Funny, I saw a Dell that was reporting "correctible ECC error" over and over. Dell's solution to the problem was run a memory tester on it. Of course, the hardwre could correct the errors so their simple read/modify/write/verify test passed and Dell won't replace the faulty memory. *grr*
Well I brought an Acer laptop and the Svideo died about 1 week out of warranty.. do you think I'm not pissed off? Well who cares? I'm going to upgrade to a Mac to get the "it just works" goodness with the Unixy backend.
And, one thing I still miss out of this.. What sharing service needs to be active? It's one thing to connect to the WiFi on a computer.. But some service has to be active for file system access.. SMB? AFP? SSH?? Given the use of 3rd party WiFi hardware, and the default config of MacOS X to have all sharing services turned off.. Does this work when a Laptop is already connected to a network? Um, what are we really looking at here? Allot of questions, with very little info..
This is not a simple matter of exploiting a serivce. The machine might does not even need any publicly accessible services for this attack to be effective.
We all know that wireless cards require soft firmware and drivers in the OS these days. The point is that it's possible to exploit the drivers with specially crafted packets and make the OS run arbitrary code that it thinks is the Wireless driver.
Running code at the level of the OS brings with it full control over the machine. The OS trusts the drivers 100% on almost every system I've used. This means your newly running code can take full control of the machine, and probably even download more code, sniff on you, etc.
It should be possible to exploit this attack even if the machine is connected to a trusted network. All you need to do is send it packets on that network (or pretend to be on that network).
The demo might have been vague, but it still points out some serious flaws with wireless systems on modern operating systems - anyone can send you packets and the OS trusts the software processing those packets 100%...
As someone who's used QT in it's non-free form, I can say that it is the bane of my existance. Trolltech do not provide licenses for a company. They provide developer-locked licenses.
If someone without a Qt license identifies a change in my code and I am off on a week of leave they are not legally allowed to make the change. Sure, they could log in as me, enter source control as me and do the work. But there is no way in hell I'm giving them my password so that screws all that up.
It also makes it hard as other users come along and want to develop plugin components for the application I am developing because they either need a license to Qt or they have to come to me every time they want to build.
The other things that bothers me is they sell different types of licenses - console and gui. With a mix and match of these licenses in the company it's a pain in the ass when someone with only the console license runs our build scripts (which build about a dozen gui/non-gui applications) and comes back to me when it fails and says "you are not licensed to use the GUI version of QT".
The framework itself is pretty good; I don't like the way it works, personally; I grew up on a wxWidgets style of programming which is somewhat different.
On that note, stick to wxWidgets. It's LGPL-derived license allows commercial or opensource development, and it's just as powerful.
will not have spent a bunch of time on the firing range ruining her hearing.
Or you could buy a gun and spend a lot of time firing it at the old man - ruining your hearing and also removing him from the equation at the time.. Better yet, spend a lot of time shooting at the device.
Since I had a company car until recently, I can say that any company that values your services will give you a decent car.
There are also a lot of tax (and child support if you happen to be in that situation) advantages to company cars if the company is willing to set it up just right. This is, of course, not to mention the savings you'll be making off your own back by not having to maintain a car with registration, insurance, petrol, tyres, maintainence, etc.
The taxable value of the car is much less than the taxable value of the income that you'd need to earn to maintian it!!!
I can't agree more. IT people bear the load of clueless PHBs all the time and it's usually the clueless PHB who does things that break everything then bitches at IT when it takes a while to fix.
Treat your IT staff like gods, for that is what they are. Without them your technology company will fail. Pay them well, for they deserve it; if they make one 2AM trip to the office a year because someone working late bollocksed something on the day of a project deadline then the increased salary is worth it. Paying them minimum/market salary for their position won't inspire loyalty. It will just keep them looking for a better offer. Go 20% above average and you'll see more loyalty.
Include benefits. Pay for their mobile phone, get them a good one that they choose. Pay for their Internet access at home - it will pay for itself when you avoid some of those 2AM callouts. Get them a killer laptop PC. Keep it updated. If they are making a lot of callouts get them a company car; even a small runabout will make them happy if they don't have to wear out their own pride and joy coming into work out of hours.
Also, get more IT staff. We have 2 people in our building servicing about 25 people. They are kept reasonably busy but not too busy that there isn't time for them to duck out here and there and manage their lives or take a day of leave here and there.
Give them the flexibility to do their job. They need an expense account and the ability to make (justified) purchasses without the messing about of manager approval (ie. replaceing dead components). Obviously there has to be limits set there -ie, any purchase over $500 should require a manager's signature. Red tape for run of the mill tasks is just annoying and is a good reason for IT staff to move elsewhere; if they feel you want to oversee every little purchase they make they will feel like you're reserving the right to second-guess them.
That brings me to the final part... trust them. Trust is recriprocated. If you don't trust them, they won't trust you. If you trust them a reasonable amount they will feel more comfortable about trusting you in return. If they feel you don't trust them they will start to be surreptitious in their dealings and you will lose visibility into what they're doing.
Finally, if it's that important that IT shouldn't be exposed to it then encryption can help. If it's already coded by the time it gets to the network/disk then they won't be able to access or sell it anyway. Make sure you have good justification for that when you do it; the HR database with everyone's personal details is on good example of something that you could justify encrypting because the details are private and even IT doesn't have a right to see other employee's details.
Actually, it's perceived commercial advantage of the horrible American video card makers (ATI and NVidia) that is the problem. They seem to think that by being as different as they can to the competition then hiding behind NDAs and funky specs that they will have some advantage. In reality there's no real advantage if the hardware is performing properly. Problem is the drivers contain hack after kludge to work around quirks in the hardware.
The big guys don't want you seeing how shitty their hardware really is because they can hide the shittyness in a binary only driver that makes it do the right thing.
Part of being a "good consumer" of TV is being a drone right? Part of that is watching out of habit right? Fucking with the schedule really makes that hard.
Being a "good consumer" of TV is being a drone, right? Part of that is watching whatever they shovel into your face, right? Fucking with the schedule doesn't matter because being a drone means you watch out of habit, not because there is something on!
I think you've got it backwards. I feel that people got tired of waiting, sometimes hours, for a new story to be posted.
O'rly? Well, I guess some of us really are nerds with nothing better to do all day. I just get a good RSS tool and load the RSS-type feeds from all my favourite sites into it. Works a treat, and I never have to wait more than a couple of minutes for something interesting to divert me from my real job!
Not true, really.. but I think most prefer to read their daily news sites about daily, maybe twice daily and then get on with other things...
I prefer monkey brains in a Matrix-style. I don't know the actual data storage density of a monkey brain, but it's higher than many existing IDE disks... if you wire it right. As a bonus, the array is self-powering and self-temperature regulating (providing minimal ventilation is supplied).
Porn dialers are fucked, but people are stupid for clicking "install me" are not they???
I was being sued by a real estate agent of all people for the services of cleaning the property I was leasing from them. Funny that, because it was clean when we moved and they didn't contest that fact at all. They just wanted to try and charge me for cleaning.
Winning that battle restored my faith that there is some sanity left in the world.
Re:This gives me an idea..
on
Online Revenge
·
· Score: 1
I thought I got ripped off on Ebay once. It was only for a small amount ($35). The seller said he'd posted my item registered mail, but had lost the receipt number. Two months passed and I had kept hassling him because it hadn't arrived. Eventually a cheque for the total cost including shipping arrived in my mailbox. That restored my faith in people a little. Obviously the item was lost in the mail, but the guy felt bad because he didn't register it like I'd asked so he refunded my money.
I did get screwed by a computer retailer one time (someone who is quite well known where I live). He billed my card for $2500 and then never had the goods delivered. He claimed he never received payment and then that he was having some family troubles and any number of excuses.
The CC company wouldn't do anything about it because he claimed I'd authorised him to bill my card (true, I did click "purchase now" on his website) so the police got involved... well that was two years ago and it's still waiting for a court date. The police just have too many other things to do:(
Assuming the story is true, the seller deserved a slap on the wrist. The buyer deserves jail time.
It's people like you who are the reason the world is so fucked up. The seller deserved a slap on the wrist... what's with that?
Assuming the story is true, he knowingly ripped someone off and refused to make good with it. That is not slap on the wrist-worthy. Public shame is too good for him. Also, his rampant stupidity should make him a prime candidate for a darwin award but it is unlikely he will ever win one.
Stupid, shonky people are rewarded for screwing the hard working public and when hard working public tries to get a little of their own back then they get in trouble. Fuck that. I spent all of yesterday fighting a court battle because stupid shonky corporation was sending me bills for service that I never requested or used. When the bills went unpaid they sued me! Of course, I lost a day's income and the court only made them pay court costs - no compensation for my time! Screw that.
You could google for them and see what comes up; I'm sure that the tech types that have had trouble with them have posted in forums and boards detailing their troubles!
ACPI support is woeful in Linux. It barely works on my laptop. The thing won't even go into sleep mode successfully. It just freezes up instead.
WiFi support works - I have WPA working with the built-in IPW2200 card. It's buggy, and WPA takes forever to associate with the AP, meaning the boot scripts all time out when obtaining IP addresses. Roaming to other wireless networks sucks too.
If you want easy bluetooth then you dont' want Linux. I couldn't get it to see anything with Bluetooth, let-alone make it talk to things. Some say they have success, but I couldn't get anything happening.
The only thing that worked well was the ATI Mobility drivers for X.org!
If you want things to work, stick with Windows on your laptop. I'm a linux man through and through. All my servers are Linux. All my desktops are Linux.
I got my laptop and all hell broke loose. Things don't work, things crash, hibernate (something I use a lot) doesn't work. Linux is too disk-heavy and the disk is continually starting and stopping (for logs) even while idle. Battery life with Linux is attrocious. With windows I can get about 5 hours out of it. With Linux less than 2.
Interesting comment. I have a Radeon Mobile chip in my lappy and it works a treat; it works better than the NV cards in my desktops. The X drivers installed on Fedora and 3d accel is amazing. Even some Direct3d stuff ran real quick in Transgaming Wine.
I (fortunately) don't have a teenage child. I have a 2 year old though, and he will turn into a teenager in due course.
I don't see further regulating Myspace by enforcing age checks and looking at content as being able to stop what they are claiming to stop. Actually, enforcing more dilligent age checks and limiting it to 18+ probably adds another loophole for people who are looking for kiddies to fiddle with:
"but, your honour, I met {him,her} on MySpace and you have to prove that you are 18 or older to be on there"
Is a pretty reasonable use of the whole "had reasonable grounds to believe the person was of legal age" clause in the law; specially if the person in question has physical attributes that appear beyond their years!
I see this as another abuse of Government power to make it look like they're doing something while not actually doing anything. The best part is that the government gets this for free, because it is MySpace that has to foot the bill for the more stringent age verification and increased number of moderators on staff!
Kudos to the guy, but get real people: he changed an oscillator. That's it.
Kudos, indeed. I don't see the point of this. Sure it's 1337 to say "I overckd my SNES aren't I t43 1337 h4x0rz?" but why would you risk destroying such a fragile piece of gaming history? It's hard to find a working SNES and carts round these days (broken, or semi-functional ones are a dime a dozen).
Would not a modification such as this run the risk of damaging the system. Start with the heat from the soldering iron. Let's add the over clocked system will run just that little hotter.
My SNES is like platinum to me. I wouldn't risk destroying it just so I could say how great I was; especially when you consider that your games won't work any better and most won't work at all!
Slashdot Mirror
See title... VMWare make software virtualisation products. Of course they're going to try and find that software methods are better.
Funny, I saw a Dell that was reporting "correctible ECC error" over and over. Dell's solution to the problem was run a memory tester on it. Of course, the hardwre could correct the errors so their simple read/modify/write/verify test passed and Dell won't replace the faulty memory. *grr*
Well I brought an Acer laptop and the Svideo died about 1 week out of warranty.. do you think I'm not pissed off? Well who cares? I'm going to upgrade to a Mac to get the "it just works" goodness with the Unixy backend.
This is not a simple matter of exploiting a serivce. The machine might does not even need any publicly accessible services for this attack to be effective.
We all know that wireless cards require soft firmware and drivers in the OS these days. The point is that it's possible to exploit the drivers with specially crafted packets and make the OS run arbitrary code that it thinks is the Wireless driver.
Running code at the level of the OS brings with it full control over the machine. The OS trusts the drivers 100% on almost every system I've used. This means your newly running code can take full control of the machine, and probably even download more code, sniff on you, etc.
It should be possible to exploit this attack even if the machine is connected to a trusted network. All you need to do is send it packets on that network (or pretend to be on that network).
The demo might have been vague, but it still points out some serious flaws with wireless systems on modern operating systems - anyone can send you packets and the OS trusts the software processing those packets 100%...
As someone who's used QT in it's non-free form, I can say that it is the bane of my existance. Trolltech do not provide licenses for a company. They provide developer-locked licenses.
If someone without a Qt license identifies a change in my code and I am off on a week of leave they are not legally allowed to make the change. Sure, they could log in as me, enter source control as me and do the work. But there is no way in hell I'm giving them my password so that screws all that up.
It also makes it hard as other users come along and want to develop plugin components for the application I am developing because they either need a license to Qt or they have to come to me every time they want to build.
The other things that bothers me is they sell different types of licenses - console and gui. With a mix and match of these licenses in the company it's a pain in the ass when someone with only the console license runs our build scripts (which build about a dozen gui/non-gui applications) and comes back to me when it fails and says "you are not licensed to use the GUI version of QT".
The framework itself is pretty good; I don't like the way it works, personally; I grew up on a wxWidgets style of programming which is somewhat different.
On that note, stick to wxWidgets. It's LGPL-derived license allows commercial or opensource development, and it's just as powerful.
Or you could buy a gun and spend a lot of time firing it at the old man - ruining your hearing and also removing him from the equation at the time.. Better yet, spend a lot of time shooting at the device.
Since I had a company car until recently, I can say that any company that values your services will give you a decent car.
There are also a lot of tax (and child support if you happen to be in that situation) advantages to company cars if the company is willing to set it up just right. This is, of course, not to mention the savings you'll be making off your own back by not having to maintain a car with registration, insurance, petrol, tyres, maintainence, etc.
The taxable value of the car is much less than the taxable value of the income that you'd need to earn to maintian it!!!
Mod the parent up?
I can't agree more. IT people bear the load of clueless PHBs all the time and it's usually the clueless PHB who does things that break everything then bitches at IT when it takes a while to fix.
Treat your IT staff like gods, for that is what they are. Without them your technology company will fail. Pay them well, for they deserve it; if they make one 2AM trip to the office a year because someone working late bollocksed something on the day of a project deadline then the increased salary is worth it. Paying them minimum/market salary for their position won't inspire loyalty. It will just keep them looking for a better offer. Go 20% above average and you'll see more loyalty.
Include benefits. Pay for their mobile phone, get them a good one that they choose. Pay for their Internet access at home - it will pay for itself when you avoid some of those 2AM callouts. Get them a killer laptop PC. Keep it updated. If they are making a lot of callouts get them a company car; even a small runabout will make them happy if they don't have to wear out their own pride and joy coming into work out of hours.
Also, get more IT staff. We have 2 people in our building servicing about 25 people. They are kept reasonably busy but not too busy that there isn't time for them to duck out here and there and manage their lives or take a day of leave here and there.
Give them the flexibility to do their job. They need an expense account and the ability to make (justified) purchasses without the messing about of manager approval (ie. replaceing dead components). Obviously there has to be limits set there -ie, any purchase over $500 should require a manager's signature. Red tape for run of the mill tasks is just annoying and is a good reason for IT staff to move elsewhere; if they feel you want to oversee every little purchase they make they will feel like you're reserving the right to second-guess them.
That brings me to the final part... trust them. Trust is recriprocated. If you don't trust them, they won't trust you. If you trust them a reasonable amount they will feel more comfortable about trusting you in return. If they feel you don't trust them they will start to be surreptitious in their dealings and you will lose visibility into what they're doing.
Finally, if it's that important that IT shouldn't be exposed to it then encryption can help. If it's already coded by the time it gets to the network/disk then they won't be able to access or sell it anyway.
Make sure you have good justification for that when you do it; the HR database with everyone's personal details is on good example of something that you could justify encrypting because the details are private and even IT doesn't have a right to see other employee's details.
And it doesn't have a massively paralleled programmable pixel engine? What is in every accelerated video card? Some sort of CPU! DUH!
"Commercial Advantage"
Actually, it's perceived commercial advantage of the horrible American video card makers (ATI and NVidia) that is the problem. They seem to think that by being as different as they can to the competition then hiding behind NDAs and funky specs that they will have some advantage. In reality there's no real advantage if the hardware is performing properly. Problem is the drivers contain hack after kludge to work around quirks in the hardware.
The big guys don't want you seeing how shitty their hardware really is because they can hide the shittyness in a binary only driver that makes it do the right thing.
I had a woman once... I'm still paying the bills! I prefer my Mac any day. Costs me less per month than having a woman did.
Being a "good consumer" of TV is being a drone, right? Part of that is watching whatever they shovel into your face, right? Fucking with the schedule doesn't matter because being a drone means you watch out of habit, not because there is something on!
O'rly? Well, I guess some of us really are nerds with nothing better to do all day. I just get a good RSS tool and load the RSS-type feeds from all my favourite sites into it. Works a treat, and I never have to wait more than a couple of minutes for something interesting to divert me from my real job!
Not true, really.. but I think most prefer to read their daily news sites about daily, maybe twice daily and then get on with other things...
I prefer monkey brains in a Matrix-style. I don't know the actual data storage density of a monkey brain, but it's higher than many existing IDE disks... if you wire it right. As a bonus, the array is self-powering and self-temperature regulating (providing minimal ventilation is supplied).
Porn dialers are fucked, but people are stupid for clicking "install me" are not they???
I was being sued by a real estate agent of all people for the services of cleaning the property I was leasing from them. Funny that, because it was clean when we moved and they didn't contest that fact at all. They just wanted to try and charge me for cleaning.
Winning that battle restored my faith that there is some sanity left in the world.
I thought I got ripped off on Ebay once. It was only for a small amount ($35). The seller said he'd posted my item registered mail, but had lost the receipt number. Two months passed and I had kept hassling him because it hadn't arrived. Eventually a cheque for the total cost including shipping arrived in my mailbox. That restored my faith in people a little. Obviously the item was lost in the mail, but the guy felt bad because he didn't register it like I'd asked so he refunded my money.
:(
I did get screwed by a computer retailer one time (someone who is quite well known where I live). He billed my card for $2500 and then never had the goods delivered. He claimed he never received payment and then that he was having some family troubles and any number of excuses.
The CC company wouldn't do anything about it because he claimed I'd authorised him to bill my card (true, I did click "purchase now" on his website) so the police got involved... well that was two years ago and it's still waiting for a court date. The police just have too many other things to do
Assuming the story is true, the seller deserved a slap on the wrist. The buyer deserves jail time.
It's people like you who are the reason the world is so fucked up. The seller deserved a slap on the wrist... what's with that?
Assuming the story is true, he knowingly ripped someone off and refused to make good with it. That is not slap on the wrist-worthy. Public shame is too good for him. Also, his rampant stupidity should make him a prime candidate for a darwin award but it is unlikely he will ever win one.
Stupid, shonky people are rewarded for screwing the hard working public and when hard working public tries to get a little of their own back then they get in trouble. Fuck that. I spent all of yesterday fighting a court battle because stupid shonky corporation was sending me bills for service that I never requested or used. When the bills went unpaid they sued me! Of course, I lost a day's income and the court only made them pay court costs - no compensation for my time! Screw that.
I say publicly shame the shammers!
They probably signed up for 64k ISDN - that was sooooo 20th century broadband! ;)
The way they network the sites together, they get a high pagerank without being obvious link farms.
If they put as much effort into making their hosting reliable as they do in scamming us...
You could google for them and see what comes up; I'm sure that the tech types that have had trouble with them have posted in forums and boards detailing their troubles!
ACPI support is woeful in Linux. It barely works on my laptop. The thing won't even go into sleep mode successfully. It just freezes up instead.
WiFi support works - I have WPA working with the built-in IPW2200 card. It's buggy, and WPA takes forever to associate with the AP, meaning the boot scripts all time out when obtaining IP addresses. Roaming to other wireless networks sucks too.
If you want easy bluetooth then you dont' want Linux. I couldn't get it to see anything with Bluetooth, let-alone make it talk to things. Some say they have success, but I couldn't get anything happening.
The only thing that worked well was the ATI Mobility drivers for X.org!
If you want things to work, stick with Windows on your laptop. I'm a linux man through and through. All my servers are Linux. All my desktops are Linux.
I got my laptop and all hell broke loose. Things don't work, things crash, hibernate (something I use a lot) doesn't work. Linux is too disk-heavy and the disk is continually starting and stopping (for logs) even while idle. Battery life with Linux is attrocious. With windows I can get about 5 hours out of it. With Linux less than 2.
Interesting comment. I have a Radeon Mobile chip in my lappy and it works a treat; it works better than the NV cards in my desktops. The X drivers installed on Fedora and 3d accel is amazing. Even some Direct3d stuff ran real quick in Transgaming Wine.
for caffeinated, bottle conditioned beer.
caffeine for those long coding hours
Bottle conditioned to ferment out every last sugar molecule.
A refreshing flavour hit that carries all the two of the three vital food groups that a hard working geek needs (caffeine and beer).
Ok, so we can't quite get it in the form of a pizza yet, but our teams of dedicated researchers are working on it day and night.
I (fortunately) don't have a teenage child. I have a 2 year old though, and he will turn into a teenager in due course.
I don't see further regulating Myspace by enforcing age checks and looking at content as being able to stop what they are claiming to stop. Actually, enforcing more dilligent age checks and limiting it to 18+ probably adds another loophole for people who are looking for kiddies to fiddle with:
"but, your honour, I met {him,her} on MySpace and you have to prove that you are 18 or older to be on there"
Is a pretty reasonable use of the whole "had reasonable grounds to believe the person was of legal age" clause in the law; specially if the person in question has physical attributes that appear beyond their years!
I see this as another abuse of Government power to make it look like they're doing something while not actually doing anything. The best part is that the government gets this for free, because it is MySpace that has to foot the bill for the more stringent age verification and increased number of moderators on staff!
Kudos to the guy, but get real people: he changed an oscillator. That's it.
Kudos, indeed. I don't see the point of this. Sure it's 1337 to say "I overckd my SNES aren't I t43 1337 h4x0rz?" but why would you risk destroying such a fragile piece of gaming history? It's hard to find a working SNES and carts round these days (broken, or semi-functional ones are a dime a dozen).
Would not a modification such as this run the risk of damaging the system. Start with the heat from the soldering iron. Let's add the over clocked system will run just that little hotter.
My SNES is like platinum to me. I wouldn't risk destroying it just so I could say how great I was; especially when you consider that your games won't work any better and most won't work at all!