Not necessarily, I've had it happen to me too. Threads get mixed up now & then. I *think* it has something to do with : * post message * have message replied to * original message gets modded down * reply suddenly find itself attach to other parent !!
I'm kind of confused here too, afaik I replied to some comment about there being no chance at all of ever getting a seabed-map because there are 'top secret' subs around...
Somehow I either pressed the wrong 'Reply to this' button, or the Slashdot database got messed up !?! Actually, due to the reply (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1139773&cid=26981505) I got on my comment, I'm thinking it's the latter... Slashdot going berserk ?? It's the end of the world !
AFAIK submarines tend to move around. What use would a 'virtual push-pin in the middle of the ocean' labeled 'submarine' have anyway ? You think that if you walk around NY-City, all the people you saw on Google-street-view will still be there ?
Anyway, if -by sheer coincidence- a sub would be located, it would show up as a 'spike' in the map and probably get discarded as an error or anomaly. Also, these sounding exercises likely make ONE HELL OF A NOISE from the point of view of a stealthy submarine, I'm sure the latter will have no problem at all in avoiding the first.
Reminds of the Blue Security thing we had couple of years ago. The idea certainly hit a nerve somewhere (= probably the 'wallet-nerve') but the collateral damage was probably more than most people are willing to offer... that is, most companies. Personally I wouldn't have cared that much if it took 2 weeks of 'no access' for all ISP's around the world to find the infected machines and lock them out, knowing that after those weeks I'd have a better internet to come back to.
The problem is : once they fight back, who is willing to take the responsibility ?
Suppose this hadn't been a 'little company' like Blue Security but an FBI operation. Would they have let the internet go down on it's knees until the entire botnetwork was cleaned up ? That could takes weeks, if not months. Trying to find the botnet-owner isn't trivial either, and suppose you'd be able to find him/her, (s)he would claim to know nothing about it, let alone give them the 'magic word' to stop said bots.
Frankly, I doubt that any spammer sends out 12 million emails from 1 machine. More likely he'll send out 1 "instruction" to some 'hub' that is then 'read' by 10000 hacked machines that will each send out 12M / 10k = (lots) of emails... Then again, I must agree, each and every spam-bot would get silenced too after a while (as would the owners of the p0wn3d machines, which might by tricky from a commercial point of view for the ISPs).
After a while, only the spam-king with the largest zombie army would be able to make money on it as he would be able to send out mails in a volume that's just below the threshold of getting tarpitted. This might result in more aggressive viruses / bot networks, not sure whether that would be good or bad... =/
Our ISP @ work (well, the one that provides the 'unimportant intarweb connection') had a filter installed that would count the number of emails coming through the SMTP server and once a certain threshold (mails / interval) was reached, the SMTP server would reply with 'You have been infected by a virus'. In fact the message was a bit harsh since in our case 100+ people behind a single IP address sent out quite a bit of 'personal' mail that was not routed via the companies mail server (Exchange), but directly out using the ISP's SMTP router; but it indeed helped us catch an infected laptop once that tried to send out gazillions of emails. So YAY for that system.
Not sure if they still do that, our mighty internal-IT-staff decided that port 25 shouldn't be open to the outside anyway. (Can't blame them off-course, our firewalls were pretty much swiss cheese before that day)
Keeping out Microsoft Updates isn't all that difficult, simply turn it off. It will show a warning in your systray, but that's it.
Sadly, judging by the tone of your entry, I'm assuming you're one of those 'ms-anti-fanboys' who will complain about virtually ANYTHING Microsoft does, or doesn't do. As such I expect the following scenario to happen : You'll switch off Automatic Updates, your system won't get patched any more and you'll turn out to be vulnerable to, well, quite a lot of the nastiness out there. After a while your machine will slow down, you'll go digging and find out that your gaming machine spends half it's CPU time being part of a botnet. Not that I care, but by all means, don't come complaining then how "windows is so bloody easily hacked" and "that it's all MS's fault for not being able to write a proper OS".
Sigh.
Sure, Windows *isn't* perfect, but I'm seeing just as much of security updates in Ubunto too, haven't heard too many complaints there yet.
That aside, Microsoft *is* a company and companies tend to care only about their *own* interests, nothing new there. If you'd prefer things to be different then give up your job (or studies) and start your own company that will be the lighting example for the rest off the world. I'm sure the rest of the world will recognize your genius and follow your example and soon the whole of humanity will throw greed and selfness and stuff overboard and we'll all live happily ever-after...
I'm assuming that with WPA you mean WGA, and frankly, what's wrong with the that piece of software? Judging by the wikipedia entry, it's not quite flawless, BUT I'm having the distinct feeling here that most people complaining about it are in fact running a pirated copy of Windows (aka "hey, I've already paid a four-figures amount for my gfx card, I'm not going to shell out another $99 for an OS!") but do consider themselves 100% eligible to complain about every aspect of given OS.
Sorry if I got carried away, but the amount of ms-bashing here is way out of proportion vs the amount of "evilness" pointed out by the article. I agree they should have at least offered you the option, but that's not quite how Windows Updates works, and I'm guessing they choose this option to make life easier for the administrators of (largish) networks. On the other hand, removing it will probably break the functionality of some sites, maybe few today, but probably more in the future, and then who will be the first again to start complaining MS does not support open source browsers like eg. Firefox ????
* Where did the fog go ? (for those eejits that have their (rear) fog-lights on even when it was sunny all week) * I can't see you ! (for those that forget to turn any light on (*)) * Your braking-lights are broken (can be very surprising when they suddenly come to a stop in front of you) * Your indicator is broken (for those that switch lane etc without using the indicator... not sure they'd get it though =)
Et-voilÃ, 4 useful messages which all of them I've been willing to pass to my fellow road users at least once in the past couple years.
* : Probably happens more in Belgium than any other country because we have that much of street-lightning making it perfectly possible to drive around without lights. The problem is, although you can see the scenery quite well, those in the scenery have a hard time seeing you... (that is, until it's probably too late)
PS: I hope I have the names more or less right, English not being my native language.
That was my first idea too : the moment you go 'open source' on a Storm-killer, the creators of said botnet will have it patched well before the fix will be finished, let alone deployed. This comes down to the fact that, involuntarily off course, they are in fact contributing to making the botnet 'stronger'.
Sigh, I'm kind of annoyed by these 'researches' that IMHO go/wasting/ time & resources on "hey look, I managed to decompile and understand someones program, let's write a paper about it" attitude. If they're not actually doing anything constructive with it... what's the use ?
Personally I find it scary that people consider 'wired' communications to be 'secure' by default.
AFAIK most wireless protocols have at least some kind of 'security' and 'encryption' in their design. Granted that quite a few of these have been shown to be "incomplete", but at least there's an effort. Wired stuff on the other hand seems to be optimized for speed (and stability) only, but nobody really cares about security. When someone finds that they can eavesdrop on a wireless keyboard from an unobscured distance of say 5ft, hell breaks loose. But by my recollection there's been 'keyboardloggers' for ages, both in hardware (a "part" you had to put between the computer and the keyboard, something not quite unfeasible when you can get up to 5ft anyway) and software. (**)
Clearly, wireless is much harder to control (it simply goes through the wall to the house next door), wired isn't all that "unbreakable" either. Imho, security would best be handled using software, that way at least it's easier to "upgrade" when a fault in the protocol is found. I doubt we're going to see everyone throw out their DECT phone or whatever anytime soon... Maybe they'll be able to eavesdrop on phone-conversations, and maybe they'll even manage to see what's going up & down when a payment transaction is going on, but I think (HOPE!) the latter will have at least some kind of protection in there to avoid the packets to be tampered with...
(**: Frankly, I think the latter is much more widespread than most any of us think since it's so damn easy to create, but that could be me being paranoid)
Ha! You thought this was binary : to overclock or not to overclock, well sonny, I've got news for you, there's a new guy in town !
My friend's been having this 1GHz PIII running on 750MHz for over 6 months now, and it's AB-SO-LU-TE-LY 100% stable !
(ps: genuinely true story : the BIOS battery-connection is broken somehow and the thing boots by default on 750MHz. Although I explained how to set the right values in the BIOS, he simply got tired of it and claims "it's just as fast".)
Agreed, but it reminded me of a joke where an insurance-salesman blames his apprentice for selling a life-insurance to a 100-year old and the apprentice retorts that statistically spoken very few 100+ years old die !
(yes, it's an old & silly joke, and probably didn't come over very well either... )
(off course, that's only based on your explanation and the little I know about how passwordmaker works. This being slashdot I clearly didn't read the website you refer too, nor the help that came with passwordmaker, no siree !)
Some years ago we used to have a stand-alone machine for testing using a local account. As most members of the team needed to be able to log on to it now and then I came up with "just leave it empty" as a password. Whenever someone forgot and had to ask for it, we simply would yell across the floor : that password ? Just leave it empty ! Those who 'knew' remembered then and were able to log in. Others who had overheard it and wanted to use our mega-powerful-machine tried logging in using a blank password, but were stumped to find out they couldn't.. Aaahh, all the fun one can have in the office =)
Point taken, the default VGA driver *is* worse than the 'open' drivers included in Ubuntu. However, getting the correct drivers to install so you get proper 2D acceleration (I' don't care that much about fancy 3D screensavers) is lots easier in Windows than it is in Ubuntu. In both cases you need to find out the model & make of your hardware, but it's simply more easy to download and install the correct driver for windows than it is for Linux. Age of the hardware might play a (huge) role in that, I'll agree.
I've dealt with 2 wifi problems on windows. Both came down to the fact that the WEP protocol wasn't functioning properly. The first time was 5 years ago and I "solved" this by using MAC-address filtering, the other 3 weeks ago I which I "solved" by using WPA2 instead. Heck, WEP is broken anyway so I don't know why the ISP botherd setting it up in the first place =(.
Ethernet MIGHT have given me problems too, I'll admit that much. But then I simply downloaded them elsewhere, put them on usb-stick and ran them on the computer at stake. In Ubuntu things are SUPERB when I can get them using synaptic, however, when I have to do things manually I go from "wow, awesome" to "ohnoos, let me put a fork in my eyes" mode =(
And yes, I was thinking about the upGRades, not the upDates. And yes, going from one windows version to another is, well undo-able. It's usually a matter of backing up all data files you want to keep and then starting afresh from a new install. That said, I feel confident running any windows version for like 5 years in a row. (eg 95 => 2k => xp => 7?). As Ubuntu has a new version every half year that is presented as 'the next best thing since sliced bread', I'm unable to resist the temptation to press that Upgrade button... and then spend lots of free time in the next weeks trying to fix things again =( But yes, it's my own choice, and I must admit, since I have nothing 'important' running on those ubuntu laptops, it's no biggie. If something important were to be running on it, I probably would stick to some LTS release.
Heck, I'll wholesomely agree that Ubuntu rules, it's just that people (especially) here enjoy complaining about windows just a tad too much. If one says 'evil' about ubuntu you'll get 20 reactions saying you're either trolling or retarded. If you say windows sucks you'll get modded insightful and offered 3 virgins.
I'm not saying windows is without flaws; and it's remarkably I know only few people who 'enjoy' Vista. But having been using Win95, Win2k Pro, WinXP Pro myself, I've never ever had one piece of hardware not being supported, I'm sorry to hear you did.
Off course I DID run into situations where a driver update (or a simple apparently non-related windows-update) messed up something and I had to manually reinstall the driver. Annoying : yes, difficult : no.
I don't mind that it works differently, I do mind that it's "incomplete" and "non-uniform".
As for the 'Computer wants to restart' nagging thing :
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations
Somehow the 'disabled' does not seem to do what I want it to do (eg : "nothing"), but I've set it to 1440, and that is "long enough" for me.
I must say that the main reason I've not given up on Ubuntu is the synaptic thing ! It's ABSO-F*ING-LUTELY FANTASTIC and unlike anything I've ever used before !
Again, once things work I consider ubuntu a joy to work with, it's responsive and (rather) user-friendly, so I'll probably have it running alongside my windows (xp) job-portable for quite a while.
I don't think Ubuntu is bad, far from it. I might even add that I do realize that being 'fluent' in windows-management might be a drawback in ubuntu (*nix?) usage because I expect things to work one way and well, they often aren't...
Then again, for me personally, the Windows experience has always been : get things working in the default configuration without a hassle. If you want to make changes or tweak something you'll need to learn how it works using blood, sweat & tears; once you get the hang of it, it quickly sets apart the plebs from the guru's. Ubuntu (and again *nix in general) on the other hand seems to skip the first step, although again I'll add that it's been improving with huge steps. (I jumped on the train with 5.10) In the end you'll run into walls on both platforms, but it seems to me that windows keeps those walls a bit further down the road by providing a much more streamlined & uniform configuration GUI. Ubuntu also has a tools, but they feel more like a bunch of tools thrown together instead of a thought-through set of programs.
We can bash on Microsoft as much as we want, but they DID manage to get computing to the general population. If the (overly) simplified windows GUI already is troublesome to mom & dad, just imagine where we would have been if we'd have been stuck with unix only.
ps: yes I'm ranting, but it's mostly due to the (other =) ranters out there... I'm sure most people are smart enough to see there's room for both OS's to co-exist but sadly it's the fanboys that make the loudest noise all the time and annoy the hell out of me.
Not sure you're replying to me : but NO the video drivers are not (generally) included in windows. There's a 'generic' driver usually that IS present, but most of the time you have to go the website of the manufacturer, find the driver for your model and run it. Reboot and presto, it works.
To get my nvidia geforce4 440 to work I had to : * install ubuntu * all 'restricted drivers', which comes telling me there is no restricted driver * read through forums, find nvidia driver from website * fight with GDM to get the driver to install, it KEEPS complaining about an X-Server running even though I've stopped it plenty of times * finally get it to run and then read that the driver is not compatible * read more forums, find beta nvidia driver from website * fight with GDM to get the driver to install, it KEEPS complaining about an X-Server running even though I've stopped it plenty of times * finally get it to install and make necesarry changes to xorg.conf file * reboot * see how ubuntu boots (scrollbar grows), then turns of your screen and gives the drum-roll that says you can login. However, the screen is pitch-black * try to poke gdm to live using the console * read lots of forum posts * mess around in the console trying to modify xorg.conf manually, starting stopping gdm until you grow very tired of it as it's all no good =( * find out that although you can't get the running x-server to live, you do can start a new one that then sits under ctrl-alt-F8 * verify/set display settings using nvidia applet * reboot to find that AGAIN nothing is visible under ctrl-alt-F7 * read more forums to find out if other people ever had that same issue ? * install/configure remote desktop via the 'second x-server' * reboot * try to log on using vnc from other pc => connection refused * log in "blindly" => works, but you don't see a thing so rather user-unfriendly * then log in remotely using vnc : works ! * via vnc, start the nvidia applet and notice that the default panel is disabled and that the signal is going to the CRT for some reason !? => why does it use the crt on console 7 but the default panel on console 8 I ask you ???????? * enable default panel (I don't have one available), disbale crt, save => error writing to configuration file !? * write to file in home folder, use console to copy from home folder to the proper location (overwrite) * reboot and everything works perfectly !
So yes, I think the Windows experience was a LOT nicer on this one. I'm not saying that Ubuntu will always fail on this, and probably it's mostly nvidia's "fault", but please come down from that ivory tower because it worked for you ! Maybe more recent hardware means less problems, but it's cheaper to buy a (second hand) windows license than it is to buy a new pc.
One simple example would be : getting the hardware to work. Followed closely by getting the wifi to work. Ubuntu is getting much more user-friendly with every incarnation, but it still has a rather long way to go before it will reach the ease-of-use of a recent Windows platform IMHO.
Seriously, I like Ubuntu and I have 2 portables running myself + have put it on my mom's computer since she wanted a localized OS. The personal ones are for me playing around with it a bit since I'm curious what's all the fuss about. The other one is in use by my toddler-girl who enjoys to play GCompris on it or watch some DVD-rips of Dora The explorer on it. My moms is being used solely for a bit of mailing (Thunderbird) and browsing (Firefox).
In the old days, those 3 computers (all dell portables btw) ran Windows2000 Professional. Setup was simple : put in Wind2k cd in the tray, startup, go through the setup, download the driver installations from Dell and run those too. At worst you had to fiddle around a bit with tcp settings. After that the system was up and running and I'd lost half a day at most per machine... (format + setup + setting up mail accounts etc takes a bit of time).
Getting Ubuntu running on them has been a hassle for all 3 of them.
* getting video running has been HELL : with only 1 out of 3 I managed to get the nvidia blob to run after reading days and days of forums, trying out every single trick they propose. The two others still run in 'software' mode, which is fine for firefox/thunderbird or GCompris (more or less), but has cost me several days trying anyway. * wifi wasn't always (properlty) recognized : pcmcia went mostly fine, usb was hell. Finally got it working via ndiswrapper * each time there is an upGRade something breaks and I'm back in the 'problem-chasing' game =(
As a side-note : people always complain about Windows Update pushing lots of bytes, but boy oh boy, same is true for ubuntu IMHO. Not that I find that a bad thing per-se, but then again, stop complaining about Windows.
the question will quickly become : can you afford what you want ?
(Not sure what you pay now for a x-Mbit line, but expect that price to go through the roof if you insist on it being 'constant speed' instead of the 'burst speed' that they sell right now, be it with 'dubious wording'...)
If I'd have mod-points I'd mod you up (insightful) regarding both the ease at which one can get said illegal drugs *and* the (potential contents) of that stuff =(
Then again, it's not because something is regulated that it becomes "safe". Think of the many food-industry scandals that emerge all too frequently all over the planet (melamine in milk, anti-freeze in wine, car-oil in cattle-feed, etc...)
We don't outlaw blunt objects, we teach people to use them 'carefully'.
The only thing about drugs that scares me is that it removes any 'reservations' one might have. It kind of undoes "education", something not present in most non-regulated things.
My 3 year old daughter has been having fun with a (very) old laptop (PIII500) that has Ubuntu + GCompris on it. Clearly it needs a bit of guiding in the beginning to explain what all the games 'do', but now she'll fire it up herself (after asking off course, I don't want her to sit behind the computer hours on end...yet =), clicks the plane-icon and jumps from one game to another. I think she likes the 'movement' games best (eg. clicking the blue dot to make a drawing, watering the plants,...) although she'll easily play the cards-memory game from start to end in no time. Having done the latter a couple of times she seems to have grown tired of it, oh well, I think it will take some more time before she manages to finish the Towers of Hanoi game =)
Since there was plenty of room left on the disk, I converted a couple of here Dora / Bob The Builder / Bumba /... DVD's to DivX and now she prefers to watch them on the laptop instead of looking at it on TV. (**)
Anyway, just keep your eyes open for a second-hand portable (I bought this one for ca 200â couple of years back as I wanted to give Linux (Ubuntu) a try, but recently she's having lots more fun on it than I am, I think I need a new toying-portable =)
**: Not sure whether it's that much better for the eyes : IMHO LCD (tft, XGA) is much less straining than CRT @50Hz, but clearly she's sitting a lot closer to the screen, so maybe both 'bads' cancel each other out ?
Slashdot Mirror
Not impossible off course, but that's not what happened to me ...
I can't vouch for the subject, maybe it changed, maybe it didn't... but I'm pretty sure that my post (and one of the replies) was originally on a different post.
=> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1139773&cid=26981295
Not necessarily, I've had it happen to me too. Threads get mixed up now & then. I *think* it has something to do with :
* post message
* have message replied to
* original message gets modded down
* reply suddenly find itself attach to other parent !!
I'm kind of confused here too, afaik I replied to some comment about there being no chance at all of ever getting a seabed-map because there are 'top secret' subs around...
Somehow I either pressed the wrong 'Reply to this' button, or the Slashdot database got messed up !?!
Actually, due to the reply (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1139773&cid=26981505) I got on my comment, I'm thinking it's the latter... Slashdot going berserk ?? It's the end of the world !
AFAIK submarines tend to move around. What use would a 'virtual push-pin in the middle of the ocean' labeled 'submarine' have anyway ? You think that if you walk around NY-City, all the people you saw on Google-street-view will still be there ?
Anyway, if -by sheer coincidence- a sub would be located, it would show up as a 'spike' in the map and probably get discarded as an error or anomaly.
Also, these sounding exercises likely make ONE HELL OF A NOISE from the point of view of a stealthy submarine, I'm sure the latter will have no problem at all in avoiding the first.
it probably would work, for a while...
Reminds of the Blue Security thing we had couple of years ago. The idea certainly hit a nerve somewhere (= probably the 'wallet-nerve') but the collateral damage was probably more than most people are willing to offer... that is, most companies. Personally I wouldn't have cared that much if it took 2 weeks of 'no access' for all ISP's around the world to find the infected machines and lock them out, knowing that after those weeks I'd have a better internet to come back to.
(see : http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/18/2158227 )
The problem is : once they fight back, who is willing to take the responsibility ?
Suppose this hadn't been a 'little company' like Blue Security but an FBI operation. Would they have let the internet go down on it's knees until the entire botnetwork was cleaned up ? That could takes weeks, if not months. Trying to find the botnet-owner isn't trivial either, and suppose you'd be able to find him/her, (s)he would claim to know nothing about it, let alone give them the 'magic word' to stop said bots.
Frankly, I doubt that any spammer sends out 12 million emails from 1 machine.
More likely he'll send out 1 "instruction" to some 'hub' that is then 'read' by 10000 hacked machines that will each send out 12M / 10k = (lots) of emails... Then again, I must agree, each and every spam-bot would get silenced too after a while (as would the owners of the p0wn3d machines, which might by tricky from a commercial point of view for the ISPs).
After a while, only the spam-king with the largest zombie army would be able to make money on it as he would be able to send out mails in a volume that's just below the threshold of getting tarpitted. This might result in more aggressive viruses / bot networks, not sure whether that would be good or bad... =/
Our ISP @ work (well, the one that provides the 'unimportant intarweb connection') had a filter installed that would count the number of emails coming through the SMTP server and once a certain threshold (mails / interval) was reached, the SMTP server would reply with 'You have been infected by a virus'. In fact the message was a bit harsh since in our case 100+ people behind a single IP address sent out quite a bit of 'personal' mail that was not routed via the companies mail server (Exchange), but directly out using the ISP's SMTP router; but it indeed helped us catch an infected laptop once that tried to send out gazillions of emails. So YAY for that system.
Not sure if they still do that, our mighty internal-IT-staff decided that port 25 shouldn't be open to the outside anyway. (Can't blame them off-course, our firewalls were pretty much swiss cheese before that day)
Keeping out Microsoft Updates isn't all that difficult, simply turn it off. It will show a warning in your systray, but that's it.
Sadly, judging by the tone of your entry, I'm assuming you're one of those 'ms-anti-fanboys' who will complain about virtually ANYTHING Microsoft does, or doesn't do. As such I expect the following scenario to happen : You'll switch off Automatic Updates, your system won't get patched any more and you'll turn out to be vulnerable to, well, quite a lot of the nastiness out there. After a while your machine will slow down, you'll go digging and find out that your gaming machine spends half it's CPU time being part of a botnet.
Not that I care, but by all means, don't come complaining then how "windows is so bloody easily hacked" and "that it's all MS's fault for not being able to write a proper OS".
Sigh.
Sure, Windows *isn't* perfect, but I'm seeing just as much of security updates in Ubunto too, haven't heard too many complaints there yet.
That aside, Microsoft *is* a company and companies tend to care only about their *own* interests, nothing new there. If you'd prefer things to be different then give up your job (or studies) and start your own company that will be the lighting example for the rest off the world. I'm sure the rest of the world will recognize your genius and follow your example and soon the whole of humanity will throw greed and selfness and stuff overboard and we'll all live happily ever-after...
I'm assuming that with WPA you mean WGA, and frankly, what's wrong with the that piece of software? Judging by the wikipedia entry, it's not quite flawless, BUT I'm having the distinct feeling here that most people complaining about it are in fact running a pirated copy of Windows (aka "hey, I've already paid a four-figures amount for my gfx card, I'm not going to shell out another $99 for an OS!") but do consider themselves 100% eligible to complain about every aspect of given OS.
Sorry if I got carried away, but the amount of ms-bashing here is way out of proportion vs the amount of "evilness" pointed out by the article. I agree they should have at least offered you the option, but that's not quite how Windows Updates works, and I'm guessing they choose this option to make life easier for the administrators of (largish) networks. On the other hand, removing it will probably break the functionality of some sites, maybe few today, but probably more in the future, and then who will be the first again to start complaining MS does not support open source browsers like eg. Firefox ????
* Where did the fog go ? (for those eejits that have their (rear) fog-lights on even when it was sunny all week)
* I can't see you ! (for those that forget to turn any light on (*))
* Your braking-lights are broken (can be very surprising when they suddenly come to a stop in front of you)
* Your indicator is broken (for those that switch lane etc without using the indicator... not sure they'd get it though =)
Et-voilÃ, 4 useful messages which all of them I've been willing to pass to my fellow road users at least once in the past couple years.
* : Probably happens more in Belgium than any other country because we have that much of street-lightning making it perfectly possible to drive around without lights. The problem is, although you can see the scenery quite well, those in the scenery have a hard time seeing you... (that is, until it's probably too late)
PS: I hope I have the names more or less right, English not being my native language.
That was my first idea too : the moment you go 'open source' on a Storm-killer, the creators of said botnet will have it patched well before the fix will be finished, let alone deployed. This comes down to the fact that, involuntarily off course, they are in fact contributing to making the botnet 'stronger'.
Sigh, I'm kind of annoyed by these 'researches' that IMHO go /wasting/ time & resources on "hey look, I managed to decompile and understand someones program, let's write a paper about it" attitude. If they're not actually doing anything constructive with it... what's the use ?
Personally I find it scary that people consider 'wired' communications to be 'secure' by default.
AFAIK most wireless protocols have at least some kind of 'security' and 'encryption' in their design. Granted that quite a few of these have been shown to be "incomplete", but at least there's an effort. Wired stuff on the other hand seems to be optimized for speed (and stability) only, but nobody really cares about security. When someone finds that they can eavesdrop on a wireless keyboard from an unobscured distance of say 5ft, hell breaks loose. But by my recollection there's been 'keyboardloggers' for ages, both in hardware (a "part" you had to put between the computer and the keyboard, something not quite unfeasible when you can get up to 5ft anyway) and software. (**)
Clearly, wireless is much harder to control (it simply goes through the wall to the house next door), wired isn't all that "unbreakable" either. ...
Imho, security would best be handled using software, that way at least it's easier to "upgrade" when a fault in the protocol is found. I doubt we're going to see everyone throw out their DECT phone or whatever anytime soon... Maybe they'll be able to eavesdrop on phone-conversations, and maybe they'll even manage to see what's going up & down when a payment transaction is going on, but I think (HOPE!) the latter will have at least some kind of protection in there to avoid the packets to be tampered with
(**: Frankly, I think the latter is much more widespread than most any of us think since it's so damn easy to create, but that could be me being paranoid)
Then UNDER-clocking might be your thing =)
Ha! You thought this was binary : to overclock or not to overclock, well sonny, I've got news for you, there's a new guy in town !
My friend's been having this 1GHz PIII running on 750MHz for over 6 months now, and it's AB-SO-LU-TE-LY 100% stable !
(ps: genuinely true story : the BIOS battery-connection is broken somehow and the thing boots by default on 750MHz. Although I explained how to set the right values in the BIOS, he simply got tired of it and claims "it's just as fast".)
Agreed, but it reminded me of a joke where an insurance-salesman blames his apprentice for selling a life-insurance to a 100-year old and the apprentice retorts that statistically spoken very few 100+ years old die !
(yes, it's an old & silly joke, and probably didn't come over very well either... )
Then again,
statistically, very few people aged 100 or more die, so all you have to do is get that old and you're safe !!!
sounds a lot like this plugin : http://passwordmaker.org/
(off course, that's only based on your explanation and the little I know about how passwordmaker works. This being slashdot I clearly didn't read the website you refer too, nor the help that came with passwordmaker, no siree !)
Some years ago we used to have a stand-alone machine for testing using a local account. As most members of the team needed to be able to log on to it now and then I came up with "just leave it empty" as a password. Whenever someone forgot and had to ask for it, we simply would yell across the floor : that password ? Just leave it empty ! Those who 'knew' remembered then and were able to log in. Others who had overheard it and wanted to use our mega-powerful-machine tried logging in using a blank password, but were stumped to find out they couldn't..
Aaahh, all the fun one can have in the office =)
Point taken, the default VGA driver *is* worse than the 'open' drivers included in Ubuntu. However, getting the correct drivers to install so you get proper 2D acceleration (I' don't care that much about fancy 3D screensavers) is lots easier in Windows than it is in Ubuntu. In both cases you need to find out the model & make of your hardware, but it's simply more easy to download and install the correct driver for windows than it is for Linux.
Age of the hardware might play a (huge) role in that, I'll agree.
I've dealt with 2 wifi problems on windows. Both came down to the fact that the WEP protocol wasn't functioning properly. The first time was 5 years ago and I "solved" this by using MAC-address filtering, the other 3 weeks ago I which I "solved" by using WPA2 instead. Heck, WEP is broken anyway so I don't know why the ISP botherd setting it up in the first place =(.
Ethernet MIGHT have given me problems too, I'll admit that much. But then I simply downloaded them elsewhere, put them on usb-stick and ran them on the computer at stake. In Ubuntu things are SUPERB when I can get them using synaptic, however, when I have to do things manually I go from "wow, awesome" to "ohnoos, let me put a fork in my eyes" mode =(
And yes, I was thinking about the upGRades, not the upDates.
And yes, going from one windows version to another is, well undo-able. It's usually a matter of backing up all data files you want to keep and then starting afresh from a new install. That said, I feel confident running any windows version for like 5 years in a row. (eg 95 => 2k => xp => 7?). As Ubuntu has a new version every half year that is presented as 'the next best thing since sliced bread', I'm unable to resist the temptation to press that Upgrade button... and then spend lots of free time in the next weeks trying to fix things again =( But yes, it's my own choice, and I must admit, since I have nothing 'important' running on those ubuntu laptops, it's no biggie. If something important were to be running on it, I probably would stick to some LTS release.
Heck, I'll wholesomely agree that Ubuntu rules, it's just that people (especially) here enjoy complaining about windows just a tad too much. If one says 'evil' about ubuntu you'll get 20 reactions saying you're either trolling or retarded. If you say windows sucks you'll get modded insightful and offered 3 virgins.
I'm not saying windows is without flaws; and it's remarkably I know only few people who 'enjoy' Vista. But having been using Win95, Win2k Pro, WinXP Pro myself, I've never ever had one piece of hardware not being supported, I'm sorry to hear you did.
Off course I DID run into situations where a driver update (or a simple apparently non-related windows-update) messed up something and I had to manually reinstall the driver. Annoying : yes, difficult : no.
I don't mind that it works differently, I do mind that it's "incomplete" and "non-uniform".
As for the 'Computer wants to restart' nagging thing :
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations
Somehow the 'disabled' does not seem to do what I want it to do (eg : "nothing"), but I've set it to 1440, and that is "long enough" for me.
I must say that the main reason I've not given up on Ubuntu is the synaptic thing ! It's ABSO-F*ING-LUTELY FANTASTIC and unlike anything I've ever used before !
Again, once things work I consider ubuntu a joy to work with, it's responsive and (rather) user-friendly, so I'll probably have it running alongside my windows (xp) job-portable for quite a while.
I don't think Ubuntu is bad, far from it. I might even add that I do realize that being 'fluent' in windows-management might be a drawback in ubuntu (*nix?) usage because I expect things to work one way and well, they often aren't ...
Then again, for me personally, the Windows experience has always been : get things working in the default configuration without a hassle. If you want to make changes or tweak something you'll need to learn how it works using blood, sweat & tears; once you get the hang of it, it quickly sets apart the plebs from the guru's. Ubuntu (and again *nix in general) on the other hand seems to skip the first step, although again I'll add that it's been improving with huge steps. (I jumped on the train with 5.10)
In the end you'll run into walls on both platforms, but it seems to me that windows keeps those walls a bit further down the road by providing a much more streamlined & uniform configuration GUI. Ubuntu also has a tools, but they feel more like a bunch of tools thrown together instead of a thought-through set of programs.
We can bash on Microsoft as much as we want, but they DID manage to get computing to the general population. If the (overly) simplified windows GUI already is troublesome to mom & dad, just imagine where we would have been if we'd have been stuck with unix only.
ps: yes I'm ranting, but it's mostly due to the (other =) ranters out there... I'm sure most people are smart enough to see there's room for both OS's to co-exist but sadly it's the fanboys that make the loudest noise all the time and annoy the hell out of me.
Not sure you're replying to me : but NO the video drivers are not (generally) included in windows. There's a 'generic' driver usually that IS present, but most of the time you have to go the website of the manufacturer, find the driver for your model and run it. Reboot and presto, it works.
To get my nvidia geforce4 440 to work I had to :
* install ubuntu
* all 'restricted drivers', which comes telling me there is no restricted driver
* read through forums, find nvidia driver from website
* fight with GDM to get the driver to install, it KEEPS complaining about an X-Server running even though I've stopped it plenty of times
* finally get it to run and then read that the driver is not compatible
* read more forums, find beta nvidia driver from website
* fight with GDM to get the driver to install, it KEEPS complaining about an X-Server running even though I've stopped it plenty of times
* finally get it to install and make necesarry changes to xorg.conf file
* reboot
* see how ubuntu boots (scrollbar grows), then turns of your screen and gives the drum-roll that says you can login. However, the screen is pitch-black
* try to poke gdm to live using the console
* read lots of forum posts
* mess around in the console trying to modify xorg.conf manually, starting stopping gdm until you grow very tired of it as it's all no good =(
* find out that although you can't get the running x-server to live, you do can start a new one that then sits under ctrl-alt-F8
* verify/set display settings using nvidia applet
* reboot to find that AGAIN nothing is visible under ctrl-alt-F7
* read more forums to find out if other people ever had that same issue ?
* install/configure remote desktop via the 'second x-server'
* reboot
* try to log on using vnc from other pc => connection refused
* log in "blindly" => works, but you don't see a thing so rather user-unfriendly
* then log in remotely using vnc : works !
* via vnc, start the nvidia applet and notice that the default panel is disabled and that the signal is going to the CRT for some reason !?
=> why does it use the crt on console 7 but the default panel on console 8 I ask you ????????
* enable default panel (I don't have one available), disbale crt, save
=> error writing to configuration file !?
* write to file in home folder, use console to copy from home folder to the proper location (overwrite)
* reboot
and everything works perfectly !
So yes, I think the Windows experience was a LOT nicer on this one.
I'm not saying that Ubuntu will always fail on this, and probably it's mostly nvidia's "fault", but please come down from that ivory tower because it worked for you ! Maybe more recent hardware means less problems, but it's cheaper to buy a (second hand) windows license than it is to buy a new pc.
One simple example would be : getting the hardware to work. Followed closely by getting the wifi to work.
Ubuntu is getting much more user-friendly with every incarnation, but it still has a rather long way to go before it will reach the ease-of-use of a recent Windows platform IMHO.
Seriously, I like Ubuntu and I have 2 portables running myself + have put it on my mom's computer since she wanted a localized OS. The personal ones are for me playing around with it a bit since I'm curious what's all the fuss about. The other one is in use by my toddler-girl who enjoys to play GCompris on it or watch some DVD-rips of Dora The explorer on it. My moms is being used solely for a bit of mailing (Thunderbird) and browsing (Firefox).
In the old days, those 3 computers (all dell portables btw) ran Windows2000 Professional. Setup was simple : put in Wind2k cd in the tray, startup, go through the setup, download the driver installations from Dell and run those too. At worst you had to fiddle around a bit with tcp settings. After that the system was up and running and I'd lost half a day at most per machine... (format + setup + setting up mail accounts etc takes a bit of time).
Getting Ubuntu running on them has been a hassle for all 3 of them.
* getting video running has been HELL : with only 1 out of 3 I managed to get the nvidia blob to run after reading days and days of forums, trying out every single trick they propose. The two others still run in 'software' mode, which is fine for firefox/thunderbird or GCompris (more or less), but has cost me several days trying anyway.
* wifi wasn't always (properlty) recognized : pcmcia went mostly fine, usb was hell. Finally got it working via ndiswrapper
* each time there is an upGRade something breaks and I'm back in the 'problem-chasing' game =(
As a side-note : people always complain about Windows Update pushing lots of bytes, but boy oh boy, same is true for ubuntu IMHO. Not that I find that a bad thing per-se, but then again, stop complaining about Windows.
Depends,
the question will quickly become : can you afford what you want ?
(Not sure what you pay now for a x-Mbit line, but expect that price to go through the roof if you insist on it being 'constant speed' instead of the 'burst speed' that they sell right now, be it with 'dubious wording'...)
If I'd have mod-points I'd mod you up (insightful) regarding both the ease at which one can get said illegal drugs *and* the (potential contents) of that stuff =(
Then again, it's not because something is regulated that it becomes "safe". Think of the many food-industry scandals that emerge all too frequently all over the planet (melamine in milk, anti-freeze in wine, car-oil in cattle-feed, etc...)
We don't outlaw blunt objects, we teach people to use them 'carefully'.
The only thing about drugs that scares me is that it removes any 'reservations' one might have. It kind of undoes "education", something not present in most non-regulated things.
I'll second that.
My 3 year old daughter has been having fun with a (very) old laptop (PIII500) that has Ubuntu + GCompris on it. Clearly it needs a bit of guiding in the beginning to explain what all the games 'do', but now she'll fire it up herself (after asking off course, I don't want her to sit behind the computer hours on end...yet =), clicks the plane-icon and jumps from one game to another. I think she likes the 'movement' games best (eg. clicking the blue dot to make a drawing, watering the plants, ...) although she'll easily play the cards-memory game from start to end in no time. Having done the latter a couple of times she seems to have grown tired of it, oh well, I think it will take some more time before she manages to finish the Towers of Hanoi game =)
Since there was plenty of room left on the disk, I converted a couple of here Dora / Bob The Builder / Bumba / ... DVD's to DivX and now she prefers to watch them on the laptop instead of looking at it on TV. (**)
Anyway, just keep your eyes open for a second-hand portable (I bought this one for ca 200â couple of years back as I wanted to give Linux (Ubuntu) a try, but recently she's having lots more fun on it than I am, I think I need a new toying-portable =)
**: Not sure whether it's that much better for the eyes : IMHO LCD (tft, XGA) is much less straining than CRT @50Hz, but clearly she's sitting a lot closer to the screen, so maybe both 'bads' cancel each other out ?
I so can see it happening :
"Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking spiders on this motherfucking space-station!"