That's already implemented. The Loki backdoor system, as described in Phrack, is a functional proof of concept that even ICMP can be hijacked for malicious purposes.
Why do people want "High Performance" on a laptop on the go?
Business users? I can't see them using more than a Bluetooth connection to a VPN, doing email and word processing. Crusoe will fit their bill just as well as anything AMD or Intel can make right now.
Gamers? Centrino isn't the answer, a blazing (in more than one sense of the word) fast desktop processor on a lap with a mobile 3d accelerator, if any laptop could suffice.
A portable MP3 unit with a little bit more intelligence? Go get a Transmeta Crusoe, it'll save your shoulders more in the long run.
More complicated processor, more transistors, more energy burned.
More bitblt activity and multimedia display, more energy burned.
More pixels on screen, more energy burned.
More radio signal activity, more energy burned.
When people realize this, laptop speeds will go down to usable levels (1GHz will play DivX movies fine, and that's probably the most intensive thing you could possibly do well on a laptop). Until then, expect those laptops to continue tacking on more battery burning "features."
It appears the Centrino is a processor that actually could be practical, conserving battery power at the expense of computing power. As such, the market is of people that want more battery time, and are going to sacrifice computing power to do so.
Why do these laptops then contain such battery burning parts as large screens, CDRW/DVD drives, and weigh as much as 7lb?
When I saw the Sony Picturebook with Transmeta Crusoe processor, I was drooling. Not because it was a Crusoe processor, but because it was a computer that could do what mobile people need it to do, and do it for a long time, and be unobtrusive enough to put in my jacket pocket.
If you're going to get a portable computer but you're always going to be plugged in when using it, get a cheap ECS Desknote that doesn't come with a battery. If you worry a bit about battery time, get a normal mobile Pentium IV or Mobile Athlon. If you're insane about battery life, get a Crusoe. I don't see the middle ground between the last two.
I am John Doe, loyal employee of Microsoft. I seek the assistance of someone who is genuinely interested in entering into a business relationship with me. As you know, Bill Gates was the ruler of Microsoft before quietly resigning a few years back. Corrupt governments deemed his business illegal, and as a result, his business accumulated assets were frozen.
I therefore seek your assistance in providing a safe and genuine bank account to temporarily store my leader's rightfully owned assets. For your assistance, 0.01% of his assets ($2.76 Million Dollars) will be left in your account as payment.
Note that there is no risk for you or your family, but keep this correspondence private, as this is a matter of great secrecy. As soon as we receive your letter of acceptance/acknowledgement/, I shall give you more on this transaction.
To get to that share you need the credentials of the local admin. What is the default password on that share? It's the local admin's password. What is the likelihood that the local admin of a Windows 2000 box at home is actually good?
Better yet, go through the entire hardening process of disabling Alerter, Messenger, Server, Print Spooler (unless necessary), Indexing Service, Uninterruptible Power Supply, Telnet, Universal Plug and Play, Fax Service, Network DDE, QoS RSVP, Remote Registry Service, and whatever else you don't need.
(Those listed above tend not to be useful for 90% of users out there)
Then change the password policies, login audit policies, and a whole mesh of other things:)
Windows 2000 Professional and Server Services Configuration 411
There is a reason why intelligent password crackers (dictionary attack) will first try passwords such as "password", "secret", "administrator", "root" or its variants before going through the main database.
It isn't only at the PHB's desk that PEBKAC can occur.
Unfortunately, in an employment environment where complicated passwords are just another encumberance and annoyance for most people, this is not going to change any time soon./.ers are young (mostly). Most users never needed to know passwords longer than a 4 digit PIN until the last decade.
If that's not the best example of when people don't know what to price at, I don't know what is. Go to (say) expedia, travelocity, or destina.ca and price out a round-trip flight to some interesting place (I suggest Osaka). Prices range from $1400 to $6000 (CDN) on what is basically the same flight, with the same restrictions, at even the same timing conditions. And the expensive flights often include more stopovers and transfers too!
Perhaps with a $4 difference we may think differently, but I'd choose the cheap option any day when the difference is $300.
I don't have a problem with it. If the blogger states on their site that they are receiving promotional goods from Dr. Pepper, then this form of advertising is about equivalent to banner ads with the little word "advertisement" underneath. Annoying but fair.
Somehow I don't think the bloggers will do that, so ignore what I just said.
Sendmail was always a good fun program to find remote exploits for, with its configuration file so incredibly cryptic and its architecture inherently unsafe. What other program treats local files like incoming mail? And has a.cf file that looks like raw/dev/random output?
FAT32 (a fairly common choice for sharing files locally with a 2k/xp box) carves disks in 32KB or 64KB chunks. But they have a 2^28 block limit, so FAT32 is good only to 16TB as well.
Most consumer level hardware is now planned to be obsolete within 2 years anyway, so nothing needs to be damage resistant. When something breaks, it's a great excuse to go build a more l33t box.
And the only exception to that is probably keyboards and mice, which take years of punishment.
If accumulating 1.8TB on a "consumer-level" PC is feasible, are the Linux LVM code and filesystem drivers ready to take on the 4TB barrier?
In kilobyte blocks, 2^32 blocks only allows for 4TB of data to be referenced. ext2 still has options to set for 1024 byte blocksize, and supports up to 4096 - which would be a 16TB barrier.
Beyond the public knowledge of name, there really isn't any reason to give any information to untrusted sources.
Even if monster had absolute highest employer screening methods, you are still trusting that monster has a secure server, that their network infrastructure is resistant to attack, that monster's employees will not illegitimately sell off your information, or anything else.
All this hassle and the hiring rates out of these sites remains dismal because there are so many applicants. To any unemployed/.ers out there, I suggest you read "What Color is Your Parachute?" by Richard Bolles. And follow its advice of hunting for jobs on foot.
Scientists discover new chemically manufactured antibiotics nearly as often as you check/. These antibiotics work. And then they don't, because the target adapts, as evolution demands of it.
That is the source of all these antibiotic resistant "superbugs." Staph adapted to the treatments we threw at it before, it will do so again.
And who do you think do all these upgrades anyway?
The entire bleeding edge is based on hard-core gamers. Why in the world would big business go buy a few hundred l33t GeForce4s or "upgrade" to an untested unknown program that breaks all backward compatibility?
Linux (not Unix) has the lowest TCO on the planet. and you CAN hire a linux expert for the same as a windows expert.
Right... but convincing PHBs of the long-term lower costs in the North American short-term profit view doesn't go well, especially if they have large infrastructure capital in Windows already in place.
Switching core infrastructure would cost on the order of millions in the human resources cost of replacing all your Windows admins with Unix admins, severance packages, and retraining costs.
And keep every other search engine out on patent infringement?
This just means Google can position itself as the only search engine using linkage networks, and not have to improve its products in the face of nonexistent competition.
Slashdot Mirror
That's already implemented. The Loki backdoor system, as described in Phrack, is a functional proof of concept that even ICMP can be hijacked for malicious purposes.
Why do people want "High Performance" on a laptop on the go?
Business users? I can't see them using more than a Bluetooth connection to a VPN, doing email and word processing. Crusoe will fit their bill just as well as anything AMD or Intel can make right now.
Gamers? Centrino isn't the answer, a blazing (in more than one sense of the word) fast desktop processor on a lap with a mobile 3d accelerator, if any laptop could suffice.
A portable MP3 unit with a little bit more intelligence? Go get a Transmeta Crusoe, it'll save your shoulders more in the long run.
More complicated processor, more transistors, more energy burned.
More bitblt activity and multimedia display, more energy burned.
More pixels on screen, more energy burned.
More radio signal activity, more energy burned.
When people realize this, laptop speeds will go down to usable levels (1GHz will play DivX movies fine, and that's probably the most intensive thing you could possibly do well on a laptop). Until then, expect those laptops to continue tacking on more battery burning "features."
It appears the Centrino is a processor that actually could be practical, conserving battery power at the expense of computing power. As such, the market is of people that want more battery time, and are going to sacrifice computing power to do so.
Why do these laptops then contain such battery burning parts as large screens, CDRW/DVD drives, and weigh as much as 7lb?
When I saw the Sony Picturebook with Transmeta Crusoe processor, I was drooling. Not because it was a Crusoe processor, but because it was a computer that could do what mobile people need it to do, and do it for a long time, and be unobtrusive enough to put in my jacket pocket.
If you're going to get a portable computer but you're always going to be plugged in when using it, get a cheap ECS Desknote that doesn't come with a battery. If you worry a bit about battery time, get a normal mobile Pentium IV or Mobile Athlon. If you're insane about battery life, get a Crusoe. I don't see the middle ground between the last two.
You're asking Microsoft to innovate. That's like asking Amazon to develop creative new business processes.
I am John Doe, loyal employee of Microsoft. I seek the assistance of someone who is genuinely interested in entering into a business relationship with me. As you know, Bill Gates was the ruler of Microsoft before quietly resigning a few years back. Corrupt governments deemed his business illegal, and as a result, his business accumulated assets were frozen.
I therefore seek your assistance in providing a safe and genuine bank account to temporarily store my leader's rightfully owned assets. For your assistance, 0.01% of his assets ($2.76 Million Dollars) will be left in your account as payment.
Note that there is no risk for you or your family, but keep this correspondence private, as this is a matter of great secrecy. As soon as we receive your letter of acceptance/acknowledgement/, I shall give you more on this transaction.
To get to that share you need the credentials of the local admin. What is the default password on that share? It's the local admin's password. What is the likelihood that the local admin of a Windows 2000 box at home is actually good?
Go look at your computer's C$ share. This is the default share on a fresh 2K install.
Even if it requires local admin accounts to access this share, just that it is available, and HIDDEN, is a grave security fault!
Better yet, go through the entire hardening process of disabling Alerter, Messenger, Server, Print Spooler (unless necessary), Indexing Service, Uninterruptible Power Supply, Telnet, Universal Plug and Play, Fax Service, Network DDE, QoS RSVP, Remote Registry Service, and whatever else you don't need.
:)
(Those listed above tend not to be useful for 90% of users out there)
Then change the password policies, login audit policies, and a whole mesh of other things
Windows 2000 Professional and Server Services Configuration 411
I doubt the non-existent and certainly not distributed open-source SAMBA suite had many security holes in Windows 95.
There is a reason why intelligent password crackers (dictionary attack) will first try passwords such as "password", "secret", "administrator", "root" or its variants before going through the main database.
/.ers are young (mostly). Most users never needed to know passwords longer than a 4 digit PIN until the last decade.
It isn't only at the PHB's desk that PEBKAC can occur.
Unfortunately, in an employment environment where complicated passwords are just another encumberance and annoyance for most people, this is not going to change any time soon.
If that's not the best example of when people don't know what to price at, I don't know what is. Go to (say) expedia, travelocity, or destina.ca and price out a round-trip flight to some interesting place (I suggest Osaka). Prices range from $1400 to $6000 (CDN) on what is basically the same flight, with the same restrictions, at even the same timing conditions. And the expensive flights often include more stopovers and transfers too!
Perhaps with a $4 difference we may think differently, but I'd choose the cheap option any day when the difference is $300.
I don't have a problem with it. If the blogger states on their site that they are receiving promotional goods from Dr. Pepper, then this form of advertising is about equivalent to banner ads with the little word "advertisement" underneath. Annoying but fair.
Somehow I don't think the bloggers will do that, so ignore what I just said.
Sendmail was always a good fun program to find remote exploits for, with its configuration file so incredibly cryptic and its architecture inherently unsafe. What other program treats local files like incoming mail? And has a .cf file that looks like raw /dev/random output?
And not just HFS carves disks in 64KB blocks.
FAT32 (a fairly common choice for sharing files locally with a 2k/xp box) carves disks in 32KB or 64KB chunks. But they have a 2^28 block limit, so FAT32 is good only to 16TB as well.
Most consumer level hardware is now planned to be obsolete within 2 years anyway, so nothing needs to be damage resistant. When something breaks, it's a great excuse to go build a more l33t box.
And the only exception to that is probably keyboards and mice, which take years of punishment.
Tell me about why people needed more than 2GB, before MP3 and DivX ;-) got big.
:-)
Technologies in the future will easily take 2TB of data.
99% of it DRM, but that's another matter
If accumulating 1.8TB on a "consumer-level" PC is feasible, are the Linux LVM code and filesystem drivers ready to take on the 4TB barrier?
In kilobyte blocks, 2^32 blocks only allows for 4TB of data to be referenced. ext2 still has options to set for 1024 byte blocksize, and supports up to 4096 - which would be a 16TB barrier.
Even if monster had absolute highest employer screening methods, you are still trusting that monster has a secure server, that their network infrastructure is resistant to attack, that monster's employees will not illegitimately sell off your information, or anything else.
All this hassle and the hiring rates out of these sites remains dismal because there are so many applicants. To any unemployed /.ers out there, I suggest you read "What Color is Your Parachute?" by Richard Bolles. And follow its advice of hunting for jobs on foot.
And imagine what the BSA would have loved to do to these servers if they were allowed to hack the offending boxes.
FTP is a file-sharing protocol, isn't it?
Scientists discover new chemically manufactured antibiotics nearly as often as you check /. These antibiotics work. And then they don't, because the target adapts, as evolution demands of it.
That is the source of all these antibiotic resistant "superbugs." Staph adapted to the treatments we threw at it before, it will do so again.
The entire bleeding edge is based on hard-core gamers. Why in the world would big business go buy a few hundred l33t GeForce4s or "upgrade" to an untested unknown program that breaks all backward compatibility?
Right... but convincing PHBs of the long-term lower costs in the North American short-term profit view doesn't go well, especially if they have large infrastructure capital in Windows already in place.
Switching core infrastructure would cost on the order of millions in the human resources cost of replacing all your Windows admins with Unix admins, severance packages, and retraining costs.
And keep every other search engine out on patent infringement? This just means Google can position itself as the only search engine using linkage networks, and not have to improve its products in the face of nonexistent competition.