I especially can't stand the comment that these fuel cells are powered by "two of the most abundant elements". Please. That implies that you can acquire H2 in much the same way you can drill for oil (the process of which, incidentally, still requires massive inputs of energy). Unless they're breaking H2O with solar power, there's some oil or coal being burnt up in order to generate the H2.
What I think is sad is that the journalists covering this stuff and the public officials setting environmental policy are just as guilty of this energy-source-misdirection as the marketers of the technology are. How many times have we heard that electric cars are 100% environmentally friendly and will solve all of our pollution problems? Where do these people think electricity comes from?
Now if someone will merge solar power into the equation, then we'd be on to something. If Coleman provided a means to refuel those H2 canisters yourself you could hypothetically power the refueling device with a solar array. Now THAT would be environmentally friendly.
One would assume that if a user is capable enough to change that setting, they'd be sensible enough to change their password to something other than "admin."
The article seems to indicate the use of factory-installed passwords as the problem. There's nothing inherently more vulnerable about routers other than the fact that the people configuring them tend to think of them as peripherals (like a printer) rather than as computers.
That said, how often are Cisco routers vulnerable to this kind of attack? I've set up plenty of Cisco routers and if I'm not using a startup config borrowed from one of my other routers, I'm using the "setup" routine that prompts me for a password. Seems like most admins worthy of the title wouldn't use "password" as a password when prompted.
Though I guess they may be referring to the zillions of low-end Ciscos carelessly dropped into client-sites -- but those are supposed to be centrally managed, right?
The linksys routers can not be configured from outside the local network so the factory-installed-password-attack doesn't work. Plus NAT routers inherently shield the systems on the "inside" which will, overall, decrease the number of compromised systems on the net. I think the use of broadband routers should actually help matters in the short run.
No way. Not even close. VoiceXML is mostly used to rapidly develop IVR systems. WAP was an attempt to squeeze HTML onto a cell phone. VoiceXML is meant to speed development and enhance the capabilities of those automated voice response systems that we've all already been using for years and years.
No I haven't, but it sounds like a great project. Too bad it's not ready to replace X (by their own admission).
The problem with these great projects is that until they appear in some distribution and a number of apps are ported over, it's really a moot point.
And how does one herd the open source community to a new standard? Maybe if Microsoft came up with a graphics platform that truly puts X to shame it'll rally everyone around a competing standard. As it is, it's too easy to emulate the capabilities of the Windows' UI with X. Nothing like a shared enemy to push things forward.
A replacement for X is long long overdue but DirectFB doesn't seem to support a client/server model that allows a remotely running app to address your local display over the network. That capability is what brought us cheap X terminals.
The writer of the anti-X page got 50% of what he/she wanted: DEC has long since been wiped off the face of the earth. DEC->Digital->Compaq->HP. Anyone know when that piece was written?
That's why I want a Sony Clie with the built-in MP3 player. That seems like a better combo (PDA + MP3) than the combination of PDA and remote control. In fact, it seems like you would want to integrate capabilities into a PDA that consumers would take advantage of while "on the road". That means that an MP3 player makes sense. A phone makes sense. A voice recorder makes sense. A GPS unit makes sense.
A remote control? How many people have a clip-on remote control that they wear around the house with them?
Yes, it would be a lot nicer and cheaper to do that. Compaq and HP, however, are not just serving customers who have text-only needs; many of their customers wish to run Windows. There have been more than a couple times when I've had to use the Compaq remote insight board's remote graphics mode capability rather than the Windows Terminal Services client to configure the system because the TCP stack got hosed or misconfigured for some reason. Plus these boards provide out-of-band power control and server diagnostics.
The wonderful thing about most serious UNIX servers (Compaq/DEC Alpha, Sun Sparc servers, etc.) is that they can be controlled and configured entirely through their serial ports. Those types of servers were meant to be sitting in some climate controlled room somewhere while the admins sit comfortably in their cube far far away reinstalling the OS or something. I bought a couple of 1U Penguin Computing servers a couple years ago expecting them to have serial console support and was extremely disappointed to discover that they were merely 1U cases with an Intel workstation motherboard slapped inside. Recent VALinux servers had the serial console capability but, alas, they're no longer in the hardware business.
We've got the Compaq Lights-Out Remote Insight Boards deployed at work. I wouldn't try to do normal office work on them, but they certainly beat having to drive into the data center in the middle of the night to tweak the BIOS and hard reboot my servers. HP has a similar product which I've used (the TopTools remote control card) but it only does text. The moment the server transitions to graphic mode, the TopTools RCC's remote control session stops.
These things are worth every penny especially if you're supporting several computers in a colocation facility. Unfortunately, they only work in Compaq's and HP's lines of servers.
802.11 does collision avoidance rather than collision detection, so it theoretically does a lot better than a regular ethernet LAN (>50% utilization versus ~30% for CSMA-CD). Of course, most people are buying switches these days which changes the math.
Though if you're shoving a lot of data around between a large number of stations within an office you'll quickly hit the bandwidth ceiling for 802.11. Wireless LANs are, after all, a shared network medium.
Besides, who wants to come into the office every morning, turn on their computer, and then have to log on to a VPN?
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What I think is sad is that the journalists covering this stuff and the public officials setting environmental policy are just as guilty of this energy-source-misdirection as the marketers of the technology are. How many times have we heard that electric cars are 100% environmentally friendly and will solve all of our pollution problems? Where do these people think electricity comes from?
Now if someone will merge solar power into the equation, then we'd be on to something. If Coleman provided a means to refuel those H2 canisters yourself you could hypothetically power the refueling device with a solar array. Now THAT would be environmentally friendly.
Right. I should've been clearer about that.
One would assume that if a user is capable enough to change that setting, they'd be sensible enough to change their password to something other than "admin."
The article seems to indicate the use of factory-installed passwords as the problem. There's nothing inherently more vulnerable about routers other than the fact that the people configuring them tend to think of them as peripherals (like a printer) rather than as computers.
That said, how often are Cisco routers vulnerable to this kind of attack? I've set up plenty of Cisco routers and if I'm not using a startup config borrowed from one of my other routers, I'm using the "setup" routine that prompts me for a password. Seems like most admins worthy of the title wouldn't use "password" as a password when prompted.
Though I guess they may be referring to the zillions of low-end Ciscos carelessly dropped into client-sites -- but those are supposed to be centrally managed, right?
The linksys routers can not be configured from outside the local network so the factory-installed-password-attack doesn't work. Plus NAT routers inherently shield the systems on the "inside" which will, overall, decrease the number of compromised systems on the net. I think the use of broadband routers should actually help matters in the short run.
No way. Not even close. VoiceXML is mostly used to rapidly develop IVR systems. WAP was an attempt to squeeze HTML onto a cell phone. VoiceXML is meant to speed development and enhance the capabilities of those automated voice response systems that we've all already been using for years and years.
No I haven't, but it sounds like a great project. Too bad it's not ready to replace X (by their own admission).
The problem with these great projects is that until they appear in some distribution and a number of apps are ported over, it's really a moot point.
And how does one herd the open source community to a new standard? Maybe if Microsoft came up with a graphics platform that truly puts X to shame it'll rally everyone around a competing standard. As it is, it's too easy to emulate the capabilities of the Windows' UI with X. Nothing like a shared enemy to push things forward.
A replacement for X is long long overdue but DirectFB doesn't seem to support a client/server model that allows a remotely running app to address your local display over the network. That capability is what brought us cheap X terminals.
The writer of the anti-X page got 50% of what he/she wanted: DEC has long since been wiped off the face of the earth. DEC->Digital->Compaq->HP. Anyone know when that piece was written?
That's why I want a Sony Clie with the built-in MP3 player. That seems like a better combo (PDA + MP3) than the combination of PDA and remote control. In fact, it seems like you would want to integrate capabilities into a PDA that consumers would take advantage of while "on the road". That means that an MP3 player makes sense. A phone makes sense. A voice recorder makes sense. A GPS unit makes sense.
A remote control? How many people have a clip-on remote control that they wear around the house with them?
Yes, it would be a lot nicer and cheaper to do that. Compaq and HP, however, are not just serving customers who have text-only needs; many of their customers wish to run Windows. There have been more than a couple times when I've had to use the Compaq remote insight board's remote graphics mode capability rather than the Windows Terminal Services client to configure the system because the TCP stack got hosed or misconfigured for some reason. Plus these boards provide out-of-band power control and server diagnostics.
The wonderful thing about most serious UNIX servers (Compaq/DEC Alpha, Sun Sparc servers, etc.) is that they can be controlled and configured entirely through their serial ports. Those types of servers were meant to be sitting in some climate controlled room somewhere while the admins sit comfortably in their cube far far away reinstalling the OS or something. I bought a couple of 1U Penguin Computing servers a couple years ago expecting them to have serial console support and was extremely disappointed to discover that they were merely 1U cases with an Intel workstation motherboard slapped inside. Recent VALinux servers had the serial console capability but, alas, they're no longer in the hardware business.
We've got the Compaq Lights-Out Remote Insight Boards deployed at work. I wouldn't try to do normal office work on them, but they certainly beat having to drive into the data center in the middle of the night to tweak the BIOS and hard reboot my servers. HP has a similar product which I've used (the TopTools remote control card) but it only does text. The moment the server transitions to graphic mode, the TopTools RCC's remote control session stops.
These things are worth every penny especially if you're supporting several computers in a colocation facility. Unfortunately, they only work in Compaq's and HP's lines of servers.
802.11 does collision avoidance rather than collision detection, so it theoretically does a lot better than a regular ethernet LAN (>50% utilization versus ~30% for CSMA-CD). Of course, most people are buying switches these days which changes the math.
Though if you're shoving a lot of data around between a large number of stations within an office you'll quickly hit the bandwidth ceiling for 802.11. Wireless LANs are, after all, a shared network medium.
Besides, who wants to come into the office every morning, turn on their computer, and then have to log on to a VPN?