aka documentation of some of the secret API calls that plebes aren't supposed to know about or use?
And what possible secret API could that be? What is currently missing in all the published documentation? And was it this idea to which the original author (TechForensics) was refering? I see no evidence of that level of understanding in his original rant.
I would assume that they allow installers signed by Microsoft-approved certificates to modify the firewall. This would mean that any only joe-the-hacker with a compiler can not do it.
A quick google search shows that this is wrong. Here is the officially published API. Or if you want, you can just write to the registry. Here is the code in C#. The C# compiler comes with.NET, so everyone can do this.
I guess this means that if you beef up the security on those registry keys then you could prevent any software from adding themselves to the exception list. Just make an Administrator account for installing that does not have access to those keys... I might have to try this out.
So was the prosecution technically incompetent, or were they aware that it was wrong and just hoped that they would get away with it? I suppose that it is possible that they expected TPB to try to make a deal rather than go to court, and so had to hurredly put a case together at the last minute.
They want to boost our morals, but they ended up boosting our morale!
I think it's more likely that that "hacked" dll he used on photoshop was infected with some virus, and THAT is why he can no longer go into his own user folder.
I don't think it was a virus. The "Local Settings" folder is implemented as a NTFS Junction to the new folder "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local". The benefit of this is that there are no spaces in the path.
Unfortunately, junctions are a bit problematic and can get a bit confusing to use. They don't just act like a folder in Explorer.
I ran into the same problem as the original crazy-guy poster, but managed to resist jumping to any conclusions about it being DRM.
Oh please! Exactly what DRM are you talking about here? There is nothing in the original "article" that has anything to do with any DRM on Microsoft's part. Adobe's copy protection is mentioned, but how is the inability to crack it somehow Microsoft's fault?
Photoshop inserts itself into the firewall exceptions list? I agree that this should require a UAC elevation, but it is no different to how the firewall works on XP. It is not a Windows 7 issue, nor is it anything to do with DRM. Neither does not being able to move or delete a DLL that is in use. We had that problem back in the day of Windows 3.0!
It doesn't surprise me that someone would submit a crazy uninformed rant (especially the Firehose version of it - you have just got to read that version if you like a laugh). It also doesn't surprise me that kdawson would post it.
What does surprise me is how many people here accept the DRM claim without even thinking about it. Doesn't anyone wonder how Microsoft "allows large software vendors to penetrate your machine" without asking what it is that these large vendors can do that ANYONE with a compiler can't do? Why are people not pointing out that "Local Settings" is now stored as AppData\Local, and is still perfectly visible.
The XP system that I am using right now doesn't allow me to select 'Stereo Mix', probably because either the motherboard chipset or the drivers do not support it. Why jump to the conclusion that it is Microsoft's fault and not lousy hardware?
And if you claim that Windows 7 is faster because the DRM is turned off, what can you do in the beta now that you can't currently do in Vista?
Labour ran with it as soon as they got in, after attacking it while they were in opposition.
Actually, it was Kim Beazley who announced Labor's Internet filter policy back when he was the opposition leader, which was obviously long before the election. In fact, it was the Coalition government who attacked Labor's policy before they then adopted a similar policy.
The problem is that you could resell the game on the second hand market once you had finished with it. You can't do that with web activation.
Games cost a lot of money, but you could always justify the cost by selling the game later on. The distributors hate this, because they lose a potential customer. On the positive side, at least the price of new games went down due to all the extra sales...
Where is it? Come on Rudd, where the hell is the broadband infrastructure promised during the campaign?
Well it's been in the news recently: the tender deadline just closed. Telstra were holding out because they didn't like the conditions - probably that the Government would even consider any other provider in the first place! They eventually submitted a tender that was supposedly 12 pages long (compared to the hundreds of pages for the others).
Here's a place to go to for some recent news stories.
Why now do we see Microsoft trying harder than before?
Actually, they have been doing this sort of stuff since 1991. A lot of reseach goes on inside the walls of Microsoft, including stuff that would obviously never have any commercial prospects.
Back in the 90s, I remember being amazed at the large number Microsoft employees delivering papers at computer science conferences. I find it interesting that Microsoft has always had a large presence at SIGGRAPH, and yet Microsoft Paint continues to suck.
This is really something new for Microsoft, isn't it? It's not as if there are people still using Windows 2000 anywhere... Oh, wait.
Everytime there is a new version of any operating system this same thing happens. People say that there is no compelling reason to upgrade. A bunch of people draw the line and never upgrade. Doom and gloom is predicted for the future.
This is why there are still people using OS/2, AmigaOS, Windows 9x and even Windows 3.1.
But life goes on, and eventually the most of the general population does upgrade. New computers are purchased, business cases are made to upgrade entire organisations and software is purchased that requires a newer OS. The upgrade cycle doesn't happened in a huge wave. It is more of a constant flow.
The reason for this is the generally accepted one: that there are never compelling reasons to do so. However, once you do get used to a new OS, you tend find it hard to go back again. Yes, we have all heard the stories of people immediately downgrading new computers when buying Vista, but so many of those stories fail to take into account the crapware installed by the PC maker that also gets wiped when reinstalling the OS.
Well, I guess that answers the grandparent's question to you. The link to the Thanks page is on the bottom of every single page, including for their forums. It seems quite appropriate to me.
If the Dosbox team didn't want this sort of thing to happen then they could have specified that it was free for non-commercial use only.
You are right, Betamax is dead, but Betacam is still in use. They are two different formats.
I don't think Apple will be too upset that the audio and video industries will have to buy their top end models. What video professional would be happy with an entry level system anyway?
The problem with tags like these is that they get overused so that every story by kdawson ends up with one. One might argue that this might be entirely warranted due to constant bias, but it still looks like a knee-jerk reaction to any post. It dilutes the term when used too much.
In this case: yes, it does seem unfair to associate these ethical guidelines with the reverse-engineering that went on prior to the guidelines being published. The work on Samba started over a decade before the Microsoft document was written.
If the question was rephrased into the current tense, then the answer would be that it is not necessary to reverse engineer the protocols/file formats, because they have now been published by Microsoft. It may have been ten years later than we would have liked, but then Microsoft do have a habit of trying to ignore anything that might result in the reduction of lock-in for Windows until way too late. This was why they were late in seeing the Internet as a priority, along with XML, VMs, and now open source and interoperability.
Honestly, even before this, ISO wasn't really particularly relevant. I mean seriously, by their own admission, they were allowing multiple competing standards to develop to solve the same problem.
I think that you misunderstand what the ISO is all about. They are not there to pick the winners. They just allow a single definition of things in the hope that each vendor doesn't come up with their own slightly different version.
It is just as valid for the ISO to standardise both ODF and OOXML as it is for them to standardise C++ and Fortran. Both are competing for the same goal, but it means that you can choose a programming language/document format and get the same C++, Fortran, ODF or OOXML no matter what compiler/office product you use.
As for Microsoft not supporting their own file format, I am sure that would change. There would be no point for them to do through this entire process just to ignore the standard that they created. It didn't make any sense for them to start writing the code until the ISO format had been finalised.
Writing to program files isn't a bug. It was also just fine under Windows95/98 Some people are still using software from then everyday. If a program works it works.
Except that the software would not work under Windows NT 4 from around the same period. Therefore it could not pass the Windows certification. Microsoft has said right from the start that you should not assume you are running at Administrator level.
Developers have had years to get it right but they just didn't listen. Microsoft could have made Windows a lot more secure years ago by defaulting accounts to be standard users, but the recalcitrant programmers wouldn't come to the party.
A friend of mine (who I always considered to be a real luddite) changed her children's accounts to limited users on Windows XP after finding some... inappropriate software installed on the computer. I actually advised against it because I knew I would end up being asked to support it. However, I was amazed at how well it worked. Pretty much all the software and games run perfectly. I wonder what percentage of software does cause problems with reduced rights and UACs.
So a company that sells security software puts out a press release to say that you still need to buy their software even if you run Vista. I can't think of a single ulterior motive that they might have to do this!
How many of the anti-virus companies don't issue doom-and-gloom style press releases? It is just their way of drumming up business. I would rely on these figures as much as I would rely of Microsoft's "research" that might suggest that Vista is completely immune to any security issue. The truth lies somewhere in between - which shouldn't surprise anybody.
And before anyone jumps down my throat, no Microsoft didn't says Vista was that perfect.
Their next version of windows needs to put all old code into a virtual machine and move forward with a cleaner API, which seems like what they are working towards.
It is also what they have done in the past. The Win16 code lived in its own subsystem for years just for backwards compatibility.
Microsoft move very slowly in this respect, but it with good reason. How many years has Microsoft been telling developers not to assume that they were running as an administrator. Vista comes along and everyone is shocked when their software fails or constantly triggers the UAC prompts.
How about if you want to store your documents somewhere other than C:\My Documents\ (on win9x) or C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\?
Right click on you My Documents icon and select Properties. You can use any path you want, including network folders. I just tried it in Windows 98, XP and Vista, and all versions allows the documents folder to be moved. In Vista you have to click on the Locations tab.
The Romans threw out their last king around 500 BC
Which might explain why the GP said that records from the Roman Kingdom were over 2500 years old and that after that they had the Roman Republic. You should have kept reading after you saw the phrase Roman Kingdom.
You are forgetting that the winners were both from computer security firms. I would imagine that they would already own so many computers that the prize would be just a drop in the ocean. It would certainly be insignificant compared to the value of the PR that their security firm would receive by winning the competition.
According to the rules of the competition, the judges randomly allocate the timeslots for each of the computers to the competitors. This means that all of the computers were being attacked simultaneously and there wasn't a great rush for just one of the machines.
The rules also state that "You can't use the same vulnerability to claim more than one box, if it is a cross-platform issue". It would be interesting to see whether the Ubuntu system was really immune to this exploit after all. However, it is reassuring that it took 7 hours for the system to be hacked. I thought that it would fall a lot faster than that!
Slashdot Mirror
aka documentation of some of the secret API calls that plebes aren't supposed to know about or use?
And what possible secret API could that be? What is currently missing in all the published documentation? And was it this idea to which the original author (TechForensics) was refering? I see no evidence of that level of understanding in his original rant.
I would assume that they allow installers signed by Microsoft-approved certificates to modify the firewall. This would mean that any only joe-the-hacker with a compiler can not do it.
A quick google search shows that this is wrong. Here is the officially published API. Or if you want, you can just write to the registry. Here is the code in C#. The C# compiler comes with .NET, so everyone can do this.
I guess this means that if you beef up the security on those registry keys then you could prevent any software from adding themselves to the exception list. Just make an Administrator account for installing that does not have access to those keys... I might have to try this out.
So was the prosecution technically incompetent, or were they aware that it was wrong and just hoped that they would get away with it? I suppose that it is possible that they expected TPB to try to make a deal rather than go to court, and so had to hurredly put a case together at the last minute.
They want to boost our morals, but they ended up boosting our morale!
I think it's more likely that that "hacked" dll he used on photoshop was infected with some virus, and THAT is why he can no longer go into his own user folder.
I don't think it was a virus. The "Local Settings" folder is implemented as a NTFS Junction to the new folder "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local". The benefit of this is that there are no spaces in the path.
Unfortunately, junctions are a bit problematic and can get a bit confusing to use. They don't just act like a folder in Explorer.
I ran into the same problem as the original crazy-guy poster, but managed to resist jumping to any conclusions about it being DRM.
Oh please! Exactly what DRM are you talking about here? There is nothing in the original "article" that has anything to do with any DRM on Microsoft's part. Adobe's copy protection is mentioned, but how is the inability to crack it somehow Microsoft's fault?
Photoshop inserts itself into the firewall exceptions list? I agree that this should require a UAC elevation, but it is no different to how the firewall works on XP. It is not a Windows 7 issue, nor is it anything to do with DRM. Neither does not being able to move or delete a DLL that is in use. We had that problem back in the day of Windows 3.0!
It doesn't surprise me that someone would submit a crazy uninformed rant (especially the Firehose version of it - you have just got to read that version if you like a laugh). It also doesn't surprise me that kdawson would post it.
What does surprise me is how many people here accept the DRM claim without even thinking about it. Doesn't anyone wonder how Microsoft "allows large software vendors to penetrate your machine" without asking what it is that these large vendors can do that ANYONE with a compiler can't do? Why are people not pointing out that "Local Settings" is now stored as AppData\Local, and is still perfectly visible.
The XP system that I am using right now doesn't allow me to select 'Stereo Mix', probably because either the motherboard chipset or the drivers do not support it. Why jump to the conclusion that it is Microsoft's fault and not lousy hardware?
And if you claim that Windows 7 is faster because the DRM is turned off, what can you do in the beta now that you can't currently do in Vista?
It is annoying, but what am I gonna do about it?
Go into Slashdot's preferences and turn off the "Show Tags" option. There are a number of options available to help speed up the site.
Labour ran with it as soon as they got in, after attacking it while they were in opposition.
Actually, it was Kim Beazley who announced Labor's Internet filter policy back when he was the opposition leader, which was obviously long before the election. In fact, it was the Coalition government who attacked Labor's policy before they then adopted a similar policy.
It was yet another reason to vote for the Greens.
that macs have been able to do out of the box since before she was born?
And how exactly would that have helped her then?
It's a misuse of the term labtop.
I really don't know how they could have misused that term.
The problem is that you could resell the game on the second hand market once you had finished with it. You can't do that with web activation.
Games cost a lot of money, but you could always justify the cost by selling the game later on. The distributors hate this, because they lose a potential customer. On the positive side, at least the price of new games went down due to all the extra sales...
...or did they?
Where is it? Come on Rudd, where the hell is the broadband infrastructure promised during the campaign?
Well it's been in the news recently: the tender deadline just closed. Telstra were holding out because they didn't like the conditions - probably that the Government would even consider any other provider in the first place! They eventually submitted a tender that was supposedly 12 pages long (compared to the hundreds of pages for the others).
Here's a place to go to for some recent news stories.
Why now do we see Microsoft trying harder than before?
Actually, they have been doing this sort of stuff since 1991. A lot of reseach goes on inside the walls of Microsoft, including stuff that would obviously never have any commercial prospects.
Back in the 90s, I remember being amazed at the large number Microsoft employees delivering papers at computer science conferences. I find it interesting that Microsoft has always had a large presence at SIGGRAPH, and yet Microsoft Paint continues to suck.
This is really something new for Microsoft, isn't it? It's not as if there are people still using Windows 2000 anywhere... Oh, wait.
Everytime there is a new version of any operating system this same thing happens. People say that there is no compelling reason to upgrade. A bunch of people draw the line and never upgrade. Doom and gloom is predicted for the future.
This is why there are still people using OS/2, AmigaOS, Windows 9x and even Windows 3.1.
But life goes on, and eventually the most of the general population does upgrade. New computers are purchased, business cases are made to upgrade entire organisations and software is purchased that requires a newer OS. The upgrade cycle doesn't happened in a huge wave. It is more of a constant flow.
The reason for this is the generally accepted one: that there are never compelling reasons to do so. However, once you do get used to a new OS, you tend find it hard to go back again. Yes, we have all heard the stories of people immediately downgrading new computers when buying Vista, but so many of those stories fail to take into account the crapware installed by the PC maker that also gets wiped when reinstalling the OS.
Well, I guess that answers the grandparent's question to you. The link to the Thanks page is on the bottom of every single page, including for their forums. It seems quite appropriate to me.
If the Dosbox team didn't want this sort of thing to happen then they could have specified that it was free for non-commercial use only.
You are right, Betamax is dead, but Betacam is still in use. They are two different formats.
I don't think Apple will be too upset that the audio and video industries will have to buy their top end models. What video professional would be happy with an entry level system anyway?
What happened to the kdawsonfud tags?
The problem with tags like these is that they get overused so that every story by kdawson ends up with one. One might argue that this might be entirely warranted due to constant bias, but it still looks like a knee-jerk reaction to any post. It dilutes the term when used too much.
In this case: yes, it does seem unfair to associate these ethical guidelines with the reverse-engineering that went on prior to the guidelines being published. The work on Samba started over a decade before the Microsoft document was written.
If the question was rephrased into the current tense, then the answer would be that it is not necessary to reverse engineer the protocols/file formats, because they have now been published by Microsoft. It may have been ten years later than we would have liked, but then Microsoft do have a habit of trying to ignore anything that might result in the reduction of lock-in for Windows until way too late. This was why they were late in seeing the Internet as a priority, along with XML, VMs, and now open source and interoperability.
I misread your first line as:
Had a similar experience with cows.
Try re-reading that entire message again with cows in mind. It certainly evokes an interesting mental image!
that must have been quite funny to watch.
A goth being buzzed by cows? I would pay to see that!
Honestly, even before this, ISO wasn't really particularly relevant. I mean seriously, by their own admission, they were allowing multiple competing standards to develop to solve the same problem.
I think that you misunderstand what the ISO is all about. They are not there to pick the winners. They just allow a single definition of things in the hope that each vendor doesn't come up with their own slightly different version.
It is just as valid for the ISO to standardise both ODF and OOXML as it is for them to standardise C++ and Fortran. Both are competing for the same goal, but it means that you can choose a programming language/document format and get the same C++, Fortran, ODF or OOXML no matter what compiler/office product you use.
As for Microsoft not supporting their own file format, I am sure that would change. There would be no point for them to do through this entire process just to ignore the standard that they created. It didn't make any sense for them to start writing the code until the ISO format had been finalised.
Except that the software would not work under Windows NT 4 from around the same period. Therefore it could not pass the Windows certification. Microsoft has said right from the start that you should not assume you are running at Administrator level.
Developers have had years to get it right but they just didn't listen. Microsoft could have made Windows a lot more secure years ago by defaulting accounts to be standard users, but the recalcitrant programmers wouldn't come to the party.
A friend of mine (who I always considered to be a real luddite) changed her children's accounts to limited users on Windows XP after finding some ... inappropriate software installed on the computer. I actually advised against it because I knew I would end up being asked to support it. However, I was amazed at how well it worked. Pretty much all the software and games run perfectly. I wonder what percentage of software does cause problems with reduced rights and UACs.
So a company that sells security software puts out a press release to say that you still need to buy their software even if you run Vista. I can't think of a single ulterior motive that they might have to do this!
How many of the anti-virus companies don't issue doom-and-gloom style press releases? It is just their way of drumming up business. I would rely on these figures as much as I would rely of Microsoft's "research" that might suggest that Vista is completely immune to any security issue. The truth lies somewhere in between - which shouldn't surprise anybody.
And before anyone jumps down my throat, no Microsoft didn't says Vista was that perfect.
It is also what they have done in the past. The Win16 code lived in its own subsystem for years just for backwards compatibility.
Microsoft move very slowly in this respect, but it with good reason. How many years has Microsoft been telling developers not to assume that they were running as an administrator. Vista comes along and everyone is shocked when their software fails or constantly triggers the UAC prompts.
Right click on you My Documents icon and select Properties. You can use any path you want, including network folders. I just tried it in Windows 98, XP and Vista, and all versions allows the documents folder to be moved. In Vista you have to click on the Locations tab.
Which might explain why the GP said that records from the Roman Kingdom were over 2500 years old and that after that they had the Roman Republic. You should have kept reading after you saw the phrase Roman Kingdom.
You are forgetting that the winners were both from computer security firms. I would imagine that they would already own so many computers that the prize would be just a drop in the ocean. It would certainly be insignificant compared to the value of the PR that their security firm would receive by winning the competition.
According to the rules of the competition, the judges randomly allocate the timeslots for each of the computers to the competitors. This means that all of the computers were being attacked simultaneously and there wasn't a great rush for just one of the machines.
The rules also state that "You can't use the same vulnerability to claim more than one box, if it is a cross-platform issue". It would be interesting to see whether the Ubuntu system was really immune to this exploit after all. However, it is reassuring that it took 7 hours for the system to be hacked. I thought that it would fall a lot faster than that!
This is gratifying news. It has been about 2 weeks since I last had a drink.
That I am now at my mental peak is certainly cause for celebration! Cheers everyone!
...
Oh... bum. Oh well, I mite as wel go browse around digg.com now.