance how the system is doing.
AboutTime"
A little applet that sets the system clock from a list of time servers. Works well and unobtrusively.
7-zip
An easy to use explorer plug-in that understands most kinds of compressed files.
CDex
A great tool for ripping / converting CDs and mp3s.
X-teq>
A very powerful utility that lets you change pretty much everything that's changeable in Windows. Allows you to set Windows update registration done, which would only be useful to pirates and won't be mentioned here.
The Proxomitron
A web proxy that strips out ads, pop-ups and other garbage.
I'm more familiar with Redhat, but I have no doubt Mandrake will come out of the box with programs that are functionally equivalent to the ones listed here.
My wife gave it to me for Xmas years ago, and I still have it sitting next to me on my notepad. I use it all the time - for quick stuff it's easier than popping open another xterm and starting vi.
It's not the most expensive pen in the world - about $40 retail for the 10k version I have. FWIW, I do really like how it writes, especially with the medium tip. Anything with less friction and my bad handwriting quickly degenerates into illegibility.
So uh, yeah, lobbying is a problem. Here we have Microsoft, manipulating the UN into pulling back from a policy that would be hugely beneficial to dozens of poorer member states. This sort of thing happens everywhere these days, so it's not particularly surprising. Although when they do happen, I can't help but wonder about the machinations that must go on behind the scenes...
OS and office software is rapidly becoming commoditized. I'm sure even Microsoft knows that with the rate of improvement with free software, it's only a matter of time before $AVERAGE_USER gets wise and its monopolies dry up.
What to do? Well, Microsoft's only chance is to use its current (illegaly attained) monopoly power to grab control of the PC hardware platform. It's easy: "hey AMD, we're not too sure we feel like coming out with a 64-bit version of Windows. Oh sorry, would hurt your bottom line?"
This is the final battle between the open and the closed, IMHO. If Microsoft wins, they'll have dominion over all the land, and software will only interoperate on their say-so, and only if you've paid the rent on the computer you naively think you own. But if enough people come to understand that they have free alternatives, Microsoft is dead meat.
Incidentally, this is why I use linux and recommend it to all my reasonably knowledgeable friends. It's more solid, obviously, but the real reason for me is (I admit it) political. I am opposed to Microsoft's reprehensible business tactics and it is my fondest wish that enough people come to their senses before it's too late.
It's war folks. Which side are you on?
About the most expensive distruction of computer equipment I've ever accomplished was to realize I'd wired the KVM between my workstation and server wrong and swapped all the cables with both computers running. I honestly had no idea this could be bad, not even when neither machine would respond to the keyboard or mouse. No problem, I thought, I'll reboot. So I did and and both halted with keyboard / mouse errors.
D'oh!
But then science won that battle, and there's no longer any need for Dualism or any of its unpleasant implications. For example, as a strict Cartesian you would have to believe that your body is a mere machine and only loosely coupled to your mind. Is *your* body just a machine? It's even worse for animals - they don't have rational thought so they're nothing more than automatons? Is your dog a robot?
That's just a start. Let's just say that strict Cartesians would have to hold a lot of positions that would not be popular among sane people today.
An obvious attempt to find a new channel that more closely couples the advertisements and the content. I can see how the marketer-droids at the Times would want this, since with normal webpages it's so easy to run proxies that strip all the ads out. But here you have to endure entire commercials before you can even get to the menu. I bet half the people who look at it are going to shitcan the thing right there, never to try it again.
It kind of defeats the purpose of finding new eyeballs for ads if the implementation is so cumbersome and painful that it drives people away. Will these people ever learn?
The truth is, every other mainstream OS has solved the security problem better than Microsoft. Most other OSes, especially *nix ones, have a philosophy of least privelege. But not Windows - its big "innovation" is to bundle the (insecure) web browser directly into the OS and enabling all sorts of nifty auto-executing controls so that drooling little kiddies all over the world can pass the time by bringing random network-connected Windows machines to their knees.
The usual refrain from Microsoft and its apologists is that its software is attacked so much because it's so popular. No. It's attacked so much because it's so easy to do.
There's been file completion for bash for quite a while now. I've been using it for a year or more and am happy with it.
This will all be blindingly obvious to most readers of /., but just for the record:
Don't use your personal email address for anything online. Don't post to usenet with it, don't use it to register for anything, don't ever use it where there's any chance of it being sold to a third party or picked up by a web crawler. Use a free throwaway web-based account like hotmail or yahoo, that's what they're for. I have a verizon.net primary email address, and I've never received a single piece of spam from it.
However, I still have a forward-only email address from my university circa 1992. Back then, there was no spam and that address has to be on every spammer's list on the planet. I still get a legitimate email every year or two, but spam outnumbers these by at least 10,000 to 1. SpamAssassin does a surprisingly good job of identifying the garbage.
I also use a proxy to surf the web, as well as a large hosts file that reroutes requests to adservers to 127.0.0.1:80, combined with a utility that returns a transparent 1x1 gif to any request on port 80. And of course I use mozilla to block pop-ups and whatnot. I'm so used to surfing in this way that I always recoil in horror when I have to use IE on a naked, unprotected box. How on earth can anyone stand it?
As for more traditional types of spam such as telemarketers, there's the national do not call list. It's free, so there's nothing to lose. You'll also want to check out the many excellent resources at the Junkbusters website. One of the most useful features is a Junkbusters Declare page, which builds custom form letters for you that you can use to opt out of Direct Marketing Association junkmail, as well as telling your financial institutions, etc., not to sell your name to third parties. I used it, it's painless, and my privacy is protected.
Of course, it would be much better if we didn't have to jump through hoop after hoop just to get through the day without being pestered by morons.
Actually it was coined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to start his own computer company. "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products."
See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD
Agreed. It's never a good idea to underestimate Microsoft. They are extremely competitive, and as you point out have a history of doing whatever it takes to own the marketplace.
However, their business tactics are so well understood nowadays (embrace & extend standards, strongarm competitors, force upgrades through deliberate incompatibilities, etc.) that many organizations now realize the overriding importance of open communication protocols and file formats, the current FUD campaign against linux notwithstanding. Money does talk, and too many people understand that the more choice you have, the lower your costs will be.
On such a purely open playing field, Microsoft is dead. Their only hope is to break interopability even further with incompatible file formats that can't be reverse engineered (such as Office's new "open" XML format coupled with the sponsoring of super-DMCA legislation) and by controlling the traditionally open PC hardware specification (the technology formerly known as Palladium).
I just can't see people and orgainizations going along with these obviously self-serving initiatives, not to mention the increasingly desperate ones that are sure to follow linux's rise on the desktop. At some point, nearly everyone will realize the benefits of free software, open hardware, and open protocols.
That's the hope anyway.
It's not obvious that democracy can survive the level of surveillance made possible by TIA and its inevitably more powerful successors.
It's crazy days we're living in. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were a horrific tragedy, but look at all the terrible things we've allowed to happen in its wake. Technology v. privacy was getting to be a real problem anyway, but Jeez the timing...
Dildo, Newfoundland, Canada
Basically, old computers and switches and nics and stuff are so cheap now you can really learn a lot about tcp/ip networking for next to no money. I think I have less than $100 invested in my home network, most of which was for network cards and a switch.
Ok, I accept that he's a good guy. But that's what worries me - he starts a new job and ditches it within a couple of months. Why? What else could it be, other than the gov't has plans for its own citizens that he finds morally unacceptable?
EXTRAVERSION = -smp_raid
Then you'll have two entries under
Wanna party like it's 1993? Just: Use mozilla to disable pop-ups and nosy cookies. Use the proximitron or filterproxy, depending on your OS. Use a big-ass hosts file and edexter (or eDexterJavaDog for non-windows users) if you want.
I use nt at work, linux at home, and I don't do ads. Bottom line, WE control what happens on our computers. Let's not forget that we have this power, or that we're going to have to fight to keep it.
You and me both. I've used unix and linux for 10 years and I still compulsively buy *nix books, even though many tread the same tired ground. Two of the best for experienced users:
Linux in a Nutshell (3rd ed.). Hands down, the best linux reference on the planet.
Unix Power Tools (2nd ed.). The best unix (linux) book ever made. It's a bit heavy on tools that aren't overly popular on linux (csh, etc.) but many of the articles are superb examples of the unix problem solving paradigm. With all the hyperlinks in the margins, it's nearly impossible to read more than a couple of pages in a row.
Speaking of compulsively buying O'Reilly books, I recently picked up Linux Server Hacks and Building Secure Servers with Linux, by Mick Bauer. Can't comment too much on the former, because I'm still reading the latter. Always liked Bauer though. Much common sense.
Preference for the familiar is pretty much true for all computer users. Even for us geeks, our preference for bsd v linux, bash v tcsh, vi v emacs, or gnome v kde depends more on what we're used to than any supposedly objective criteria.
Me: linux, bash, vi, gnome. Naturally I'm right about what's best for me, so it must be best for you, too... Gee, maybe I should be an interface reviewer too!
The terrorist attacks were a horrible atrocity, and a year and a half later I still can't understand how anyone could willingly commit such a awful crime against humanity.
It's bad enough that 3000 innocents were killed, but the real legacy of the attacks may well be the ongoing erosion of our civil rights by those in power, e.g. the Patriot Act and its forthcoming descendents (Patriot II, TIA, etc.).
What I've been worrying about lately is: how do democracies die? I think using some emergency to convince voters to give up their constitutionally guaranteed civil rights is a great start. It's like the Communist hysteria of the 50's, only potentially worse because of all the technology that can be brought to bear.
The intersection of technology and surveillance was something that needed to be looked at before 9/11 ever happened, but now... I just hope people come to their senses by the time the next election rolls around.