My personal highlights are NAT having eliminated most of the address space limitations - most companies, even medium-large ones, can make do with 4-8 external IPs
If you want redundancy and have multiple provider connections, the absolute minimum you'll have is a/24. Usually though you'd want bigger as a lot of people set a bgp filter on/24s and smaller as you don't want your router's memory filling up
I fail to understand point 1: at the hardware level, I see no reason why any hardware equipment needs modification to support IPv6, unless you rely on "firmware-accelerated" hardware (TCP offloaders and whatnot). At the upper layers, all you need is software which handles both protocols. They're pretty much universal today.
You're making a VERY big assumption that large networks are generally full of brand new installs (under 5 years old) and have been setup by people who can't be bothered to follow security basics and disable unneccessary things like IPv6 support. You assume that ALL the software will support IPv6, and that the software that doesn't can be easily brought up to date without having to pay $$$ for someone to re-impliment the software as the original developers went bust 10 years ago...
How would you propose testing and upgrading a few thousand servers knowing that just ONE missed server could cause substantial financial loss if it doesn't play ball when you throw the switch?
Network equipment wise, you're looking at spending a hell of a lot of money. 90% of the switches you see in datacentres and cable rooms for instance are Cisco 2900s/3500s and 3Com SS2s which don't support IPv6. I'll bet half the 7200 routers which run a substantial proportion of the Internet are running IOS versions which pre-date IPv6 too
Not everyone runs your average bedroom linux install in commercial environments.
Having to single-user it for a shell? Sod that. I got bored and hooked up the usb dvdrom within about 15 minutes of opening my aspire one's box. Now I'm happily booting XP and OSX, although the damn thing won't un-suspend in OSX so that kinda kills the usefulness of that!
BTW, Acer left/root/.bash_history in place for their image. Quite interesting
I used to do daily commutes of 110 miles in a 1997 150bhp turbocharged petrol 4-pot and found that the fuel I put in would have a major effect on the economy of the car. The worst stuff was Adsa's own brand fuel which would return about 33mpg. The best stuff was BP Ultimate at about 43MPG. I settled on BP Standard which gave me the best mileage per pound (UK currency) at 42.5MPG +/- 0.1mpg (average for the round trip) on a typical day (I drove in a very repeatable manner)
Now I've got a '98 200bhp n/a V6 (same car make+model) I've found that BP Ultimate gives a substantial improvement over the standard stuff (42mpg vs. 38mpg on the same run mentioned above) and is actually cheaper to run in the long term, despite being the most expensive stuff you can buy around here.
Why this happens I don't know, but I do know that each brand of unleaded returns distinctly different economy in the two engines I've had since caring about economy.
What if a company decides to make you "redundant" with zero warning (illegal in the uk) and zero severance package (also illegal in the uk)
You're being fired on the spot without being paid for the last few weeks work, but they call it a layoff, so you're fine, right? You'll get your severance in 6-12 months through a tribunal. Well, half of it after the no-win-no-fee solicitor's had his share...
Your potential employer wants a reference. Do they get it? Do they hell. Legal recourse? None. You want to pay your rent but even working 24/7 at minimum wage doesn't cover it, but that's ok because you were "laid off" not sacked. Sure the landlord will agree... And of course the local convenience store will give you credit on food so you can feed your self because you were "laid off"... yeahright
At the end of the day taking information is essential to a sysadmins survival outside the workplace. Sysadmins get special treatment because there's the perceived threat that once sacked we can and will do whatever we like, so getting rid of us is a quick process, usually involving the cutting of all ties such as the company's contractual obligations in regards to pay, even pay that we've already worked for
Having a little ammunition to "motivate" them in pre-tribunal discussions is essential
Of course, if companies behaved responsibly like my last redundancy, there'd be no need for any of this childishness, and you'd be laid off with the understanding that yes, you know all the root passwords but you promise not to use them. An industry-standard severance package, clear reference procedure and an honest handshake means I'll uphold my end of that bargain with no problem, but god help any company that ever tries to fuck me over again...
Sysadmins generally don't go looking for ways to fuck companies, they just know how to protect themselves, and not forgetting passwords is one way to achieve that
There's something about Dells, USB keyboards and any non-windows installer... Tried about 5 os boot disks on a vostro before I discovered you need the keyboard in just the right socket - and then it screwed up after you chose the kbd type in the installer, necessitating a different machine to install on. Once installed it's worked well.
Are you really under the impression this laptop is aimed towards the geek home use niche? There are two obvious target audiences for this device:
1) People who want the flashiest toys. People who queued up for the iphone. People who won't care about the non user-replaceable battery and will happily pay a couple of hundred for a replacement battery at an apple shop in a couple of years, unless Apple have brought out something shinier by then
2) (The biggest market by far) Companies. Every second middle manager and above in the corporate world will have one of these on order by the end of the week. It'll look good next to their iphone/blackberry. When the shine wears off it'll be replaced and handed down to the IT department for internal 'recycling' or disposal. 2 years would be a long time for an exec to keep a laptop.
The only thing that *might* hamper its adoption (or more realistically force IT departments to upgrade infrastructure) is the lack of an ethernet port.
It's not about form over function or even the product itself, it's about flashiness. That's what Apple sells (as well as a pretty nice OS on generally mediocre hardware). Saying an Apple product will flop because it's not as practical as other products is analogous to saying nobody would want to pay silly money for an original DaVinci painting.
But beyond looking sleek, I'm not sure I get the point. I mean, are you actually SUPPOSED to be storing these in packing envelopes?
What would Mr Opportunist Thief rather target - a bulky Targus bag that some guy in a suit puts down while he does something, or a jiffy bag someone has tucked under their arm?
If I drew my own copies of my favorite Dilbert strips, could I sell a book of them? Seems like basically the same thing.
A more suitable comparison would be to have Scott Adams sue you for selling a photo of yourself holding a Dilbert book you own. You're talking more forgery than anything else.
"considerably more expensive"? Try over 20 times more expensive! (UK 320d touring poverty spec = £27,000. Tato Nano according to the article = £1,250)
Your DIESEL can do 47mpg combined cycle (according to specs), but the petrol 320 can only do 37 and that's with millions of euros worth of development on it. What's the urban figure for the petrol 320?
Sure the VAG group have come up with some very economic little engines (eg. the VW Lupo) but those cars still only do 60mpg extra-urban AND they cost the consumer 6 times more than this thing will to buy.
Now, you try getting a 2 cylinder engine to carry 4 people at 50mph and do 54mpg on a shoestring budget...
it's also kicking their butts on ebay resales once people get fed up of Wii Sports...
TBH my opinion is that times have changed, and what was amazing then really ain't that great now. Look at Elite. It was sensationally good back in its day. So far ahead of its time graphically and as for gameplay, it'd have people hooked for months on end. But wait a minute, what was the gameplay exactly? Buy low, sell high, and shoot the random spaceships 6400 times. It's actually a bloody boring game! So why did we all spend so much time playing it? Because back then it was the best thing around.
Nowadays I'm happy to spend 30 hours playing Mass Effect, or 100 hours playing Blue Dragon or Forza2, but can I play one of my old text adventures for more than 30 minutes before getting bored/frustrated? No, and a lot of people I've spoken to have said the same thing.
We're spoiled nowadays and we have much shorter attention spans than we did back then. Those games may have seemed great 20-30 years ago, but compared to modern offerings they really are quite crap *especially* in the gameplay stakes.
Disclaimer: I'm only making comparisons here between the decent 5% of old-school games, and the decent 5% of modern games. There have always been hideously bad games, and there always will be
Most of the people who buy 360s don't exactly buy £2-300 worth of cutting edge (ish) tech to play 80s games on. If I wanted to re-live my childhood I'd just download an emulator or better yet get the old 8bit machines down from the loft and do it properly.
They/had/ longevity and appeal. I played them for hours on end back when I was a kid and sometimes I do spend a while now and again messing with emulators on my PC. When I'm on the xbox 360 though I want storylines, cutting edge graphics and immersion. How many of the kids today do you think would give more than 30 seconds to these games?
They're not giving away anything really. XBox Live Arcade is a collection of cheap and nasty games like Frogger which probably took a single guy 2 hours to code including drawing the sprites. Think bargain bucket games from the early 1980s.
You're thinking of GATSOs and TruVelos. SPECS are the small cameras (usually surrounded by a pair of IR lamps) on blue poles often with a fancy design in the cross-brace. The cameras themselves just relay video feeds back to a central processing system which clocks your numberplate going through one camera at 1:00pm then going through one 5 miles away at 1:05pm meaning you averaged 60mph between the cameras and sends you a NIP for doing 60 in a 40.
Usually found on long-term motorway roadworks like the M6 between J11-13 ish earlier in the year while they were re-laying the road north of the M6/M6 toll merge. Often accompanied by signs saying "Average speed check".
You know it's SPECS when artics all set the cruise control to 40mph. They don't usually bother for other types of camera/speed limits.
Public transport in the UK (quite literally) stinks.
I could spend 3 hours driving to and from work in climate-controlled comfort for £10/day, or I could spend 4-6 hours standing up on overcrowded trains and standing on freezing cold platforms for £20/day.
However I'm now working a lot closer to home so I have the option of spending about £2/day on petrol+tax+maint+insurance for a 5min door-to-door trip, or waiting up to an hour at a bus stop for a dangerously ill-maintained bus to take another hour to get me to work for £4/day. And then getting mugged on my way home
Either way, the car wins! Public transport only seems to work within the confines of the major cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester)
The worst is when you know there's a GATSO hidden over the crest of a hill (we have plenty of those up north). Unless you like revving the tits off your car to get enough engine braking going, you NEED to hit the pedal. Unfortunately so does the car in front and if it's an SUV, Corsa or worst of all a Micra, you have no choice but to assume they're going to stamp on it and drop 20mph under the speed limit while you're pondering the futility of praying the guy up your exhaust is paying as much attention as you
Trying to light any sort of smoking material with a Bic lighter
I'll light up while driving... but you (or more importantly to me, a copper) will never see me do it unless I'm stopped. The same with taking a swig of a non-alcoholic drink. A quick scan of what's around you, some common sense and an ounce of spatial awareness is all it takes to turn something potentially dangerous into something completely safe. It's the ones without these 3 key skills that are the worrying ones.
The M42 system is more complex, with limits enforced by hundreds of spy cameras..... Drivers have responded by speeding up between the camera traps and braking just before them
I could have sworn they were SPECS cameras down there (number plate recognition system that works out your average speed between 2 points, for those not in the know)
The only games I ever bought for my PS2 were GT3/4 and the GTA games. However I've got an Xbox 360 now and I must say if you liked GT you'll love Forza 2 once you get used to the xbox controller's triggers. It's a great game which like GT3 puts so much focus on racing lines and technique. Very recommended way to spend a couple of hundred quid... Plus GTA4 is coming to the 360 - yum:)
If the laser is sitting in the same place as the current magnetic head, then that the head can potentially read/write 100 times faster doesn't really matter, when there's no way the disk itself can be made spin 100 times faster.
But what if they could make the laser deflect (is there some non-moving way of doing this?) in a tiny but precise arc millions of times a second? With multiple receivers that would enable it to read bits from several tracks during the time it would normally be sitting there waiting for the next bit to come along...
AI65 - Thermal interrupt does not occur if DTS reaches an invalid temperature. What the hell is an invalid temperature? A disconnected sensor or something? It doesn't sound like something a userland thermal-generating loop can exploit but the errata is not detailed enough to know for sure.
I'd guess an invalid temperature would be one which is outside monitorable range. Phase-change cooling will take CPUs to well below 0 degrees C, probably causing a problem if the temperature's dealt with as an unsigned number.
As for the possibility of something exploiting it to gain priv'd code execution, who says every bug has to be exploitable? AFAICT the errata is a list of acknowledged bugs, not security problems. Remember it's Intel that wrote the doc, not Theo.
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My personal highlights are NAT having eliminated most of the address space limitations - most companies, even medium-large ones, can make do with 4-8 external IPs
If you want redundancy and have multiple provider connections, the absolute minimum you'll have is a /24. Usually though you'd want bigger as a lot of people set a bgp filter on /24s and smaller as you don't want your router's memory filling up
I fail to understand point 1: at the hardware level, I see no reason why any hardware equipment needs modification to support IPv6, unless you rely on "firmware-accelerated" hardware (TCP offloaders and whatnot). At the upper layers, all you need is software which handles both protocols. They're pretty much universal today.
You're making a VERY big assumption that large networks are generally full of brand new installs (under 5 years old) and have been setup by people who can't be bothered to follow security basics and disable unneccessary things like IPv6 support. You assume that ALL the software will support IPv6, and that the software that doesn't can be easily brought up to date without having to pay $$$ for someone to re-impliment the software as the original developers went bust 10 years ago...
How would you propose testing and upgrading a few thousand servers knowing that just ONE missed server could cause substantial financial loss if it doesn't play ball when you throw the switch?
Network equipment wise, you're looking at spending a hell of a lot of money. 90% of the switches you see in datacentres and cable rooms for instance are Cisco 2900s/3500s and 3Com SS2s which don't support IPv6. I'll bet half the 7200 routers which run a substantial proportion of the Internet are running IOS versions which pre-date IPv6 too
Not everyone runs your average bedroom linux install in commercial environments.
Having to single-user it for a shell? Sod that. I got bored and hooked up the usb dvdrom within about 15 minutes of opening my aspire one's box. Now I'm happily booting XP and OSX, although the damn thing won't un-suspend in OSX so that kinda kills the usefulness of that!
BTW, Acer left /root/.bash_history in place for their image. Quite interesting
I used to do daily commutes of 110 miles in a 1997 150bhp turbocharged petrol 4-pot and found that the fuel I put in would have a major effect on the economy of the car. The worst stuff was Adsa's own brand fuel which would return about 33mpg. The best stuff was BP Ultimate at about 43MPG. I settled on BP Standard which gave me the best mileage per pound (UK currency) at 42.5MPG +/- 0.1mpg (average for the round trip) on a typical day (I drove in a very repeatable manner)
Now I've got a '98 200bhp n/a V6 (same car make+model) I've found that BP Ultimate gives a substantial improvement over the standard stuff (42mpg vs. 38mpg on the same run mentioned above) and is actually cheaper to run in the long term, despite being the most expensive stuff you can buy around here.
Why this happens I don't know, but I do know that each brand of unleaded returns distinctly different economy in the two engines I've had since caring about economy.
What if a company decides to make you "redundant" with zero warning (illegal in the uk) and zero severance package (also illegal in the uk)
You're being fired on the spot without being paid for the last few weeks work, but they call it a layoff, so you're fine, right? You'll get your severance in 6-12 months through a tribunal. Well, half of it after the no-win-no-fee solicitor's had his share...
Your potential employer wants a reference. Do they get it? Do they hell. Legal recourse? None. You want to pay your rent but even working 24/7 at minimum wage doesn't cover it, but that's ok because you were "laid off" not sacked. Sure the landlord will agree... And of course the local convenience store will give you credit on food so you can feed your self because you were "laid off"... yeahright
At the end of the day taking information is essential to a sysadmins survival outside the workplace. Sysadmins get special treatment because there's the perceived threat that once sacked we can and will do whatever we like, so getting rid of us is a quick process, usually involving the cutting of all ties such as the company's contractual obligations in regards to pay, even pay that we've already worked for
Having a little ammunition to "motivate" them in pre-tribunal discussions is essential
Of course, if companies behaved responsibly like my last redundancy, there'd be no need for any of this childishness, and you'd be laid off with the understanding that yes, you know all the root passwords but you promise not to use them. An industry-standard severance package, clear reference procedure and an honest handshake means I'll uphold my end of that bargain with no problem, but god help any company that ever tries to fuck me over again...
Sysadmins generally don't go looking for ways to fuck companies, they just know how to protect themselves, and not forgetting passwords is one way to achieve that
I forgot to add - this was a mix of linux (debian, ubuntu, rhel, centos) and FreeBSD
There's something about Dells, USB keyboards and any non-windows installer... Tried about 5 os boot disks on a vostro before I discovered you need the keyboard in just the right socket - and then it screwed up after you chose the kbd type in the installer, necessitating a different machine to install on. Once installed it's worked well.
Are you really under the impression this laptop is aimed towards the geek home use niche? There are two obvious target audiences for this device:
1) People who want the flashiest toys. People who queued up for the iphone. People who won't care about the non user-replaceable battery and will happily pay a couple of hundred for a replacement battery at an apple shop in a couple of years, unless Apple have brought out something shinier by then
2) (The biggest market by far) Companies. Every second middle manager and above in the corporate world will have one of these on order by the end of the week. It'll look good next to their iphone/blackberry. When the shine wears off it'll be replaced and handed down to the IT department for internal 'recycling' or disposal. 2 years would be a long time for an exec to keep a laptop.
The only thing that *might* hamper its adoption (or more realistically force IT departments to upgrade infrastructure) is the lack of an ethernet port.
It's not about form over function or even the product itself, it's about flashiness. That's what Apple sells (as well as a pretty nice OS on generally mediocre hardware). Saying an Apple product will flop because it's not as practical as other products is analogous to saying nobody would want to pay silly money for an original DaVinci painting.
But beyond looking sleek, I'm not sure I get the point. I mean, are you actually SUPPOSED to be storing these in packing envelopes?
What would Mr Opportunist Thief rather target - a bulky Targus bag that some guy in a suit puts down while he does something, or a jiffy bag someone has tucked under their arm?
If I drew my own copies of my favorite Dilbert strips, could I sell a book of them? Seems like basically the same thing.
A more suitable comparison would be to have Scott Adams sue you for selling a photo of yourself holding a Dilbert book you own. You're talking more forgery than anything else.
"considerably more expensive"? Try over 20 times more expensive! (UK 320d touring poverty spec = £27,000. Tato Nano according to the article = £1,250)
Your DIESEL can do 47mpg combined cycle (according to specs), but the petrol 320 can only do 37 and that's with millions of euros worth of development on it. What's the urban figure for the petrol 320?
Sure the VAG group have come up with some very economic little engines (eg. the VW Lupo) but those cars still only do 60mpg extra-urban AND they cost the consumer 6 times more than this thing will to buy.
Now, you try getting a 2 cylinder engine to carry 4 people at 50mph and do 54mpg on a shoestring budget...
it's also kicking their butts on ebay resales once people get fed up of Wii Sports...
TBH my opinion is that times have changed, and what was amazing then really ain't that great now. Look at Elite. It was sensationally good back in its day. So far ahead of its time graphically and as for gameplay, it'd have people hooked for months on end. But wait a minute, what was the gameplay exactly? Buy low, sell high, and shoot the random spaceships 6400 times. It's actually a bloody boring game! So why did we all spend so much time playing it? Because back then it was the best thing around.
Nowadays I'm happy to spend 30 hours playing Mass Effect, or 100 hours playing Blue Dragon or Forza2, but can I play one of my old text adventures for more than 30 minutes before getting bored/frustrated? No, and a lot of people I've spoken to have said the same thing.
We're spoiled nowadays and we have much shorter attention spans than we did back then. Those games may have seemed great 20-30 years ago, but compared to modern offerings they really are quite crap *especially* in the gameplay stakes.
Disclaimer: I'm only making comparisons here between the decent 5% of old-school games, and the decent 5% of modern games. There have always been hideously bad games, and there always will be
Most of the people who buy 360s don't exactly buy £2-300 worth of cutting edge (ish) tech to play 80s games on. If I wanted to re-live my childhood I'd just download an emulator or better yet get the old 8bit machines down from the loft and do it properly.
They /had/ longevity and appeal. I played them for hours on end back when I was a kid and sometimes I do spend a while now and again messing with emulators on my PC. When I'm on the xbox 360 though I want storylines, cutting edge graphics and immersion. How many of the kids today do you think would give more than 30 seconds to these games?
They're not giving away anything really. XBox Live Arcade is a collection of cheap and nasty games like Frogger which probably took a single guy 2 hours to code including drawing the sprites. Think bargain bucket games from the early 1980s.
You're thinking of GATSOs and TruVelos. SPECS are the small cameras (usually surrounded by a pair of IR lamps) on blue poles often with a fancy design in the cross-brace. The cameras themselves just relay video feeds back to a central processing system which clocks your numberplate going through one camera at 1:00pm then going through one 5 miles away at 1:05pm meaning you averaged 60mph between the cameras and sends you a NIP for doing 60 in a 40.
Usually found on long-term motorway roadworks like the M6 between J11-13 ish earlier in the year while they were re-laying the road north of the M6/M6 toll merge. Often accompanied by signs saying "Average speed check".
You know it's SPECS when artics all set the cruise control to 40mph. They don't usually bother for other types of camera/speed limits.
Public transport in the UK (quite literally) stinks.
I could spend 3 hours driving to and from work in climate-controlled comfort for £10/day, or I could spend 4-6 hours standing up on overcrowded trains and standing on freezing cold platforms for £20/day.
However I'm now working a lot closer to home so I have the option of spending about £2/day on petrol+tax+maint+insurance for a 5min door-to-door trip, or waiting up to an hour at a bus stop for a dangerously ill-maintained bus to take another hour to get me to work for £4/day. And then getting mugged on my way home
Either way, the car wins! Public transport only seems to work within the confines of the major cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester)
The worst is when you know there's a GATSO hidden over the crest of a hill (we have plenty of those up north). Unless you like revving the tits off your car to get enough engine braking going, you NEED to hit the pedal. Unfortunately so does the car in front and if it's an SUV, Corsa or worst of all a Micra, you have no choice but to assume they're going to stamp on it and drop 20mph under the speed limit while you're pondering the futility of praying the guy up your exhaust is paying as much attention as you
Trying to light any sort of smoking material with a Bic lighter
I'll light up while driving... but you (or more importantly to me, a copper) will never see me do it unless I'm stopped. The same with taking a swig of a non-alcoholic drink. A quick scan of what's around you, some common sense and an ounce of spatial awareness is all it takes to turn something potentially dangerous into something completely safe. It's the ones without these 3 key skills that are the worrying ones.
The M42 system is more complex, with limits enforced by hundreds of spy cameras..... Drivers have responded by speeding up between the camera traps and braking just before them
I could have sworn they were SPECS cameras down there (number plate recognition system that works out your average speed between 2 points, for those not in the know)
The only games I ever bought for my PS2 were GT3/4 and the GTA games. However I've got an Xbox 360 now and I must say if you liked GT you'll love Forza 2 once you get used to the xbox controller's triggers. It's a great game which like GT3 puts so much focus on racing lines and technique. Very recommended way to spend a couple of hundred quid... Plus GTA4 is coming to the 360 - yum :)
openssl s_client -host secure.webserver.net -port 443
If the laser is sitting in the same place as the current magnetic head, then that the head can potentially read/write 100 times faster doesn't really matter, when there's no way the disk itself can be made spin 100 times faster.
But what if they could make the laser deflect (is there some non-moving way of doing this?) in a tiny but precise arc millions of times a second? With multiple receivers that would enable it to read bits from several tracks during the time it would normally be sitting there waiting for the next bit to come along...
AI65 - Thermal interrupt does not occur if DTS reaches an invalid temperature. What the hell is an invalid temperature? A disconnected sensor or something? It doesn't sound like something a userland thermal-generating loop can exploit but the errata is not detailed enough to know for sure.
I'd guess an invalid temperature would be one which is outside monitorable range. Phase-change cooling will take CPUs to well below 0 degrees C, probably causing a problem if the temperature's dealt with as an unsigned number.
As for the possibility of something exploiting it to gain priv'd code execution, who says every bug has to be exploitable? AFAICT the errata is a list of acknowledged bugs, not security problems. Remember it's Intel that wrote the doc, not Theo.
I'm thinking it'd make a fantastic low-power transparent 50Mbit (remember the slow CPU) firewall if not for the lack of memory for state tables.