Jesus, now that is funny. I can only envision the machine after a BIOS tweak stops the CPU fan and the entire thing comes back as a smoking piece of molten plastic and twisted metal and everybody is looking at the programmer with heads full of 'dude - we said wipe, not nuke'
Reminds me of one of the first small peer to peer networks I ever set up years ago... engineering department. The junior IS guy was in the building doing (??) maintenance and he saw that one guy's G: drive had a bunch of stuff in the root directory that didn't need to be there (looked like the root directory of a boot drive, which obviously didn't need to be on this engineer's G: drive) so he just started blowing away files. What the hell is this engineer doing, looks like he has a \DOS and a \Windows directory on his G: drive too - poof. And this was that junior IS guy's introduction to peer to peer networking, and his invitation never to visit the engineering department ever again. Those engineering guys sure can hold a grudge - remotely blow away one senior engineer's workstation while he is in the middle of a project and all of a sudden nobody likes you - grin.
I wasn't looking to rattle anybody's cage - actually it just sort of happened upon me and I felt compelled to share it. It wasn't a political statement.
That said, I encourage any man who can make better use of the word 'Shenanigans' in a coherent poem be the one to cast the first stone.
Because hey, poem'in ain't as easy as people might think.
Close, but wrong. The guy actually made it himself which requires a Class II improvised munitions / weaponsbuilder license on top of a regular FFL (Federal Firearm License) - assuming he wanted to insure complete immunity against all legal persecution.
To upgrade a regular FFL to a Class III used to be $500, but I don't think that they are inclusive (ie just because you have a III doesn't automagically include all the benefits of being a II.) It has been a while and I forgot what it costs to upgrade to a II.
Or he could just do it in Texas or Montana where nobody cares.
I would tend to agree. The odds of a programmer 'accidently' adding working code capable of deleting an end user's files or participating in a DDoS is about as likely as a programmer 'accidently' having sex with a pretty woman. It can happen, but it takes a LOT of work and planning on the part of the programmer (and wasn't an accident.)
-Not to turn this into a clothing discussion, but do any other lanky geeks out there have pant-finding tips?
When you do find something that fits, that looks good : buy every damn pair they have. No joke - the extra $150 you spend on 4 or 5 more pair is a mere pittance when you can hang them in your closet and not have to worry about finding them again in the future. Keep at least one pair new with the tags still on so you don't wear them - so you always have at least one pair of pants that are new, pressed, creased and clean for emergencies.
HAH! Actually I knew a guy in college that where ever he went he carried something about the size of a smallish laptop case in black nylon. Muc smaller than a briefcase but larger than a Daytimer. Took it to class, to the mall, out walking around.. everywhere. And he never actually opened it to get/put anything - he just carried it.
One day I asked him about it, he opened it up and showed me : Chrome Desert Eagle - the biggest hand cannon I had ever seen. I had no clue all those years, but I'm glad I never gave him any shit about carrying a manpurse.
Nice reference, now I need to go read that book and Neuromancer again.
As for the OP: Dockers Mobile Pant. (note : not pants, simply pant. I didn't name them - I just wear them.) The front pockets are massively deep, the right front pocket has a second zippered smaller pocket for change or whatever, and on the sides of the thighs are two discrete zippers that also have pockets (I keep my checkbook in one, it barely fits, so your average tech toys will probably fit nicely - my Jornada 680 does NOT fit.) Because of the fit most of the time you can't even tell there is something in those pockets or that they even exist.
I was more posing the question not how to circumvent it technically, but from a honest licensing perspective how many licenses we are -supposed- to purchase. It is a hazy line, and I really am interested in knowing what is honestly expected by the licensing agent (be it MS or whoever.)
I'm not about to drop $40,000 on server licenses just so I can run 5 copies of Win2003 Server EE in windows on my box, but in a completely compliant world does MS expect me to?
Oh man in today's economy I had a hard time coming up with $300 for regular ol' VMware. I think ESX is listed on their price sheet as 'If you have to ask, you can't afford it.'
You know that is funny, I was thinking that the other day... can you cascade VMware? I mean on a VM running Linux on a Windows 2000 host, can you install VMware for Linux and create a VM and install Windows 2000 on it?
Or would that be the equivalent of putting a portable hole into a bag of holding (or vice versa,) causing either a dimensional rift which either imploded sucking everyone and thing in immediate area into another plane or exploding and destroying everything within immediate area.
Actually based on my skimming the article it merely removes the requirement for the host OS in VMware - Xen sort of creates a (Null) host OS from which virtual machines are started.
In that respect it is pretty much like a version of VMware that doesn't require a host OS. Oh yea - and it doesn't actually run any commercially available OS without modifying and recompiling.
It looks cool, no doubt, and a LOT faster in certain aspects where multiple layers of abstraction are slowing down VMware (according to the nifty graphs, I haven't actually tried it) out on the fringes of performance.
That said, I really like VMware. Like the second coming of the silicon jesus - it is good. Wicked fast compared to some other VM implementations I have run (does Desqview on a 386 count?) Anybody that is reading this and hasn't played with it needs to get the 30 day trial from www.vmware.com
Imagine all the stuff described in this post, but it works with the OSs you already have, requires a host OS (needs to be run under Linux or Windows) and cost $300.
Silly question about activation.. actually not -about- activation, but inspired by activitation:
If you only have a single computer with a single CPU, how many copies of WinXP do you need? That one is rhetorical of course, and the answer is One.
Can you run whatever software on that legitimately licensed WinXP machine that you like, assuming it was also legitimately licensed? That one is also rhetorical and the answer is Yes.
Now install VMware on that machine, WinXP as the host OS. By adding VMware you have not increased the number of CPUs or physical machines. If you created three virtual machines (if you had enough RAM and hard drive space, not a stretch at all) and wanted to run WinXP in each of those virtual machines simultaneously - do you need 1 license of WinXP or four licenses of WinXP (one for the host OS, and one for each VM)?
Granted the activation and active license management in XP may not allow this to happen even if in theory it should be allowed according to the 1 license / physical machine license in the EULA - but swap it with Windows 2000 or whatever... what are the facts?
You are both wrong, I bought a CPU and an LCD. The CPU is a nice ceramic square thing with a zillion little gold spikes coming out the bottom, and the LCD is a square piece of plastic about 15" across with a wire coming off of one side. It is clear but I think there is some magic black ink in there that moves around when enough electricity is run through the wire.
My daughter has no clue what to do with either, but she enjoys playing with the printer.
One good rule : get your cell phone at Best Buy, and get the extended warranty.
A friend bought a Sprint PCS phone from one of those Sprint PCS stores (I don't know if it was a mall outlet, or kiosk, or whatever) but when his phone cratered they didn't handle the warranty, but sent his phone off for repairs. He was phoneless for a month. To a business guy, this was a mega hassle.
When my phone died I walked into BB with the magic yellow folder and the box the phone came in (with all the goodies) and walked out with a new phone. They even walked me past the line at customer service, making it known that as I had the service plan I didn't need to wait in line on this issue. The biggest hassle was reprogramming all my phone numbers back into a new phone, I was back up and running in about an hour.
Twice in 6 months. Cell phones are not particularly sturdy, I have decided.
And when your battery won't hold a charge, bring it in and they replace it free. Heck that alone is worth the price of the plan.
When your CF died... please describe the death process. I mean did it start losing capacity a little at a time as the controller partitioned off dead cells, or did you lose data, or did the whole thing just up and crater at once?
As of yet the whole 'CF card dying' thing has been purely speculation, I have been dying to find out how it actually plays out.
OP: Better yet - you already have it working with the compactflash setup, yes? It already work, and you already like it. And it works. And you have it working.
Did I already mention that it is working?
If it works and you are happy with it, don't fsck with it. You understand the limitations of the media, so work those into your maintenance cycle. 64M CF cards are cheap, so replace it every year, even every 6 months (or better yet, keep a spare and replace it when it starts to show damage, if there is a way of checking...)
Oil is pretty good at lubricating a car engine, but it needs to be replaced every 3500 miles. Batterys are pretty good at storing power so you can start your car, but even they wear out and need to be replaced every couple of years. CompactFlash is doing exactly what you want, but it needs to be replaced every once in a while - so keep using it, and replace it every once in a while.
I am about -:- that close to replacing the hard drive in an older laptop with a CF solution, I just need to wait for the 1G cards to come down in price a little - or wait for the Win2000 version of 98lite to go live so I can buy it (and fit Win2000 plus apps in under 512M of flash-drive.) The thought of a laptop that is silent, with no moving parts, and totally immune to me flopping it around while it is running (without worrying about gyroscopic effects on the drive) simply thrills me.
It has probably been said, but at this point he has pretty much insured that when (if?) his network gets pwned it is going to be a direct result of the actions of somebody inside.
One of the guys gets an email from another guy in his poker circle that has an attachment called I_Love_You.doc.vbs and opens it.
Someone gets the email from 'Microsoft' that has the latest 'security patch.exe' attached; user runs that. Because everybody knows how much MS loves us and is proactive about security, and has singled him out to send him a patch.
Downloads the latest P2P client to share music, the new client of course having a fun new(worm/virus/trojan).
The leet new employee adds wifi (yea I know you mentioned that one) without enabling WEP.
There is a live Ethernet connection in the waiting room / reception room. This one always cracks me up.
User takes his laptop home, plugs it directly into the 'net, gets loaded with fun new bugs, brings it back to the office on Monday.
This pretty much covers my question - the home users (cablemodem) that have VPN access - will a Linksys (or SMC, or D-Link, or whatever) cablemodem router ( also a hardware firewall ) be enough security to insure that they don't get 'pwn3d' from the outside (assuming they remember to change the default password on the router, and they don't go poking holes in it so they can host a damn Quake 3 Arena server.)
Oh yea, and assuming they enable WEP on the wireless ones. Which two out of three home owners (in my neighborhood, ahem) did not.
Remember that sound that the Death Star would make when powering up the planet destroying ion beam cannon? I wonder if Windows 2004 will have that as the welcome sound. It would be pretty appropriate, if running on this CPU.
I was thinking this same thing myself - right now a top P4 at 3.2GHz or an AMD at 2GHz is burning what... 100 watts? 135 watts max maybe, just for the CPU?
Two questions in my mind are : how they getting the power in (as electricity) and how are they handling it after it gets done crunching a number (as heat) ?
Then again there is that old saying 'faster CPUs are good at converting CPU bound systems into I/O bound systems.'
Damn I miss the good old days. I used to do crap like this too, back during (and leading up to) the tech boom.
Hell today most hackers are just happy nobody walks in and says 'pack your shit and leave, you have just been RIF'ed' for no good reason - I honestly don't envision many of the bright ones making these kinds of waves in the here and now.
Man a few years ago there was a book but I forgot the name. The Road to $Something. Talked about the good old days, now those guys had some fun pranks. Disassemble Scott McNealy's car and reassemble it in his office while he was out on vacation. Paper mache an entire office contents while a guy is gone for two weeks on vacation. Have building contractors come in while a guy is on vacation and remove his office door, drywall and wall paper over it like it was never there and when he comes back pretend not to know what he is talking about when he wants to know where his office went.
Save the Karma for whoever replies to this one with the name of the book, it really is worth a good read.
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Jesus, now that is funny. I can only envision the machine after a BIOS tweak stops the CPU fan and the entire thing comes back as a smoking piece of molten plastic and twisted metal and everybody is looking at the programmer with heads full of 'dude - we said wipe, not nuke'
... engineering department. The junior IS guy was in the building doing (??) maintenance and he saw that one guy's G: drive had a bunch of stuff in the root directory that didn't need to be there (looked like the root directory of a boot drive, which obviously didn't need to be on this engineer's G: drive) so he just started blowing away files. What the hell is this engineer doing, looks like he has a \DOS and a \Windows directory on his G: drive too - poof. And this was that junior IS guy's introduction to peer to peer networking, and his invitation never to visit the engineering department ever again. Those engineering guys sure can hold a grudge - remotely blow away one senior engineer's workstation while he is in the middle of a project and all of a sudden nobody likes you - grin.
Reminds me of one of the first small peer to peer networks I ever set up years ago
I wasn't looking to rattle anybody's cage - actually it just sort of happened upon me and I felt compelled to share it. It wasn't a political statement.
That said, I encourage any man who can make better use of the word 'Shenanigans' in a coherent poem be the one to cast the first stone.
Because hey, poem'in ain't as easy as people might think.
This isn't a gun, and it isn't a firearm. It is a Bowling Ball for Columbine launcher.
Close, but wrong. The guy actually made it himself which requires a Class II improvised munitions / weaponsbuilder license on top of a regular FFL (Federal Firearm License) - assuming he wanted to insure complete immunity against all legal persecution.
To upgrade a regular FFL to a Class III used to be $500, but I don't think that they are inclusive (ie just because you have a III doesn't automagically include all the benefits of being a II.) It has been a while and I forgot what it costs to upgrade to a II.
Or he could just do it in Texas or Montana where nobody cares.
-I'm sorry, i have to go hang myself. A random feature just occurred to my windows ME, and i lost half a day's work on Autocad.
Dude you need document management. Reply here if you want details.
Oh yea, and maybe it is time to upgrade your workstation to Win2000Pro.
First they came for the Death, but I do not like Death so I sat back and said nothing.
Then they came for the Destruction and I thought 'well we can do without the Destruction' and I said nothing.
Then they came to remove Mayhem from terrorism and as I was not a beliver in Mayhem - so I let them take away the Mayhem.
When they came for me and my Shenanigans there was nobody left to speak out.
I would tend to agree. The odds of a programmer 'accidently' adding working code capable of deleting an end user's files or participating in a DDoS is about as likely as a programmer 'accidently' having sex with a pretty woman. It can happen, but it takes a LOT of work and planning on the part of the programmer (and wasn't an accident.)
-Not to turn this into a clothing discussion, but do any other lanky geeks out there have pant-finding tips?
When you do find something that fits, that looks good : buy every damn pair they have. No joke - the extra $150 you spend on 4 or 5 more pair is a mere pittance when you can hang them in your closet and not have to worry about finding them again in the future. Keep at least one pair new with the tags still on so you don't wear them - so you always have at least one pair of pants that are new, pressed, creased and clean for emergencies.
HAH! Actually I knew a guy in college that where ever he went he carried something about the size of a smallish laptop case in black nylon. Muc smaller than a briefcase but larger than a Daytimer. Took it to class, to the mall, out walking around .. everywhere. And he never actually opened it to get/put anything - he just carried it.
One day I asked him about it, he opened it up and showed me : Chrome Desert Eagle - the biggest hand cannon I had ever seen. I had no clue all those years, but I'm glad I never gave him any shit about carrying a manpurse.
Nice reference, now I need to go read that book and Neuromancer again.
As for the OP:
Dockers Mobile Pant.
(note : not pants, simply pant. I didn't name them - I just wear them.)
The front pockets are massively deep, the right front pocket has a second zippered smaller pocket for change or whatever, and on the sides of the thighs are two discrete zippers that also have pockets (I keep my checkbook in one, it barely fits, so your average tech toys will probably fit nicely - my Jornada 680 does NOT fit.) Because of the fit most of the time you can't even tell there is something in those pockets or that they even exist.
Right, or just use Win 2000.
I was more posing the question not how to circumvent it technically, but from a honest licensing perspective how many licenses we are -supposed- to purchase. It is a hazy line, and I really am interested in knowing what is honestly expected by the licensing agent (be it MS or whoever.)
I'm not about to drop $40,000 on server licenses just so I can run 5 copies of Win2003 Server EE in windows on my box, but in a completely compliant world does MS expect me to?
Oh man in today's economy I had a hard time coming up with $300 for regular ol' VMware. I think ESX is listed on their price sheet as 'If you have to ask, you can't afford it.'
Which today is pretty accurate, in my case.
You know that is funny, I was thinking that the other day ... can you cascade VMware? I mean on a VM running Linux on a Windows 2000 host, can you install VMware for Linux and create a VM and install Windows 2000 on it?
Or would that be the equivalent of putting a portable hole into a bag of holding (or vice versa,) causing either a dimensional rift which either imploded sucking everyone and thing in immediate area into another plane or exploding and destroying everything within immediate area.
Try VMware. $300. www.vmware.com Free 30 day trial.
Lets you run DOS in a window on your Xp1500+ machine. Emulates Sound Blaster 16, I believe.
Honestly it kicks ass. If they dropped the price to $100 I imagine them selling them as fast as they could print them.
Actually based on my skimming the article it merely removes the requirement for the host OS in VMware - Xen sort of creates a (Null) host OS from which virtual machines are started.
In that respect it is pretty much like a version of VMware that doesn't require a host OS. Oh yea - and it doesn't actually run any commercially available OS without modifying and recompiling.
It looks cool, no doubt, and a LOT faster in certain aspects where multiple layers of abstraction are slowing down VMware (according to the nifty graphs, I haven't actually tried it) out on the fringes of performance.
That said, I really like VMware. Like the second coming of the silicon jesus - it is good. Wicked fast compared to some other VM implementations I have run (does Desqview on a 386 count?) Anybody that is reading this and hasn't played with it needs to get the 30 day trial from www.vmware.com
Imagine all the stuff described in this post, but it works with the OSs you already have, requires a host OS (needs to be run under Linux or Windows) and cost $300.
Silly question about activation .. actually not -about- activation, but inspired by activitation :
... what are the facts?
If you only have a single computer with a single CPU, how many copies of WinXP do you need? That one is rhetorical of course, and the answer is One.
Can you run whatever software on that legitimately licensed WinXP machine that you like, assuming it was also legitimately licensed? That one is also rhetorical and the answer is Yes.
Now install VMware on that machine, WinXP as the host OS. By adding VMware you have not increased the number of CPUs or physical machines. If you created three virtual machines (if you had enough RAM and hard drive space, not a stretch at all) and wanted to run WinXP in each of those virtual machines simultaneously - do you need 1 license of WinXP or four licenses of WinXP (one for the host OS, and one for each VM)?
Granted the activation and active license management in XP may not allow this to happen even if in theory it should be allowed according to the 1 license / physical machine license in the EULA - but swap it with Windows 2000 or whatever
I am just curious.
You are both wrong, I bought a CPU and an LCD. The CPU is a nice ceramic square thing with a zillion little gold spikes coming out the bottom, and the LCD is a square piece of plastic about 15" across with a wire coming off of one side. It is clear but I think there is some magic black ink in there that moves around when enough electricity is run through the wire.
My daughter has no clue what to do with either, but she enjoys playing with the printer.
One good rule : get your cell phone at Best Buy, and get the extended warranty.
A friend bought a Sprint PCS phone from one of those Sprint PCS stores (I don't know if it was a mall outlet, or kiosk, or whatever) but when his phone cratered they didn't handle the warranty, but sent his phone off for repairs. He was phoneless for a month. To a business guy, this was a mega hassle.
When my phone died I walked into BB with the magic yellow folder and the box the phone came in (with all the goodies) and walked out with a new phone. They even walked me past the line at customer service, making it known that as I had the service plan I didn't need to wait in line on this issue. The biggest hassle was reprogramming all my phone numbers back into a new phone, I was back up and running in about an hour.
Twice in 6 months. Cell phones are not particularly sturdy, I have decided.
And when your battery won't hold a charge, bring it in and they replace it free. Heck that alone is worth the price of the plan.
When your CF died ... please describe the death process. I mean did it start losing capacity a little at a time as the controller partitioned off dead cells, or did you lose data, or did the whole thing just up and crater at once?
As of yet the whole 'CF card dying' thing has been purely speculation, I have been dying to find out how it actually plays out.
OP:
...)
Better yet - you already have it working with the compactflash setup, yes? It already work, and you already like it. And it works. And you have it working.
Did I already mention that it is working?
If it works and you are happy with it, don't fsck with it. You understand the limitations of the media, so work those into your maintenance cycle. 64M CF cards are cheap, so replace it every year, even every 6 months (or better yet, keep a spare and replace it when it starts to show damage, if there is a way of checking
Oil is pretty good at lubricating a car engine, but it needs to be replaced every 3500 miles.
Batterys are pretty good at storing power so you can start your car, but even they wear out and need to be replaced every couple of years.
CompactFlash is doing exactly what you want, but it needs to be replaced every once in a while - so keep using it, and replace it every once in a while.
I am about -:- that close to replacing the hard drive in an older laptop with a CF solution, I just need to wait for the 1G cards to come down in price a little - or wait for the Win2000 version of 98lite to go live so I can buy it (and fit Win2000 plus apps in under 512M of flash-drive.) The thought of a laptop that is silent, with no moving parts, and totally immune to me flopping it around while it is running (without worrying about gyroscopic effects on the drive) simply thrills me.
It has probably been said, but at this point he has pretty much insured that when (if?) his network gets pwned it is going to be a direct result of the actions of somebody inside.
One of the guys gets an email from another guy in his poker circle that has an attachment called I_Love_You.doc.vbs and opens it.
Someone gets the email from 'Microsoft' that has the latest 'security patch.exe' attached; user runs that. Because everybody knows how much MS loves us and is proactive about security, and has singled him out to send him a patch.
Downloads the latest P2P client to share music, the new client of course having a fun new(worm/virus/trojan).
The leet new employee adds wifi (yea I know you mentioned that one) without enabling WEP.
There is a live Ethernet connection in the waiting room / reception room. This one always cracks me up.
User takes his laptop home, plugs it directly into the 'net, gets loaded with fun new bugs, brings it back to the office on Monday.
This pretty much covers my question - the home users (cablemodem) that have VPN access - will a Linksys (or SMC, or D-Link, or whatever) cablemodem router ( also a hardware firewall ) be enough security to insure that they don't get 'pwn3d' from the outside (assuming they remember to change the default password on the router, and they don't go poking holes in it so they can host a damn Quake 3 Arena server.)
Oh yea, and assuming they enable WEP on the wireless ones. Which two out of three home owners (in my neighborhood, ahem) did not.
Remember that sound that the Death Star would make when powering up the planet destroying ion beam cannon? I wonder if Windows 2004 will have that as the welcome sound. It would be pretty appropriate, if running on this CPU.
I was thinking this same thing myself - right now a top P4 at 3.2GHz or an AMD at 2GHz is burning what ... 100 watts? 135 watts max maybe, just for the CPU?
Two questions in my mind are : how they getting the power in (as electricity) and how are they handling it after it gets done crunching a number (as heat) ?
Then again there is that old saying 'faster CPUs are good at converting CPU bound systems into I/O bound systems.'
Damn I miss the good old days. I used to do crap like this too, back during (and leading up to) the tech boom.
Hell today most hackers are just happy nobody walks in and says 'pack your shit and leave, you have just been RIF'ed' for no good reason - I honestly don't envision many of the bright ones making these kinds of waves in the here and now.
Man a few years ago there was a book but I forgot the name. The Road to $Something. Talked about the good old days, now those guys had some fun pranks. Disassemble Scott McNealy's car and reassemble it in his office while he was out on vacation. Paper mache an entire office contents while a guy is gone for two weeks on vacation. Have building contractors come in while a guy is on vacation and remove his office door, drywall and wall paper over it like it was never there and when he comes back pretend not to know what he is talking about when he wants to know where his office went.
Save the Karma for whoever replies to this one with the name of the book, it really is worth a good read.