They could also be looking to buy an ISP. Google is an on-line destination. What brings people to Google? ISPs! EarthLink looks like a good candidate. Both companies seem to have similar philosophies in terms of striving to give their users what they need.
i don't mean to be karma-whoring... i couldn't resist... here is the search you mentioned. I also excluded naked (per your suggestion) and Nicky (her sister):
no, precisely it tries to address the saturation issue. it's part of the reason why it is a totally passive device that does not have its own ip address. i think the use of their device requires close cooperation with the upstream provider and sits somewhere between the upstream and its customer. all traffic between upstream provider and customer goes thru one or more such devices which start dropping packets. i think the sought end-result is that the upstream is only routing "legit" traffic to the customer. or something like that. their whole solution was built from the ground-up to address distributed denial of service attacks. their solutions is absolutely unlike any firewall solution.
... who gives a rat's ass what cringely thinks. the guy has zero credentials. all he does is bitch and whine all the fucking time in his "i, cringely, pulpit" columns.
Melior Inc.'s solution to combat network abuses and intrusions, especially DDoS, seems quite interesting. It's a physical device you place before your network, that just sits there and examines incoming packets and attempts to throw-away junk. it's transparent, meaning it doesn't have an ip address, stuff just kinda flows thru it.
i know that at least one anti-spam entity uses them.
hear hear. i echoed some your points on two previousposts.
A lotta geeks like to believe they have a clue about industrial design and engineering challenges associated therewith. Glad to see a non-iPod user with a sense of objectivity. *tips hat*. u've just earned a fan.
what are the dimensions of a Nomad Zen NX? would you care to give a comparison to iPod's dimensions? i haven't found on their site any documentation about which battery it uses, how much it costs, and what it takes to replace it. It does say it's a replaceable battery, but technically, iPod *also* has a replaceable battery.
hint: if the iPod is a smaller, more portable form-factor while touting similar capacity, while being less confusing, with less holes to plug shit in, less buttons to fuck with, your average consumer ain't guna give a shit about a device that's a geek's dream. detachable this or that, believe it or not, is confusing to the average user. It's a matter of which audience you cater to. More on this later.
There are reasons why there are tradeoffs. the iPod is extremely small for the capacity it offers, it is extremely portable and unintrusive. i have fit mine (2G) in just about any pocket i've had. Furthermore, many of my co-workers had bought competing players, absolutely every single one of them complained about either its form-factor or lack of capacity. Nomad Jukebox3 is a big square-ish size, much like today's CD players that are basically the size of a CD, which is NOT a form factor that is nearly as appealing as one of an iPod's. Don't get me wrong the features and interoperability capabilities of the Nomad jukebox3 are simply impressive but when a device's form-factor is not really a constraint, you can go to town with features. That doesn't mean this is necessarily what the average user Apple targets will be drawn to. The Jukebox3's affluence of buttons and holes to plug things in also make it, to your average non-computer geek, a "complicated", "confusing" device, while geeks see those features as a God-Sent. it's all relative. Sure the lack of replaceable battery is frustrating. But it ain't the first time, nor is it ever guna be the last time this sort of issue will plague consumer electronics.
Replacing an iPod battery is NOT that hard, you just gotta be careful and requires a bit of skills. If that doesn't do it, then pay the $100 for the cost of the battery and to have someone else install it and be done with it. Or buy extended warranty such as AppleCare or one from Fry's, Best Buy, CompUSA, FNAC, or whoever sells you the iPod. It ain't that bad. People always pit the price of a battery against the price of the device it goes into and get infuriated to "pay $100 for a battery for a device that's only $400". No no no and no. Most resilient, quality batteries are expensive and that's the fucking way it is. Especially the type of flat one required for the iPod, it is quite a nice piece of engineering. When it dies, you gotta pay. period. Take a deep fucking breath and accept this fact.
It always works like this: you shop for some device, it tells you it's rechargeable, but no one ever cares to ask "yes but for how long, what do i do when it can no-longer hold a charge" to make an informed purchasing decision based on those questions. They don't think, then get pissed when the inevitable happens, then go whine at their lawyers, who in the end will be the only winners in the upcoming class-action lawsuit. Once people also get the device they rarely ever look at best practices included in their manual to enhance battery life. There you have it.
this isn't about zealotry. some people happened to have understood why Apple has made the compromises it did at the time it did and accept 'em without whining all fucking day, and will eventually vote with their feet and potentially wait for improvements, others choose to bitch around, karma-whoring on slashdot, thinking they're smart and have a fucking clue about industrial design and stating the obvious ad nauseum, bragging about how device X or Y has a detachable this or that while never addres
i call bullshit. for one, my guess is you are not an industrial designer. secondly, just because "standards" are there or emerging, or you'd wish there was a standard, has every chance, moral, and legal right to be irrelevant to Apple: if standards don't fit the bill, then fuck the standards, inferior devices can adhere to those standards and lose marketshare all they want to the sleeker iPod.
have you even looked at the shape of the battery we're talking about?. What trap door would accomodate that? you'd basically have to replace screws with ugly-protruding latches. change form factor? then the battery becomes bulgy and the iPod is no-longer slick and thin. i'm sure i'm barely scraping the surface. let's scrape some more though:
Part of the appeal of the whole Apple look is that it is one solid block of metal, no rugged edges, nothing to protrude, and yes that includes NO easy-to-open little battery door. Tiny digital cameras are NOT ipods. what you call tiny is actually way fucking bigger a form factor than an iPod. But again, beyond mere technical challenges, this whole issue is also about DESIGN. read my lips. D E S I G N. Nothing, absolutely nothing about the way Apple industrially designs its products is a result of a coincidence. Users like the iPod because it is simple. There isn't a lot of shit on it that catches the eye, things to fuck with that may confuse you, make you needlessly use your brain, and/or otherwise hurt the eye.
i've have litterally seen high-school chicks use the back of their fucking iPod as a make-up mirror. silly huh? guess what all their friends want for x-mas? Now. you wanna stick an ugly-ass trap-door to further mingle a pimple-ridden teenage chick's face? What about personalized engraved notes in the back of the iPod? If you want such note to live in an esthetically pleasing environment, while retaining all the attention, you can't have lines, holes, trap doors on the same surface. imagine a blank sheet of paper on your bed with a message in blue ink right at the center that says "thanks for last night". Now, imagine the same message written on the back of a shrivelled croissant-wrapper with the bakery's logo on it. not quite the same impact is it? it is that silly type of detailed attention to DESIGN, among many other features, that makes the iPod a truly unique consumer item. i'm sure Apple pays people to sit around all fucking day and think of the impact of silly shit like that. silly, but it works.
now. i understand people's frustration about their battery issues but hey, from a moral standpoint, that's the kinda shit they should have thought of before buying the iPod. $100 to change a battery is NOT the end of the world. I'll gladly pay $50 to some techie on top of the cost of the battery to ensure he successfully upgrades my battery without fuckin' it up. otherwise ill just do it myself. it ain't impossible to do. Even $100 is not a bad deal, Sony charges $100 for the rechargeable battery that fits their DSC P50 digital camera, and you don't really know you gotta buy the battery until after you buy the camera and realize that 2 AA batteries only let you take a few pictures. Unless you are like me and always read reviews of consumer products on amazon before buying. I'm not exactly seeing Sony being sued over this right now. legal foot to stand on? my ass. which brings me to my next point...
from a legal standpoint, Apple never said their battery would last a lifetime. in fact Apple doesn't even advertise iPod as being a lifetime device. In fact what piece of consumer electronics ever makes such claims? NONE. NOT ONE. this is why Best Buy, Good Guys, Fry's
too expensive for anyone but the yuppy elite? Listen, you can nerdulate all you want about fancy-shmancy uber-elite PC configuration at 3.2Ghz you built from scratch for $400, but then you'd be behaving like the nerdy elite.
All i know is that right now i'm looking to get a low-end computer for my Dad that'll allow him to easily:
use the internet: user-friendly e-mail program with built-in adaptive bayesian spam filtering with ability to interoperate with ISP-supplied spam indicators. I want the mail program to closely interact with a separate, sync'able address book entity, so e-mail addresses are instantly linked to clickable "people objects" on which a variety of other actions can be performed. A web browser with built-in pop-up blocker that doesn't let a web page install a piece of software on the operating system just because a user inadvertently clicked yes in some cryptic dialog box he couldn't understand. Not get this computer thoroughly owned on his DSL connection because some internet service was enabled in the background.
manage digital pictures from just about any digital camera on the market with a USB interface by just plugging-it in without having to install any piece of software *at all*.
edit home videos from any digital video camera with a firewire interface, by just plugging-it in and without installing a single piece of software.
Sync his current USB Pam Pilot, bluetooth cellphone, any handheld device he may ever lay his hands on, and his main computer, again, without installing a single piece of software, all in a user-friendly, consistent, vendor-agnostic experience, including syncing of the aforementioned address book
What's a thousand bucks? for a system he'll keep a long ass time (note that each revision of Mac OS X actually runs better than its predecessor even on hardware from back in 1998.), and, more importantly, will keep him outta my hair.
yeah. i got this phisher e-mail too. 211.154.171.106 appears to be a compromised box, some lame cracker used to set-up their phisher site at/li_pi n/verification/step1_e.htm .
Please submit a spamcop report for that phisher e-mail you just received. Basic reporting account is free, i recently purchased a yearly mailbox from them, i like what spamcop does for the Internet.
emphasis on more. No computer system is ever secure in absolute terms.
while security surrounding DHCP has been and will continue to be a non-trivial issue, that one DHCP/directory issue that'd allow a malicious user on a LOCAL network to root a few boxes are still not the kind of vulnerabilities that'd allow worms to wreac wild havoc on the internet. In the case of this vulnerability, an exploit could spread to a local network and stop right there. There is just no way some worm could be written to spread outside of that local network. And worst, the exploit still needs to rely on the victim's machine actually DOING SOMETHING to be potentially vulnerable, in this case, rebooting, or renewing a DHCP lease, which are actions that seldom happen, especially on a network full of idling desktop boxes.
that exploit was interesting, needs to be addressed, requires more than a mere patch to a piece of C code and will require Apple and many Darwin/BSD developers to come-up with a complex solution that could involve user-interface updates or the development of certificates mechansisms which have been in discussion since 2001 in some rfc.
but this is hardly grounds for a windows user to gloat. and if the above didn't make sense, here are concepts that are simpler to understand:
Ever since OS X came out in its 10.1 version in late 2001, has any worm managed to spread thru OS X machines?
answer: no. Regardless of potential security holes found here and there, all OS X boxes ship by default with ALL NETWORK SERVICES TURNED OFF. Run nmap against a freshly installed OS X system, and guess what you get: NOTHING. NOT A SINGLE PORT OPENED. Hi there. Security 101 anyone? Even if OS X was the #1-used operating system in the world by millions and millions of people connected thru always-on broadband internet, any infection would stem from marginal power-users enabing certain remote services, at which point an infection or worm still wouldn't manage to reach the rest of the populace.
This is a far cry from windows boxes who have shipped for many years with services turned-on by default such as IIS and SMB, which allowed silly worms such as CodeRed and Nimda to make their initial way in, while further exploiting many exotic windoz system-level vulnerabilities surrounding Outlook and Internet Explorer, whereby previewing an e-mail or stumbling upon a malicious web page after pasting a URL found in an IRC chat room could get your computer thoroughly owned by inferior lifeforms also known as script kiddies, as your computer would secretly become one among thousands of unwitting drones awaiting their commands from a hidden IRC chatroom to launch DDoS attacks against some web sites, while seriously congesting the Internet. Hey Ulanoff, kinda sounds like what has happened at your office? thought so. Go Windoz.
Since System Mac 7.6 aka harmony with Open Transport which actually made internet access via dial-up and DHCP actually practical and easy-to-use circa 1996, has any internet-connected mac user running the default operating system as it was first installed from the Apple CDs ever gotten infected by a worm from just sitting on an un-NAT'ed, unfirewalled internet connection?
NO. That's because prior to OS X, Apple stuck to doing what they were good at: building an out-of-the-box single user, narrowly focused operating system targetted at your average joe-user and graphic designer, that had the ability to be extended thru 3rd-party software or other system configuration to better interoperate within, say, a corporate network. "Dave Client" comes to mind.
On the other hand Microsoft thought it would be fun to create worthless pieces of ass-ware such as windoz 95, NT, 98, ME, 2000 which they'd sell to BOTH enterprises and average joe-users, and enable, out-of-the-box, by default, a slew of services and features most users would never ever need or use, just so regardless of who the customer was, the operating syste
you, like 99.9% of the world's entire population, are absolutely unable to understand and/or see some very basic concepts and facts of international policy related to Iraq.
Let me refresh your memory. Over 10 years ago, when France, Germany, U.S. and all other U.N. constituants voted for the embargo on Iraq, they essentially signed the death certificates of thousands upon thousands of starving Iraqi children every single month. For 10 fucking years this has been going on and NO ONE, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, has done ANYTHING concrete to put an end to this. People see bombs, planes, tanks and "the big invasion" as the worst thing Iraq has endured over the last 10 years, WAKE THE FUCK UP, you clueless masses, IRAQ, HAS ALREADY been at war for over 10 years.
You may agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, hide behind the same old rehashed conspiracy theories behind the U.S.'s motives for going there. But in the end, this invasion is the very very first chance for Iraq at a brighter future. Even if only U.S. companies obtain Iraqi contracts, guess where that U.S. money is guna go? The Iraqi PEOPLE. Not to some dictator who constantly remains eager to build himself new pools and palaces, while his children starve.
This is not about getting rid of all oppressive regimes in the world. This is about fixing a mess that the U.S. and Europe started over a decade ago, it is about bringing closure to a campaign that had been started back in 1989 that may have ephemerously freed the Kurds, but has also immediately thrown the Iraqi People in the middle of economic sanctions and subsequent starvation, under a dictator that never ever gave a shit about his People, all to see the U.N. bitch, moan, and do absolutely nothing concrete for 10 years to hold saddam accountable and lift sanctions. For 10 years, the Iraq situation has been a can of worms no leader in the world has been willing to open, while U.S. and Europe enjoyed a prosperous economic expansion.
Even if saddam was never himself involved with terrorist activities, his regime has set the stage to feed extremist Muslim movements with the hate, anger and desperation they so direly need to formulate their anti-Occident brainwash and bring-in new recruits. Until now, if you're an Iraqi struggling to make ends meet to feed your family, here were your only two options at a better life:
join saddam's army and be guaranteed 3 meals a day.
join bin laden's army and guarantee your family a hefty reward after your death.
Why would young, strong Iraqi Men NOT choose one of those two routes? For all they knew, they'd be fighting the western cultures that oppress them.
My guess is these are the real reasons why we went to war with Iraq. Sure this administration's lack of credibility sticks out like a sore fucking thumb in this whole mess, what fucking WMD? what fucking 9/11? But this all goes back to what i started this post with: 99.9% of people in the world are clueless numbnuts who just LIVE for hair-brained conspiracy theories to make simple sense out of a complicated mess. From there, it isn't hard to see why the U.S. administration tried to rally their citizens and the rest of the world with simple concepts simpletons could grok: "WMD, 9/11".
How did we get here? Simple. For decades Arab countries have been the bitch to either one of two entities: Capitalist Factions and Communist Factions. Since Arab countries never evolved to even simple forms of democracy, no ruler of Iran or Iraq ever was truly accountable for their actions, and was therefore free to more or less secretely broker deals with the U.S., Europe or the USSR. Russians were racing for oil interests thru Iran, Americans thru Iraq, who all sat back and watched Arab Brothers kill oneanother, while feeding them weapons.
ever since OS X was released to the public, this has always been true:
install OS X
boot into OS X
run nmap against the OSX box's ip address from another box
how many ports are opened? ZERONADAZILCHNOT ONE
You wanna know how many DSL and/or cable-connected windows boxes have been totally owned thru various design flaws in that operating system, be them related to very basic network and application security such as default ports or poorly-designed security-related user interfaces such as ActiveX controls in web pages? Just ask any IRC system administrator of popular IRC networks, such as efnet or undernet. Thousands upon thousands of unwitting "drones" from all over the world can be summonned at will by some lame-ass script-kiddie asshole who issues commands from a hidden IRC channel to launch most deadly denial-of-service attacks.
TO THIS DAY that stupid-ass nimda worm is still probing my DSL connection's port 80.
how many network ports do most windows boxes have opened? A WHOLE FUCKING LOT, and far too many.
This is all the result of microsoft building an operating system that made close to ZERO distinction in its distribution format between a home, average-joe-end-user and a business, enterprise, corporate network end-user, blindly choosing convenience over security.
the other key microsoft failure is that for years it barely ever attempted to make the distinction between an operating system designed to be a SERVER vs a CLIENT. Far too many CLIENT machines have shipped with features turned-on by default that were only useful to SERVER machines.
already been done, long ago, in other news:
on
AOL's $299 PC
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
... and that's just a few of many MANY options out there. Now why the fuck would you shell out $300 for an OK computer on-top of having to pay $24/month for internet service that'll suck phat donkey ass?
please, sit down for a second, and take the time to think long and hard about the scope of the concept of a remote exploit. While it is true that someone who is not "at the machine" could potentially own it, this exploit can asbolutely NOT be leveraged by just anyone on the internet. For example, there is absolutely no fucking way in the world, this exploit could be leveraged to write a self-spreading worm that could wreac havoc all over the internet? Why? because the exploit has to happen within a local network. The author of the advisory could have very easily waited another 30 days without anyone ever being affected. Hell even now that the exploit is out and can be copied verbatim by lower-lifeforms, there is still no way anyone will be infected.
i'm tempted to qualify this hole/exploit as "extended local".
... well... what people are saying is that they could use the exploit to mount a malicious file sytem and execute some eeeveeehl piece of code that would enable sshd and afpd... or something....
what boggles my mind is that this exploit is labeled as a "remote" exploit. while it is technically true, i'd like people to start qualifying the concept of "remote": an offending machine would need to live within a fairly close geographical location to exploit this vulnerability as it would need to be plugged to a network port plugged to some small or large hub, with machines belonging to a similar subnet. Or it would have to be a machine that lives within 802.11 b/g range, which is *also* fairly local. Both scenarios should allow a fairly educated network admin to trace the attacker and hang'em by the balls.
i agree with Dema, if this was a trivial fix such as fixing a stupid buffer overflow vulnerability in one line of C code of some daemon, then you would have a point, Apple could, and should have released a fix early.
but this is not the case.
upon reading the karma-whoring advisory it would appear that fixing this vulnerability will NOT be a trivial matter, in which case it is reasonable to expect and anticipate a reasonable amount of time to release a stable, reliable patch involving a re-think of the DHCP protocol implementation.
i don't know why you got modded down, i do think you do have a very valid point. that thing reeks of self-promotion and he went as far as releasing the exploit in a first advisory, which is completely unethical.
Apple clearly confirmed the vulnerability and chances are they started working on it right away but my guess is fixing the vulnerability isn't exactly a trivial patch such as mere buffer overflows in daemons. Otherwise the open-source Darwin community would have written and released a patch to the public a long-assed time ago. It looks like Apple is guna have to rethink the way DHCP hand-shaking is being handled and this needs careful thought and consideration.
Way to fucking botch some poor engineer's Thanks Giving holiday. And i can fucking relate.
Slashdot Mirror
OMFG. that was funny. mods, plz mod this up further. :D
Bruce Willis?
i think it fairly objectively debunks a lot of the FUD that surrounds google.
They could also be looking to buy an ISP. Google is an on-line destination. What brings people to Google? ISPs! EarthLink looks like a good candidate. Both companies seem to have similar philosophies in terms of striving to give their users what they need.
mmm. like dis? ;]. Or .. might as well keep it simple.
i don't mean to be karma-whoring ... i couldn't resist ... here is the search you mentioned. I also excluded naked (per your suggestion) and Nicky (her sister):
+"paris hilton" +hotel -naked -porn -tape -nicky
it does indeed work quite well!
thanks for your most informative post :)
no, precisely it tries to address the saturation issue. it's part of the reason why it is a totally passive device that does not have its own ip address. i think the use of their device requires close cooperation with the upstream provider and sits somewhere between the upstream and its customer. all traffic between upstream provider and customer goes thru one or more such devices which start dropping packets. i think the sought end-result is that the upstream is only routing "legit" traffic to the customer. or something like that. their whole solution was built from the ground-up to address distributed denial of service attacks. their solutions is absolutely unlike any firewall solution.
... who gives a rat's ass what cringely thinks. the guy has zero credentials. all he does is bitch and whine all the fucking time in his "i, cringely, pulpit" columns.
Melior Inc.'s solution to combat network abuses and intrusions, especially DDoS, seems quite interesting. It's a physical device you place before your network, that just sits there and examines incoming packets and attempts to throw-away junk. it's transparent, meaning it doesn't have an ip address, stuff just kinda flows thru it.
i know that at least one anti-spam entity uses them.
hear hear. i echoed some your points on two previous posts.
A lotta geeks like to believe they have a clue about industrial design and engineering challenges associated therewith. Glad to see a non-iPod user with a sense of objectivity. *tips hat*. u've just earned a fan.
what are the dimensions of a Nomad Zen NX? would you care to give a comparison to iPod's dimensions? i haven't found on their site any documentation about which battery it uses, how much it costs, and what it takes to replace it. It does say it's a replaceable battery, but technically, iPod *also* has a replaceable battery.
hint: if the iPod is a smaller, more portable form-factor while touting similar capacity, while being less confusing, with less holes to plug shit in, less buttons to fuck with, your average consumer ain't guna give a shit about a device that's a geek's dream. detachable this or that, believe it or not, is confusing to the average user. It's a matter of which audience you cater to. More on this later.
There are reasons why there are tradeoffs. the iPod is extremely small for the capacity it offers, it is extremely portable and unintrusive. i have fit mine (2G) in just about any pocket i've had. Furthermore, many of my co-workers had bought competing players, absolutely every single one of them complained about either its form-factor or lack of capacity. Nomad Jukebox3 is a big square-ish size, much like today's CD players that are basically the size of a CD, which is NOT a form factor that is nearly as appealing as one of an iPod's. Don't get me wrong the features and interoperability capabilities of the Nomad jukebox3 are simply impressive but when a device's form-factor is not really a constraint, you can go to town with features. That doesn't mean this is necessarily what the average user Apple targets will be drawn to. The Jukebox3's affluence of buttons and holes to plug things in also make it, to your average non-computer geek, a "complicated", "confusing" device, while geeks see those features as a God-Sent. it's all relative. Sure the lack of replaceable battery is frustrating. But it ain't the first time, nor is it ever guna be the last time this sort of issue will plague consumer electronics.
Replacing an iPod battery is NOT that hard, you just gotta be careful and requires a bit of skills. If that doesn't do it, then pay the $100 for the cost of the battery and to have someone else install it and be done with it. Or buy extended warranty such as AppleCare or one from Fry's, Best Buy, CompUSA, FNAC, or whoever sells you the iPod. It ain't that bad. People always pit the price of a battery against the price of the device it goes into and get infuriated to "pay $100 for a battery for a device that's only $400". No no no and no. Most resilient, quality batteries are expensive and that's the fucking way it is. Especially the type of flat one required for the iPod, it is quite a nice piece of engineering. When it dies, you gotta pay. period. Take a deep fucking breath and accept this fact.
It always works like this: you shop for some device, it tells you it's rechargeable, but no one ever cares to ask "yes but for how long, what do i do when it can no-longer hold a charge" to make an informed purchasing decision based on those questions. They don't think, then get pissed when the inevitable happens, then go whine at their lawyers, who in the end will be the only winners in the upcoming class-action lawsuit. Once people also get the device they rarely ever look at best practices included in their manual to enhance battery life. There you have it.
feel free to read a couple more ideas about why things may be the way they are.
this isn't about zealotry. some people happened to have understood why Apple has made the compromises it did at the time it did and accept 'em without whining all fucking day, and will eventually vote with their feet and potentially wait for improvements, others choose to bitch around, karma-whoring on slashdot, thinking they're smart and have a fucking clue about industrial design and stating the obvious ad nauseum, bragging about how device X or Y has a detachable this or that while never addres
I shall call it ... MiniPod
*puts pinky finger to corner of mouth*.
i call bullshit. for one, my guess is you are not an industrial designer. secondly, just because "standards" are there or emerging, or you'd wish there was a standard, has every chance, moral, and legal right to be irrelevant to Apple: if standards don't fit the bill, then fuck the standards, inferior devices can adhere to those standards and lose marketshare all they want to the sleeker iPod.
have you even looked at the shape of the battery we're talking about?. What trap door would accomodate that? you'd basically have to replace screws with ugly-protruding latches. change form factor? then the battery becomes bulgy and the iPod is no-longer slick and thin. i'm sure i'm barely scraping the surface. let's scrape some more though:
Part of the appeal of the whole Apple look is that it is one solid block of metal, no rugged edges, nothing to protrude, and yes that includes NO easy-to-open little battery door. Tiny digital cameras are NOT ipods. what you call tiny is actually way fucking bigger a form factor than an iPod. But again, beyond mere technical challenges, this whole issue is also about DESIGN. read my lips. D E S I G N. Nothing, absolutely nothing about the way Apple industrially designs its products is a result of a coincidence. Users like the iPod because it is simple. There isn't a lot of shit on it that catches the eye, things to fuck with that may confuse you, make you needlessly use your brain, and/or otherwise hurt the eye.
i've have litterally seen high-school chicks use the back of their fucking iPod as a make-up mirror. silly huh? guess what all their friends want for x-mas? Now. you wanna stick an ugly-ass trap-door to further mingle a pimple-ridden teenage chick's face? What about personalized engraved notes in the back of the iPod? If you want such note to live in an esthetically pleasing environment, while retaining all the attention, you can't have lines, holes, trap doors on the same surface. imagine a blank sheet of paper on your bed with a message in blue ink right at the center that says "thanks for last night". Now, imagine the same message written on the back of a shrivelled croissant-wrapper with the bakery's logo on it. not quite the same impact is it? it is that silly type of detailed attention to DESIGN, among many other features, that makes the iPod a truly unique consumer item. i'm sure Apple pays people to sit around all fucking day and think of the impact of silly shit like that. silly, but it works.
now. i understand people's frustration about their battery issues but hey, from a moral standpoint, that's the kinda shit they should have thought of before buying the iPod. $100 to change a battery is NOT the end of the world. I'll gladly pay $50 to some techie on top of the cost of the battery to ensure he successfully upgrades my battery without fuckin' it up. otherwise ill just do it myself. it ain't impossible to do. Even $100 is not a bad deal, Sony charges $100 for the rechargeable battery that fits their DSC P50 digital camera, and you don't really know you gotta buy the battery until after you buy the camera and realize that 2 AA batteries only let you take a few pictures. Unless you are like me and always read reviews of consumer products on amazon before buying. I'm not exactly seeing Sony being sued over this right now. legal foot to stand on? my ass. which brings me to my next point ...
from a legal standpoint, Apple never said their battery would last a lifetime. in fact Apple doesn't even advertise iPod as being a lifetime device. In fact what piece of consumer electronics ever makes such claims? NONE. NOT ONE. this is why Best Buy, Good Guys, Fry's
too expensive for anyone but the yuppy elite? Listen, you can nerdulate all you want about fancy-shmancy uber-elite PC configuration at 3.2Ghz you built from scratch for $400, but then you'd be behaving like the nerdy elite.
All i know is that right now i'm looking to get a low-end computer for my Dad that'll allow him to easily:
What's a thousand bucks? for a system he'll keep a long ass time (note that each revision of Mac OS X actually runs better than its predecessor even on hardware from back in 1998.), and, more importantly, will keep him outta my hair.
in soviet russia, a few words can wager descriptions of many thousands of you!
so do ogres >;-[]
yeah. i got this phisher e-mail too. 211.154.171.106 appears to be a compromised box, some lame cracker used to set-up their phisher site at /li_pi n/verification/step1_e.htm .
mm. it looks like eventually the script that gathers all the sensitive info is this one: http://211.154.171.106/li_pin/verification/form2.p hp
Please submit a spamcop report for that phisher e-mail you just received. Basic reporting account is free, i recently purchased a yearly mailbox from them, i like what spamcop does for the Internet.
emphasis on more. No computer system is ever secure in absolute terms.
while security surrounding DHCP has been and will continue to be a non-trivial issue, that one DHCP/directory issue that'd allow a malicious user on a LOCAL network to root a few boxes are still not the kind of vulnerabilities that'd allow worms to wreac wild havoc on the internet. In the case of this vulnerability, an exploit could spread to a local network and stop right there. There is just no way some worm could be written to spread outside of that local network. And worst, the exploit still needs to rely on the victim's machine actually DOING SOMETHING to be potentially vulnerable, in this case, rebooting, or renewing a DHCP lease, which are actions that seldom happen, especially on a network full of idling desktop boxes.
that exploit was interesting, needs to be addressed, requires more than a mere patch to a piece of C code and will require Apple and many Darwin/BSD developers to come-up with a complex solution that could involve user-interface updates or the development of certificates mechansisms which have been in discussion since 2001 in some rfc.
but this is hardly grounds for a windows user to gloat. and if the above didn't make sense, here are concepts that are simpler to understand:
Ever since OS X came out in its 10.1 version in late 2001, has any worm managed to spread thru OS X machines?
answer: no. Regardless of potential security holes found here and there, all OS X boxes ship by default with ALL NETWORK SERVICES TURNED OFF. Run nmap against a freshly installed OS X system, and guess what you get: NOTHING. NOT A SINGLE PORT OPENED. Hi there. Security 101 anyone? Even if OS X was the #1-used operating system in the world by millions and millions of people connected thru always-on broadband internet, any infection would stem from marginal power-users enabing certain remote services, at which point an infection or worm still wouldn't manage to reach the rest of the populace.
This is a far cry from windows boxes who have shipped for many years with services turned-on by default such as IIS and SMB, which allowed silly worms such as CodeRed and Nimda to make their initial way in, while further exploiting many exotic windoz system-level vulnerabilities surrounding Outlook and Internet Explorer, whereby previewing an e-mail or stumbling upon a malicious web page after pasting a URL found in an IRC chat room could get your computer thoroughly owned by inferior lifeforms also known as script kiddies, as your computer would secretly become one among thousands of unwitting drones awaiting their commands from a hidden IRC chatroom to launch DDoS attacks against some web sites, while seriously congesting the Internet. Hey Ulanoff, kinda sounds like what has happened at your office? thought so. Go Windoz.
Since System Mac 7.6 aka harmony with Open Transport which actually made internet access via dial-up and DHCP actually practical and easy-to-use circa 1996, has any internet-connected mac user running the default operating system as it was first installed from the Apple CDs ever gotten infected by a worm from just sitting on an un-NAT'ed, unfirewalled internet connection?
NO. That's because prior to OS X, Apple stuck to doing what they were good at: building an out-of-the-box single user, narrowly focused operating system targetted at your average joe-user and graphic designer, that had the ability to be extended thru 3rd-party software or other system configuration to better interoperate within, say, a corporate network. "Dave Client" comes to mind.
On the other hand Microsoft thought it would be fun to create worthless pieces of ass-ware such as windoz 95, NT, 98, ME, 2000 which they'd sell to BOTH enterprises and average joe-users, and enable, out-of-the-box, by default, a slew of services and features most users would never ever need or use, just so regardless of who the customer was, the operating syste
you, like 99.9% of the world's entire population, are absolutely unable to understand and/or see some very basic concepts and facts of international policy related to Iraq.
Let me refresh your memory. Over 10 years ago, when France, Germany, U.S. and all other U.N. constituants voted for the embargo on Iraq, they essentially signed the death certificates of thousands upon thousands of starving Iraqi children every single month. For 10 fucking years this has been going on and NO ONE, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, has done ANYTHING concrete to put an end to this. People see bombs, planes, tanks and "the big invasion" as the worst thing Iraq has endured over the last 10 years, WAKE THE FUCK UP, you clueless masses, IRAQ, HAS ALREADY been at war for over 10 years.
You may agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, hide behind the same old rehashed conspiracy theories behind the U.S.'s motives for going there. But in the end, this invasion is the very very first chance for Iraq at a brighter future. Even if only U.S. companies obtain Iraqi contracts, guess where that U.S. money is guna go? The Iraqi PEOPLE. Not to some dictator who constantly remains eager to build himself new pools and palaces, while his children starve.
This is not about getting rid of all oppressive regimes in the world. This is about fixing a mess that the U.S. and Europe started over a decade ago, it is about bringing closure to a campaign that had been started back in 1989 that may have ephemerously freed the Kurds, but has also immediately thrown the Iraqi People in the middle of economic sanctions and subsequent starvation, under a dictator that never ever gave a shit about his People, all to see the U.N. bitch, moan, and do absolutely nothing concrete for 10 years to hold saddam accountable and lift sanctions. For 10 years, the Iraq situation has been a can of worms no leader in the world has been willing to open, while U.S. and Europe enjoyed a prosperous economic expansion.
Even if saddam was never himself involved with terrorist activities, his regime has set the stage to feed extremist Muslim movements with the hate, anger and desperation they so direly need to formulate their anti-Occident brainwash and bring-in new recruits. Until now, if you're an Iraqi struggling to make ends meet to feed your family, here were your only two options at a better life:
Why would young, strong Iraqi Men NOT choose one of those two routes? For all they knew, they'd be fighting the western cultures that oppress them.
My guess is these are the real reasons why we went to war with Iraq. Sure this administration's lack of credibility sticks out like a sore fucking thumb in this whole mess, what fucking WMD? what fucking 9/11? But this all goes back to what i started this post with: 99.9% of people in the world are clueless numbnuts who just LIVE for hair-brained conspiracy theories to make simple sense out of a complicated mess. From there, it isn't hard to see why the U.S. administration tried to rally their citizens and the rest of the world with simple concepts simpletons could grok: "WMD, 9/11".
How did we get here? Simple. For decades Arab countries have been the bitch to either one of two entities: Capitalist Factions and Communist Factions. Since Arab countries never evolved to even simple forms of democracy, no ruler of Iran or Iraq ever was truly accountable for their actions, and was therefore free to more or less secretely broker deals with the U.S., Europe or the USSR. Russians were racing for oil interests thru Iran, Americans thru Iraq, who all sat back and watched Arab Brothers kill oneanother, while feeding them weapons.
Arab countries have GOT to demo
You wanna know how many DSL and/or cable-connected windows boxes have been totally owned thru various design flaws in that operating system, be them related to very basic network and application security such as default ports or poorly-designed security-related user interfaces such as ActiveX controls in web pages? Just ask any IRC system administrator of popular IRC networks, such as efnet or undernet. Thousands upon thousands of unwitting "drones" from all over the world can be summonned at will by some lame-ass script-kiddie asshole who issues commands from a hidden IRC channel to launch most deadly denial-of-service attacks.
TO THIS DAY that stupid-ass nimda worm is still probing my DSL connection's port 80.
how many network ports do most windows boxes have opened? A WHOLE FUCKING LOT, and far too many.
This is all the result of microsoft building an operating system that made close to ZERO distinction in its distribution format between a home, average-joe-end-user and a business, enterprise, corporate network end-user, blindly choosing convenience over security.
the other key microsoft failure is that for years it barely ever attempted to make the distinction between an operating system designed to be a SERVER vs a CLIENT. Far too many CLIENT machines have shipped with features turned-on by default that were only useful to SERVER machines.
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You can buy a PC for $200 at wal-mart.
go AOL. tsk.
please, sit down for a second, and take the time to think long and hard about the scope of the concept of a remote exploit. While it is true that someone who is not "at the machine" could potentially own it, this exploit can asbolutely NOT be leveraged by just anyone on the internet. For example, there is absolutely no fucking way in the world, this exploit could be leveraged to write a self-spreading worm that could wreac havoc all over the internet? Why? because the exploit has to happen within a local network. The author of the advisory could have very easily waited another 30 days without anyone ever being affected. Hell even now that the exploit is out and can be copied verbatim by lower-lifeforms, there is still no way anyone will be infected.
i'm tempted to qualify this hole/exploit as "extended local".
what boggles my mind is that this exploit is labeled as a "remote" exploit. while it is technically true, i'd like people to start qualifying the concept of "remote": an offending machine would need to live within a fairly close geographical location to exploit this vulnerability as it would need to be plugged to a network port plugged to some small or large hub, with machines belonging to a similar subnet. Or it would have to be a machine that lives within 802.11 b/g range, which is *also* fairly local. Both scenarios should allow a fairly educated network admin to trace the attacker and hang'em by the balls.
i agree with Dema, if this was a trivial fix such as fixing a stupid buffer overflow vulnerability in one line of C code of some daemon, then you would have a point, Apple could, and should have released a fix early.
but this is not the case.
upon reading the karma-whoring advisory it would appear that fixing this vulnerability will NOT be a trivial matter, in which case it is reasonable to expect and anticipate a reasonable amount of time to release a stable, reliable patch involving a re-think of the DHCP protocol implementation.
i don't know why you got modded down, i do think you do have a very valid point. that thing reeks of self-promotion and he went as far as releasing the exploit in a first advisory, which is completely unethical.
Apple clearly confirmed the vulnerability and chances are they started working on it right away but my guess is fixing the vulnerability isn't exactly a trivial patch such as mere buffer overflows in daemons. Otherwise the open-source Darwin community would have written and released a patch to the public a long-assed time ago. It looks like Apple is guna have to rethink the way DHCP hand-shaking is being handled and this needs careful thought and consideration.
Way to fucking botch some poor engineer's Thanks Giving holiday. And i can fucking relate.