Then you obviously have never worked in the automotive business, as I have. I'll speak about Toyota, since that is where I'm most knowledgable. Toyota dealerships have to access a website called Toyota Dealer Daily to order parts, put in warranty claims, and other things. This site uses so much proprietary IE javascript that Firefox can't even load the login page (and you have to login to do ANYTHING on Dealer Daily). I worked at a dealer where we had Toyota, Chevy, Dodge, Kia, and Hyundai, and all of those sites stipulated that you must use IE to access the site, but I worked in the Toyota end of the dealership, so I can only vouch for Toyota's IE only site.
Let me introduce you to one more IE commercial site. This company has an asset managment, patch management, online backup, etc... service that is hosted by them, and you access everything through a web interface. I'm quite familiar with it, as the company that I work for partners with them more than I like (nothing I can do about it). It doesn't work in any other browser than IE. Others need not even apply.:(
My 2007 Toyota Yaris has an aux connector in the center console that links into my CD player. That's an analog input. The sound quality is much better than using the FM transmitter I used with my previous vehicle. However, I don't have the ability to control my iPod through my radio since it is just an analog input for auxiliary devices. (Plus, I don't have any buttons on my steering wheel so no big loss anyhow).
"On XP home, I can give my users only the most basic rights, they belong to the group Users. This is as limited as it gets, and they can still install programs by default (they just have to be signed and can't make machine/domain level changes)."
Of course, we're talking about the enterprise here, so XP Home is an exception. In an Active Directory domain, using Group Policy I can pretty much lockdown whatever I need to. I could make your start menu have only a couple items, make your account use a predefined user profile (and a read-only profile at that so, that any changes you make are gone at next login). I can even set domain-wide everyone's home page in Internet Explorer (and I can change pretty much every other setting in IE as well). The point being here, is that as the original poster said, you can lock Windows down to disallow users installing updates from Microsoft.
I know of one area where Windows 3.1 is still used... I recently took a tour during open house where my father works (he is a machinist) and one of the CNC controlled machines was running Windows 3.1. I was sort of surprised at first, but when I thought about it I realized that for as long as that machine still functions, it will be running Windows 3.1. That could be a while!
Do you have a link with info on identifying CD/DVD burners as RPC-1 or not? As much as I'd love to leave the world of Windows (and I do use Linux when I can), but my job revolves around Windows support. I will have to run Vista at some point and I'd like to know if my DVD burners are RPC-1 or not.
Why does your browser have to be a closed-source product?
Theoretically speaking, it doesn't. However, there are certain industries where doing business requires Internet Explorer. I will give you an example that I'm very familiar with: Once upon a time, I worked for a Toyota dealership, specifically in the parts department. To order parts, make returns, do warranty claims... etc, we had to use what Toyota likes to call "Dealer Daily". Guess what, I tried using Firefox once to access that site. It chokes - badly. They are using so many IE proprietary extensions that not only does the page not render correctly, but it seems the web app just doesn't run. Period. You can't even get past the login screen.
You see, the problem is that in industries such as that, where a website is only accessed by a closed group of businesses (in that case Toyota dealerships), the website engineers simply decided that since everyone is using Windows, and Windows comes with IE, we are going to program for IE and screw everything else. They don't control the who, what, when, where, and how dealerships take care of their IT, and they cannot guarantee that Firefox, Netscape, or Opera is installed on the PCs. They DO know, however, that IE is always available. So that is what they program for. Do I like that fact? No. Why can't they be bothered to make things as browser independent as possible? It's easier and cheaper to program for one browser. Cost savings! There's your answer.
I now work for a company that is an IT solutions company, and we have several clients that are dealer groups (one of them owns over 150 dealerships and over 7,000 desktops at said dealerships). Nearly all of them run Windows of some flavor. We use Microsoft here. A lot. I don't like using so much MS products, but its how we do business, much of it having to do with who we support.
Last night I was at my wifes friends house, removed Norton which was due to start nagging her in 4 weeks for money anyway and installed AVG. 120MB of memory freed and 7 Services uninstalled! I actually wouldn't mind paying for Norton if it wasn't such a complete pile of bloat!
Oh, I agree, I stopped using regular Norton AV a couple years ago. I have the corporate version available to me anyhow, so that is what I've been using. WAY better.
On my Athlon64 3700+, I decided to try out 32 vs 64 bit in their current state using Gentoo Linux. I setup two hard drives, one had everything compiled 32bit, and the other hard drive I had 64bit. I didn't think there would be any difference for everyday desktop use, but the system did feel a tad more responsive over all. I would like to do that again, this time as a server. Like SQL maybe. That's where the biggest difference would be as of right now.
... you are seriously forgetting about the most used symantec product in the corporate environment. Symantec Corporate Anti-virus. We use it, every company I support uses it (lots of companies). One client has over 7,000 machines running the client end of it, meanwhile there's all the domain controllers running the server end as well. Licenses... cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching! Unlike their comsumer level Norton AV, Symantec Corporate AV, in my experience, actually does it's job without being intrusive, AND it's nowhere near the resource hog that Norton AV is.
Ghost isn't as big as it used to be, and the rest is junk as you mentioned. I just needed to add in the corporate AV... it's their one decent product. If Symantec goes under, I won't miss all the other products, but the corporate AV would be missed.
I just happen to enjoy playing Doom3 and UT 2004. What card other than an ATI or Nvidia is going to pull that off and has open source drivers?
You're using open source drivers, but then you go and (censored) it up by using a closed source game.
Actually, I use Nvidia's binary driver.:P
I was just waiting for one of you open source utopians to express the "closed source games are evil" opinion. Let's face it, while there have been some good open source games released, 99% of the games in the world are closed source, and some of them I have deemed are worth my time and money spent. The game industry wouldn't truly exist without the profit motive, and in general they see the need to keep things closed to ensure that.
Games don't need to be closed source to make money. That's what you're probably thinking at the moment. The only system that would work that I can think of is if a source CD was included in the same box as the binary CD. Obviously, you couldn't post the source on a publicly accessible server, for people who can would download the source and compile the game - never giving the company one dollar.
Things to keep in mind:
A business is a profiteering venture (we're not talking non-profit here).
It is in the business's best interest to protect any proprietary technology. Since we all hate software patents (and dislike copyright), the only protection left is closed source.
Thanks for the info on the G550 PCIe. I used to have a G450 AGP that worked great on Linux. Looks like I will still be buying Matrox cards for Linux where I don't need the GPU power provided by Nvidia (i.e. I do play Doom3 and UT2004 under linux).
Wow, what a wonderful piece of flamebait. I shouldn't even respond, but here goes:
Some of us don't give a shit about games. I'm not a 14-year-old anymore. 3D is for wankers.
True, some people don't care about games. But if you think 3D is only for 14 year olds and wankers, then I am sure plenty of people over at ILM would vehemently disagree with you. They use Linux, too. I'm 27, and I still find some time to play games. I have friends in their mid thirties (family and all that) who play 3D games. To each their own, but gaming doesn't seem to be lacking in players from children on up to people in their 40s.
If you can't shake the addiction though... how about a Nintendo product? I'm told that Nintendo makes cheap computers that are designed almost exclusively for playing games. You can even use a 52-inch widescreen TV instead of some puny computer monitor. The games are all well matched to the CPU, RAM, controllers, etc. You never need to worry about system requirements.
System requirements are never a problem for me, so that argument is out the window. Oh, and I have a TV out if I really wanted to do something like that. By the way, if you've seen Halo for original xbox and then played the PC version... the PC version looks much better IMHO.
Microsoft has a similar product. No, not Windows. (not sure what that is useful for) I mean the X-Box.
This isn't a Windows bashing thread! While there are certainly things about Windows I dislike (and I really like Linux overall), it is not useless. I should know, I support Windows in a corporate environment. We get work done (though we certainly pay $$$$ for it. Licensing sucks.)
Sony makes something like this too. It's called something like Playstation, Playstation 2, or maybe Playstation 3. I don't know and I don't care, but you might like the product.
I think you missed the part in my original post about not liking console controllers. My cousin has an xbox, xbox360, and a playstation 2... for some games the controllers are fine for me. And Xbox Live! solves the problem of online competition (I love competitive playing via the internet like Unreal Tournament 2004), but controllers fall short for the FPS genre of games, and I play mostly FPS games.
Anyway, we're on the verge of off-topic, and I've wasted enough time replying to you.
I completely agree with you. Too bad I don't have mod points.
Even the integrated video on motherboards is limited to very few chipset choices. Hmmm.. S3(owned by VIA these days, right?), Nvidia, ATI, SIS... can't think of anyone else. Are S3 and SiS more open about their hardware? I don't own a system with either one. Hell, even my laptop has a ATI Radeon Mobility chip for video!
Seems to me that all the people bitching about using a "non-evil" graphics card must be using old junk for video. I just happen to enjoy playing Doom3 and UT 2004. What card other than an ATI or Nvidia is going to pull that off and has open source drivers?
Yeah, that's what I thought. (Then again, I bet those people will bitch about closed source games installed on my linux system!)
If you read the review, they hook a bunch of stuff up to it, and measure the draw to be 332W(!). And it seems to handle the load fine. However, I wouldn't want that for a long term solution.
I have one of those Shuttle XPC systems that has an Athlon64 3700+ w/1GB RAM in it, as well as a GeForce 6600GT AGP, a DVD+/-RW, and of course a hard drive. This XPC only comes with a 240W PSU(!). I was worried at first about cramming a GeForce 6600GT in it, since it is a power hungry card (plus this xpc is a socket 754 setup and it's maxed out CPU wise... 3700+ is the end of the line AFAIK.)
Anyway, to shorten the story: This system runs rock solid, WinXP doesn't crash, my games run reliably -- Important since I wanted a little system I could tote easily to a LAN party. And this machine does all the tasks I need a Windows PC for not just games. My other PCs (excluding the BBS) all run Linux.
It's been a long time since I've felt compelled to "friend" anyone here on slashdot, but I've just added you to my friends list. I agree completely with your post.
This test compares the new heatsink to a popular 3rd party product and it turns out that the new AMD unit is very impressive: high performance and silent operation from a free CPU cooler?
So I take it this person has never looked at the price difference between retail package and oem(bare) processors. You're definitely paying for the packaging and the heatsink/fan, though maybe not as much as a nice 3rd party unit.
I was under the impression that Gentoo had gotten a lot of the users who want the level of deep control and configurability that this article is associating with Slackware.
Funny you should say that... because that's exactly what I did. I jumped from Slackware to Gentoo a little over a year ago. Prior to that, however I had used Slackware for several years. (On a side note, my first distro ever was Red Hat 5.2. I stuck with RH until about v7.3. And yeah, I've played with some other distros. But I'm loving Gentoo!).
Well, that won't fix my particular problem since it's a prior exploit that is causing my problem. At any rate, VPN isn't even enabled. The router wouldn't have been accepting those packets anyway. Getting an updated version of the IOS for the exploit at hand, however, I find that Cisco wants to make the process as much of a PITA as possible; They'd rather I buy at service contract from them. (Not going to happen - My website is a hobby and not worth that much money). I bought a less expensive router that still meets my needs but is still probably overkill - at anyrate the firmware updates are free.;)
Thanks for the link to Auditor, I didn't know about that useful tool until your post. Yeah, it's scary knowing that some of the "wrong hands" probably do use it.
I'll be taking a look at the previously known exploits on Cisco's site and seeing which one is probably the problem I experienced. I'll see about getting the patched IOS version. Eitherway, however, I'll more than likely be putting it on eBay even if I don't get the update. I'll just note in the auction that the buyer will need to obtain the update.:P
Unfortunately, "jumping through hoops" is still necessary. You can only obtain an update by contacting Cisco's TAC either by phone or email. That get's the ball rolling.
Then later in the same document, there's a whole section about Obtaining Fixed Software including a subsection for Customers without Service Contracts (emphasis mine) which I assume is your case.
Yes, that section would apply to me. I do not have a service contract with them. (Nor do I want one).
Interestingly enough, though, is the fact that I don't even use VPN on this router... which leads me to believe I missed a previous DOS exploit for my router.
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Then you obviously have never worked in the automotive business, as I have. I'll speak about Toyota, since that is where I'm most knowledgable. Toyota dealerships have to access a website called Toyota Dealer Daily to order parts, put in warranty claims, and other things. This site uses so much proprietary IE javascript that Firefox can't even load the login page (and you have to login to do ANYTHING on Dealer Daily). I worked at a dealer where we had Toyota, Chevy, Dodge, Kia, and Hyundai, and all of those sites stipulated that you must use IE to access the site, but I worked in the Toyota end of the dealership, so I can only vouch for Toyota's IE only site.
Let me introduce you to one more IE commercial site. This company has an asset managment, patch management, online backup, etc... service that is hosted by them, and you access everything through a web interface. I'm quite familiar with it, as the company that I work for partners with them more than I like (nothing I can do about it). It doesn't work in any other browser than IE. Others need not even apply. :(
Hah! Gentoo is still my favorite distro. I love Portage!
My 2007 Toyota Yaris has an aux connector in the center console that links into my CD player. That's an analog input. The sound quality is much better than using the FM transmitter I used with my previous vehicle. However, I don't have the ability to control my iPod through my radio since it is just an analog input for auxiliary devices. (Plus, I don't have any buttons on my steering wheel so no big loss anyhow).
I average 40mpg in my new 2007 Toyota Yaris. I could get more if I didn't do 80mph to work everyday. ;)
Of course, we're talking about the enterprise here, so XP Home is an exception. In an Active Directory domain, using Group Policy I can pretty much lockdown whatever I need to. I could make your start menu have only a couple items, make your account use a predefined user profile (and a read-only profile at that so, that any changes you make are gone at next login). I can even set domain-wide everyone's home page in Internet Explorer (and I can change pretty much every other setting in IE as well). The point being here, is that as the original poster said, you can lock Windows down to disallow users installing updates from Microsoft.
I know of one area where Windows 3.1 is still used... I recently took a tour during open house where my father works (he is a machinist) and one of the CNC controlled machines was running Windows 3.1. I was sort of surprised at first, but when I thought about it I realized that for as long as that machine still functions, it will be running Windows 3.1. That could be a while!
Do you have a link with info on identifying CD/DVD burners as RPC-1 or not? As much as I'd love to leave the world of Windows (and I do use Linux when I can), but my job revolves around Windows support. I will have to run Vista at some point and I'd like to know if my DVD burners are RPC-1 or not.
Theoretically speaking, it doesn't. However, there are certain industries where doing business requires Internet Explorer. I will give you an example that I'm very familiar with: Once upon a time, I worked for a Toyota dealership, specifically in the parts department. To order parts, make returns, do warranty claims... etc, we had to use what Toyota likes to call "Dealer Daily". Guess what, I tried using Firefox once to access that site. It chokes - badly. They are using so many IE proprietary extensions that not only does the page not render correctly, but it seems the web app just doesn't run. Period. You can't even get past the login screen.
You see, the problem is that in industries such as that, where a website is only accessed by a closed group of businesses (in that case Toyota dealerships), the website engineers simply decided that since everyone is using Windows, and Windows comes with IE, we are going to program for IE and screw everything else. They don't control the who, what, when, where, and how dealerships take care of their IT, and they cannot guarantee that Firefox, Netscape, or Opera is installed on the PCs. They DO know, however, that IE is always available. So that is what they program for. Do I like that fact? No. Why can't they be bothered to make things as browser independent as possible? It's easier and cheaper to program for one browser. Cost savings! There's your answer.
I now work for a company that is an IT solutions company, and we have several clients that are dealer groups (one of them owns over 150 dealerships and over 7,000 desktops at said dealerships). Nearly all of them run Windows of some flavor. We use Microsoft here. A lot. I don't like using so much MS products, but its how we do business, much of it having to do with who we support.
Oh, I agree, I stopped using regular Norton AV a couple years ago. I have the corporate version available to me anyhow, so that is what I've been using. WAY better.
On my Athlon64 3700+, I decided to try out 32 vs 64 bit in their current state using Gentoo Linux. I setup two hard drives, one had everything compiled 32bit, and the other hard drive I had 64bit. I didn't think there would be any difference for everyday desktop use, but the system did feel a tad more responsive over all. I would like to do that again, this time as a server. Like SQL maybe. That's where the biggest difference would be as of right now.
... you are seriously forgetting about the most used symantec product in the corporate environment. Symantec Corporate Anti-virus. We use it, every company I support uses it (lots of companies). One client has over 7,000 machines running the client end of it, meanwhile there's all the domain controllers running the server end as well. Licenses... cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching! Unlike their comsumer level Norton AV, Symantec Corporate AV, in my experience, actually does it's job without being intrusive, AND it's nowhere near the resource hog that Norton AV is.
Ghost isn't as big as it used to be, and the rest is junk as you mentioned. I just needed to add in the corporate AV... it's their one decent product. If Symantec goes under, I won't miss all the other products, but the corporate AV would be missed.
OK, I've got karma to burn.
I just happen to enjoy playing Doom3 and UT 2004. What card other than an ATI or Nvidia is going to pull that off and has open source drivers?
Actually, I use Nvidia's binary driver. :P
I was just waiting for one of you open source utopians to express the "closed source games are evil" opinion. Let's face it, while there have been some good open source games released, 99% of the games in the world are closed source, and some of them I have deemed are worth my time and money spent. The game industry wouldn't truly exist without the profit motive, and in general they see the need to keep things closed to ensure that.
Games don't need to be closed source to make money. That's what you're probably thinking at the moment. The only system that would work that I can think of is if a source CD was included in the same box as the binary CD. Obviously, you couldn't post the source on a publicly accessible server, for people who can would download the source and compile the game - never giving the company one dollar.
Things to keep in mind:
Thanks for the info on the G550 PCIe. I used to have a G450 AGP that worked great on Linux. Looks like I will still be buying Matrox cards for Linux where I don't need the GPU power provided by Nvidia (i.e. I do play Doom3 and UT2004 under linux).
Wow, what a wonderful piece of flamebait. I shouldn't even respond, but here goes:
True, some people don't care about games. But if you think 3D is only for 14 year olds and wankers, then I am sure plenty of people over at ILM would vehemently disagree with you. They use Linux, too. I'm 27, and I still find some time to play games. I have friends in their mid thirties (family and all that) who play 3D games. To each their own, but gaming doesn't seem to be lacking in players from children on up to people in their 40s.
System requirements are never a problem for me, so that argument is out the window. Oh, and I have a TV out if I really wanted to do something like that. By the way, if you've seen Halo for original xbox and then played the PC version... the PC version looks much better IMHO.
This isn't a Windows bashing thread! While there are certainly things about Windows I dislike (and I really like Linux overall), it is not useless. I should know, I support Windows in a corporate environment. We get work done (though we certainly pay $$$$ for it. Licensing sucks.)
I think you missed the part in my original post about not liking console controllers. My cousin has an xbox, xbox360, and a playstation 2... for some games the controllers are fine for me. And Xbox Live! solves the problem of online competition (I love competitive playing via the internet like Unreal Tournament 2004), but controllers fall short for the FPS genre of games, and I play mostly FPS games.
Anyway, we're on the verge of off-topic, and I've wasted enough time replying to you.
I completely agree with you. Too bad I don't have mod points.
Even the integrated video on motherboards is limited to very few chipset choices. Hmmm.. S3(owned by VIA these days, right?), Nvidia, ATI, SIS... can't think of anyone else. Are S3 and SiS more open about their hardware? I don't own a system with either one. Hell, even my laptop has a ATI Radeon Mobility chip for video!
Seems to me that all the people bitching about using a "non-evil" graphics card must be using old junk for video. I just happen to enjoy playing Doom3 and UT 2004. What card other than an ATI or Nvidia is going to pull that off and has open source drivers?
Yeah, that's what I thought. (Then again, I bet those people will bitch about closed source games installed on my linux system!)
I have one of those Shuttle XPC systems that has an Athlon64 3700+ w/1GB RAM in it, as well as a GeForce 6600GT AGP, a DVD+/-RW, and of course a hard drive. This XPC only comes with a 240W PSU(!). I was worried at first about cramming a GeForce 6600GT in it, since it is a power hungry card (plus this xpc is a socket 754 setup and it's maxed out CPU wise... 3700+ is the end of the line AFAIK.)
Anyway, to shorten the story: This system runs rock solid, WinXP doesn't crash, my games run reliably -- Important since I wanted a little system I could tote easily to a LAN party. And this machine does all the tasks I need a Windows PC for not just games. My other PCs (excluding the BBS) all run Linux.
Topic says it all, this is just filler space for the lame-filter!
It's been a long time since I've felt compelled to "friend" anyone here on slashdot, but I've just added you to my friends list. I agree completely with your post.
So I take it this person has never looked at the price difference between retail package and oem(bare) processors. You're definitely paying for the packaging and the heatsink/fan, though maybe not as much as a nice 3rd party unit.
I hadn't heard of RedHawk Linux until this news blurb, so at first I thought I had read it as "RedHat" and just about choked on my coffee!
Funny you should say that... because that's exactly what I did. I jumped from Slackware to Gentoo a little over a year ago. Prior to that, however I had used Slackware for several years. (On a side note, my first distro ever was Red Hat 5.2. I stuck with RH until about v7.3. And yeah, I've played with some other distros. But I'm loving Gentoo!).
Well, that won't fix my particular problem since it's a prior exploit that is causing my problem. At any rate, VPN isn't even enabled. The router wouldn't have been accepting those packets anyway. Getting an updated version of the IOS for the exploit at hand, however, I find that Cisco wants to make the process as much of a PITA as possible; They'd rather I buy at service contract from them. (Not going to happen - My website is a hobby and not worth that much money). I bought a less expensive router that still meets my needs but is still probably overkill - at anyrate the firmware updates are free. ;)
Thanks for the link to Auditor, I didn't know about that useful tool until your post. Yeah, it's scary knowing that some of the "wrong hands" probably do use it.
I'll be taking a look at the previously known exploits on Cisco's site and seeing which one is probably the problem I experienced. I'll see about getting the patched IOS version. Eitherway, however, I'll more than likely be putting it on eBay even if I don't get the update. I'll just note in the auction that the buyer will need to obtain the update. :P
Unfortunately, "jumping through hoops" is still necessary. You can only obtain an update by contacting Cisco's TAC either by phone or email. That get's the ball rolling.
Yes, that section would apply to me. I do not have a service contract with them. (Nor do I want one).
Interestingly enough, though, is the fact that I don't even use VPN on this router... which leads me to believe I missed a previous DOS exploit for my router.