I disagree, but I could still think of other fun things someone could do to render your machine useless:
* Overwrite the BIOS with something fun - wouldn't it make your day to boot to a Hangman game rather than your BIOS? Flash BIOSes are everywhere, this could possibly work.
* Based on how cheaply hardware is being made these days, my guess is that most hardware can be tricked into doing out-of-spec things. Even if not, many of them have programmable parts. Imagine if your plug-and-play network card suddenly decided that it owned the IRQ of another device?
* If you managed to bypass the buffer-cache, you might be able to cause a hard-disk to fail by reading and writing a single sector multiple times in ultra-rapid succession. That would be really fun on the partition table.
* Another fun BIOS thing - you might be able to change the boot order of your machine so that it tries to netboot. It would be really fun if you had your virus alternating between _setting_ a machine to netboot, and being a netboot server serving out fun images (by fun I mean, well, use your imagination:)
"So, in essence, if cpuburn crashes your system, your system is defective to begin with."
This is true, but it doesn't mean that it is as innocuous as Seti@Home.
Do you think that most sysadmins watch their heat that closely? Do you think they'd notice if they threw a fan? Especially with older equipment, this could cause major problems.
And think if you had a worm which attained privileged access. You might be able to do real damage (think of how hot you can get those NVIDIA cards).
This is incorrect. There are certain instructions that cause much more heat than others. Some an order of magnitude hotter. Running these instructions in sequence can cause CPUs to overheat easily.
I can't believe I got marked as flamebait. Shoot, I even have my email address in my profile. Why doesn't the moderator email me and ask?
What I said was true, and I'll repost it here:
I'm the IT guy at my (small) company (I also wear many other hats around here). Anyway, my job is to do the following: support everyone else in what they are doing.
When people buy machines, they don't go through me. They have to justify it through the accounting guy. I only get involved if they don't know how to set it up on the network. In fact, I usually don't know about computer purchases until _after_ they've arrived.
The reason? People use what they need to get the job done. That's not my business. My business is to help all the computers talk to each other so that we are more productive.
The threat facing companies is not someone installing their own OS on the computer. The threat is every person who doesn't know about computers running Outlook.
We run Windows 9x, 2000, XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and RHL here, and I just keep Appletalk, NFS, and SMB running on the server, as well as DHCP.
I have never seen a company with a truly secure intranet - most of them are just appearances of security. To have a truly secure intranet it requires that you implement security policies that waste time and productivity. When severe security policies are implemented, the users just go around them, making it even more secure than if there were lax protocols.
Case in point - the _big_ company I used to work for kept all of their root passwords for their UNIX machines in an access database that was available on the intranet, and on several desktops. I'm sure they had access restrictions on the file, but really, trusting SMB for every server's root password? Putting them all in the same file, in an Access database, where many users copied it locally to their own hard drive?
If you don't believe me, email me and I'll tell you which company I'm referring to.
Actually, destroying the whole OS isn't as bad as you can get. Imagine if there were a worm packed with a payload like CPUburn! Or if it had drivers which hosed hardware. Especially if it was set to go off in the middle of the night, you could actually have a virus which inflicted hardware damage.
Open Content is not the same as doing everything for free.
In fact, Open Content used to be the norm. Copyright laws are actually a fairly recent phenomena in history.
If it costs X to produce a picture, there's nothing wrong with charging Y for it at a store. The problem is that if I'm an artist, too, and I make a copy for my friends using my own paints, and they pay me for cost of materials and time to do it, that should be legal, but it isn't.
In fact, a _lot_ of art is one-time stuff. Painting murals in houses and buidings and stuff like that. Copyright does not aide the artist in those situations at all.
There's nothing wrong with charging for CDs. It when I can't make a collection of the songs my wife and I enjoy and give it to her for her birthday (actually, this argument made more sense when she was just my girlfriend, but you get the picture).
The fact is, throughout history, most content was open. Closed content is a relatively recent phenomena, and it's usefulness is questionable.
"As long as you sign a NDA, you too can see the source code for Windows NT for academic purposes."
Actually, although you get most of it, you don't get the whole thing. And the NDA basically prevents you from working on Windows or WINE, so the people interested in those projects probably wouldn't bother.
I used to work for one. If you would like the name, email me.
"And seriously, even if they had to hire someone for that, I doubt that this would be a full-time position. If a company actually did that, they would deserve to lose that money anwyay."
Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep track of licenses for everything Windows normally has installed on it?
Let's see:
Windows (of course)
WinZip
Photoshop
Microsoft Office
Other things that people need on a daily basis
Trying to keep in compliance with all licenses at all times is a nightmare. If you don't have a site license, then you aren't even allowed to make standard hard drive images, even if you are standardized! If you do have a site license, then you essentially can never switch to Linux without switching everyone to Linux, because Microsoft site license contracts never reduce the headcount, they only increase it.
"A $5000/yr difference in salary between a *nix admin and a Windows admin would make up the difference in a year"
There are several problems with this:
* You can usually run on less boxes with Linux
* Linux boxes require less time (i.e. - fewer people) to run
* The salary difference doesn't really exist. The difference is between qualified admins and non-qualified admins. There just happen to be a lot more non-qualified Windows admins
However, designers are typically more productive on Macintoshes, Developers/Admins are more productive on UNIXs, and accounting-type people are more productive on Windows.
The sales people will be equally poor on whatever OS you give them.
Microsoft has many patents they could use against the Free Software community.
The GPL says that you waive your right to patent enforcement on the code you redistribute.
What if someone added little bits of patented algorithms throughout one or more of the packages Microsoft uses for SFU? Then, when they pull out their patent portfolio, we can just say "you licensed them to the whole community with SFU!"
"Amen! And what about standard corporate applications like Siebel, Peoplesoft, SAP etc? Its ok to move some fringe desktops but the majority of the desktops exist for the purpose of running a (number of) specific corporate apps."
Actually, many of these can be run on Linux.
I ran Oracle Applications 11.0.3 on Linux just fine. The only bug was that sometimes I had to click the menus more than once. Interestingly, at the time, it was more stable on Linux than Windows (I'm not counting UI quirks as stability issues).
I believe SAP runs on Linux. I know their server does and I _think_ the client does, too.
I'm the IT guy at my (small) company (I also wear many other hats around here). Anyway, my job is to do the following: support everyone else in what they are doing.
When people buy machines, they don't go through me. They have to justify it through the accounting guy. I only get involved if they don't know how to set it up on the network. In fact, I usually don't know about computer purchases until _after_ they've arrived.
The reason? People use what they need to get the job done. That's not my business. My business is to help all the computers talk to each other so that we are more productive.
The threat facing companies is not someone installing their own OS on the computer. The threat is every person who doesn't know about computers running Outlook.
We run Windows 9x, 2000, XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and RHL here, and I just keep Appletalk, NFS, and SMB running on the server, as well as DHCP.
I have never seen a company with a truly secure intranet - most of them are just appearances of security. To have a truly secure intranet it requires that you implement security policies that waste time and productivity. When severe security policies are implemented, the users just go around them, making it even more secure than if there were lax protocols.
Case in point - the _big_ company I used to work for kept all of their root passwords for their UNIX machines in an access database that was available on the intranet, and on several desktops. I'm sure they had access restrictions on the file, but really, trusting SMB for every server's root password? Putting them all in the same file, in an Access database, where many users copied it locally to their own hard drive?
If you don't believe me, email me and I'll tell you which company I'm referring to.
Re:What I always wondered
on
OpenGL 1.5
·
· Score: 1
"What I always wondered is why the OpenGL people don't promote a two-level standard"
That would be silly. Why not give people a choice of what to use on the second level? Especially if it's implemented in terms of the first level, it really doesn't matter what you use.
The problem is that Microsoft is adding post-sale restrictions to the use of their product (beyond copyright), and are using this silly little clause to make it "legit". This refund is intended to show them that they can't just use it as a scapegoat and not follow through.
Since you can't get Windows for that price separate from the computer, and they can't document how much they paid for it (because of their secret contracts), you get the list price.
'And as far as the email - "the people we send to generally _ask_ to be sent to". "Generally"? Just spamming the rest of them?'
The rest are people on our customer's customer list. They have not specifically asked for the mailing, but they have given their address to the company.
Another thing we will do is if your company is at a trade show, and the trade show is selling email addresses, we will send to those.
"And out of curiosity, is submitting an email address enough to get on the list, or do you use confirmed opt-in"
Submitting an email is enough. Confirmed opt-in is overkill, because you get the same number of emails if you don't want it (1), but it's a pain in the butt for people who just want to sign up.
The biggest batch of email we've ever sent to is 5,000 people. Most of our mailings are aimed at between 300 and 3,000 people.
I would say an equivalency only exists if, before the phone rang you, a message said to them "I do not want soliciting phone calls".
A DNC list is not the equivalent of a "no solicitors" sign. Imagine if the government decided to keep a database of people who didn't want to be solicited by someone walking by. Why do that, when the person can hang a "no solicitors" sign instead.
Why go to the government for what we can do as private entities?
"My intent is that you not call my fucking phone line. I've told a government agency my intent, and they have told you."
See, my libertarianness wants to say that the government shouldn't waste it's money maintaining such a list, and it shouldn't be prosecutable nearly to the extent it is now.
I think that we should just look at existing harassment laws, and see how they can be modified. You see, harassment has nothing to do with the medium.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree, but I could still think of other fun things someone could do to render your machine useless:
:)
* Overwrite the BIOS with something fun - wouldn't it make your day to boot to a Hangman game rather than your BIOS? Flash BIOSes are everywhere, this could possibly work.
* Based on how cheaply hardware is being made these days, my guess is that most hardware can be tricked into doing out-of-spec things. Even if not, many of them have programmable parts. Imagine if your plug-and-play network card suddenly decided that it owned the IRQ of another device?
* If you managed to bypass the buffer-cache, you might be able to cause a hard-disk to fail by reading and writing a single sector multiple times in ultra-rapid succession. That would be really fun on the partition table.
* Another fun BIOS thing - you might be able to change the boot order of your machine so that it tries to netboot. It would be really fun if you had your virus alternating between _setting_ a machine to netboot, and being a netboot server serving out fun images (by fun I mean, well, use your imagination
One thing - many modern CPUs will switch to half-clockspeed mode or apply other heatsaving measures when they hit a certain heat.
"So, in essence, if cpuburn crashes your system, your system is defective to begin with."
This is true, but it doesn't mean that it is as innocuous as Seti@Home.
Do you think that most sysadmins watch their heat that closely? Do you think they'd notice if they threw a fan? Especially with older equipment, this could cause major problems.
And think if you had a worm which attained privileged access. You might be able to do real damage (think of how hot you can get those NVIDIA cards).
This is incorrect. There are certain instructions that cause much more heat than others. Some an order of magnitude hotter. Running these instructions in sequence can cause CPUs to overheat easily.
For those too lazy to look up my email address, it's johnnyb@eskimo.com.
I can't believe I got marked as flamebait. Shoot, I even have my email address in my profile. Why doesn't the moderator email me and ask?
What I said was true, and I'll repost it here:
I'm the IT guy at my (small) company (I also wear many other hats around here). Anyway, my job is to do the following: support everyone else in what they are doing.
When people buy machines, they don't go through me. They have to justify it through the accounting guy. I only get involved if they don't know how to set it up on the network. In fact, I usually don't know about computer purchases until _after_ they've arrived.
The reason? People use what they need to get the job done. That's not my business. My business is to help all the computers talk to each other so that we are more productive.
The threat facing companies is not someone installing their own OS on the computer. The threat is every person who doesn't know about computers running Outlook.
We run Windows 9x, 2000, XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and RHL here, and I just keep Appletalk, NFS, and SMB running on the server, as well as DHCP.
I have never seen a company with a truly secure intranet - most of them are just appearances of security. To have a truly secure intranet it requires that you implement security policies that waste time and productivity. When severe security policies are implemented, the users just go around them, making it even more secure than if there were lax protocols.
Case in point - the _big_ company I used to work for kept all of their root passwords for their UNIX machines in an access database that was available on the intranet, and on several desktops. I'm sure they had access restrictions on the file, but really, trusting SMB for every server's root password? Putting them all in the same file, in an Access database, where many users copied it locally to their own hard drive?
If you don't believe me, email me and I'll tell you which company I'm referring to.
A well-engineered worm could also cause hardware damage using a payload such as CPUburn.
Actually, destroying the whole OS isn't as bad as you can get. Imagine if there were a worm packed with a payload like CPUburn! Or if it had drivers which hosed hardware. Especially if it was set to go off in the middle of the night, you could actually have a virus which inflicted hardware damage.
Open Content is not the same as doing everything for free.
In fact, Open Content used to be the norm. Copyright laws are actually a fairly recent phenomena in history.
If it costs X to produce a picture, there's nothing wrong with charging Y for it at a store. The problem is that if I'm an artist, too, and I make a copy for my friends using my own paints, and they pay me for cost of materials and time to do it, that should be legal, but it isn't.
In fact, a _lot_ of art is one-time stuff. Painting murals in houses and buidings and stuff like that. Copyright does not aide the artist in those situations at all.
There's nothing wrong with charging for CDs. It when I can't make a collection of the songs my wife and I enjoy and give it to her for her birthday (actually, this argument made more sense when she was just my girlfriend, but you get the picture).
The fact is, throughout history, most content was open. Closed content is a relatively recent phenomena, and it's usefulness is questionable.
"As long as you sign a NDA, you too can see the source code for Windows NT for academic purposes."
Actually, although you get most of it, you don't get the whole thing. And the NDA basically prevents you from working on Windows or WINE, so the people interested in those projects probably wouldn't bother.
"Do you have any examples of such a company?"
I used to work for one. If you would like the name, email me.
"And seriously, even if they had to hire someone for that, I doubt that this would be a full-time position. If a company actually did that, they would deserve to lose that money anwyay."
Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep track of licenses for everything Windows normally has installed on it?
Let's see:
Windows (of course)
WinZip
Photoshop
Microsoft Office
Other things that people need on a daily basis
Trying to keep in compliance with all licenses at all times is a nightmare. If you don't have a site license, then you aren't even allowed to make standard hard drive images, even if you are standardized! If you do have a site license, then you essentially can never switch to Linux without switching everyone to Linux, because Microsoft site license contracts never reduce the headcount, they only increase it.
"A $5000/yr difference in salary between a *nix admin and a Windows admin would make up the difference in a year"
There are several problems with this:
* You can usually run on less boxes with Linux
* Linux boxes require less time (i.e. - fewer people) to run
* The salary difference doesn't really exist. The difference is between qualified admins and non-qualified admins. There just happen to be a lot more non-qualified Windows admins
phpgroupware
Oh no! You can't use it with Outlook's Built-in Calendar! My World might fall apart!!!!!!
Oh, you mean that there can actually be a calendar apart from Outlook? Seriously? Wow. That's like, magical or something.
However, designers are typically more productive on Macintoshes, Developers/Admins are more productive on UNIXs, and accounting-type people are more productive on Windows.
The sales people will be equally poor on whatever OS you give them.
Hmmm... This gives me an interesting thought.
Microsoft has many patents they could use against the Free Software community.
The GPL says that you waive your right to patent enforcement on the code you redistribute.
What if someone added little bits of patented algorithms throughout one or more of the packages Microsoft uses for SFU? Then, when they pull out their patent portfolio, we can just say "you licensed them to the whole community with SFU!"
Doesn't this happen every time an Outlook user opens his mail?
"Amen! And what about standard corporate applications like Siebel, Peoplesoft, SAP etc? Its ok to move some fringe desktops but the majority of the desktops exist for the purpose of running a (number of) specific corporate apps."
Actually, many of these can be run on Linux.
I ran Oracle Applications 11.0.3 on Linux just fine. The only bug was that sometimes I had to click the menus more than once. Interestingly, at the time, it was more stable on Linux than Windows (I'm not counting UI quirks as stability issues).
I believe SAP runs on Linux. I know their server does and I _think_ the client does, too.
I'm the IT guy at my (small) company (I also wear many other hats around here). Anyway, my job is to do the following: support everyone else in what they are doing.
When people buy machines, they don't go through me. They have to justify it through the accounting guy. I only get involved if they don't know how to set it up on the network. In fact, I usually don't know about computer purchases until _after_ they've arrived.
The reason? People use what they need to get the job done. That's not my business. My business is to help all the computers talk to each other so that we are more productive.
The threat facing companies is not someone installing their own OS on the computer. The threat is every person who doesn't know about computers running Outlook.
We run Windows 9x, 2000, XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and RHL here, and I just keep Appletalk, NFS, and SMB running on the server, as well as DHCP.
I have never seen a company with a truly secure intranet - most of them are just appearances of security. To have a truly secure intranet it requires that you implement security policies that waste time and productivity. When severe security policies are implemented, the users just go around them, making it even more secure than if there were lax protocols.
Case in point - the _big_ company I used to work for kept all of their root passwords for their UNIX machines in an access database that was available on the intranet, and on several desktops. I'm sure they had access restrictions on the file, but really, trusting SMB for every server's root password? Putting them all in the same file, in an Access database, where many users copied it locally to their own hard drive?
If you don't believe me, email me and I'll tell you which company I'm referring to.
"What I always wondered is why the OpenGL people don't promote a two-level standard"
That would be silly. Why not give people a choice of what to use on the second level? Especially if it's implemented in terms of the first level, it really doesn't matter what you use.
The problem is that Microsoft is adding post-sale restrictions to the use of their product (beyond copyright), and are using this silly little clause to make it "legit". This refund is intended to show them that they can't just use it as a scapegoat and not follow through.
Read the article.
Since you can't get Windows for that price separate from the computer, and they can't document how much they paid for it (because of their secret contracts), you get the list price.
" so it is not wasting its money."
Just because it's not your money they are directly wasting doesn't mean that it's not wasting money.
'And as far as the email - "the people we send to generally _ask_ to be sent to". "Generally"? Just spamming the rest of them?'
The rest are people on our customer's customer list. They have not specifically asked for the mailing, but they have given their address to the company.
Another thing we will do is if your company is at a trade show, and the trade show is selling email addresses, we will send to those.
"And out of curiosity, is submitting an email address enough to get on the list, or do you use confirmed opt-in"
Submitting an email is enough. Confirmed opt-in is overkill, because you get the same number of emails if you don't want it (1), but it's a pain in the butt for people who just want to sign up.
The biggest batch of email we've ever sent to is 5,000 people. Most of our mailings are aimed at between 300 and 3,000 people.
" Listen up, motherfucker, if you or one of your fucking customers calls any of my clients, I WILL SUE YOUR ASS."
For what exactly?
"You personally will pay damages."
For what?
Since when has expressing opinions been illegal? What exactly do you have against me? I am not a telemarketer, if that's what you think.
I would say an equivalency only exists if, before the phone rang you, a message said to them "I do not want soliciting phone calls".
A DNC list is not the equivalent of a "no solicitors" sign. Imagine if the government decided to keep a database of people who didn't want to be solicited by someone walking by. Why do that, when the person can hang a "no solicitors" sign instead.
Why go to the government for what we can do as private entities?
"My intent is that you not call my fucking phone line. I've told a government agency my intent, and they have told you."
See, my libertarianness wants to say that the government shouldn't waste it's money maintaining such a list, and it shouldn't be prosecutable nearly to the extent it is now.
I think that we should just look at existing harassment laws, and see how they can be modified. You see, harassment has nothing to do with the medium.