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User: Vancorps

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  1. Re:wow on Windows 2003 and XP SP2 Vulnerable To LAND Attack · · Score: -1, Troll
    Sorry, but you seem a bit shortsighted. I'm not trying to defend MS or anythin but it sure sounds like you're making an awful lot of assumptions there.

    You might forget that MS is not a security company. Security is one of many priorities they have so if you are going to criticize them you should at least acknowledge that they have been trying harder and then comes the productive part of criticism. You tell them they should focus more on security than making a GUI that can be used equally well if you have perfect vision or are blind or anywhere in between.

    They have a lot of priorities, you can argue that they are trying to do too much but nothing in your statement in any ways helps anybody so why make it?

    As for regression testing, I'm sure they do it, I don't work for them so I can't know how extensive it is but the reality is this vulnerability happened after SP2 was released. Perhaps they setup a firewall to allow them to fix things underneath without totally destroying everyone's networks?

    When you have as large of an installbase as MS does you can't shift things right away or you will lose customers, you have to make changes slowly and incrimentally so that users don't get confused. MS has been working a lot on connectivity over the last year or so with some protocol enhancements and increased IPv6 support. I imagine things are going to get worse before they get better, but don't kid yourself, they are working on fixing it.
  2. Re:Open ports on Windows 2003 and XP SP2 Vulnerable To LAND Attack · · Score: 1

    Cause production servers are connected directly to the Internet completely open for all to see. Sorry, but this doesn't scare me one bit. There is a reason you use multiple approaches to security.

  3. Re:What ban? on Stem Cell Injections Pioneering Step Forward? · · Score: 1
    Wow really? So if I use the hundred bucks I have in my wallet I can research whatever I want. Yeah, I'm going to get real far.

    The history of medical advances in the U.S. has shown again and again that the federal government should be funding as much as it can. 10 billion dollars to research a technology that could start a biotechnological revolution sure seems like a good way to spend the money. The best part is the results belong to the public so advancements are actually accelerated because other researchers can see the work and evolve it further.

    That is how the U.S. advanced technologically so fast. There's a wealth of history that shows it is a sensible path to follow.

    Now that doesn't end the ethical concerns, they are valid considering the number of people that see it that way. The whole problem is that no one wants to talk about it in any intellectual way. Both sides are absolutes and you have an administration put in the middle. I don't agree with the way they handled it at all because they comprimised both contradictory sides. That means the issue will need to be addressed again in the future and right now the technology is stunted because of it.

    During the last year of the Clinton administration you could read any medical journal and hear about the miracles of stem cell research and the exciting projects everyone was doing. Then Bush made the decision and suddenly all those medical journals were posting foreign medical research. I'm glad a big portion of the world thinks its worthwhile research.
  4. Re:Bush's Stupid Policy on Stem Cell Injections Pioneering Step Forward? · · Score: 1
    First off, the federal government will only fund existing stem cell lines. This is basically useless. This can only be used to verify existing research for the most part.

    The thing most people don't realize and some people have a partial grasp is that the federal government funds most of the leading edge research in the U.S.

    The federal government does not fund new stem cell research and as a result you have organsizations such as the pentagon which has to fund it in Sweden instead because new cell lines are the key to actual breakthroughs in the field. So effectively Bush has banned stem cell research even though there is no law against it.

    Right now the only stem cell research happening in the U.S. is occuring at pharmaceutical companies and they will be great when they get the patent on anything and everything resulting from this potentially explosive technology. Stem cell research has the potential to be the biggest technological advancement in medicine since the electron microscrope.

  5. Re:What about on MS Security Chief Says Windows is Safer Than Linux · · Score: 1
    Now try again from safe-mode and watch it go away. The real nasty stuff reboots the comp when you try to get into safe mode, but once again, if you know what you're doing you can get around it with the recovery console.

    Another poster said it best, you should only use trusted software then you don't have to worry about all that crap and you can continue on with your life without all the spyware/adware.

    Firefox is a beautiful example, its not perfect, but you can trust it to do exactly what it says its doing.

    Of course, education is the most powerful tool, any operating system can become downright useful when you know what you're doing.

  6. Re:Responsibility on Why Does Windows Still Suck? · · Score: 1
    Explain which free software alternative is available that can live on the net for longer than a few hours unpatched? Last a checked a default fedora installation still took about 30 mins to be owned which is still a lot better than the 3 minutes it used to take.

    Are you seriously blind enough to think that you should rely on one level of security? That's insane, if you are a network engineer I suggest you quit your job to make room for someone capable of securing anything.


    Seriously, even in a home environment a personal firewall like a linksys ain't a bad idea, it allows any device to hop on the net, my parents don't use it for security, they use it because it makes having a laptop and a desktop on the net easy. So now you've just eliminated the OS variable alltogether for $60. I fail to see what is wrong with that.

    No OS is perfect so you might as well take steps to minimize risk rather than complaining.


    This whole article smacks from the get-go so I don't know why I'm bothering to comment. Its all about ignoring the things a product does well while concentrating on the things the product has always had trouble with while simulataneously ignoring any improvements. Yeah, that's quite helpful.
  7. Re:Includes? on Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating · · Score: 1
    I think you woefully underestimate the sites that dreamweaver creates.

    There is so much wrong with your assumptions its hardly worth replying to. First of all, small tools works for scripting, that is where they are powerful.

    The basic operating system utilities will get the job done but the reality is, its faster and easier to do it in DW when you're only doing it once or twice. I can select a couple of folders and hit find and it will tell me where all occurances of a href= are. Yes it can be done using find, grep, and vim if you're going to replace the text but you can't possibly think that is easier or faster.

    Tools are built to assist with a task, DW is well suited to editing very large sites. After using Unix and Linux of 8 years scripting just about everything I still say a GUI works better for a developer or end-user.

    As for the learning curve, thats just bullshit all around. Are you seriously saying that my knowledge of Cisco networking doesn't help with Netware or Linux networking? Or that my knowledge of Windows and KDE doesn't help me figure out the OS X interface? If you truly believe that then I feel sorry for you. Everyone I know that knows multiple operatings system has very little trouble adjusting to new ones. Same goes for people that know a lot of applications.

    Everything takes time to study, then again, knowledge of Samba doesn't really help if you want to implement NFS.

    Also you appear to be confusing the OS Unix with its interface which can either be CLI or GUI based. Its rare you will ever find a company sit a new employee in front of a CLI and expect them to just go to town. They will sit in front of the GUI and they will see what types of apps they work with at their job. How often do you think they work with the CLI? Mostly its just the admins that ever even see the CLI. Seen a few developer dive into it but even that's fairly rare these days with some very nice IDEs replacing the need to debug in CLI.
  8. Re:Advice To The Netlorn on Spam and Spyware Too Much for Some Users · · Score: 1
    Actually, I see it all the time on people that replace explorer in Windows. One of my coworkers has a truly beautiful desktop.

    My beef with OS X is much the same as always with Mac anything. They do everything they can to make it simple and in doing so are going to hide a lot of the features I use regularly. I rarely come across a Mac user that has any concept of multitasking. Same goes with Windows users but the open applications is at least a little more straight forward in my opinion.

    As for the Unix apps, the things that interest me like Samba are crippled versions which don't support encryption. Everytime I have an issue on the network it almost always results in me having to open security for that machine. Its to the point where I built a linux box to act as a gateway since I can make linux talk to just about any network.

    My frustration is largely based in the incomplete featureset, every release of the OS eases a bit of the problems I see but even network printing is fairly clunky. Like this minolta we have on our network that requires an access code to print. I had to manually go in and edit the ppd which the OS protected initially. Took me about an hour to setup a network printer. That's rediculous. Of course networking was never a strong suit of Apple, perhaps in a few more years they will learn how to play with other environments. Always had issues connecting Macs to Netware, Linux, and Windows. To me that makes them fairly worthless when I can obtain the same applications and features on other platforms that play nice with others.

    Course you can tell I'm a bit frustrated at the moment. Even wireless is a pain in the ass unless you're doing the typical stuff.
  9. Re:Education no longer matters on Who Needs Harvard? · · Score: 1
    Point is well taken, however, at the age of 13 I started a network consulting business. By the time I was 16 I was the sole network engineer for 6 hotels and one school district.

    At 18 I attended college and found myself making less money than I did before I started. Now I've graduated and I make the same amount of money as I started, of course I actually have a forseeable future so I at least gained that.

    Experience matters greatly, so does the education. The trick is getting both, which is something many educational institutions leave out.

    That said, I had a fair amount of motivation and work ethic before going to college, I also chose not to attend since I could grow my business. I wouldn't just discount people without a degree, especially if they have a strong desire to learn.

  10. Re:Advice To The Netlorn on Spam and Spyware Too Much for Some Users · · Score: 1
    Right, and its totally obvious why Entourage only connects to your mail server when plugged into an ethernet connection, don't tell the user that airport will block access to such things. You gotta enable it first.

    An OS that outsmarts the end-user invariably causes more problems, hence my support calls for Macs. Its usually the OS trying to do something that isn't supported on the network. This happens with Windows too. With Linux everything is broken by default so it is up to your distro to turn on the features and make those decisions for you. Unless you're a gentoo user of course.

    As for a work of art, I laugh at the thought. Switching between applications is difficult for most users I come by, I didn't even know how to do it at first so I tried the old alt+tab approach and thankfully it worked. The menuing system is terrible too, it works okay if you only have a few apps installed but I've got a graphic artist with tons and it takes forever to find what you're looking for.

    Back to the point, the problem isn't the OS. You can't expect people to understand the OS to a level where they can protect themselves so you need a perimeter device that does that work for them. Then the problem is designing a device that doesn't break anything. Its like all those people out there that play Flight Simulator, if they put themselves behind a router they get blocked out and have to forward ports on the firewall which will invariably be ports required for someone else.

    I say, find a better way to distinguish acceptable content from malware. Create a standalone device that can analyze what's coming through and tell you 100% if it is going to do something bad to the system. A whitelist option may work but thats a bit of administrative overhead for an enduser.

    Basically I'm out of ideas, I equip my users with the right tools and as a result none of them have spyware or viruses and they use Windows/Mac/Linux all the time. As long as the tool is scriptable it works in my network environment, at home for most other people its probably a bigger situation to handle.

  11. Re:we use it for order status menu system on Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom · · Score: 1
    Sounds like pricing is fairly comparable. We currently have about 60 Cisco 7940 phones all attached to Cisco powered switches, naturally that solutions costs a bit more.

    The televantage system will run fine on a P3 650 box so hardwdare wise its not too bad. Software is where the price becomes comparable. The new system we are implementing allows us to use regular analog phones or realistically anything that can in any wawy connect to the server. Gives us a lot of options. I can operate with all the same functions from my cell phone in an airport, I like that.

  12. Re:All these VOIP phones on Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom · · Score: 1
    Last I checked there are already ISPs that offer IPv6. My ISP is one of them, they are Mountain Telecom based in Phoenix. They primarily offer IPv4 but if I asked for a v6 address they will give me one.

    Probably not representative of public access seeings how we have special arrangements with them. They provide us with lots of free services in exchange for a skybox at our auction.

  13. Re:it's nice until on Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom · · Score: 1

    Better solution, televantage, use regular analog phones, total cost per phone, bout $10. No idea why your WICs are so expensive, perhaps you got hosed.

  14. Re:we use it for order status menu system on Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom · · Score: 1
    Televantage by Artisoft also sports those features, we are in the process of migrating to it from our current Cisco VOIP service. So much better, we also got an API so we can tie in phone numbers with our database so when a customer calls their info automatically pops up on the screen of the person taking their call. If we don't have any info for them then we pop up a form to add them.

    Good little system, I wonder how pricing compares to Asterisk?

  15. Re:Includes? on Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating · · Score: 1
    Think of a Microsoft, yahoo, cnn, reuters,... any news site and 96,000 pages from different templates over the years can come up quite often, all of those sites would laugh if all that had to change was 96,000 pages.

    As for the find command, that wouldn't find a file three directories up. The beauty is it searches the whole site, a whole directory, or just a selected area of text. Its a lot easier to develop with.

    Course I do parse my web logs that way to determine how many people clicked on the ads on my homepage, naturally there are a few pipes involved.

    BTW, I'd be scared too, but it does happen, often.

    Might note I am a network engineer now that does web development on the side now but I've definitely seen a lot of things that could make a grown man cry.
  16. Re:Includes? on Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating · · Score: 1

    yes, across thousands of directories with varying naming conventions/extensions/languages.

  17. Re:Includes? on Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating · · Score: 1
    Dreamweaver has a lot of features, its site management features are second to none, the only thing I wish it had was a source management system but for now I just use VSS.

    Other features are the scripting support, its easy to switch from php/asp/aspx/html,shtml ....

    The testing functions I haven't found a match to as of yet either. I setup a testing server in DW and I can instantly see what the end result of the page will look like. This dramatically speeds up my development time because I can view a simple edit with a database back-end. Don't know if Quanta can do that.

    Templating really isn't that big of a deal, I don't see DW as offering much in the way of creating a template. Basically you generate your navigation and then include it in every file then on out. Of course there are some pages that you will have to override and some sections where the site owner wants a different color scheme so you get some nice options there.

    That said, I'll hand code most of my asp, vb, and javascript inside of DW since machine generated code is often very difficult to read.
  18. Re:Includes? on Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating · · Score: 1
    You're making assumptions that people coding sites are creating the sites and not modifying or updating.

    Good luck using Kate to modify 96,000 pages where Biotch was sposed to be spelled Lawyer.

    Someone with a clue that uses Dreamweaver is by far more productive than someone with a clue that sticks to hand coding. Single edits you'll get away with using a simple editor but even a single edit across multiple pages becomes pointless without an automation tool which is the strength of Dreamweaver.

    I might add that when building tables dreamweaver does not add any additional code, it is as if you hand coded it. If you want to use dreamweaver extensions that add that stuff well then deal with machine generated code. In either case, creating an initial template will take less time in a gaphical environment than it will in a text only environment. Even a simple page, all I have to do in DW is hit ctrl+n and I have a new html document that is properly tagged and all. Save it and I'm done. That was definitely faster than typing the html, head, title, and body tags among a few others depending on your preferences.

  19. Re:Behaviour confirmed. on MS AntiSpyware vs Ad-Aware vs. SpyBot · · Score: 2, Interesting
    VNC is commonly used as a trojan so that behavior makes sense.

    The rest is typical with microsoft.

    I would be curious of an anti-spyware app could be written to run on a network, since profiles are stored on a central server and that server is never used to browse the Internet it would be the perfect environment to clean spyware from all the profiles out there.

    It would also be nice if you could script the app so for instance, your organization uses Alexa or Viewpoint you could enable it to prevent apps from breaking while disabling or removing all other spyware.

  20. Re:Plenty of Dark Fiber on Gigabit Transfer Rates Over Power Lines? · · Score: 4, Insightful
    You completely miss the point, the problem isn't the backbone of America, its the last mile. Big deal there is a conduit with enough dark fiber to serve an OC768 when its 75 miles from my house.

    Come up with a better way to get to the house and maintain the speed of fiber while holding on to the reliability and simplicitity of copper.

  21. Re:well as for me on Broadband Usage Up, TV Usage Down · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Its hard to compete, for now TV is on its own schedule and that will hold it back. Why should I wait to watch a TV show when I can download it from someone who recorded it several hours earlier. Movies are even worse for this since some cities see a movie as much as a few months earlier.

    The Internet allows me to have what I want and when I want it and at a very reasonable price. I don't see TV as being able to provide as much. They really are different forms of entertainment these days. TV is mind-numbing and thus good for when you just want to relax and be lazy. Problem is when you don't want to take time for that but once every six months.

  22. Re:Quick remote file ops? on Samba 4 Reaches "Susan" Stage · · Score: 4, Informative
    There is a rather fundimental flaw in your request that Windows could not allow unless it was between two domain controllers. Every resource has its own session key. You would not have the permissions to create a new session key on your remote server since only system and krtg are allowed to do such things.

    My solution is to either use ssh and copy the file from the box, or if the two servers/shares are Windows I use AnalogX TS Drop Copy which does exactly what you ask for.

  23. Re:Thanks Samba Team on Samba 4 Reaches "Susan" Stage · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Samba has been my savior on many occasions because of the damn Macs. They don't just handle remote file-systems very well. They never release a file they open. The G5s at my work I often have to boot off because other users are unable to move files around which is part of our workflow process currently so its quite annoying. Samba fixes the problem by acting as my proxy. It talks very nicely to all major network platforms. They've done some nice work this far, Samba 4 looks even more promising.

  24. Re:Samba's great on Samba 4 Reaches "Susan" Stage · · Score: 1
    Poor example there considering the Windows share doesn't work unless you disable connection signing which 2003 has enabled by default.

    I agree with your point about config files but I will take a config file over the automagic approach anyday seeings how it can be a pain in fix automagic apps.

  25. Re:Andrew Tridgell - a free software hero on Samba 4 Reaches "Susan" Stage · · Score: 1, Informative

    The Windows world has either robocopy or the more automated Distributed Filesystem support. DFS replication is a bit more elegant but robocopy is nice and simple, easy to understand and very easy to script.