A cool thing I did a few times in our development lab was take a screen capture of the machine with various apps loaded and open on the display, and make that into the desktop image.
You can leave such a machine up and running with no actual apps loaded and running. People will walk in and start using the machine. When they discover that none of the 'windows' open on the machine are responsive to the mouse, they power cycle the machine. Which boots up and loads the desktop image again.
I remember using one of these while Gates was saying that you would need "at least 1.5 meg" to multitask.
Correction: in 1982 Gates' company Microsoft produced a product called Xenix. Microsoft Xenix ran, with support for five users plugged into serial ports on dumb terminals, on an 8086 box with 512K of RAM. That was a hell of a lot of memory back in 1982, but the fact that Altos made the Altos 586 box, and Microsoft produced the OS for it, contradicts your claim.
Intel shouldn't have had to replace all those Pentium chips with the FDIV bug in them, either. It actually impacted very few people's ordinary usage of their computers.
The question is wether the flames on this one will be flamed or not.
There are very few reasons to have sshd enabled on a portable machine. Can you name some?
Laptops have smaller, less comfortable displays and keyboards. It's nice to be able to put the thing on the corner of the desk plugged into the network and access it to do various things from your desktop with the big display and the friendly keyboard and mouse. For me, it's a very good reason to have sshd enabled on my portable machines, and it would be for anybody else technically inclined who works regularly across a personal network all the time.
Waah. My Powerbook is a 165c and only has 4 megs of RAM. It's jealous of yours. I guess there's probably a version of Photoshop out there somewhere that would run on it. There's Pagemaker, afterall...
And there is a free utility that lets you password-protect the OpenFirmware, which prevents you from booting from a CD or in single-user mode.
Oh coolness! So there isn't any default protection built in, but anybody who has physical access to the box can install a patch that locks any and everybody else out of the box to undo whatever fun tricks they've installed.
This is the kind of stuff that makes malevolent freshmen in College computer labs smile.
(not advocating the above, but let's be real here- easily installable add-on lockout features aren't that great an idea. That level of security should be thought of 'inside the box' before it's produced)
Yes, yes. And the Pentium division bug only had a slight and obscure error that only signifcantly impacted a few programs and a few computer users.
That doesn't mean that a lot of people, particularly Mac Zealots, didn't crow and crow and crow, and cheer on the demand that Intel replace each and every Pentium chip.
'Every' geek who runs a Unix/Freenix has uses for ssh and is likely running it. Hell, some people see running ssh as 'security enhancing' since the classic alternative is telnet. So yes, there are probably people who like to be able to 'reach into' their Powerbook from their desktop from time to time for various tasks, who have the ssh daemon enabled. Likely there are a bunch of them.
You only have to root a box once if you know what you're doing. Then it's yours forever, or until the next OS install, anyway. So don't pooh-pooh 'only if they're very lucky'. This sounds like 'cool stuff' for University computer labs and bored students with 'cracker' tendencies.
The swiss-cheese security of default Linux five years ago is what got me involved in home networking. Back in the day you could just throw samba on an old Slackware box and do cool things out-of-the-box with Windows 95, WFW, and even LanMan client systems. There were loose 'default on' Sendmail configs on out-of-the-box Linux distros.
In one sense this taught 'lazy admin' habits and a resulting lack of security, in another sense, things just worked without a lot of the hairpulling these days. Linux tightened up, Microsoft tightened up (to deliberately break Samba, some claim), and things got 'better' but truth be told, it's not as welcoming to a beginner messing around on an isolated home subnet anymore.
I used to do amazing geek-out things with older hardware (back when a skinflint geek couldn't afford to have five or six 386 or better boxes around running Linux) like the time I had a boot floppy with just DOS and the MS Lanman TCP/IP client on it for a floppy-only system, that mounted a Samba share 'C:' drive that I was able to then install Windows 3.1 on without the Windows Software ever knowing it was a network drive. You know, cool things that bored geeks do with junk hardware. It was an 8 MHz 286 system, what can I say?
Last time I tried to casually just install Samba by building from the NetBSD pkgsrc system, it was a big mess and I've not bothered to get it to work.
Vanity Fair is also pitiful compared to the kind of 'literate' magazines that used to be published in the U.S. Visit a used bookstore and pick up a copy or Argosy or Atlantic or any number of other magazines. Get an issue from the 1950's or earlier.
Well, maybe you can't get to it, because it's not in your mom's basement with all the rest of your computers. The staff and end-users who are meant to have physical access to the machine can.
We live in a very strange world these days where people consider big powerful chunks of hardware totally inaccessable if they can't sit at their keyboard/monitor and reach it.
That market represents one of the places where the residential networking is centralized enough to meter. It's more a metering point than a unique 'narrow "target market".'
"Just think of all the money you'll make from the single imbecile that will order a copy of your CD, (and that only by mistake; he thought he was ordering a Wayne Newton Box Set but filled out the form wrong) because everybody else already got their copy online for free."
Somebody, umm, better tell all those people willing to shell out money at the cash registers of said stores. While you're at it, tell them they don't exist. heh.
Yes, but hardware development, i.e. the kind of hairpulling work necessary to implement a 3D engine in an FPGA, isn't light-duty 'scratch an itch' work, nor can it be incrementally chipped away at like a C compiler.
The people who hack Verilog and other hardware defintion languages are in such high demand and so highly paid that you're not gonna find them diddling with free projects on the side very often.
And FPGA hardware isn't available in screwdriver shops, nor are there OSes like Windows coming along making FPGA hardware 'obsolete' and cast-off enough that geeks can get it by dumpster diving another piece of gear for their 10base2 'Internet' in mom's basement. The 'phillips screwdriver brigade' of computer hardware 'experts' just aren't gonna bumble in there. Their self-esteem is at risk, ya know...
You can 'open source' a fresh-caught salmon with a sharp knife. That's the same usage of the verb that applies to much software that was developed in a 'closed' environment, where the company has 'given up' and just throws the source out to the winds.
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A cool thing I did a few times in our development lab was take a screen capture of the machine with various apps loaded and open on the display, and make that into the desktop image.
You can leave such a machine up and running with no actual apps loaded and running. People will walk in and start using the machine. When they discover that none of the 'windows' open on the machine are responsive to the mouse, they power cycle the machine. Which boots up and loads the desktop image again.
I remember using one of these while Gates was saying that you would need "at least 1.5 meg" to multitask.
Correction: in 1982 Gates' company Microsoft produced a product called Xenix. Microsoft Xenix ran, with support for five users plugged into serial ports on dumb terminals, on an 8086 box with 512K of RAM. That was a hell of a lot of memory back in 1982, but the fact that Altos made the Altos 586 box, and Microsoft produced the OS for it, contradicts your claim.
First, the average user 1) doesn't have a directory server to authenticate to
No problem. No problem at all. I'm sure Joe Cracker will provide a directory server post-haste.
correction:
"The question is wether the flames on this one will be fanned or not."
Thus I can see Apple's low priority for it.
Intel shouldn't have had to replace all those Pentium chips with the FDIV bug in them, either. It actually impacted very few people's ordinary usage of their computers.
The question is wether the flames on this one will be flamed or not.
There are very few reasons to have sshd enabled on a portable machine. Can you name some?
Laptops have smaller, less comfortable displays and keyboards. It's nice to be able to put the thing on the corner of the desk plugged into the network and access it to do various things from your desktop with the big display and the friendly keyboard and mouse. For me, it's a very good reason to have sshd enabled on my portable machines, and it would be for anybody else technically inclined who works regularly across a personal network all the time.
Waah. My Powerbook is a 165c and only has 4 megs of RAM. It's jealous of yours. I guess there's probably a version of Photoshop out there somewhere that would run on it. There's Pagemaker, afterall...
And there is a free utility that lets you password-protect the OpenFirmware, which prevents you from booting from a CD or in single-user mode.
Oh coolness! So there isn't any default protection built in, but anybody who has physical access to the box can install a patch that locks any and everybody else out of the box to undo whatever fun tricks they've installed.
This is the kind of stuff that makes malevolent freshmen in College computer labs smile.
(not advocating the above, but let's be real here- easily installable add-on lockout features aren't that great an idea. That level of security should be thought of 'inside the box' before it's produced)
If you have physical access to a machine, security is compromised anyway.
Yes, but it's so convenient to not need an external boot device, or to open the box or anything at all.
Granted you can single-user boot any freenix system as well.
Yes, yes. And the Pentium division bug only had a slight and obscure error that only signifcantly impacted a few programs and a few computer users.
That doesn't mean that a lot of people, particularly Mac Zealots, didn't crow and crow and crow, and cheer on the demand that Intel replace each and every Pentium chip.
'Every' geek who runs a Unix/Freenix has uses for ssh and is likely running it. Hell, some people see running ssh as 'security enhancing' since the classic alternative is telnet. So yes, there are probably people who like to be able to 'reach into' their Powerbook from their desktop from time to time for various tasks, who have the ssh daemon enabled. Likely there are a bunch of them.
You only have to root a box once if you know what you're doing. Then it's yours forever, or until the next OS install, anyway. So don't pooh-pooh 'only if they're very lucky'. This sounds like 'cool stuff' for University computer labs and bored students with 'cracker' tendencies.
Security holes are often 'features' of a sort.
The swiss-cheese security of default Linux five years ago is what got me involved in home networking. Back in the day you could just throw samba on an old Slackware box and do cool things out-of-the-box with Windows 95, WFW, and even LanMan client systems. There were loose 'default on' Sendmail configs on out-of-the-box Linux distros.
In one sense this taught 'lazy admin' habits and a resulting lack of security, in another sense, things just worked without a lot of the hairpulling these days. Linux tightened up, Microsoft tightened up (to deliberately break Samba, some claim), and things got 'better' but truth be told, it's not as welcoming to a beginner messing around on an isolated home subnet anymore.
I used to do amazing geek-out things with older hardware (back when a skinflint geek couldn't afford to have five or six 386 or better boxes around running Linux) like the time I had a boot floppy with just DOS and the MS Lanman TCP/IP client on it for a floppy-only system, that mounted a Samba share 'C:' drive that I was able to then install Windows 3.1 on without the Windows Software ever knowing it was a network drive. You know, cool things that bored geeks do with junk hardware. It was an 8 MHz 286 system, what can I say?
Last time I tried to casually just install Samba by building from the NetBSD pkgsrc system, it was a big mess and I've not bothered to get it to work.
Vanity Fair is also pitiful compared to the kind of 'literate' magazines that used to be published in the U.S. Visit a used bookstore and pick up a copy or Argosy or Atlantic or any number of other magazines. Get an issue from the 1950's or earlier.
And people form 'bands' so they can make money.
It's a small business organization. Radically different from playing a musical instrument for enjoyment.
When Linux pulls through, *nix systems that rely on non-x86 hardware are going to wither and die.
WTF??
Linux is an open source codebase, and it's fairly portable. Are you pretending that IBM runs linux primarily on x86 hardware??
Well, maybe you can't get to it, because it's not in your mom's basement with all the rest of your computers. The staff and end-users who are meant to have physical access to the machine can.
We live in a very strange world these days where people consider big powerful chunks of hardware totally inaccessable if they can't sit at their keyboard/monitor and reach it.
That market represents one of the places where the residential networking is centralized enough to meter. It's more a metering point than a unique 'narrow "target market".'
"Just think of all the money you'll make from the single imbecile that will order a copy of your CD, (and that only by mistake; he thought he was ordering a Wayne Newton Box Set but filled out the form wrong) because everybody else already got their copy online for free."
Wow. A content-free flame.
Are you a bot?
Somebody, umm, better tell all those people willing to shell out money at the cash registers of said stores. While you're at it, tell them they don't exist. heh.
The whole 'bands' concept is wrapped up tightly in money. The generes of popular music have been created and evolved to fit a commercial model.
Therefore, saying 'the bands you should be for' is ridiculous.
Yes, but hardware development, i.e. the kind of hairpulling work necessary to implement a 3D engine in an FPGA, isn't light-duty 'scratch an itch' work, nor can it be incrementally chipped away at like a C compiler.
The people who hack Verilog and other hardware defintion languages are in such high demand and so highly paid that you're not gonna find them diddling with free projects on the side very often.
And FPGA hardware isn't available in screwdriver shops, nor are there OSes like Windows coming along making FPGA hardware 'obsolete' and cast-off enough that geeks can get it by dumpster diving another piece of gear for their 10base2 'Internet' in mom's basement. The 'phillips screwdriver brigade' of computer hardware 'experts' just aren't gonna bumble in there. Their self-esteem is at risk, ya know...
Cool! 'Themeable' dial-up tech support.
You can 'open source' a fresh-caught salmon with a sharp knife. That's the same usage of the verb that applies to much software that was developed in a 'closed' environment, where the company has 'given up' and just throws the source out to the winds.