Even if you wrote this in C in the style in which they did it the program would be slow. Since there's no way to "extend" a C string, it would require determining the length of the current string (which involves scanning the string for a null byte), malloc'ing a new buffer with one more byte, copying the old string and then adding the new character and new null byte. Scanning and copying are both going to require an operation for each byte (yeah, it could be optimized to take advantage of the computer's word length) on each iteration, with that byte count growing by "1" each time.
Actually, you can "extend" a C-style string just fine in C - just replace the NULL byte with another byte. It's a common error in C programs to miss the NULL byte.
This works because C doesn't do boundary checks and will gladly let you overwrite your stack or heap.
Unlike Java, C doesn't try to protect you from yourself.
What about all the PCs that were shipped with valid licenses, but for whatever reason, techs (such as myself) have had to install a fresh copy of Windows on the box. Could be a failed drive, or other failed hardware, or whatever, reason doesn't matter too much. The point is that it shipped with a legit copy of Windows, and often times doesn't have a recovery disk or an OEM copy of Windows. What are we supposed to do then as techs? Tell the customer "SUCKS TO BE YOU" or "GOTTA PAY FOR THE THING YOU ALREADY PAID FOR, AGAIN" - or just suck it up and install a "non-genuine" license key on the box? Are these users totally SOL out of having a genuine upgrade to Windows 10 because the previous version of Windows that shipped with the system became broken?
Because in that case you should call the computer manufacturer and get a copy of the installation disks to restore onto the new drive with.
While I'm aware most people don't, if I was buying a Windows computer, I wouldn't buy it without the restore disks for that exact reason. HP charges $19 for the disks; BestBuy will make the disks for you for a small fee too.
In the end, there is zero reason to have to re-buy the Windows OS in order to help your customers.
P.S You can only use an OEM License with an OEM installation; so a Retail installation set won't work with the OEM license on the box. If you're a support shop then you should have a copy of the OEM installation for your own uses any way. That's just good business. If you're doing it on your own for Friends and Family, then just take the extra time to get it from the OEM (e.g HP, Asus, Lenovo, etc) when you run into the issue.
The Founding Fathers would not have allowed home inspections of firearms.
Yet wrote and passed the Alien And Sedition Acts. Owned slaves, and did other things that he modern revisionists ignore when quoting WWtFFD
No, I'm not ignoring any of that. Just pointing out that with respect to the OP of this thread which remarked about having people inspect the safety of the firearms (f.e kept in safe, trigger locks, etc) that that would have never flown with those who wrote the Consistitution - namely because they did have to live with some of that under the English Rule where soldiers could decide that you or your property needed to be searched for whatever reason they came up with. This is explicitly why we have the 4th Amendment (no Warrantless Searches) and limits on Property Seizure.
It was a civic duty to have a firearm to start with as that qualified you to be part of the militia (even if you didn't have a firearm you could still join, but then you had to find someone to give you one).
I've never seen that requirement in the definition of "militia". And your wording is odd. You must either have a firearm or have a firearm (by gift/loan) to join the militia. Seems it would be easier to say "must have a firearm to be a member of the militia." Though the current definition has no relationship to armament. And it's impossible to find a good 1776 definition, as they are all tainted by the modern gun rights war (one way or the other).
Look at how people fought at that time. If someone wanted to join in, they had to be able to fight. That typically meant they had to bring their own weapons - the military generally did not provide one for them. This was true even in the Civil War, though by that point the military did start providing some as there was more funding towards it. If you didn't have one, then you had to "borrow" one from someone else who had more than one available.
If you could't fight, or couldn't arm yourself appropriately then you were of little to no use in the militia; though you might have gotten deployed for recon, scouting, or other intelligence operations.
So that brings me to how I feel about people that would use guns to harm themselves and others. Neither the protection of criminals nor the suicidal is justification for "reasonable" restrictions on anyone's rights. It's not that life isn't precious, but why should we protect those who do not value it at all?
While IANAL, in the US the legal issue is basically that you cannot remove a right (must less one specifically called out in the Constitution) to protect the minority, if only (at minimum) inconveniencing the majority.
The Founding Fathers would not have allowed home inspections of firearms. In their minds, it was not the government's business how many or what kind of firearms you had. It was a civic duty to have a firearm to start with as that qualified you to be part of the militia (even if you didn't have a firearm you could still join, but then you had to find someone to give you one).
No they don't. But they work well to load the coffers and scare everyone else into paying up, especially when the other party is gagged on the topic as part of the settlement, which is what MS tends to do - so even if they pay out (B&N) then the other party can't counter MS's story as to why, etc.
Surely they have to tell the court what patents are being infringed in order to get an injunction? Does this case reveal it? I couldn't find any information though.
May be, may be not. Even so, they could do so by sealing the filing so only the parties in the case can read it; all it takes is for Microsoft to claim trade secret, harm to its business, etc for that to happen. And the judges in Seattle (or WA for that matter) are typically in their back pocket for one reason or another - it's a very friendly state towards MS, but then, MS pours a lot into funding various public things (f.e education) there too so there's the whole "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing going on there.
Reading the FAQ and TFA, this is more about BusyBox than the Linux Kernel.
And well, anyone dealing with a proprietary product should know better by now than to include BusyBox in their product without also providing the code for it as BusyBox has a very good history of winning court cases of this type.
Now, while the initial thing was regarding BusyBox, they are also trying to go and push against Tivoization with GPLv2 trying to gain access to "vmkernel" from VMware ESXi. Linus has had a long history of allowing Tivoization, so that might not get through the courts so clearly, but it's a second prong of attack they are using. Expect nVidia and any other proprietary driver maker to possibly join in on that prong - whether arguing for VMware's position or trying to curtail a court ruling that would expand beyond this particular case (since it's basically about an ESXi OS that uses Linux in some form) from impacting other driver manufacturers (f.e nVidia) that simply provide a binary blob for use with their hardware to customers. It should be pretty easy to make the differentiation between the two groups; but you never know what a judge will do.
But does it include "compilation and installation" on the end user's machines, or only on developer hardware available only to a select few? The latter interpretation leads to the Tivoization loophole in the GPLv2. GPLv3 tightened this by defining "Installation Information", its counterpart to GPLv2's "scripts used to control [...] installation", to require that execution be possible "in that User Product" if the work is designed for a consumer platform.
Well, having used VMware Workstation 8 and 9, I can was able to download and modify the Linux drivers provided by VMware, necessary to fix some kernel related bugs (http://clocksmind.blogspot.com/2013/04/vmware-workstation-8-and-linux-kernel-38.html) as kernels changed over time but VMware simply didn't keep up with compatibility.
So frankly, I'm a little surprised but then, may this is for a different edition or something.
"Fact optimization" is already behind more than one multi-billion dollar industry: advertising, political lobbying...
And this is why I fear this initiative, no matter how well intentioned, is doomed to failure. Just because something gets repeated a lot, that doesn't make it factually correct. Moreover, censoring dissenting opinions is a terrible reaction to active manipulation and even to old-fashioned gossip, because it removes the best mechanism for correcting the groupthink and promoting more informed debate, which is introducing alternative ideas from someone who knows better or simply has a different (but still reasonable) point of view.
Remember, not so long ago, the almost-universal opinion would have been that the world was flat.
My advice to save a lot of time and effort, Do not let republicans, terrorists, the religious, anyone connected with the oil companies or climate change deniers anywhere near this technology ever!
Or the democrats, liberals, communists, facists, socialists...
oh, wait...is there anyone left to use the technology?
Education. Engineers get the engineering core education. Which is basically calculus, physics, diffEq and the first semester of all the engineering disciplines (more or less the first two years of a four year program). Only then do you start your specialized education.
Competence not guaranteed in ether case. Engineer job title means nothing.
Degree from certified engineering school is the requirement for an 'engineering' degree. 'Engineering technologist' is the weasel word version from shitty schools.
Some nations require that you pass the P.E. test (or it's local equivalent) to call yourself an engineer, some that you are qualified to take the E.I.T.
In America anybody can call themselves an Engineer.
Wrong. That is only the case with Software Engineeres, and even then if you are in Texas you have to pass a certification to do so.
In pretty much every other Engineering field you cannot call yourself an Engineer without first having passed the exams. Just like you can't call yourself a Lawyer (Esquire), CFA, CPA, or a number of other titles without passing the relevant exams either.
And the difference between engineer and developer is.. what?
Engineers are often held personally liable for their mistakes.
Tim S.
Only one state (Texas) regulates "Software Engineers". Software Engineering is perhaps the only Engineering field that that statement doesn't apply to except, perhaps, in Texas (but even then I doubt it). Typically "Software Engineer" is synonymous with "Software Developer".
On the other hand, a "Computer Engineer" is regulated in all states since it is a sub-field of Eletrical Engineering.
My CS professor said you can only get a CS job these days with one of them, but I can't find any information on what I have to do to get certified.
Get a job where a company will sponsor your H1-B visa. You can't apply until you have a job. The company has to justify the need to hire you over someone else for it to be approved.
If you believe yourself to be an eternal being, then this life is but one small step in a much longer journey. It's always puzzled me why so many Christians fear death, when they claim to know they are going to a place vastly superior to this one.
Well, there are many who profess to be Christians but are not; but then, you always fear what you do not know, no matter how much you try.
And then, of course, many fear how death will come on them - do you really want to die because a sword cut off your head in one of many passes, being burned alive, etc?
What kind of idiot would buy a cell phone with a non-replaceable battery? That would be even more stupid than if it had a proprietary data-cable port. Nobody in their right mind would but such a crippled device.
Apple Customers....did you see the original iPod? They've never had replaceable batteries. Now others (f.e. Google) are following with their high-end lines (Nexus since Nexus5 phone and Nexus 7 tablet).
i remodeled his house in seattle before i went to school and got a phd in physics. i spent a lot of time with him. he's not an asshole at all. in fact, he's pretty much like on his show, just a bit more real. not arrogant. not full of shit.
A friend of mine suggested such an idea to me 15 years ago. This is what I told him.
You run it inside an x86 interpreter which simulates the CPU all the way through the decryption. Then you snapshot the decrypted code and rebuild the app without the decryption and substitute the decrypted code. Now it's just a plain app. If it tries to "detect it's environment" (read the clock, etc), the simulator just tells it whatever it wants to hear. It cannot know it's being simulated, it's just code.
In a sense, that is exactly what Bochs is. It's a true Virtual Machine in that it software interprets every CPU instruction, and emulates every piece of connected hardware - RAM, motherboard, video, network, usb, chipsets, etc - to do so. A truely fine tool for OS and hardware developers.
Yep that trick totally evaded me... I don't doubt that would work fine though.
Now.. what about if it had to be connected to the internet to validate the installation at startup >:W
And the server had to give it's response in a reasonable amount of time ie 100ms and you couldn't fake it on the PC due to encryption. Now I don't doubt that could be broken but it would be a tad harder at least perhaps... maybe:D
Until you have someone that has a slow internet connection, f.e sat-com where latencies are typically around 500ms or worse. A poor network, or bad mix of equipment, can make latencies really bad even on an otherwise good network.
For example, my Dell D600 from 2003 had a Broadcom networking chipset in it. The 1GBit interface had a problem with some Cisco routers. The previous routers it was on were 10/100 and it had no issue; but when they upgraded the router to 10/100/1000 the new router had an issue with the auto-negotiation. Until I figured that out, the network speed when from 100 megaibts to 17 kilobits. Outlook generally worked okay (no choice at that company) but anything that made more use of the network had big issues. (Outlook worked to view what was in my inbox, because of the small messages; but even then it was slow).
So even doing something like that would be risky - of course, you could also just capture the network traffic and hack that too; since you can control the network in Bochs, if you were really going that far it wouldn't be an issue to capture and adjust it as required to make it think it was talking to the real thing. This is actually relatively easy:
Setup a transparent MITM proxy so SSL connections can be handled and neither side necessarily knows about it; though they would have to allow you to specify a client proxy because some places require you to do so to get to the Internet any how, so you could just use a client proxy too.
capture the network traffic using tools like Wireshark for several different runs of the program
compare the deltas to figure out what is changing
Now you just setup a server to either play back the captured data, making the emulated system think it is running at that point when the older software did, or if you figured out enough of the traffic setup something to fake the other side in a way you control.
FYI - this is how SaMBa got started (at least for Windows compatibility) - network analysis of CIFS/SMB traffic with Windows. They found some interesting things doing so - read their docs for things like single-bit flip reboots the Windows computer kind of stuff.
There's very little that cannot be cracked in this regard.
That's utterly ridiculous. There's a lot more to an OS than just the desktop environment (DE): there's the kernel, the init system and other low-level daemons, the display subsystem, the package manager, and of course lots of apps (beyond just what KDE (or Gnome) include in their software collections). The KDE team has enough work to do, they certainly don't want to become their own distro, when there's already several distros that feature KDE as a prominent DE (Mint, Debian, OpenSUSE for starters).
You do realize that KDE is maintained on more than just Linux - including BSDs, Unix, Mac, and even *gasp* Windows. Some ports (like the Windows port) are not as far along as the others - well, pretty much just the Windows port last I checked, and that's primarily because of Windows not having some of the requisite functionality yet.
I'd avoid SVN for anything that isn't a flat text file, otherwise it becomes a pain to merge or determine what the actual difference between two files is. I'm not aware of anything that will make viewing diffs for Word documents human readable. Never mind that some of the people who need to use it will probably be a afraid of it or have even more basic problems like forgetting to commit.
Which is why you just treat the SVN repository as a WebDAV network drive. They user knows nothing about the underlying versioning going on, and you can always capture back the old version.
Additionally, tools like TortoiseSVN (well, technical TortoiseMerge written by the TSVN devs) have support for comparing MS Office documents. You have to have MS Office installed as it loads both into MS Office and runs the comparison functionality within MS Office to do the diffs.
Most developer VCS are overkill for a business environment. Do you really want to have to explain branching/merging or *gasp* rebasing to an office temp? The ideal system would require initial configuration and then create versions automatically.
Candidates:
* Dropbox or equivalent. Good choice. Automatic backup and versioning. Reasonable per user / month pricing ($15/user/mo)
* Sharepoint. Love it or leave it.
Individual users can turn on the versioning features of office, but since no way to enforce that behavior, good luck.
That is why I usually recommend Subversion - because you can just mount Subversion like a network drive since it uses WebDAV as its base protocol.
I've done that with several managers and it works well.
And there's no additional cost.
The problem now, though, is that Microsoft is removing their WebDAV FS drivers from Windows.
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Even if you wrote this in C in the style in which they did it the program would be slow. Since there's no way to "extend" a C string, it would require determining the length of the current string (which involves scanning the string for a null byte), malloc'ing a new buffer with one more byte, copying the old string and then adding the new character and new null byte. Scanning and copying are both going to require an operation for each byte (yeah, it could be optimized to take advantage of the computer's word length) on each iteration, with that byte count growing by "1" each time.
Actually, you can "extend" a C-style string just fine in C - just replace the NULL byte with another byte. It's a common error in C programs to miss the NULL byte.
This works because C doesn't do boundary checks and will gladly let you overwrite your stack or heap.
Unlike Java, C doesn't try to protect you from yourself.
What about all the PCs that were shipped with valid licenses, but for whatever reason, techs (such as myself) have had to install a fresh copy of Windows on the box. Could be a failed drive, or other failed hardware, or whatever, reason doesn't matter too much. The point is that it shipped with a legit copy of Windows, and often times doesn't have a recovery disk or an OEM copy of Windows. What are we supposed to do then as techs? Tell the customer "SUCKS TO BE YOU" or "GOTTA PAY FOR THE THING YOU ALREADY PAID FOR, AGAIN" - or just suck it up and install a "non-genuine" license key on the box? Are these users totally SOL out of having a genuine upgrade to Windows 10 because the previous version of Windows that shipped with the system became broken?
Because in that case you should call the computer manufacturer and get a copy of the installation disks to restore onto the new drive with.
While I'm aware most people don't, if I was buying a Windows computer, I wouldn't buy it without the restore disks for that exact reason. HP charges $19 for the disks; BestBuy will make the disks for you for a small fee too.
In the end, there is zero reason to have to re-buy the Windows OS in order to help your customers.
P.S You can only use an OEM License with an OEM installation; so a Retail installation set won't work with the OEM license on the box. If you're a support shop then you should have a copy of the OEM installation for your own uses any way. That's just good business. If you're doing it on your own for Friends and Family, then just take the extra time to get it from the OEM (e.g HP, Asus, Lenovo, etc) when you run into the issue.
But the rumor is it will be filled with nags complete with the background turning black and daily pop ups bitching and demanding cash.
They started doing that with Vista. Win7 and WIn8 do that as well. so that's not new.
I've never used phone support, but yes they do offer it for Office and Windows, I'm pretty sure it's free, but time / case limited.
Not sure about Free; though they could have changed policy since last I checked (late 1990's) when it was:
There's a reason why no one calls MS for support outside of Partner agreements, MSDN, etc. ;-)
Hopefully they've changed the policy since then.
Just scanned the /16 next to my home broadband and found a number of repeated certificate hashes and all belonging to systems identifying themselves as
*.myfoscam.org/organizationName=ShenZhen Foscam Intelligent Technology Co,Ltd
Seems to be a network enabled camera.
Which is why I don't allow them out of my local network, and never setup their "remote access" functionality. in fact, it's explicitly disabled.
The Founding Fathers would not have allowed home inspections of firearms.
Yet wrote and passed the Alien And Sedition Acts. Owned slaves, and did other things that he modern revisionists ignore when quoting WWtFFD
No, I'm not ignoring any of that. Just pointing out that with respect to the OP of this thread which remarked about having people inspect the safety of the firearms (f.e kept in safe, trigger locks, etc) that that would have never flown with those who wrote the Consistitution - namely because they did have to live with some of that under the English Rule where soldiers could decide that you or your property needed to be searched for whatever reason they came up with. This is explicitly why we have the 4th Amendment (no Warrantless Searches) and limits on Property Seizure.
It was a civic duty to have a firearm to start with as that qualified you to be part of the militia (even if you didn't have a firearm you could still join, but then you had to find someone to give you one).
I've never seen that requirement in the definition of "militia". And your wording is odd. You must either have a firearm or have a firearm (by gift/loan) to join the militia. Seems it would be easier to say "must have a firearm to be a member of the militia." Though the current definition has no relationship to armament. And it's impossible to find a good 1776 definition, as they are all tainted by the modern gun rights war (one way or the other).
Look at how people fought at that time. If someone wanted to join in, they had to be able to fight. That typically meant they had to bring their own weapons - the military generally did not provide one for them. This was true even in the Civil War, though by that point the military did start providing some as there was more funding towards it. If you didn't have one, then you had to "borrow" one from someone else who had more than one available.
If you could't fight, or couldn't arm yourself appropriately then you were of little to no use in the militia; though you might have gotten deployed for recon, scouting, or other intelligence operations.
So that brings me to how I feel about people that would use guns to harm themselves and others. Neither the protection of criminals nor the suicidal is justification for "reasonable" restrictions on anyone's rights. It's not that life isn't precious, but why should we protect those who do not value it at all?
While IANAL, in the US the legal issue is basically that you cannot remove a right (must less one specifically called out in the Constitution) to protect the minority, if only (at minimum) inconveniencing the majority.
The Founding Fathers would not have allowed home inspections of firearms. In their minds, it was not the government's business how many or what kind of firearms you had. It was a civic duty to have a firearm to start with as that qualified you to be part of the militia (even if you didn't have a firearm you could still join, but then you had to find someone to give you one).
Settlements don't establish precedent.
No they don't. But they work well to load the coffers and scare everyone else into paying up, especially when the other party is gagged on the topic as part of the settlement, which is what MS tends to do - so even if they pay out (B&N) then the other party can't counter MS's story as to why, etc.
Surely they have to tell the court what patents are being infringed in order to get an injunction? Does this case reveal it? I couldn't find any information though.
May be, may be not. Even so, they could do so by sealing the filing so only the parties in the case can read it; all it takes is for Microsoft to claim trade secret, harm to its business, etc for that to happen. And the judges in Seattle (or WA for that matter) are typically in their back pocket for one reason or another - it's a very friendly state towards MS, but then, MS pours a lot into funding various public things (f.e education) there too so there's the whole "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing going on there.
Reading the FAQ and TFA, this is more about BusyBox than the Linux Kernel.
And well, anyone dealing with a proprietary product should know better by now than to include BusyBox in their product without also providing the code for it as BusyBox has a very good history of winning court cases of this type.
Now, while the initial thing was regarding BusyBox, they are also trying to go and push against Tivoization with GPLv2 trying to gain access to "vmkernel" from VMware ESXi. Linus has had a long history of allowing Tivoization, so that might not get through the courts so clearly, but it's a second prong of attack they are using. Expect nVidia and any other proprietary driver maker to possibly join in on that prong - whether arguing for VMware's position or trying to curtail a court ruling that would expand beyond this particular case (since it's basically about an ESXi OS that uses Linux in some form) from impacting other driver manufacturers (f.e nVidia) that simply provide a binary blob for use with their hardware to customers. It should be pretty easy to make the differentiation between the two groups; but you never know what a judge will do.
IANAL, but that's what I see.
But does it include "compilation and installation" on the end user's machines, or only on developer hardware available only to a select few? The latter interpretation leads to the Tivoization loophole in the GPLv2. GPLv3 tightened this by defining "Installation Information", its counterpart to GPLv2's "scripts used to control [...] installation", to require that execution be possible "in that User Product" if the work is designed for a consumer platform.
Well, having used VMware Workstation 8 and 9, I can was able to download and modify the Linux drivers provided by VMware, necessary to fix some kernel related bugs (http://clocksmind.blogspot.com/2013/04/vmware-workstation-8-and-linux-kernel-38.html) as kernels changed over time but VMware simply didn't keep up with compatibility.
So frankly, I'm a little surprised but then, may this is for a different edition or something.
"Fact optimization" is already behind more than one multi-billion dollar industry: advertising, political lobbying...
And this is why I fear this initiative, no matter how well intentioned, is doomed to failure. Just because something gets repeated a lot, that doesn't make it factually correct. Moreover, censoring dissenting opinions is a terrible reaction to active manipulation and even to old-fashioned gossip, because it removes the best mechanism for correcting the groupthink and promoting more informed debate, which is introducing alternative ideas from someone who knows better or simply has a different (but still reasonable) point of view.
Remember, not so long ago, the almost-universal opinion would have been that the world was flat.
My advice to save a lot of time and effort, Do not let republicans, terrorists, the religious, anyone connected with the oil companies or climate change deniers anywhere near this technology ever!
Or the democrats, liberals, communists, facists, socialists...
oh, wait...is there anyone left to use the technology?
...is that HOAs are just as big if not a bigger impediment to solar as many ban them from their communities.
Education. Engineers get the engineering core education. Which is basically calculus, physics, diffEq and the first semester of all the engineering disciplines (more or less the first two years of a four year program). Only then do you start your specialized education.
Competence not guaranteed in ether case. Engineer job title means nothing.
Degree from certified engineering school is the requirement for an 'engineering' degree. 'Engineering technologist' is the weasel word version from shitty schools.
Some nations require that you pass the P.E. test (or it's local equivalent) to call yourself an engineer, some that you are qualified to take the E.I.T.
In America anybody can call themselves an Engineer.
Wrong. That is only the case with Software Engineeres, and even then if you are in Texas you have to pass a certification to do so.
In pretty much every other Engineering field you cannot call yourself an Engineer without first having passed the exams. Just like you can't call yourself a Lawyer (Esquire), CFA, CPA, or a number of other titles without passing the relevant exams either.
And the difference between engineer and developer is.. what?
Engineers are often held personally liable for their mistakes. Tim S.
Only one state (Texas) regulates "Software Engineers". Software Engineering is perhaps the only Engineering field that that statement doesn't apply to except, perhaps, in Texas (but even then I doubt it). Typically "Software Engineer" is synonymous with "Software Developer".
On the other hand, a "Computer Engineer" is regulated in all states since it is a sub-field of Eletrical Engineering.
My CS professor said you can only get a CS job these days with one of them, but I can't find any information on what I have to do to get certified.
Get a job where a company will sponsor your H1-B visa. You can't apply until you have a job. The company has to justify the need to hire you over someone else for it to be approved.
iPorn?
What the iWife/iHubby not good enough for you? Just wait until you have an iKid.
If you believe yourself to be an eternal being, then this life is but one small step in a much longer journey. It's always puzzled me why so many Christians fear death, when they claim to know they are going to a place vastly superior to this one.
Well, there are many who profess to be Christians but are not; but then, you always fear what you do not know, no matter how much you try.
And then, of course, many fear how death will come on them - do you really want to die because a sword cut off your head in one of many passes, being burned alive, etc?
$0.02
What kind of idiot would buy a cell phone with a non-replaceable battery? That would be even more stupid than if it had a proprietary data-cable port. Nobody in their right mind would but such a crippled device.
Apple Customers....did you see the original iPod? They've never had replaceable batteries. Now others (f.e. Google) are following with their high-end lines (Nexus since Nexus5 phone and Nexus 7 tablet).
i remodeled his house in seattle before i went to school and got a phd in physics. i spent a lot of time with him. he's not an asshole at all. in fact, he's pretty much like on his show, just a bit more real. not arrogant. not full of shit.
Nye, is that you?
A friend of mine suggested such an idea to me 15 years ago. This is what I told him.
You run it inside an x86 interpreter which simulates the CPU all the way through the decryption. Then you snapshot the decrypted code and rebuild the app without the decryption and substitute the decrypted code. Now it's just a plain app. If it tries to "detect it's environment" (read the clock, etc), the simulator just tells it whatever it wants to hear. It cannot know it's being simulated, it's just code.
In a sense, that is exactly what Bochs is. It's a true Virtual Machine in that it software interprets every CPU instruction, and emulates every piece of connected hardware - RAM, motherboard, video, network, usb, chipsets, etc - to do so. A truely fine tool for OS and hardware developers.
Yep that trick totally evaded me... I don't doubt that would work fine though. Now.. what about if it had to be connected to the internet to validate the installation at startup >:W And the server had to give it's response in a reasonable amount of time ie 100ms and you couldn't fake it on the PC due to encryption. Now I don't doubt that could be broken but it would be a tad harder at least perhaps ... maybe :D
Until you have someone that has a slow internet connection, f.e sat-com where latencies are typically around 500ms or worse. A poor network, or bad mix of equipment, can make latencies really bad even on an otherwise good network.
For example, my Dell D600 from 2003 had a Broadcom networking chipset in it. The 1GBit interface had a problem with some Cisco routers. The previous routers it was on were 10/100 and it had no issue; but when they upgraded the router to 10/100/1000 the new router had an issue with the auto-negotiation. Until I figured that out, the network speed when from 100 megaibts to 17 kilobits. Outlook generally worked okay (no choice at that company) but anything that made more use of the network had big issues. (Outlook worked to view what was in my inbox, because of the small messages; but even then it was slow).
So even doing something like that would be risky - of course, you could also just capture the network traffic and hack that too; since you can control the network in Bochs, if you were really going that far it wouldn't be an issue to capture and adjust it as required to make it think it was talking to the real thing. This is actually relatively easy:
compare the deltas to figure out what is changing
Now you just setup a server to either play back the captured data, making the emulated system think it is running at that point when the older software did, or if you figured out enough of the traffic setup something to fake the other side in a way you control.
FYI - this is how SaMBa got started (at least for Windows compatibility) - network analysis of CIFS/SMB traffic with Windows. They found some interesting things doing so - read their docs for things like single-bit flip reboots the Windows computer kind of stuff.
There's very little that cannot be cracked in this regard.
That's utterly ridiculous. There's a lot more to an OS than just the desktop environment (DE): there's the kernel, the init system and other low-level daemons, the display subsystem, the package manager, and of course lots of apps (beyond just what KDE (or Gnome) include in their software collections). The KDE team has enough work to do, they certainly don't want to become their own distro, when there's already several distros that feature KDE as a prominent DE (Mint, Debian, OpenSUSE for starters).
You do realize that KDE is maintained on more than just Linux - including BSDs, Unix, Mac, and even *gasp* Windows. Some ports (like the Windows port) are not as far along as the others - well, pretty much just the Windows port last I checked, and that's primarily because of Windows not having some of the requisite functionality yet.
I'd avoid SVN for anything that isn't a flat text file, otherwise it becomes a pain to merge or determine what the actual difference between two files is. I'm not aware of anything that will make viewing diffs for Word documents human readable. Never mind that some of the people who need to use it will probably be a afraid of it or have even more basic problems like forgetting to commit.
Which is why you just treat the SVN repository as a WebDAV network drive. They user knows nothing about the underlying versioning going on, and you can always capture back the old version.
Additionally, tools like TortoiseSVN (well, technical TortoiseMerge written by the TSVN devs) have support for comparing MS Office documents. You have to have MS Office installed as it loads both into MS Office and runs the comparison functionality within MS Office to do the diffs.
Most developer VCS are overkill for a business environment. Do you really want to have to explain branching/merging or *gasp* rebasing to an office temp? The ideal system would require initial configuration and then create versions automatically.
Candidates: * Dropbox or equivalent. Good choice. Automatic backup and versioning. Reasonable per user / month pricing ($15/user/mo) * Sharepoint. Love it or leave it.
Individual users can turn on the versioning features of office, but since no way to enforce that behavior, good luck.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/not-just-for-coders-top-version-control-systems-for-writers/
That is why I usually recommend Subversion - because you can just mount Subversion like a network drive since it uses WebDAV as its base protocol. I've done that with several managers and it works well.
And there's no additional cost.
The problem now, though, is that Microsoft is removing their WebDAV FS drivers from Windows.