"Hey look at Apple -- they just introduced machines that do not run any software from as little as 5 years ago."
Well.. This dude's game, written in 1984, still runs on absolute latest PPC machines running OS X 10.4.4, with no modification to the code whatsoever (runs on the iBook I bought one week ago). Yup, you're running a binary compiled for a machine from 20 years ago... http://home.earthlink.net/~mrob/pub/missile20.html
"By transmitting data to and receiving instructions from nearby base stations, BAN chips can reprogram your heartbeat at your doctor's office"...
Umm.. so.. this straight up gives you the ability to kill someone using home-made tech. How long until someone steals the "doctor-only" equipment, reverse engineers it, and suddenly schematics/code are written up? I can just imagine the possibilities, and they are NOT worth the convenience.
Nice powerful transmitter to set all in-range pacemakers to 2 beats per minute... grab tickets to the Superbowl... now maybe our wirelessly-configured pacemaker isn't so convenient. The most disturbing thing is, it's obvious you could transmit these lethal configuration signals completely undetected. You could commit murder to no end in that manner and NEVER be detected, or even suspected.
Well, unless you're running a software-based "firewall" on your machine, you're pretty much open to any sort of network-based attack. Frankly, I see remotely connecting to someone's LAN as being in a nice big free-for-all of exploit-tasticness! Guaranteed fun for all involved.
That's the thing though. He doesn't need to list the software. Software on Windows crashes so often and so badly (in comparison to any/all software on his Sun machine) the name of the software is redundant.
No kidding dude. I've been using Windoze PCs exclusively for about 4 years now and have gotten entirely used to crashes, freezing, etc.
Then I just bought a new Mac laptop last week (it's an iBook, for those of you about to laugh at me for getting a PowerBook when the new one was just released)...
Now I remember why I used to so adamantly defend the Mac back in elementary school when all the kids made fun of me for using a Mac and thinking it kicked ass. It did. They still do. Now I remember why I told them they were the only ones that should be made fun of - for actually thinking Windows 95 was somehow better than Mac OS 7.5.
But seriously, this new laptop is running great, hasn't crashed once (and I don't think it's been off for more than a few hours one night when I was sleeping - I usually just close the lid on the machine and put it to sleep, leaving it running so I don't have to wait for the [short] bootup of the machine).
I'm impressed as hell with how great it runs and how intuitive the OS is. I feel like I've been living in the dark ages for the past 3 or 4 years using what was supposedly a high-end PC.
That was a 64-bit version of Windows. Oh, also, it has been cancelled.
Not to mention, who wants "the WOW64 subsystem" which provides "a highly-compatible, high-performance environment for the thousands of existing 32-bit applications." AKA emulation, for their games and other software? Also, the Core Duo isn't 64-bit, so no one is going to be running 64-bit Windows on there, either.
Straight up vanilla Windows XP Home/Pro has no compatibility with EFI and probably never will. Vista, sure. We'll see what happens with Vista when the time comes.
The real key issue that we are aware of is that Windows can't boot using EFI.
However, Mac OS X can.
I'm sure there is very high potential for someone to create a simple bootloader using, for example, a modified copy of Darwin, that would allow you to then bootstrap Windows using either some kind of BIOS emulation, or... ?
I imagine the system would otherwise run problem-free once it has booted. Although, the OS would probably try to communicate with a regular PC BIOS, which isn't there. It really depends on how EFI communicates with the OS. Considering Mac OS X ran on Intel machines with a typical BIOS for the past what, ~5 years, I figure EFI must be highly compatible in terms of how it communicates device information etc. to the OS, considering only the last one or two (if that) developer releases of x86 OS X booted from the new EFI.
Apple didn't use EFI for their new Intel-based systems to keep users from running Windows, as this article mildly suggests.
EFI is just a more recent, and importantly, extensible booting technology which will obviously offer Apple more advanced and useful capabilities for the way their systems boot and run.
The fact is, Apple has indeed done essentially nothing to prevent users from running Windows on their machines. Considering the genuine x86 architecture, someone will probably come up with some software to allow Windows to run in a virtual space, natively (very much like Classic), although that's another topic entirely.
Windows won't run simply because of technological advancements. Windows was created far before EFI's inception/implementation and thus is completely incompatible. Saying that Apple is preventing Windows installation on their x86 Macs is just as dubious as saying Microsoft is preventing Windows from being installed on the x86 Macs by not being able to boot on EFI-based systems (as in, neither fact had the intention of preventing Windows installation on x86 Macs, regardless of the convenience to Apple)...
Uh, it's not a Pentium Pro, dude. The Pentium brand is no longer existant, in that there will never be another new "Pentium" CPU developed. Intel has abandoned the Pentium brand and is creating a whole new processor brand. It's kind of been like, all over every news site, including this one, so yeah... heh.
It will invert your screen's colors, thus turning those blinding harsh whites into an unintrusive dark black.
I use this feature all the time when I'm out and about with my iBook at night. It's especially good if you're at a coffee shop etc. and don't want to distract other people with your painfully-bright LCD monitor illuminating half the room. It's far more effective than just lessening the brightness of the display (go into an unlit room with the laptop, face the screen away from you, and just keep pressing the key-command to invert the video and you'll see how much of a difference it makes)!
Uhh, pretty much everyone I know still buys DVDs all the time. DVD is far from dead. I'd say it's more that tech. companies *want* DVD to be "dead" so they can bring in their DRM-mangled disc formats...
-amount of risk caused by vulnerability -percentage of high-risk vulnerabilities per OS -time taken to patch vulnerability -whether the vulnerability is in some tiny obscure piece of shareware or in a VERY common software (such as MSIE)... etc. etc.
Statistics aren't so useful with such lack of completeness.
Of course that page isn't there to be a useful guide for statistics on vulernabilities, but the Slashdot article seems to be portraying it as such...
This is pretty good timing since I've been looking into the purchase of a 12" iBook for the past couple weeks (now waiting another week to see if there are price drops due to the alleged impending Intel-based iBook announcement).
Then again, I'm taking the article text with a pretty decent "grain of salt" considering what other users on here have already said - it's probably about as reliable as your typical SlashDot poll...;)
Nonetheless, I just arrived back at work from the local computer store (went there to take a look at an iBook on display), loaded up Slashdot, and well... nice timing!
I think you're failing to realize that there are MANY MANY musicians out there whose music is NOT being sold by any affiliate of the RIAA.
There is NO REASON to cease purchasing music by these musicians.
The RIAA doesn't own the entire music industry. They might own an unbelievable percentage of the pop music industry, but I assure you, to say that no more music should be bought is completely ludicrous.
Instead, before making a purchase, check to see that the record label you're purchasing from is not RIAA-affiliated.
Check out RIAA Radar to search albums and see if they are released by RIAA-member record labels or not.
I fully support boycotting all RIAA-affiliated products but trying to kill the music industry is, to say the least, going a little overboard.
Yeah, where I work, we often create email template designs for companies who wish to send out "email blasts" (marketing campaign emails sent to thousands+ of contacts, essentially).
Needless to say the first time I was told to cut up an "email blast template", I had to ask what the hell email "blasting" was. It sounded like some kind of widespread ("distributed"?) Denial of Service attack launched by zombie PCs running hacked up MTAs or something!
"The settlement includes a host of restrictions on future Sony DRM use"...
Sony DRM use? Why only Sony? Are all other companies guaranteed to maintain ethical & reasonable DRM implementations?
If they're going to come up with some big guidelines on DRM usage they should apply to any/all DRM implementations. Maybe such stuff can stop maniacal levels of DRM before it's too late..?
Well, that's the thing. Someone very well may come up with a way to exploit one of the 5 or so game demos on the disc, by making unexpected edits to the data files that these games load. I don't have the disc myself so I don't know if they're playable demos or just trailer-style movies, but if they are playable I'm sure there's a lot more than just Windows Media files being loaded;)
Slashdot Mirror
"Hey look at Apple -- they just introduced machines that do not run any software from as little as 5 years ago."
l
Well.. This dude's game, written in 1984, still runs on absolute latest PPC machines running OS X 10.4.4, with no modification to the code whatsoever (runs on the iBook I bought one week ago). Yup, you're running a binary compiled for a machine from 20 years ago...
http://home.earthlink.net/~mrob/pub/missile20.htm
"By transmitting data to and receiving instructions from nearby base stations, BAN chips can reprogram your heartbeat at your doctor's office"...
Umm.. so.. this straight up gives you the ability to kill someone using home-made tech. How long until someone steals the "doctor-only" equipment, reverse engineers it, and suddenly schematics/code are written up? I can just imagine the possibilities, and they are NOT worth the convenience.
Nice powerful transmitter to set all in-range pacemakers to 2 beats per minute... grab tickets to the Superbowl... now maybe our wirelessly-configured pacemaker isn't so convenient. The most disturbing thing is, it's obvious you could transmit these lethal configuration signals completely undetected. You could commit murder to no end in that manner and NEVER be detected, or even suspected.
Fucking unbelievable.
Well, unless you're running a software-based "firewall" on your machine, you're pretty much open to any sort of network-based attack. Frankly, I see remotely connecting to someone's LAN as being in a nice big free-for-all of exploit-tasticness! Guaranteed fun for all involved.
That's the thing though. He doesn't need to list the software. Software on Windows crashes so often and so badly (in comparison to any/all software on his Sun machine) the name of the software is redundant.
No kidding dude. I've been using Windoze PCs exclusively for about 4 years now and have gotten entirely used to crashes, freezing, etc.
Then I just bought a new Mac laptop last week (it's an iBook, for those of you about to laugh at me for getting a PowerBook when the new one was just released)...
Now I remember why I used to so adamantly defend the Mac back in elementary school when all the kids made fun of me for using a Mac and thinking it kicked ass. It did. They still do. Now I remember why I told them they were the only ones that should be made fun of - for actually thinking Windows 95 was somehow better than Mac OS 7.5.
But seriously, this new laptop is running great, hasn't crashed once (and I don't think it's been off for more than a few hours one night when I was sleeping - I usually just close the lid on the machine and put it to sleep, leaving it running so I don't have to wait for the [short] bootup of the machine).
I'm impressed as hell with how great it runs and how intuitive the OS is. I feel like I've been living in the dark ages for the past 3 or 4 years using what was supposedly a high-end PC.
In a word... no.
That was a 64-bit version of Windows. Oh, also, it has been cancelled.
Not to mention, who wants "the WOW64 subsystem" which provides "a highly-compatible, high-performance environment for the thousands of existing 32-bit applications." AKA emulation, for their games and other software? Also, the Core Duo isn't 64-bit, so no one is going to be running 64-bit Windows on there, either.
Straight up vanilla Windows XP Home/Pro has no compatibility with EFI and probably never will. Vista, sure. We'll see what happens with Vista when the time comes.
0 is a lot less than 400.
Not in Soviet Russia...
The real key issue that we are aware of is that Windows can't boot using EFI.
... ?
However, Mac OS X can.
I'm sure there is very high potential for someone to create a simple bootloader using, for example, a modified copy of Darwin, that would allow you to then bootstrap Windows using either some kind of BIOS emulation, or
I imagine the system would otherwise run problem-free once it has booted. Although, the OS would probably try to communicate with a regular PC BIOS, which isn't there. It really depends on how EFI communicates with the OS. Considering Mac OS X ran on Intel machines with a typical BIOS for the past what, ~5 years, I figure EFI must be highly compatible in terms of how it communicates device information etc. to the OS, considering only the last one or two (if that) developer releases of x86 OS X booted from the new EFI.
Apple didn't use EFI for their new Intel-based systems to keep users from running Windows, as this article mildly suggests.
EFI is just a more recent, and importantly, extensible booting technology which will obviously offer Apple more advanced and useful capabilities for the way their systems boot and run.
The fact is, Apple has indeed done essentially nothing to prevent users from running Windows on their machines. Considering the genuine x86 architecture, someone will probably come up with some software to allow Windows to run in a virtual space, natively (very much like Classic), although that's another topic entirely.
Windows won't run simply because of technological advancements. Windows was created far before EFI's inception/implementation and thus is completely incompatible. Saying that Apple is preventing Windows installation on their x86 Macs is just as dubious as saying Microsoft is preventing Windows from being installed on the x86 Macs by not being able to boot on EFI-based systems (as in, neither fact had the intention of preventing Windows installation on x86 Macs, regardless of the convenience to Apple)...
Uh, it's not a Pentium Pro, dude. The Pentium brand is no longer existant, in that there will never be another new "Pentium" CPU developed. Intel has abandoned the Pentium brand and is creating a whole new processor brand. It's kind of been like, all over every news site, including this one, so yeah... heh.
BTW, the processor is called the Intel Core Duo.
Firewire - USB dongle adapters don't exist... heh
Who knows, I mean we have memory, don't we? I wonder how long that memory is 'stored' once a person dies?
People have supposedly reached clinical death for some time and awoken after a short period. Surely these peoples' minds weren't simply "wiped".
It sounds kind of farfetched at first but when you think about it, your idea isn't so unrealistic...
Skinny Puppy - Testure
Ever seen that music video? If not, go download it...
Press Command-Option-Control-8.
;)
It will invert your screen's colors, thus turning those blinding harsh whites into an unintrusive dark black.
I use this feature all the time when I'm out and about with my iBook at night. It's especially good if you're at a coffee shop etc. and don't want to distract other people with your painfully-bright LCD monitor illuminating half the room. It's far more effective than just lessening the brightness of the display (go into an unlit room with the laptop, face the screen away from you, and just keep pressing the key-command to invert the video and you'll see how much of a difference it makes)!
Not to mention it looks pretty sweet.
Uhh, pretty much everyone I know still buys DVDs all the time. DVD is far from dead. I'd say it's more that tech. companies *want* DVD to be "dead" so they can bring in their DRM-mangled disc formats...
Points not mentioned :
... etc. etc.
-amount of risk caused by vulnerability
-percentage of high-risk vulnerabilities per OS
-time taken to patch vulnerability
-whether the vulnerability is in some tiny obscure piece of shareware or in a VERY common software (such as MSIE)
Statistics aren't so useful with such lack of completeness.
Of course that page isn't there to be a useful guide for statistics on vulernabilities, but the Slashdot article seems to be portraying it as such...
This is pretty good timing since I've been looking into the purchase of a 12" iBook for the past couple weeks (now waiting another week to see if there are price drops due to the alleged impending Intel-based iBook announcement).
;)
Then again, I'm taking the article text with a pretty decent "grain of salt" considering what other users on here have already said - it's probably about as reliable as your typical SlashDot poll...
Nonetheless, I just arrived back at work from the local computer store (went there to take a look at an iBook on display), loaded up Slashdot, and well... nice timing!
I think you're failing to realize that there are MANY MANY musicians out there whose music is NOT being sold by any affiliate of the RIAA.
There is NO REASON to cease purchasing music by these musicians.
The RIAA doesn't own the entire music industry. They might own an unbelievable percentage of the pop music industry, but I assure you, to say that no more music should be bought is completely ludicrous.
Instead, before making a purchase, check to see that the record label you're purchasing from is not RIAA-affiliated.
Check out RIAA Radar to search albums and see if they are released by RIAA-member record labels or not.
I fully support boycotting all RIAA-affiliated products but trying to kill the music industry is, to say the least, going a little overboard.
Yeah, where I work, we often create email template designs for companies who wish to send out "email blasts" (marketing campaign emails sent to thousands+ of contacts, essentially).
Needless to say the first time I was told to cut up an "email blast template", I had to ask what the hell email "blasting" was. It sounded like some kind of widespread ("distributed"?) Denial of Service attack launched by zombie PCs running hacked up MTAs or something!
"The settlement includes a host of restrictions on future Sony DRM use"...
Sony DRM use? Why only Sony? Are all other companies guaranteed to maintain ethical & reasonable DRM implementations?
If they're going to come up with some big guidelines on DRM usage they should apply to any/all DRM implementations. Maybe such stuff can stop maniacal levels of DRM before it's too late..?
I believe the project you're thinking of is: "PROMIS"
;)
Use Google to find some info..
FBI is planning to recruit any/all Google staff. ;)
Well, that's the thing. Someone very well may come up with a way to exploit one of the 5 or so game demos on the disc, by making unexpected edits to the data files that these games load. I don't have the disc myself so I don't know if they're playable demos or just trailer-style movies, but if they are playable I'm sure there's a lot more than just Windows Media files being loaded ;)
Please read: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=172301&c id=14354694