I would bet a fair amount of money that Microsoft will push the end-of-life for W2K back. There are two many large companies that use it, and want to continue to use it.
Just look at Windows 98se. It's end-of-life (or extended support) was extended at least once and I believe several times.
There are way too many companies out there that will look at alternatives to XP.
might have detected Coreflood. I went to symantec and their AV seems to know about it (and several variants), so in *theory*, it would have been caught/removed.
Coreflood seems to allow remote access, so a *firewall* might have helped.
now, the *real* question: If it was indeed coreflood, did someone (a real person) surf his files looking for account info, did all (most, alot, ect) of his files get downloaded, or did coreflood have enough smarts to look for the account info.
I can't see how this is the fault of his bank except that maybe 'fraud detection' didn't work too well, but I don't know what it looks for. I see idiots like this guy all the time. 'No I don't want to pay for Antiviral, Antispyware, Firewall, Backups, etc'
Medicine is behind because of the doctors. I have done computer work about 15-18 medical offices and the doctors seem to have a 'this shouldn't cost me any money' attitude towards technology. In a lot of (but not all) the offices, things were not updated/replaced until the gun of hippa was placed to their heads.
Apparently, the ability to get more accurate records, better customer satisfaction, faster data retrieval, etc, doesn't seem to matter. It's like a lot of the doctors take out as much money as they possibly can in their pockets *now*, and do very little reinvesting for the future.
nope, they will not want to pay more. but if stuff can't be outsoured to a cheap county that will follow patent law, there are alot of people here (US) that would be thrilled by factory assembly jobs.
so if china gets cut off and dvd players can't be made inexpensively elsewhere, people will have a choice for dvd players: pay more or go without.
Even the big guys have to compete sometimes. About 1988 or 1989, IBM was making the PS/2 line, which was 3.5 floppy only. You could get an external 5.25 floppy (low density), but it was expensive and a PITA.
A lot of people wanted 5.25 internal at that time and IBM said 'NO'. Our way or the Highway.
All of the sudden a large number of major corporations and *Government* agencies were buying computers with a specification that said 'Internal 5.25 HD FDD'. I was actually at a event where an IBM rep was trying to tell a major customer that they didn't really need this. One of the effects of this was to automatically remove IBM from the bid process.
Sometime in 1989 or 1990, IBM introduced a 5.25 internal HD FDD for the model 80.
The Moral of this Story?
If enough people wave enough money that someone can't touch, it get's their attention. Even Microsoft.
Dell (and IBM, Gateway, etc) sells you machine that comes with all sort of *crap*. And they don't give you a windows X cd to do a clean install (that may not be the fault of Dell). So users have all this noise on their desktop and no training except by trial and error. It's hard to explain to users why they have all this stuff that wants registration and why they shouldn't do it, when after all, 'it came from dell!'
that people don't believe in things they can't see. they can't 'see' spyware so it's an imaginary problem. same thing with viruses. they don't believe until something bad happens.
it's the same mentality the apparently caused countries in the indian ocean region to decide that a tsunami warning system was not a high priority.
there was a time in early/mid 2000 that i got so tired of people deciding that y2k was a hoax that i wished really bad things had happened.
If you look at some of the outrageous EULAs out there, I can't help but to believe that some of these companies would be embarassed to 'publish' them.
If you (or especially your company) was evaluating products and you could get a copy of all the EULAs up front, don't you think that would be outstanding?
And as far as web publishing, it seems to me that for it to be a legal document, it might have to be digitally signed.
On the other hand if you buy software around the time a EULA changes, there may not be a good way to determine which EULA is in effect. A given package (product, version, release, etc might have to be hardcoded to a special EULA).
I think this is outstanding.
The more opportunity people have to see this crap, the tougher it will be to sell.
Because a shrinkwrapped jewel case is *way* too easy to reshrinkwrap. Shrinkwrap isn't that hard to come by and all you need to find to make shrinkwrap work is hot air (hairdryer).
Many, many, many years ago I worked for a regional computer retailer (way out of business). They had a roll of shrink plastic and mounted blow dryer. They had nicknamed it the relicenser.
Paper containers with gummed flaps are a much better way of detecting an opened package.
Windows NT/2K/XP/2003 have two registry entries for a popup box called legal notice. When you do the cntl-alt-del thing and these registry entries exist you get a dialog box that has a legal message of your choice. Then you click on ok, the you get the username and password box. The understanding is that you can state what authorized/legitimate access is and I can state that you saw the message.
Apparently there have been cases where a defendant used the 'it said welcome, please login' defense and won cases. I have used the legalnotice registry entries for several big customers.
The main problem is a mistaken belief that computers can teach people. The very best learning comes from other people. There are all sorts of tools to help convey ideas and messages, such as slides, film strips, videos, computers, etc, but they are only *tools*! and computers can be wonderful tools.
If you have good instructional goals and good instructors, a computer can be an amazing tool. But when you want the computer to be the instructor, you lose interactive communications and the ability to clarify ideas. I studied the Microsoft SMS 1.2 courseware and passed the test. There was lots of places where my knowledge was sketchy, but there I went. I was later taking the class (a requirement for teaching it) I asked a question and the instructor drew a picture that helped me put almost all the pieces of the puzzle together. Boom. One display (that was not in any MS material, instructional or otherwise) and my understanding was increased 10x.
One final point is that a lot of educational programs are poorly written and poorly supported. This is very much like the poor software in other very vertical markets.
A lot of people don't understand that current (last 20-30? years) black and white negative that have been properly processed and stored should last *hundreds* of years. this is why for a long time disney would archive their color movies by making three black and white copies based on channel separation (red image on one spool, green on another , and blue on a third).
as a side issue, a lot of talk goes into forgotton formats. i'm not sure that it will be a real big problem in the future as we have tons of documentation on available formats. i recall people stating that getting bits back from the media was not a problem, but understanding them was. i don't believe that the specification for a cdrom is going to be 'lost' for hundreds or thousands of years.
I'm sitting around with such letters as CNE/CNI/MCSE/MCT/CCNA etc, and probably 75 to 90 percent of the dollars i've earned in the last 4 months are from disinfection.
It's nice to pay bills but it gets kinda depressing making money off of other peoples misery.
is that when you request a resolution to disputed facts, they have to take it off of the report. this is for a limited time while the investigation goes on. after that, if the entity that put the record in on the first place is not happy/convinced/paid off/etc, they can put it back on.
this is how 'credit repair' scams work. you can get your credit 'cleaned up' for a certain amount of time if you time everything correctly. also, a certain number of people will not fight small amounts. i would have assumed that if you dispute 1.81, it would not come back, but for 1.81 to be there is the first place is kinda stupid. there is a possibility that it was automated and a challange will force a person to become involved and say 'this isn't worth it.'...
I have *always* thought it would be nice to be able to 'hover' over a dimmed menu item and have a tooltip (?) popup bubble point me in direction to address whatever issue makes it dimmed.
You might call this a prism. The concept of bouncing light off of the inside edge of a prism is what happens in the pentaprism mirror inside a slr camera.
The big advantage that I can see with this is that a reasonable quality plastic wedge/prism should be much cheaper to replace when it gets damaged. I'm sure the initial cost will still be high, but the expensive stuff can be a little more protected.
I used to believe the PIII serial number was a good idea. It would have made network management a lot easier as tracking by computer name or ip address is not real reliable on some networks.
That was then...
I spend about half my time cleaning up spyware off of peoples computers. The people that write this crud would have looooved to get serial numbers. And they would have. Even with the systems that required a reboot to 'activate' the serial number. Most people don't even think twice about a random crash. Make the config change (bios or os), make it look like something bad happened and reboot (or just be patient and wait for it). Presto, on your way to a hugely correlated database. Yuck!
I have the same problem with rfid. It's wonderful technology and if the rfid tags get burned out when you're done, great. But the *same* problem exits:
People with a clue will Own the People without a clue.
I keep on seeing all this neat stuff and then i ask the question: how can this be mis-used?
Here is a wonderful example: There is a goal of putting rfids on bulk bottles of medicine (in the caps? which could end up on the wrong bottle? did it matter which cap went before?). ok, I see the advantage for inventory and quality control, as you really do want people the get the proper medicine. What about the dark side? If I'm am understanding this correctly, you can use sensitive scanners that allow for greater distances. Does your pharmicist want anyone to know when the next 1000ct bottle of Oxycontin gets there? (any maybe where in the store to look for it?) Does this mean rf shielded storage?
If the problem people have with being phished is any indicator, RFID is just going to be a disaster.
wouldn't it be kinda hard to build a building out of bricks that were coated with a non-stick substance? after all, mortar is designed to stick bricks together....
but, there is poorly written software out there that 'requires' admin membership. so even if what you need are rights to a section of registry or file system, the program either checks for membership or tech support won't help unless it's set up their way.
it's called How to Steal a Million. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060522/
One of the more intresting parts is a gentleman that causes false positives on a sensor protecting a piece of art. this being at night, the guard gets tired of checking out the art. he then turns off the system. our thief then does his trick and notes the system being off. he then takes the art work and leaves a plain old bottle in it's place...
Slashdot Mirror
I would bet a fair amount of money that Microsoft will push the end-of-life for W2K back. There are two many large companies that use it, and want to continue to use it.
Just look at Windows 98se. It's end-of-life (or extended support) was extended at least once and I believe several times.
There are way too many companies out there that will look at alternatives to XP.
eric
might have detected Coreflood. I went to symantec and their AV seems to know about it (and several variants), so in *theory*, it would have been caught/removed.
Coreflood seems to allow remote access, so a *firewall* might have helped.
now, the *real* question: If it was indeed coreflood, did someone (a real person) surf his files looking for account info, did all (most, alot, ect) of his files get downloaded, or did coreflood have enough smarts to look for the account info.
I can't see how this is the fault of his bank except that maybe 'fraud detection' didn't work too well, but I don't know what it looks for. I see idiots like this guy all the time. 'No I don't want to pay for Antiviral, Antispyware, Firewall, Backups, etc'
eric
between those ears is another anomoly!
PERFECT VACUUM!
e
Medicine is behind because of the doctors. I have done computer work about 15-18 medical offices and the doctors seem to have a 'this shouldn't cost me any money' attitude towards technology. In a lot of (but not all) the offices, things were not updated/replaced until the gun of hippa was placed to their heads.
Apparently, the ability to get more accurate records, better customer satisfaction, faster data retrieval, etc, doesn't seem to matter. It's like a lot of the doctors take out as much money as they possibly can in their pockets *now*, and do very little reinvesting for the future.
nope, they will not want to pay more. but if stuff can't be outsoured to a cheap county that will follow patent law, there are alot of people here (US) that would be thrilled by factory assembly jobs.
so if china gets cut off and dvd players can't be made inexpensively elsewhere, people will have a choice for dvd players: pay more or go without.
eric
Even the big guys have to compete sometimes. About 1988 or 1989, IBM was making the PS/2 line, which was 3.5 floppy only. You could get an external 5.25 floppy (low density), but it was expensive and a PITA.
A lot of people wanted 5.25 internal at that time and IBM said 'NO'. Our way or the Highway.
All of the sudden a large number of major corporations and *Government* agencies were buying computers with a specification that said 'Internal 5.25 HD FDD'. I was actually at a event where an IBM rep was trying to tell a major customer that they didn't really need this. One of the effects of this was to automatically remove IBM from the bid process.
Sometime in 1989 or 1990, IBM introduced a 5.25 internal HD FDD for the model 80.
The Moral of this Story?
If enough people wave enough money that someone can't touch, it get's their attention. Even Microsoft.
eric
Dell (and IBM, Gateway, etc) sells you machine that comes with all sort of *crap*. And they don't give you a windows X cd to do a clean install (that may not be the fault of Dell). So users have all this noise on their desktop and no training except by trial and error. It's hard to explain to users why they have all this stuff that wants registration and why they shouldn't do it, when after all, 'it came from dell!'
eric
that people don't believe in things they can't see. they can't 'see' spyware so it's an imaginary problem. same thing with viruses. they don't believe until something bad happens.
it's the same mentality the apparently caused countries in the indian ocean region to decide that a tsunami warning system was not a high priority.
there was a time in early/mid 2000 that i got so tired of people deciding that y2k was a hoax that i wished really bad things had happened.
eric
The state of California putting an end to sneakwrap EULAs!
eric
Daylight is that last things they want.
If you look at some of the outrageous EULAs out there, I can't help but to believe that some of these companies would be embarassed to 'publish' them.
If you (or especially your company) was evaluating products and you could get a copy of all the EULAs up front, don't you think that would be outstanding?
And as far as web publishing, it seems to me that for it to be a legal document, it might have to be digitally signed.
On the other hand if you buy software around the time a EULA changes, there may not be a good way to determine which EULA is in effect. A given package (product, version, release, etc might have to be hardcoded to a special EULA).
I think this is outstanding.
The more opportunity people have to see this crap, the tougher it will be to sell.
eric
Because a shrinkwrapped jewel case is *way* too easy to reshrinkwrap. Shrinkwrap isn't that hard to come by and all you need to find to make shrinkwrap work is hot air (hairdryer).
Many, many, many years ago I worked for a regional computer retailer (way out of business). They had a roll of shrink plastic and mounted blow dryer. They had nicknamed it the relicenser.
Paper containers with gummed flaps are a much better way of detecting an opened package.
eric
Windows NT/2K/XP/2003 have two registry entries for a popup box called legal notice. When you do the cntl-alt-del thing and these registry entries exist you get a dialog box that has a legal message of your choice. Then you click on ok, the you get the username and password box. The understanding is that you can state what authorized/legitimate access is and I can state that you saw the message.
Apparently there have been cases where a defendant used the 'it said welcome, please login' defense and won cases. I have used the legalnotice registry entries for several big customers.
So there is some track history here.
eric
it was conner backup exec in 1993.
then it was purchased by acada (? - acadia)
then it was purchased by seagate
then it was purchased by veritas
and amazingly enough, backup exec has continued to get better over time.
eric
I believe this got a new version number, not slipped in the back door as a service pack.
eric
The main problem is a mistaken belief that computers can teach people. The very best learning comes from other people. There are all sorts of tools to help convey ideas and messages, such as slides, film strips, videos, computers, etc, but they are only *tools*! and computers can be wonderful tools.
If you have good instructional goals and good instructors, a computer can be an amazing tool. But when you want the computer to be the instructor, you lose interactive communications and the ability to clarify ideas. I studied the Microsoft SMS 1.2 courseware and passed the test. There was lots of places where my knowledge was sketchy, but there I went. I was later taking the class (a requirement for teaching it) I asked a question and the instructor drew a picture that helped me put almost all the pieces of the puzzle together. Boom. One display (that was not in any MS material, instructional or otherwise) and my understanding was increased 10x.
One final point is that a lot of educational programs are poorly written and poorly supported. This is very much like the poor software in other very vertical markets.
eric
A lot of people don't understand that current (last 20-30? years) black and white negative that have been properly processed and stored should last *hundreds* of years. this is why for a long time disney would archive their color movies by making three black and white copies based on channel separation (red image on one spool, green on another , and blue on a third).
as a side issue, a lot of talk goes into forgotton formats. i'm not sure that it will be a real big problem in the future as we have tons of documentation on available formats. i recall people stating that getting bits back from the media was not a problem, but understanding them was. i don't believe that the specification for a cdrom is going to be 'lost' for hundreds or thousands of years.
eric
I'm sitting around with such letters as CNE/CNI/MCSE/MCT/CCNA etc, and probably 75 to 90 percent of the dollars i've earned in the last 4 months are from disinfection.
It's nice to pay bills but it gets kinda depressing making money off of other peoples misery.
eric
is that when you request a resolution to disputed facts, they have to take it off of the report. this is for a limited time while the investigation goes on. after that, if the entity that put the record in on the first place is not happy/convinced/paid off/etc, they can put it back on.
this is how 'credit repair' scams work. you can get your credit 'cleaned up' for a certain amount of time if you time everything correctly. also, a certain number of people will not fight small amounts. i would have assumed that if you dispute 1.81, it would not come back, but for 1.81 to be there is the first place is kinda stupid. there is a possibility that it was automated and a challange will force a person to become involved and say 'this isn't worth it.'...
eric
I have *always* thought it would be nice to be able to 'hover' over a dimmed menu item and have a tooltip (?) popup bubble point me in direction to address whatever issue makes it dimmed.
just my two cents.
eric
You might call this a prism. The concept of bouncing light off of the inside edge of a prism is what happens in the pentaprism mirror inside a slr camera.
The big advantage that I can see with this is that a reasonable quality plastic wedge/prism should be much cheaper to replace when it gets damaged. I'm sure the initial cost will still be high, but the expensive stuff can be a little more protected.
eric
I used to believe the PIII serial number was a good idea. It would have made network management a lot easier as tracking by computer name or ip address is not real reliable on some networks.
That was then...
I spend about half my time cleaning up spyware off of peoples computers. The people that write this crud would have looooved to get serial numbers. And they would have. Even with the systems that required a reboot to 'activate' the serial number. Most people don't even think twice about a random crash. Make the config change (bios or os), make it look like something bad happened and reboot (or just be patient and wait for it). Presto, on your way to a hugely correlated database. Yuck!
I have the same problem with rfid. It's wonderful technology and if the rfid tags get burned out when you're done, great. But the *same* problem exits:
People with a clue will Own the People without a clue.
I keep on seeing all this neat stuff and then i ask the question: how can this be mis-used?
Here is a wonderful example: There is a goal of putting rfids on bulk bottles of medicine (in the caps? which could end up on the wrong bottle? did it matter which cap went before?). ok, I see the advantage for inventory and quality control, as you really do want people the get the proper medicine. What about the dark side? If I'm am understanding this correctly, you can use sensitive scanners that allow for greater distances. Does your pharmicist want anyone to know when the next 1000ct bottle of Oxycontin gets there? (any maybe where in the store to look for it?) Does this mean rf shielded storage?
If the problem people have with being phished is any indicator, RFID is just going to be a disaster.
eric
wouldn't it be kinda hard to build a building out of bricks that were coated with a non-stick substance? after all, mortar is designed to stick bricks together....
just a though!
eric
but, there is poorly written software out there that 'requires' admin membership. so even if what you need are rights to a section of registry or file system, the program either checks for membership or tech support won't help unless it's set up their way.
these people should be boiled in oil.
eric
These seem to be *very* low power devices. i would expect that you would have to be within inches to detect any radio interference.
eric
it's called How to Steal a Million.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060522/
One of the more intresting parts is a gentleman that causes false positives on a sensor protecting a piece of art. this being at night, the guard gets tired of checking out the art. he then turns off the system. our thief then does his trick and notes the system being off. he then takes the art work and leaves a plain old bottle in it's place...
eric