Because 95% of the data on my computer is mp3's, videos, pictures, and that kind of stuff. Even the slowest of the slow 5400RPM drives can serve MP3's easily, and is able to serve compressed video too. I can see a fast boot drive for the OS, applications, swap files, scratch disk, etc. - but I hardly need 300GB of super fast storage.
Re:Simple security practices go a long way...
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LovSan Clone Let Loose
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· Score: 3, Funny
The next step is to remake the Administrator account, except make it a basic user and give it no privileges at all. Then give it a really long random password. If someone ever tries to h4x0r the box, this one is guaranteed to keep the script kiddies busy for days!
It's the same problem you have with hackers who hack a system just because they can, and claim they don't do any harm. You now have a worm infecting your computer that claims to do no harm. However, in both cases you are left with a compromised system, and even though it may appear to be working OK you really do not have any idea what may have been done or what holes may have been opened. The only real solution in these cases is to rebuild or restore from backups.
However, a benificial worm may help the home users. Though I would wait a bit until most of the systems that will be fixed have already been fixed, so the worm will primarily hit the still infected systems owned by the clueless people who don't care.
Most of the problems I have found are people who install WAY too much stuff, like 5 different IM programs, real player, Kazaa, WinMX, etc etc etc and the computer gets so bogged down that things just start grinding to a halt. Either that or all those processes start causing various random crashes, and general instability ensues.
The other problems are the people running IE, and end up with various peices of malware taking things over, causing slow downs, annoying popups, and instability. I try to turn them to some other browser, but some are just really really stubborn. "It works for me.", they say. Well I guess it depends on how you define "working", considering it lets in peices of malware that I just had to nuke off your system because it crashed. But they still won't consider switching. Ugh.
I'm convinced that IE just has too many problems, even for the experienced user. Just yesterday I ran accross some site that did not care too much for Opera. Okay, so I fire up IE. I don't like doing it, but I have a patched IE6SP1 with conservative security settings just in case. After a couple of minutes, some popup(?) takes over my *entire* screen, with some poor lookalike of the MSBlaster virus (using the XP interface, and I'm on Windows 2000 = dead giveaway) with some blinking link telling me to click here for the fix NOW. Uh huh. Well after spending a few seconds trying to figure out how to get control of my computer back (it took up the whole screen, including covering the taskbar, there were no close buttons or anything to click on other than the ad), I just did the three finger salute and nuked the window. Then on second thought I nuked the other IE windows and went back to Opera. It amazes me that IE lets websites do nasty tricks like that, it's pretty obvious how the malware gets onto the computers of otherwise intelligent people.
I would think that RAID on a laptop would not work that well. Battery and size issues aside, most data loss with laptops seem to have to do with the laptop getting stolen, or the entire machine ruined (dunked underwater, etc.)
What would be cool with laptops is a RAID setup with a docking station. You have one drive in the laptop, the other in the docking station. Whenever the laptop is in the docking station, the drives act as RAID 1. When the laptop is connected back to the docking station after being used on the road, the drives automatically sync back up.
Another idea would be to have the mirror drive part of the power adaptor. Every time you charge your laptop, it backs itself up. Then all you would have to do is keep the charger seperate (like in a different bag), and you would not have to worry about losing your data to theft so easily.
Does that mean they won't bundle an email client in Windows anymore? That's one good thing I see coming out of this. Hopefully a good, simple to use, secure, and free email client will be able to fill the gap.
"Backups. Consumer level PC need a VERY GOOD inexpensive method of backing up stuff... I'm talking the whole hard drive in a manner of minutes. Cheap. Often."
You mean RAID 1? It's cheap enough (~$2/gig) that I don't see why anyone would not use it if they have even mildly important data on their machines. Cheap and continous. Though not a 100% perfect solution, as it basically only protects against drive failure.
Of course, for any other backup, hard disk drives need to catch up in the speed department first. While the average hard disks of today are 100 times larger than those 10 years ago, they are maybe 10 times faster. Which means it takes 10 times longer to read all the data off of one. Mirroring a drive used to take a few minutes, now it takes an hour or more. A USB external HDD may be a great backup, but to backup a 160GB drive takes all night!
I think they would be rather amazed at the power of the computers themselves. Show them that we can store 2 trillion bits of data on something thats about the size of a paperback book. Oh yeah, and it only costs about $200 too. However, they may not be so impressed when they discover we use it mostly to store vast quantities of bad music, bad movies, and porn. Oh well.
Or the processors that run at 2 billion cycles per second that cost less than $100. It would blow them away.
You can tell them, "Sure, the thing won't boot with less than 64MB of memory, but who cares when that much memory costs $15?" Oh course they will probably say that's our problem - what incentive do we have to elimate bloat when it's so much cheaper to throw more hardware at a problem?
BTW, be sure to tell them to put all their money into the stock of a small company named "Microsoft" in the early 1980's, and that around 1999 you'll be expecting a nice check in the mail.
Well, I did not really expect that I would be using the *exact* same keyboard that I did 10 years ago. However, in 10 years I highly suspect that I'll still be using it, if at all possible.
I don't think so. Maybe diamond computers will take over the high end, but the cheap computer market will likely still thrive with the current technologies.
Another interesting point is if most of the value of the computer is now the diamonds that make it up, dumpster diving for old equipment could get even more profitable!
Why not have the banks/credit card companies/etc. pay for the database, since they are the ones who use it to their advantage, so individuals can look up their own report for free?
Universities can say they do it because of bandwidth concerns, not because of legal reasons. I'm pretty sure that's the number one reason why they do it now anyway. I'm sure the university does not want some computer in the dorm uploading gigabytes of Linux.iso's everyday even if it is perfectly legal.
Yeah, I walk around my schools campus carrying CDs that say things ldke l33t h4k0r1n9 t00lz" on them.
Heck, I'd just throw a few low quality.mp3's in any free space on the CD, and claim it's a CD of remixes of Britney Spears and 'N-Sync. I doubt they'll suspect anything.
I still wonder how many people buy those items. They seem terribly overpriced considering how common they are on the realms, thanks to dupers and hackers. I remember a long time ago, sites did sell legit items - they had high level characters they played in some of the more lucrative areas and sold off the booty. But those sites are long gone.
I also wonder why Blizzard doesn't shut those sites down. I mean, if they are selling those items in any quantity, they aren't getting them through legit means. If I was Blizzard I would atleast figure out what exploits they are using, patch them up, and ban their CD-keys. If you buy an item, they somehow have to get them to you, so it shouldn't be too tough to figure out their CD-keys and account names.
My only hope is 1.10 will somehow delete all those items. If I see naked characters running around complaining about how their hacked gear they spent all that money on went poof, I'm just going to laugh at them.
Just so you have some numbers, the Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM drive I have right here states that it draws 670mA on the +5V line and 960mA on the +12V line. The Samsung 16X DVD-Rom draws 2.0A(!) on the +5V line and 1.0A on the 12V line. An ancient Seagate 2GB I have does not have any ratings.
According to my motherboard monitor, the +12V line is +12.480V, and the +5V line is +4.590V. The computer is completely stable with it's Athlon 2000+, 3 HDDs, CD burner, etc. The voltages don't fluctuate more than about.05V either. The power supply is an Enermax 350W, and it also worked great on my older setup, a K6-III 450Mhz with 3 HDDs and other goodies.
So I have concluded that either the builtin monitoring is wacky, or the components just don't care.
What if I just programmed the virus to go visit alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.young or something like that and just start downloading files at random? That would be a lot less traceable, I would think.
Intermittant problems like that are the worst, because they think it doesn't exist or that it's software, etc. Sometimes it's just best to make it a dead computer. You could try backing up your data, yanking the disk drive, and microwaving it for a second or two. That'll make it nice and dead, and with luck they'll just pop in a replacement and you'll be on your way.
Lawyer speak: If this doesn't work I'm in no way responsible!!!
My experience with Windows 2000 (and all versions of Windows) is that if it can't find the page file, it will just create a new one. So if I store my page file on D:, and I replace my old D: harddrive with a freshly formatted, empty one - Windows will create a new page file on boot. I guess it may be a problem if D: changes to an optical drive.
On the otherhand, getting Windows 2000 to boot off of my motherboard's built in RAID controller is like mission impossible!
I agree. Sometimes I wonder if XP Home was a derivative of Windows ME and not 2000. It seems stable enough, but the quirks and silly interface makes me wonder.
I can never see a mime without having flashbacks to the video of a mime that played everytime I started up my Packard Bell 486. That was until I figured out how to disable Packard Bell's Navigator program, and changed the thing to boot to the Windows 3.1 desktop instead.
It would be interesting to see that again. I seem to recall it played smoothly, though a sluggish 486 wouldn't be up to the task of playing a MPEG1 file? I recall the file was like 45MB, which was *huge* on it's tiny harddrive.
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What if you used an OS like Knoppix on the drive? Knoppix boots into just about everything but the most bizarre hardware out there.
Because 95% of the data on my computer is mp3's, videos, pictures, and that kind of stuff. Even the slowest of the slow 5400RPM drives can serve MP3's easily, and is able to serve compressed video too. I can see a fast boot drive for the OS, applications, swap files, scratch disk, etc. - but I hardly need 300GB of super fast storage.
The next step is to remake the Administrator account, except make it a basic user and give it no privileges at all. Then give it a really long random password. If someone ever tries to h4x0r the box, this one is guaranteed to keep the script kiddies busy for days!
It's the same problem you have with hackers who hack a system just because they can, and claim they don't do any harm. You now have a worm infecting your computer that claims to do no harm. However, in both cases you are left with a compromised system, and even though it may appear to be working OK you really do not have any idea what may have been done or what holes may have been opened. The only real solution in these cases is to rebuild or restore from backups.
However, a benificial worm may help the home users. Though I would wait a bit until most of the systems that will be fixed have already been fixed, so the worm will primarily hit the still infected systems owned by the clueless people who don't care.
Most of the problems I have found are people who install WAY too much stuff, like 5 different IM programs, real player, Kazaa, WinMX, etc etc etc and the computer gets so bogged down that things just start grinding to a halt. Either that or all those processes start causing various random crashes, and general instability ensues.
The other problems are the people running IE, and end up with various peices of malware taking things over, causing slow downs, annoying popups, and instability. I try to turn them to some other browser, but some are just really really stubborn. "It works for me.", they say. Well I guess it depends on how you define "working", considering it lets in peices of malware that I just had to nuke off your system because it crashed. But they still won't consider switching. Ugh.
I'm convinced that IE just has too many problems, even for the experienced user. Just yesterday I ran accross some site that did not care too much for Opera. Okay, so I fire up IE. I don't like doing it, but I have a patched IE6SP1 with conservative security settings just in case. After a couple of minutes, some popup(?) takes over my *entire* screen, with some poor lookalike of the MSBlaster virus (using the XP interface, and I'm on Windows 2000 = dead giveaway) with some blinking link telling me to click here for the fix NOW. Uh huh. Well after spending a few seconds trying to figure out how to get control of my computer back (it took up the whole screen, including covering the taskbar, there were no close buttons or anything to click on other than the ad), I just did the three finger salute and nuked the window. Then on second thought I nuked the other IE windows and went back to Opera. It amazes me that IE lets websites do nasty tricks like that, it's pretty obvious how the malware gets onto the computers of otherwise intelligent people.
So, I guess that makes their Linux drivers better than the current crop of drivers for Windows 2000?
I would think that RAID on a laptop would not work that well. Battery and size issues aside, most data loss with laptops seem to have to do with the laptop getting stolen, or the entire machine ruined (dunked underwater, etc.)
What would be cool with laptops is a RAID setup with a docking station. You have one drive in the laptop, the other in the docking station. Whenever the laptop is in the docking station, the drives act as RAID 1. When the laptop is connected back to the docking station after being used on the road, the drives automatically sync back up.
Another idea would be to have the mirror drive part of the power adaptor. Every time you charge your laptop, it backs itself up. Then all you would have to do is keep the charger seperate (like in a different bag), and you would not have to worry about losing your data to theft so easily.
Does that mean they won't bundle an email client in Windows anymore? That's one good thing I see coming out of this. Hopefully a good, simple to use, secure, and free email client will be able to fill the gap.
"Backups. Consumer level PC need a VERY GOOD inexpensive method of backing up stuff... I'm talking the whole hard drive in a manner of minutes. Cheap. Often."
You mean RAID 1? It's cheap enough (~$2/gig) that I don't see why anyone would not use it if they have even mildly important data on their machines. Cheap and continous. Though not a 100% perfect solution, as it basically only protects against drive failure.
Of course, for any other backup, hard disk drives need to catch up in the speed department first. While the average hard disks of today are 100 times larger than those 10 years ago, they are maybe 10 times faster. Which means it takes 10 times longer to read all the data off of one. Mirroring a drive used to take a few minutes, now it takes an hour or more. A USB external HDD may be a great backup, but to backup a 160GB drive takes all night!
I think they would be rather amazed at the power of the computers themselves. Show them that we can store 2 trillion bits of data on something thats about the size of a paperback book. Oh yeah, and it only costs about $200 too. However, they may not be so impressed when they discover we use it mostly to store vast quantities of bad music, bad movies, and porn. Oh well.
Or the processors that run at 2 billion cycles per second that cost less than $100. It would blow them away.
You can tell them, "Sure, the thing won't boot with less than 64MB of memory, but who cares when that much memory costs $15?" Oh course they will probably say that's our problem - what incentive do we have to elimate bloat when it's so much cheaper to throw more hardware at a problem?
BTW, be sure to tell them to put all their money into the stock of a small company named "Microsoft" in the early 1980's, and that around 1999 you'll be expecting a nice check in the mail.
Well, I did not really expect that I would be using the *exact* same keyboard that I did 10 years ago. However, in 10 years I highly suspect that I'll still be using it, if at all possible.
Go Model M!!!
...Dude1: Dude, do you look at 3D porn with that?
I don't think so. Maybe diamond computers will take over the high end, but the cheap computer market will likely still thrive with the current technologies.
Another interesting point is if most of the value of the computer is now the diamonds that make it up, dumpster diving for old equipment could get even more profitable!
Why not have the banks/credit card companies/etc. pay for the database, since they are the ones who use it to their advantage, so individuals can look up their own report for free?
Universities can say they do it because of bandwidth concerns, not because of legal reasons. I'm pretty sure that's the number one reason why they do it now anyway. I'm sure the university does not want some computer in the dorm uploading gigabytes of Linux .iso's everyday even if it is perfectly legal.
Yeah, I walk around my schools campus carrying CDs that say things ldke l33t h4k0r1n9 t00lz" on them.
.mp3's in any free space on the CD, and claim it's a CD of remixes of Britney Spears and 'N-Sync. I doubt they'll suspect anything.
Heck, I'd just throw a few low quality
I still wonder how many people buy those items. They seem terribly overpriced considering how common they are on the realms, thanks to dupers and hackers. I remember a long time ago, sites did sell legit items - they had high level characters they played in some of the more lucrative areas and sold off the booty. But those sites are long gone.
I also wonder why Blizzard doesn't shut those sites down. I mean, if they are selling those items in any quantity, they aren't getting them through legit means. If I was Blizzard I would atleast figure out what exploits they are using, patch them up, and ban their CD-keys. If you buy an item, they somehow have to get them to you, so it shouldn't be too tough to figure out their CD-keys and account names.
My only hope is 1.10 will somehow delete all those items. If I see naked characters running around complaining about how their hacked gear they spent all that money on went poof, I'm just going to laugh at them.
Just so you have some numbers, the Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM drive I have right here states that it draws 670mA on the +5V line and 960mA on the +12V line. The Samsung 16X DVD-Rom draws 2.0A(!) on the +5V line and 1.0A on the 12V line. An ancient Seagate 2GB I have does not have any ratings.
According to my motherboard monitor, the +12V line is +12.480V, and the +5V line is +4.590V. The computer is completely stable with it's Athlon 2000+, 3 HDDs, CD burner, etc. The voltages don't fluctuate more than about .05V either. The power supply is an Enermax 350W, and it also worked great on my older setup, a K6-III 450Mhz with 3 HDDs and other goodies.
So I have concluded that either the builtin monitoring is wacky, or the components just don't care.
What if I just programmed the virus to go visit alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.young or something like that and just start downloading files at random? That would be a lot less traceable, I would think.
Intermittant problems like that are the worst, because they think it doesn't exist or that it's software, etc. Sometimes it's just best to make it a dead computer. You could try backing up your data, yanking the disk drive, and microwaving it for a second or two. That'll make it nice and dead, and with luck they'll just pop in a replacement and you'll be on your way.
Lawyer speak: If this doesn't work I'm in no way responsible!!!
Well I know how to get rid of them, throw the CDs in the microwave!!! ...10 seconds later.... D'Oh!!!
My experience with Windows 2000 (and all versions of Windows) is that if it can't find the page file, it will just create a new one. So if I store my page file on D:, and I replace my old D: harddrive with a freshly formatted, empty one - Windows will create a new page file on boot. I guess it may be a problem if D: changes to an optical drive.
On the otherhand, getting Windows 2000 to boot off of my motherboard's built in RAID controller is like mission impossible!
I agree. Sometimes I wonder if XP Home was a derivative of Windows ME and not 2000. It seems stable enough, but the quirks and silly interface makes me wonder.
I can never see a mime without having flashbacks to the video of a mime that played everytime I started up my Packard Bell 486. That was until I figured out how to disable Packard Bell's Navigator program, and changed the thing to boot to the Windows 3.1 desktop instead.
It would be interesting to see that again. I seem to recall it played smoothly, though a sluggish 486 wouldn't be up to the task of playing a MPEG1 file? I recall the file was like 45MB, which was *huge* on it's tiny harddrive.