have you ever read an Microsoft EULA? Let me quote from a bit of one... this is copy/pasted directly. Note the original was all in capitals, but slashdot's lameness filter meant I had to overwrite with lower case (so even/. website think's MS's EULA is lame:-)
disclaimer of warranties. to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law,
microsoft and its suppliers provide to you
the os components, and any (if any) support
services related to the os components
("support services") as is and with all faults ... wait, there's more...
hereby disclaim with respect to the os
components and support services all
warrantes and conditions, whether express,...
merchantability, fitness for a particular
purpose etc
at least with linux, the lack of warranty is free:-)
I was going to add a sarcastic comment that Microsoft don't put a tube of KY Jelly in with their products because they don't care how much it hurts when they shaft you, but that would be cheap and crude. ooops.
he intuitive interface and time saving features such as searching and sorting significantly decrease the time spent mucking around with the OS
didn't a recent study find that Vista was less productive than XP? And wasn't XP supposed to be more secure, better and easier to use than 2000?
I think Vista might be more *fun* to use than XP, which in turn had more visual toys than 2000. Even if it were a bit more productive than XP, most competent staff and managers are about as productive as they can ever be anyway in word processing, powerpointing and email, but it there would be a decrease in productivity of IT Support staff for quite a while commissioning new systems and getting users up to speed, let alone the costs of more powerful computers and the electricity to power them.
when I install windows, I always redo the entire start menu. I also change XP theme to Windows2000, turn off the eye candy, turn off the annoying "remove unused icons", turn off the hiding unused menu entries, fix the quickstart bar... takes me half an hour tops. If vista is so damn configurable, it surely is possible to make it look sufficiently like Win2k or WinXP so no training required, and this would be a custom install so that trivial to rollout systems.
My first step would be to migrate existing users to OpenOffice, and thus break the MS Office cycle. Most users should need no more than half an hour to get up to speed. New users and/or upgraded computers would become linux desktops if possible. Also, at the very least, a lot of older file servers could be replaced with Linux, which could be quite a big saving.
Having gone down this route at former employer, the biggest problem in converting staff were the senior managers who love their Outlook/Exchange/calendaring, and the techies loved converting to linux as it meant they could avoid being put on Outlook and micromanaged using calendars!
When I used to do embedded debug, my employer used 8051 and there were about half a dozen in-circuit emulators around; we needed more grunt and started using the 80188, and the ICEs were about GBP15000 at the time (18 years ago, so about GBP25000 or USD38000 in todays money). There was only one rival emulator at the time, and we tried it and it was crap. Seemed that the ICE had a special version of the microcontroller in it that only Intel's test equipment team could use.
Another department learned from our mistake and used NEC's V25 and V35 x86 microcontrollers and got their emulators for well under GBP1000; they weren't as full featured but instead of four people competing to use two debug stations, they were able to buy or rent enough for each developer.
If I were still in embedded development, I'd put a couple of people onto the job of full-time tool evaluation before we picked a microcontroller to ensure the kit worked reliably AND we had prices negotiated before adopting any one CPU.
you can write a trivial web server in bash, using inetd to handle the networking side. horrendously inefficient BUT very quick and dirty, and you can do a surprising amount to parse headers using awk and sed!
I used this technique to create a snapshot of a website and add a searchable index using namazu; the web pages are accessed using FILE:///, but the search engine uses http://localhost/namazu. Since you're only doing one cgi invocation on an occasional basis, who needs scalability?
customer: forget it i'll just have a box of VHS tapes please
Salesman: would you like Sony, TDK, Memorex or own brand
Customer: er, Sony
Salesman: what grade would you like? XB, XBR, XBR-E ... ad nauseam...
Here in the UK, in small to medium sized cars, automatic gearboxes make a car undesirable, so to buy a VW Golf automatic you'd have to order it specially. As soon as you get to the luxury end of the market, the cars come with auto box by default, and you have to order a manual specially. When buying a 2nd hand luxury car, if it doesn't have leather seats, is manual box and there's no sun roof, it can be an indicator the car was previously owned by the police.
look at meaningless blinking lights for no good reason, why not do it the easy way and just stare at the sun
because I don't want permanent scarring of my retinas?
a fake tricorder and a cheap palm pilot is a damn site cheaper than buying Vista if you want eye candy!
the colour one runs fine on my Palm T3 despite the program being written for pre Arm processors
Re:Isn't that what they want? Not Quite!
on
DRM Causes Piracy
·
· Score: 1
I do the same, I use the wonderful DVDShrink to rip the bits of the disk you want to watch; by stripping off the useless soundtracks etc it can make even long movies fit onto a 4.7GB disk.
Given that my wife mildly abuses DVDs and my young son has no concept of caring for them, it's also a vital step in protecting my "investment".
If the studios, movie or music, actually lived by their concept that we are buying licenses to watch or listen, and not the media + freedom to do what we want with the content for personal use (rip, backup, sample etc) then they would be willing to replace the media in the event of damage at cost.. e.g. US$1 inc P&P for swap old for new. In the past when I've had a damaged disk I've yet to be able to get it fixed and have to take a backup of a friend's, or download.
Judge: Son, why did you take a hires photo of this poster and print your own rather than buying a copy? Me: because it cost too much and I wouldn't have bought it ever at that price
You can stick me with a plasma, gut me with the sword, blast me with the shotgun, or hit me face-first with a rocket, but please just shut up with the trash talk!
and don't step on his blue suede stomtrooper boots!
indeed. take a look at the countries where corruption is rife such as the Congo, and you'll see some of the poorest countries, despite large quantities of aid being injected very little of it filters down to the people who need it, and very little money is invested in the future because corruption at the highest level means it is impossible to get a return on investment. There's no benefit to working hard if the local gov't officials discover a new tax to take everything you've got. Inflation is also usually a massive problem because people can't even trust their money - I have witnessed people trying to buy a washing machine in Zimbabwe dollars, and needing several large backpacks to carry the cash, and taking hours to count it!
trust in society is a vital glue, whether stopping to help a stranger in trouble, or running a shop and expecting that the dollars being offered for the goods on sale are both genuine and have a stable value for future trade.
We have the same problem here in the UK with a chain called Tesco; there are numerous reports about them and the two next largest supermarkets screwing suppliers (e.g. farms) down so low that many are sent almost to the wall. Since most supermarkets run their own petrol (gas to USA'ns) stations they also undercut all local competition until they quit, and then crank prices back up.
Even though it's widely publicised that local shops in small towns and villages, especially local post offices, are being killed in this way, people's basic instinct to buy the cheapest goods mean the problem continues, and only when the local shop dies do people take notice.
The same effect is true in the internet provider markets, and at the end of the day the service falls and the prices rise because there's no effective competition. When the corporate giant is big enough it can lobby the gov't to protect it against new entrants into the market.
DRM has been done successfully to some extent, ignoring the "analogue" hole, by NDS (News Corp) who provide Sky. However, they do this with a combination of closed proprietary hardware and active policing (they have a team of private police to investigate any attempts for hacker communities to break it).
... which is a nice advert for Nokia; I would hope that Silica doesn't use any GPLd libraries otherwise they'll have to release source, which would be nice, as kismet or aircrack-ng are nowhere near as automated as this baby!
janus mini-itx
I quote:
The "Janus Project" is the brainchild of Kyle Williams of the Janus Wireless Security Research Group in Portland, Oregon.
Mounted inside an epoxy and silicone-sealed watertight case lives a 1.5GHz C7 powered EPIA EN 15000G motherboard, 2 x four-port PCI to mini-PCI adapters, 8 x 802.11a/b/g mini-PCI WLAN Modules, 2 x 1W 2.4Ghz WLAN amplifiers, a keyboard and a 17in LCD screen. The system can scan up to 300 wireless networks simultaneously, storing and AES encrypting in real time all the data onto its 20GB hard drive.
actually, it probably WOULD be possible to have the TPM module written into the virtual machine, as it's mostly a crytographic function that relies on an internal secret key that can either sign data or code, or verify signed data or code.
however, the problem would be that your TPM module being wholly software wouldn't be able to keep the key secret, so whilst you could release the source code to the module, getting any trusted authority to actually issue you with a key for it would be impossible... this is a similar problem to the "crack" for HD-DVD's content protection and the keys being extracted from a software player.
I don't know whether you could write a module in the VM which would be a pathway to a physical TPM, because I don't know how any man-in-the-middle protection works for the TPM and the libraries and APIs used to access it. My guess is you SHOULD be able to do this, since the OS and apps in the VM shouldn't be able to realise they're talking via a software emulation layer.
they should just try posting it, with a big sticker on it saying "fragile"... seems to work pretty well in the UK. I think that's how nuclear fission has been done on the cheap!
Slashdot Mirror
looks like we're going to have to build a big machine to roll the earth back into a more spherical shape then :-O
UTC - for people who are too snobbish to use GMT
:-)
have you ever read an Microsoft EULA? Let me quote from a bit of one... this is copy/pasted directly. Note the original was all in capitals, but slashdot's lameness filter meant I had to overwrite with lower case (so even /. website think's MS's EULA is lame :-)
... wait, there's more...
...
merchantability, fitness for a particular
purpose etc
:-)
disclaimer of warranties. to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, microsoft and its suppliers provide to you the os components, and any (if any) support services related to the os components ("support services") as is and with all faults
hereby disclaim with respect to the os components and support services all warrantes and conditions, whether express,
at least with linux, the lack of warranty is free
I was going to add a sarcastic comment that Microsoft don't put a tube of KY Jelly in with their products because they don't care how much it hurts when they shaft you, but that would be cheap and crude. ooops.
he intuitive interface and time saving features such as searching and sorting significantly decrease the time spent mucking around with the OS
didn't a recent study find that Vista was less productive than XP? And wasn't XP supposed to be more secure, better and easier to use than 2000?
I think Vista might be more *fun* to use than XP, which in turn had more visual toys than 2000. Even if it were a bit more productive than XP, most competent staff and managers are about as productive as they can ever be anyway in word processing, powerpointing and email, but it there would be a decrease in productivity of IT Support staff for quite a while commissioning new systems and getting users up to speed, let alone the costs of more powerful computers and the electricity to power them.
I've heard good things about the OQO's features, but not about its build quality.. has the 02 improved in that respect?
even tho the Z was a big seller in Japan, Sharp have gone over to the dark side with the em-one, a big windows mobile device.
JK On the run has a video of it in action. apart from his very amateurish video work, you get a pretty good appreciation of the device.
in summary... powerful but chunky!
when I install windows, I always redo the entire start menu. I also change XP theme to Windows2000, turn off the eye candy, turn off the annoying "remove unused icons", turn off the hiding unused menu entries, fix the quickstart bar... takes me half an hour tops. If vista is so damn configurable, it surely is possible to make it look sufficiently like Win2k or WinXP so no training required, and this would be a custom install so that trivial to rollout systems.
My first step would be to migrate existing users to OpenOffice, and thus break the MS Office cycle. Most users should need no more than half an hour to get up to speed. New users and/or upgraded computers would become linux desktops if possible. Also, at the very least, a lot of older file servers could be replaced with Linux, which could be quite a big saving.
Having gone down this route at former employer, the biggest problem in converting staff were the senior managers who love their Outlook/Exchange/calendaring, and the techies loved converting to linux as it meant they could avoid being put on Outlook and micromanaged using calendars!
When I used to do embedded debug, my employer used 8051 and there were about half a dozen in-circuit emulators around; we needed more grunt and started using the 80188, and the ICEs were about GBP15000 at the time (18 years ago, so about GBP25000 or USD38000 in todays money). There was only one rival emulator at the time, and we tried it and it was crap. Seemed that the ICE had a special version of the microcontroller in it that only Intel's test equipment team could use.
Another department learned from our mistake and used NEC's V25 and V35 x86 microcontrollers and got their emulators for well under GBP1000; they weren't as full featured but instead of four people competing to use two debug stations, they were able to buy or rent enough for each developer.
If I were still in embedded development, I'd put a couple of people onto the job of full-time tool evaluation before we picked a microcontroller to ensure the kit worked reliably AND we had prices negotiated before adopting any one CPU.
you can write a trivial web server in bash, using inetd to handle the networking side. horrendously inefficient BUT very quick and dirty, and you can do a surprising amount to parse headers using awk and sed!
I used this technique to create a snapshot of a website and add a searchable index using namazu; the web pages are accessed using FILE:///, but the search engine uses http://localhost/namazu. Since you're only doing one cgi invocation on an occasional basis, who needs scalability?
customer: forget it i'll just have a box of VHS tapes please
... ad nauseam ...
Salesman: would you like Sony, TDK, Memorex or own brand
Customer: er, Sony
Salesman: what grade would you like? XB, XBR, XBR-E
Here in the UK, in small to medium sized cars, automatic gearboxes make a car undesirable, so to buy a VW Golf automatic you'd have to order it specially. As soon as you get to the luxury end of the market, the cars come with auto box by default, and you have to order a manual specially. When buying a 2nd hand luxury car, if it doesn't have leather seats, is manual box and there's no sun roof, it can be an indicator the car was previously owned by the police.
Re your sig: Everyone in Britain (and France, too) learns to drive in a manual car.
AIUI, No, you can learn to drive and pass your test in an automatic car, but then you're not licensed to drive a manual-gear-box vehicle.
look at meaningless blinking lights for no good reason, why not do it the easy way and just stare at the sun
because I don't want permanent scarring of my retinas?
a fake tricorder and a cheap palm pilot is a damn site cheaper than buying Vista if you want eye candy!
there's been a fun emulator for Palm for years:
Jeff Jetton's Tricorder Palm site
the colour one runs fine on my Palm T3 despite the program being written for pre Arm processors
I do the same, I use the wonderful DVDShrink to rip the bits of the disk you want to watch; by stripping off the useless soundtracks etc it can make even long movies fit onto a 4.7GB disk.
Given that my wife mildly abuses DVDs and my young son has no concept of caring for them, it's also a vital step in protecting my "investment".
If the studios, movie or music, actually lived by their concept that we are buying licenses to watch or listen, and not the media + freedom to do what we want with the content for personal use (rip, backup, sample etc) then they would be willing to replace the media in the event of damage at cost.. e.g. US$1 inc P&P for swap old for new. In the past when I've had a damaged disk I've yet to be able to get it fixed and have to take a backup of a friend's, or download.
I think a better analogy:
Judge: Son, why did you take a hires photo of this poster and print your own rather than buying a copy?
Me: because it cost too much and I wouldn't have bought it ever at that price
You can stick me with a plasma, gut me with the sword, blast me with the shotgun, or hit me face-first with a rocket, but please just shut up with the trash talk!
and don't step on his blue suede stomtrooper boots!
indeed. take a look at the countries where corruption is rife such as the Congo, and you'll see some of the poorest countries, despite large quantities of aid being injected very little of it filters down to the people who need it, and very little money is invested in the future because corruption at the highest level means it is impossible to get a return on investment. There's no benefit to working hard if the local gov't officials discover a new tax to take everything you've got. Inflation is also usually a massive problem because people can't even trust their money - I have witnessed people trying to buy a washing machine in Zimbabwe dollars, and needing several large backpacks to carry the cash, and taking hours to count it!
trust in society is a vital glue, whether stopping to help a stranger in trouble, or running a shop and expecting that the dollars being offered for the goods on sale are both genuine and have a stable value for future trade.
We have the same problem here in the UK with a chain called Tesco; there are numerous reports about them and the two next largest supermarkets screwing suppliers (e.g. farms) down so low that many are sent almost to the wall. Since most supermarkets run their own petrol (gas to USA'ns) stations they also undercut all local competition until they quit, and then crank prices back up.
Even though it's widely publicised that local shops in small towns and villages, especially local post offices, are being killed in this way, people's basic instinct to buy the cheapest goods mean the problem continues, and only when the local shop dies do people take notice.
The same effect is true in the internet provider markets, and at the end of the day the service falls and the prices rise because there's no effective competition. When the corporate giant is big enough it can lobby the gov't to protect it against new entrants into the market.
DRM has been done successfully to some extent, ignoring the "analogue" hole, by NDS (News Corp) who provide Sky. However, they do this with a combination of closed proprietary hardware and active policing (they have a team of private police to investigate any attempts for hacker communities to break it).
... which is a nice advert for Nokia; I would hope that Silica doesn't use any GPLd libraries otherwise they'll have to release source, which would be nice, as kismet or aircrack-ng are nowhere near as automated as this baby!
janus mini-itx I quote:
The "Janus Project" is the brainchild of Kyle Williams of the Janus Wireless Security Research Group in Portland, Oregon.
Mounted inside an epoxy and silicone-sealed watertight case lives a 1.5GHz C7 powered EPIA EN 15000G motherboard, 2 x four-port PCI to mini-PCI adapters, 8 x 802.11a/b/g mini-PCI WLAN Modules, 2 x 1W 2.4Ghz WLAN amplifiers, a keyboard and a 17in LCD screen. The system can scan up to 300 wireless networks simultaneously, storing and AES encrypting in real time all the data onto its 20GB hard drive.
unfair I think to mod parent flamebait.
actually, it probably WOULD be possible to have the TPM module written into the virtual machine, as it's mostly a crytographic function that relies on an internal secret key that can either sign data or code, or verify signed data or code.
however, the problem would be that your TPM module being wholly software wouldn't be able to keep the key secret, so whilst you could release the source code to the module, getting any trusted authority to actually issue you with a key for it would be impossible... this is a similar problem to the "crack" for HD-DVD's content protection and the keys being extracted from a software player.
I don't know whether you could write a module in the VM which would be a pathway to a physical TPM, because I don't know how any man-in-the-middle protection works for the TPM and the libraries and APIs used to access it. My guess is you SHOULD be able to do this, since the OS and apps in the VM shouldn't be able to realise they're talking via a software emulation layer.
they should just try posting it, with a big sticker on it saying "fragile"... seems to work pretty well in the UK. I think that's how nuclear fission has been done on the cheap!