Boy, do I have to agree with you here. I got the @Home cablemodem about a year ago, and it's only gone downhill since then
At first, they didn't care about servers. They just didn't guarantee any availability or connectivity (read: no SLA).
A few months later, as they grew their subscriber base, they suddenly came out with a rabid "no servers" subscriber agreement.
Now, @Home users have to deal with the latest shaft up the sphincter, the "OnVantage" program -- or whatever the hell they call it. All users, no matter if you've purchased multiple IPs or not, are limited to 128 Kbits/sec upstream.
Apparently, it's been effective for quashing warez servers and other 'pirate sites', but it sure kills my NetMeeting connections!:-P So much for getting files when I need them.
I used to be able to get 400 KBytes/sec upstream. Oh, well... At $130/month for a T1, I'd kick @Home out the door so fast they wouldn't know what hit them! You can barely get xDSL here for that price, and it's nowhere near these speeds!
Sorry, but I have to take issue with two of your points here.
1) Don't dare try to install NT with more than 3 logical drives. It will only let you use 1GB of the primary drive.
Care to explain, then, the NT box I have on my desk? It has a 6 GB C: drive / partition formatted NTFS. Yup, one piece. It's an EIDE drive in a removable case. Then, there are 3 more EIDE units before I get to the 2 IBM SCSI units. That doesn't even count my CD and CDR, and then there's the SyJet... That's ninephysical units, with the potential for many more logical drives. I have the full capacity available on all my drives, and I've never had a problem.
2) Don't ever start up NT with one of your external RAID arrays unattatched. It will basically list the drives as offline, and won't let you do shit about it until you recreate the RAID container. And for the RAID unwashed out there, that means you gotta wipe the drives.
You're right, this can be a pain. It is possible to recover from it. With Disk Administrator, (under the Start / Programs / Administrative Tools (Common) menu), select all the drives that are affected. Select "Configuration > Restore". NT will now ask you for the disk that has your config on it. You do have a backup of your RAID config, right? Wait for it to finish grinding on the floppy, then NT will ask you to -- you got it! -- reboot.
If the server is a new install, you'll probably have to go in and replace all the permissions on the files in the array. If you don't, you'll most likely get a "Device not ready, RETRY / CANCEL" message box. This can be rather confusing... it's the same message you get when you try to access the floppy or CD drive and there's no media in it...
I'll agree with what you said about weird problems. It can take way too long to establish exactly what's causing NT to puke. Been there, done that, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt... and a head-start (pun intended) on grey hair.
I have another 'internet movie' for you to consider. You all have heard of it, if you haven't, you haven't been reading Slashdot.
There were dozens of fan-run websites, the 'official' movie site provided a party-line, and let the other fan sites run wild with rumor and conjecture. Video and audio clips abounded, and fan art proliferated. There was almost no television advertising -- at least very little that I saw. The interest in this movie was entirely fan based. The studio noticed this early on, used it, and encouraged it.
Of course, I refer to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It's an 'internet movie' just as much as the Blair Witch Project is. Remember Men in Black? They created a 'UFO sightings and ET conspiracies' website to hype their movie (before they even admitted it was a movie!), and when they were ready to announce the movie, they rolled the www.MenInBlack.com site into the movie site. Many serious X-Filers were seriously pissed.
The Hollywood glitterati is just mad that they didn't think of this first. The fatcats are mad that they didn't get their mega-million-dollar cuts of the 'production costs'. It's not like they've tried to do something like this before...
Hollywood, you got beat at your own game. Suck it up and deal.
No, No, No, It has to be the OpenBWP! It's the most secure version! You know, everyone comes out happy and safe in the end, no ports have been... um, violated, and, uh... nevermind.
Sheesh. I don't know what's worse, that I actually thought this was funny, or that I felt compelled to post this incredibly witty and sarcastic addition to the thread...;-P
PS: OpenBWP includes WPI (Witch passing interface) for easy setup of BWCs (BeoWitch Clusters)! =P
Okay, I wasn't being serious, but if you insist...
First: I'd think that since a fuel cell ideally consumes hydrogen and oxygen (NASA versions), that the more pure (close to / highest percentage of hydrogen) the fuel the better the performance you'll receive.
Second: (In my best 'Bones McCoy' voice) I'm a techie, not a chemist, damnit! How do you expect me to know the difference between types of alcohol?!? Besides the obvious Jack Daniels vs Skyy vs Captain Morgan vs Everclear (foom!) =P
Third: Now that I'm done ranting, I have to admit I'm glad there are people out there who actually bothered to stay awake in HS chemistry class. Who else would check facts for those of us who don't know any better?
Besides, I don't even know if I correctly remembered which type of fuel they were using for that fuel cell! It could have been ethanol and I just don't remember. Alternatively, why not use butane? It's readily available, inexpensive, and provides it's own pressure feed! Just 'stick a bic' into your phone, and you're good for another week! Also, it avoids the alcohol questions altogether!
Ditto on those fuel cells. I was quite happy to hear about the ~80 deg F units that were demonstrated as a proof of concept device -- what? about a year ago?
IIRC, the researchers developing it were trying to run your cell phone all month on an insert pack of methanol... or was it a week...
The important point was, for the volume the fuel cell occupied, the energy density wasn't that great, but it was enough to run a phone (about 1 watt or so). Being that heat is more of an enemy in a laptop than a phone, I'd worry about the necessity of additional cooling measures. (Can't just replace the battery in your existing laptop) The recharge times are incredible, though!
One question: If these things run on methanol (alcohol), will you have to be over 21 to purchase fuel for your laptop?;-P
Note: All numbered items are direct quotes from the SecurityFocus article by Liraz Siri. The intent here is not to flame, but to state the facts as I understood them from the article.
"The crack was via an NT box, so the weakness was less in Linux itself than in NT. (NT has more holes than swiss cheese.)"
1: The attacker knows the employee's username and password and is even connecting through the employee's Japanese ISP on the employee's account! (the phone company identified this was an untraceable overseas caller)
2: This is only an hypothesis, but is strongly supported by the fact that the entire attack only lasted an incredible 8 seconds! During which the attacker manages to log on (over an employee's SSH account, no less), gain root privileges, backdoor the system, remove any (standard) traces of it's activity and log off.
3: Further investigation shows that this employee's personal NT box, connected over a dynamic dailup connection, had been cracked into 4 days earlier.
It appears that the crack was due to an NT box, not via it. The actual intrusion came in at the Japanese ISP, and the intruder already knew the username and password for both the ISP and SSH. Note that the phone call to the ISP is from an "untraceable overseas" number.
"The second vulnerability was SSH. Someone altered the SSH client to act as a trojan. This should not be possible - programs should be able to detect if they've been modified. Failing that, a virus scanner should be able to detect modifications."
4: Readers should also note how although a key binary in the cracked machine had been modified, tripwire and an assortment of other booby traps failed to detect this had happened. Even a close-up manual inspection (comparing file contents with a trusted backup, playing with it's name) could not detect any odd behavior. This trick, and others equally spooky were achieved by clever manipulation of the OS's kernel code (dynamicly, through a module).
They were using scanning and file comparator software. Even when the backdoor was identified and manually examined, they "could not detect any odd behavior"! Impressive.
"Thirdly, how did they get hold of the ISP password? The article said SSH was cracked, but not that the dial-in software was. "
There's no specific quote I can use here, but knowing the NT box was compromised leads me to believe that the ISP account was compromised shortly thereafter. I've tried L0phtCrack, it's an impressive program. If I can 'script kiddie' almost every NT machine I've ever worked on like this, getting the ISP account info out of the registry isn't much of a stretch.
I want to know how they ID'd the NT box in the first place. I don't know how they did that, and I can't even start to guess...
Please read the article. You'll find that the scans were done from places (Russia) where this type of activity isn't considered much of a crime, if at all.
[Now, a little more off topic...]
IIRC, in Sweden there was a fellow charged with "attempted cracking" He portscanned a company's computers. The courts ruled that portscanning was not an intrusion, thus not a crime. The fellow was acquitted.
Explain the workings of a switching power supply? (I'll settle for how it gets away with the teeny little transformer...)
Diagnose an illness...
Okay, that's a lengthy list of rehtorical questions. Here's the point:
There are a lot of things in our lives that require specialized knowledge. Programming. Flying. Auto Mechanics. Accounting. Electrical or chemical engineering. Medicine. Many of us are knowledgeable in several fields. I can fly a Cessna 172, but not a 747. I've done engine replacements in a VW. I'm getting to the point where I at least understand what makes the things around me work. I'll never be all the things listed above, and I'd be nuts to try.
Our world is a specialized palce, and we are some of the specialists. That's what makes us valuable. Some things are far too complex for a lay person to completely understand, that's where we come in.
Would you expect your doctor to laugh (to other doctors) that one of her patients couldn't diagnose & treat a hot appendix? Of course not. I expect that we will come to the point where computers are the same way. People will bring their ailing machines in, we'll take them into the back room, fix 'em, and hand these people a bill. Thanks for your buisness, don't forget your 6 month checkup.
You (and a lot of other people who've said similar things...) are right to worry about the lawyers. Here's what I'd do:
Requireevery parent or guardian that wants their child to have a computer to attend a class.
In this class make these parents explicitly aware of both the benefits and the dangers of allowing their progeny access to the internet. Also explain that the internet is not the only danger (violent games come to mind). Explain to them the extraordinary necessity for parental supervision and guidance. Perhaps suggest that internet access is not necessary until the kids learn more about the computer itself.
Next step is the obvious waiver of liability for all those wonderful legal terms, like:
corrupting the morals of a minor
delivery of pornography to a minor
bombmaking
Oh, hell, I can't think of legalese at this hour. You'll have to use your imagination to fill in all those terrible things that the christian coalition accuses 'the internet' of...
Obviously, no signed waiver, no computer. If the class worries off a few parents, so be it. There will most likely be many others on the waiting list.
Good luck in your venture. Regardless of what others may say, it is very worthwhile.
I like your "eat 'em all!" idea, it rocks. I think that it would be hilarious!
I mean, have a !@#%$ day at work, come home, log on, grab that joystick (not that one, the other one! sick perverts...) and munch my way through a party of adventurers... BURP!
Call me old fashioned, but the art they've posted on their site is sweet.
Why old-fashioned? It's been 14 years since I seriously played AD&D... I probably still have my books somewhere. Geez, I remember dreaming stuff like this up, but it just lost it's appeal after a while. I guess the folks I played with ran out of imagination, and things were just too predictable. (Oh, well.)
I like the mage... I just wish I could set my office up like that... It'd sure slow the flow of stupid questions...
I thought they actually managed to get NT certified -- yes, to the C2 level. However, it was a workstation that was not connected to a network!
Therefore, all this networking BS is a moot point as far as certification is concerned, because as soon as you plug in that modem or network card, there goes your certification!
I've played with these C2 tools that MS puts out. After they get through with a system, your job as an administrator is not fun at all. You'll have so much reading (in the form of audit logs) that you run the risk of going insane! That, and users asking for more (temporary) rights so they can... click the start button, empty the trash, etc.
For those of you really concerned with security, this appears to be Microsoft's interpretation of C2:
Lock the damn thing in a room, post an armed guard. Check the IDs of everyone that wants to even
look at the computer, and tell him to shoot everyone that he hasn't known since birth. Lock the CPU away in another room, with another armed guard, this time with orders to shoot everybody.
Useful computer, huh?
Sorry for the sarcasm, I got a little carried away there.
...and on the 8th day, the Corps of Engineers started changing everything.
In a C2 configured system, auditing system of Windows NT provides an option to the administrator to shut down the system when security audit log is filled up. To enable this, use the following key value in the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Lsa:
Name: CrashOnAuditFail
Type: REG_DWORD Value: 1
With this setting, the system will shutdown itself when the audit log full is detected. The value in the registry is reset to 2. When the system is rebooted, it only allows the administrators to log on to the machine (locally or remotely). They will be required to clean the audit log (or archive it), reset the value to 1 and reboot the system before any other user is allowed to log on.
The log is whatever size the administrator chooses. By default, the logs are limited to 512KB (Max setting 4,194,240 KB), and events older than 7 days get overwritten (this can be turned off). It is very easy to change these settings, and obviously Microsoft has done this. Then (as above) NT automatically crashes when any of the event logs fill up (System, Security, or Application).
For those of you interested enough to read this document, it is referring to NT4 service pack 0. A lot of the holes that it would have you manually patch are automatically fixed when you apply the various service packs. (Remote access to the registry, for example.)
My favorite quote from this.doc: "...the default out-of-the-box configuration is highly relaxed, especially on the Workstation product. This is because the operating system is sold as a shrink-wrapped product with an assumption that an average customer may not want to worry about a highly restrained but secure system on their desktop..."
I'm sorry, these pictures are so good I gotta post a link again. Hey, it deals with NT security, right?
Kernel 2.4 is - at this very second - vaporware. Yes, I agree. Will it continue to be? Not a chance. There is a demand for the features that the article talks about.
That's the wonderful thing about linux: instead of 'features' like an animated paperclip 'assistant', the people developing linux are answering only to thir own needs and things that there is a demand for. There are no marketdroids, no billionaire empire moguls commanding from on high (yet), and no single point of development. These are all Good Things.
With this kind of a development system, I'm not at all surprised that there's no PnP (yet). I hate Plug-n-Pray. Firewire and USB? Bring 'em on, these I can use! However, I'm not yet confident enough to hack my own mods to a kernel, so all I can do is let it be known that I would like these features included in linux, please. Then an amazing thing happens: Enough people want something, and a very generous person dedicates a chunk of his or her life to staring at a glowing screen, and a few kernels later, things work.
Know what, folks? This is a great time to be alive.
I saw the paragraph where the possibility of single-chip AFMs was put forth... You're right, multiple heads would pull the data off noticably faster. Still, it this 'penny' form factor persists, just how many heads will they be able to fit over it?
Personally, I'd like to see something along the 3.5 inch size. Small enough to be stiff and stable enough that the spinning disk doesn't wipe out your AFM read heads, and large enough to hold all the info that you'll ever need for your whole life! (Yeah, right! Give me one, I guarantee that I can fill it up!)
I'm glad someone else saw this as well... 180 Gbits on a penny, or 22.5 GBytes. Kinda takes the wind out of the sails, I know. Gadzooks, what am I saying??? I'm brazenly spewing "giga" here, and I'm getting ready to say "IBM MicroDrive..." Uh, not even remotely close...
Now, on to more serious matters... I saw an article a few months back in Popular Science about this same discovery / researcher. PopSci's website is completely blank on searching for info, and I don't have read access to my archives at the moment. (Sorry.)
I'd like to know what kind of transfer rate this device would be capable of... Transfer rates are turning into the limitation that we need to address, instead of raw storage...
Anyone remember Men in Black? Agent K standing in their 'alien tech museum' and saying "This little thing is gonna replace CDs in a few years... Looks like I'm going to have to buy the 'White' album again!"
My, how fast fiction is becoming reality these days!
Sure thing, lets hand over the primary root servers (which are still controlled by Uncle Sam, not NSI) to the UN. Then when they come up with another boneheaded idea like an email tax, they'll have all the world's domain names to hold ransom!!!
I mean, geez, about all the UN does these days is 'agree to censure [insert the name of your favorite warlord]' or pass a resolution condemning child labor abuses... The UN has no army, and nothing but an agreement among countries to try to stick to some of the resolutions that are passed. If they suddenly had something valuable to hold over our heads, I fear that things would get out of hand. The US government has been rather good so far in not taxing the 'net... the UN has made no such promises -- just the opposite, in fact.
I post this not as an American, but as an individual opposed to bureaucracy. Less government regulation & taxation of the internet!!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Bones?
Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a webmaster! ...It's dead, Jim.
Well, maybe not exactly dead...
Hehehehe, that was fun.
At first, they didn't care about servers. They just didn't guarantee any availability or connectivity (read: no SLA).
A few months later, as they grew their subscriber base, they suddenly came out with a rabid "no servers" subscriber agreement.
Now, @Home users have to deal with the latest shaft up the sphincter, the "OnVantage" program -- or whatever the hell they call it. All users, no matter if you've purchased multiple IPs or not, are limited to 128 Kbits/sec upstream.
Apparently, it's been effective for quashing warez servers and other 'pirate sites', but it sure kills my NetMeeting connections! :-P So much for getting files when I need them.
I used to be able to get 400 KBytes/sec upstream. Oh, well... At $130/month for a T1, I'd kick @Home out the door so fast they wouldn't know what hit them! You can barely get xDSL here for that price, and it's nowhere near these speeds!
That's it... I'm movin' to Tucson.
1) Don't dare try to install NT with more than 3 logical drives. It will only let you use 1GB of the primary drive.
Care to explain, then, the NT box I have on my desk? It has a 6 GB C: drive / partition formatted NTFS. Yup, one piece. It's an EIDE drive in a removable case. Then, there are 3 more EIDE units before I get to the 2 IBM SCSI units. That doesn't even count my CD and CDR, and then there's the SyJet... That's nine physical units, with the potential for many more logical drives. I have the full capacity available on all my drives, and I've never had a problem.
2) Don't ever start up NT with one of your external RAID arrays unattatched. It will basically list the drives as offline, and won't let you do shit about it until you recreate the RAID container. And for the RAID unwashed out there, that means you gotta wipe the drives.
You're right, this can be a pain. It is possible to recover from it. With Disk Administrator, (under the Start / Programs / Administrative Tools (Common) menu), select all the drives that are affected. Select "Configuration > Restore". NT will now ask you for the disk that has your config on it. You do have a backup of your RAID config, right? Wait for it to finish grinding on the floppy, then NT will ask you to -- you got it! -- reboot.
If the server is a new install, you'll probably have to go in and replace all the permissions on the files in the array. If you don't, you'll most likely get a "Device not ready, RETRY / CANCEL" message box. This can be rather confusing... it's the same message you get when you try to access the floppy or CD drive and there's no media in it...
I'll agree with what you said about weird problems. It can take way too long to establish exactly what's causing NT to puke. Been there, done that, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt... and a head-start (pun intended) on grey hair.
There were dozens of fan-run websites, the 'official' movie site provided a party-line, and let the other fan sites run wild with rumor and conjecture. Video and audio clips abounded, and fan art proliferated. There was almost no television advertising -- at least very little that I saw. The interest in this movie was entirely fan based. The studio noticed this early on, used it, and encouraged it.
Of course, I refer to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It's an 'internet movie' just as much as the Blair Witch Project is. Remember Men in Black? They created a 'UFO sightings and ET conspiracies' website to hype their movie (before they even admitted it was a movie!), and when they were ready to announce the movie, they rolled the www.MenInBlack.com site into the movie site. Many serious X-Filers were seriously pissed.
The Hollywood glitterati is just mad that they didn't think of this first. The fatcats are mad that they didn't get their mega-million-dollar cuts of the 'production costs'. It's not like they've tried to do something like this before...
Hollywood, you got beat at your own game. Suck it up and deal.
Sheesh. I don't know what's worse, that I actually thought this was funny, or that I felt compelled to post this incredibly witty and sarcastic addition to the thread... ;-P
PS: OpenBWP includes WPI (Witch passing interface) for easy setup of BWCs (BeoWitch Clusters)! =P
Okay, I go now.
First: I'd think that since a fuel cell ideally consumes hydrogen and oxygen (NASA versions), that the more pure (close to / highest percentage of hydrogen) the fuel the better the performance you'll receive.
Second: (In my best 'Bones McCoy' voice) I'm a techie, not a chemist, damnit! How do you expect me to know the difference between types of alcohol?!? Besides the obvious Jack Daniels vs Skyy vs Captain Morgan vs Everclear (foom!) =P
Third: Now that I'm done ranting, I have to admit I'm glad there are people out there who actually bothered to stay awake in HS chemistry class. Who else would check facts for those of us who don't know any better?
Besides, I don't even know if I correctly remembered which type of fuel they were using for that fuel cell! It could have been ethanol and I just don't remember. Alternatively, why not use butane? It's readily available, inexpensive, and provides it's own pressure feed! Just 'stick a bic' into your phone, and you're good for another week! Also, it avoids the alcohol questions altogether!
IIRC, the researchers developing it were trying to run your cell phone all month on an insert pack of methanol... or was it a week...
The important point was, for the volume the fuel cell occupied, the energy density wasn't that great, but it was enough to run a phone (about 1 watt or so). Being that heat is more of an enemy in a laptop than a phone, I'd worry about the necessity of additional cooling measures. (Can't just replace the battery in your existing laptop) The recharge times are incredible, though!
One question: If these things run on methanol (alcohol), will you have to be over 21 to purchase fuel for your laptop?
(Yes, I've thought of denatured alcohol! Sheesh!)
Thanks!
"The crack was via an NT box, so the weakness was less in Linux itself than in NT. (NT has more holes than swiss cheese.)"
2: This is only an hypothesis, but is strongly supported by the fact that the entire attack only lasted an incredible 8 seconds! During which the attacker manages to log on (over an employee's SSH account, no less), gain root privileges, backdoor the system, remove any (standard) traces of it's activity and log off.
3: Further investigation shows that this employee's personal NT box, connected over a dynamic dailup connection, had been cracked into 4 days earlier.
It appears that the crack was due to an NT box, not via it. The actual intrusion came in at the Japanese ISP, and the intruder already knew the username and password for both the ISP and SSH. Note that the phone call to the ISP is from an "untraceable overseas" number.
"The second vulnerability was SSH. Someone altered the SSH client to act as a trojan. This should not be possible - programs should be able to detect if they've been modified. Failing that, a virus scanner should be able to detect modifications."
They were using scanning and file comparator software. Even when the backdoor was identified and manually examined, they "could not detect any odd behavior"! Impressive.
"Thirdly, how did they get hold of the ISP password? The article said SSH was cracked, but not that the dial-in software was. "
There's no specific quote I can use here, but knowing the NT box was compromised leads me to believe that the ISP account was compromised shortly thereafter. I've tried L0phtCrack, it's an impressive program. If I can 'script kiddie' almost every NT machine I've ever worked on like this, getting the ISP account info out of the registry isn't much of a stretch.
I want to know how they ID'd the NT box in the first place. I don't know how they did that, and I can't even start to guess...
Do it in 8 seconds??? That's Incredible! (TM that old 70s (80s?) show by the same name)
I learned a fair amount reading this article, most specifically:
- Don't run anything you don't
- absolutely need! Like X.
I know that'll make things sometimes slower, and less pretty, but look at the alternative! 8 Seconds... DAMN![Now, a little more off topic...]
- Know how nylon is made?
- Rubber?
- Know how to fly an aircraft? (just the basics)
- Know what the acronym NASDAQ means?
- Know how to plant & grow a garden?
Can you...- Fix a car? (Beyond fuel, oil & tires)
- Calculate compound interest?
- Build a crystal radio?
- Explain the workings of a switching power supply? (I'll settle for how it gets away with the teeny little transformer...)
- Diagnose an illness...
Okay, that's a lengthy list of rehtorical questions. Here's the point:There are a lot of things in our lives that require specialized knowledge. Programming. Flying. Auto Mechanics. Accounting. Electrical or chemical engineering. Medicine. Many of us are knowledgeable in several fields. I can fly a Cessna 172, but not a 747. I've done engine replacements in a VW. I'm getting to the point where I at least understand what makes the things around me work. I'll never be all the things listed above, and I'd be nuts to try.
Our world is a specialized palce, and we are some of the specialists. That's what makes us valuable. Some things are far too complex for a lay person to completely understand, that's where we come in.
Would you expect your doctor to laugh (to other doctors) that one of her patients couldn't diagnose & treat a hot appendix? Of course not. I expect that we will come to the point where computers are the same way. People will bring their ailing machines in, we'll take them into the back room, fix 'em, and hand these people a bill. Thanks for your buisness, don't forget your 6 month checkup.
Just watch out for the "Computer HMOs".
In this class make these parents explicitly aware of both the benefits and the dangers of allowing their progeny access to the internet. Also explain that the internet is not the only danger (violent games come to mind). Explain to them the extraordinary necessity for parental supervision and guidance. Perhaps suggest that internet access is not necessary until the kids learn more about the computer itself.
Next step is the obvious waiver of liability for all those wonderful legal terms, like:
Obviously, no signed waiver, no computer. If the class worries off a few parents, so be it. There will most likely be many others on the waiting list.
Good luck in your venture. Regardless of what others may say, it is very worthwhile.
Geez, I gotta hit 'refresh' before I post such obvious replies...
2 + 2 = 5 for very large values of 2.
I mean, have a !@#%$ day at work, come home, log on, grab that joystick (not that one, the other one! sick perverts...) and munch my way through a party of adventurers... BURP!
God, sometimes that would just make my day.
Why old-fashioned? It's been 14 years since I seriously played AD&D... I probably still have my books somewhere. Geez, I remember dreaming stuff like this up, but it just lost it's appeal after a while. I guess the folks I played with ran out of imagination, and things were just too predictable. (Oh, well.)
I like the mage... I just wish I could set my office up like that... It'd sure slow the flow of stupid questions...
Also, their background makes nice wallpaper!
Therefore, all this networking BS is a moot point as far as certification is concerned, because as soon as you plug in that modem or network card, there goes your certification!
I've played with these C2 tools that MS puts out. After they get through with a system, your job as an administrator is not fun at all. You'll have so much reading (in the form of audit logs) that you run the risk of going insane! That, and users asking for more (temporary) rights so they can... click the start button, empty the trash, etc.
For those of you really concerned with security, this appears to be Microsoft's interpretation of C2:
Useful computer, huh?
Sorry for the sarcasm, I got a little carried away there.
In a C2 configured system, auditing system of Windows NT provides an option to the administrator to shut down the system when security audit log is filled up. To enable this, use the following key value in the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Lsa:
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1
With this setting, the system will shutdown itself when the audit log full is detected. The value in the registry is reset to 2. When the system is rebooted, it only allows the administrators to log on to the machine (locally or remotely). They will be required to clean the audit log (or archive it), reset the value to 1 and reboot the system before any other user is allowed to log on.
The log is whatever size the administrator chooses. By default, the logs are limited to 512KB (Max setting 4,194,240 KB), and events older than 7 days get overwritten (this can be turned off). It is very easy to change these settings, and obviously Microsoft has done this. Then (as above) NT automatically crashes when any of the event logs fill up (System, Security, or Application).
For those of you interested enough to read this document, it is referring to NT4 service pack 0. A lot of the holes that it would have you manually patch are automatically fixed when you apply the various service packs. (Remote access to the registry, for example.)
My favorite quote from this .doc: "...the default out-of-the-box configuration is highly relaxed, especially on the Workstation product. This is because the operating system is sold as a shrink-wrapped product with an assumption that an average customer may not want to worry about a highly restrained but secure system on their desktop..."
I'm sorry, these pictures are so good I gotta post a link again. Hey, it deals with NT security, right?
Note: I'm not a MCSE, but I play one at work.
That's the wonderful thing about linux: instead of 'features' like an animated paperclip 'assistant', the people developing linux are answering only to thir own needs and things that there is a demand for. There are no marketdroids, no billionaire empire moguls commanding from on high (yet), and no single point of development. These are all Good Things.
With this kind of a development system, I'm not at all surprised that there's no PnP (yet). I hate Plug-n-Pray. Firewire and USB? Bring 'em on, these I can use! However, I'm not yet confident enough to hack my own mods to a kernel, so all I can do is let it be known that I would like these features included in linux, please. Then an amazing thing happens: Enough people want something, and a very generous person dedicates a chunk of his or her life to staring at a glowing screen, and a few kernels later, things work.
Know what, folks? This is a great time to be alive.
Hang on...
Just gotta get back into my chair...
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (THUD! again)
I'm O-kay... God, that was SO fscking funny! The look on that's poor guy's face... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
And he's using a QuickCam...
And he's just realized that the guy that BO'd him probably captured the hanky-panky that went on last night...
For those of you too damn lazy to cut-n-paste, here's a clickable link: HOLY SH!T
God, this one's a classic! That's it, this one's WALLPAPER!!
Who says cracking isn't worthwhile? This was sure worth it!!
Personally, I'd like to see something along the 3.5 inch size. Small enough to be stiff and stable enough that the spinning disk doesn't wipe out your AFM read heads, and large enough to hold all the info that you'll ever need for your whole life! (Yeah, right! Give me one, I guarantee that I can fill it up!)
Just as soon as I get done posting this deep and intensely researched post, TacoBoy goes and makes the point moot by changing the subject line! =P
Whyyoulittle...!
For the record, this story's original topic was "Penny-size 180 GB CDROMs"
Now, on to more serious matters... I saw an article a few months back in Popular Science about this same discovery / researcher. PopSci's website is completely blank on searching for info, and I don't have read access to my archives at the moment. (Sorry.)
I'd like to know what kind of transfer rate this device would be capable of... Transfer rates are turning into the limitation that we need to address, instead of raw storage...
Anyone remember Men in Black? Agent K standing in their 'alien tech museum' and saying "This little thing is gonna replace CDs in a few years... Looks like I'm going to have to buy the 'White' album again!"
My, how fast fiction is becoming reality these days!
I mean, geez, about all the UN does these days is 'agree to censure [insert the name of your favorite warlord]' or pass a resolution condemning child labor abuses... The UN has no army, and nothing but an agreement among countries to try to stick to some of the resolutions that are passed. If they suddenly had something valuable to hold over our heads, I fear that things would get out of hand. The US government has been rather good so far in not taxing the 'net... the UN has made no such promises -- just the opposite, in fact.
I post this not as an American, but as an individual opposed to bureaucracy. Less government regulation & taxation of the internet!!