Now that would be something - a network of compromised 360s.
There are some practicability issues though.. These boxes are loud, would not be hard to notice one running even though it seems to be turned off. Then, they need to be fully patched to even connect to XBox live, so you'd need a zero day remote exploit. Compromising those boxes even locally is no easy feat. Maybe I missed something, but I've never heard of a remote exploit for the 360, and last I heard from a local exploit was ages ago, and it only worked for one particular firmware version.
So anyways, I disagree on the detectability part of you message. For most XBoxes (I don't know about those special, more expensive editions), their sheer loudness is a pretty good intrusion detection, harder to miss for the average user than slow PCs with additional software.
If you're after streaming inside your own LAN, ps3mediaserver is the best solution I have found so far. Even though it's originally for the PS3, with which it still works best, its XBox support is workable. It transcodes, so whatever format your media has, it should work.
It can't do online streams though, as far as I know.
I don't quite get all this animosity towards closed down hardware - it's not like that's something that's come up recently.
Sure, theoretically, you should be able to do whatever you want with a device you own. And, as far as I know, you can. It's not illegal to reverse engineer your console/dishwasher/washing machine and make it do stuff it wasn't intended to do.
But you can't really expect hardware companies to make it easy. Naturally, they want their hardware to be used for its intended purpose. Console manufacturers want to sell games, washing machine companies want to sell more features for more money.
I'm not sure I understand your PSP reference, so maybe I'm missing an important point, but isn't it that it's no longer trivial to install a custom firmware on that thing?
Those same nerds you accuse of lacking any business sense know how much informed tech support (as opposed to a low paid call center agent from India or the local college) costs, and have an idea on how long it takes to walk people through cleaning their systems.
Of course, if you're just talking about an informing e-mail, and a phone call telling the customer to contact some AV company, yes, that's probably covered by the bandwidth saved. Unless of course the customer maxes out the line anyways...
Hm, of the estimated 100 different teachers I had the pleasure of getting taught by, I think about 5 met your criteria. Give or take like 25% due to false memories, and in the best case 90% of my teachers would be losing their jobs under your... regime.
Right now, an average school class has 22 students. That would increase to 198. Those teachers would burn.
About teachers being able to handle 30 students.. Well, that might be true when the students are older, like college age. But 30 kids in puberty, off different backgrounds and of varied cognitive abilities in one class is hell, and getting them to follow instructions is nigh impossible.
I'm not saying what you want is impossible, but it'd take more than firing a bunch of teachers. The school system would need to be different, with kids put in classes according to their learning habits and personalities. And those classes must all reach the same academic level at the end. I wonder if that has been tried before...
Funny he managed to pick examples you actually do have an understanding of, but that doesn't make his point less valid. There are bound to be things you have no interest in. You being a hands on guy, I would guess something like.. marketing? management?
But that's all irrelevant - you have incredibly high expectations of what a teacher should be able to do. You shouldn't forget that they're not very well paid, and curiosity doesn't really play a very big role in their profession. They're supposed to convey basic knowledge that's been established for a very long time, and doesn't really change that much over time. Not much room for curiosity there.
What you're after doesn't seem possible - you want less teachers, as you want to get rid of those that don't meet your high expectations, and those that do will certainly want to get paid better than what teachers currently make. On the other hand there are too little teachers to begin with, as shown by there being classes with >20 students.
I'm not going to boast with my Unix experience, but you should be aware that there are better ways to reach people than to diminish their knowledge and experience.
I wonder though, what does background fsck, or the lack thereof, have to do with any of the things I listed? There is no fsck, background or otherwise.
The problem I have with forcably mounting filesystems is that I have no way of knowing what I'm forcing. Sure, it's probably just not been unmounted probably, but do you really know?
And yes, fuse is slow. But that's hardly a defense for ntfs-3g, rather it begs the question, why isn't there a kernel driver?
The whole point of forbidding mounting an unclean fs is to make people run fsck_$FS. Lacking this, $FS support is insufficient.
When forcing a mount, I don't know exactly what I'm forcing. Mount says it's probably an unclean FS, but who's to say there isn't something more seriously wrong with the filesystem?
Defragging on Windows (with its included deframentation tool) doesn't fix the kind of fragmentation ntfs-3g has issues with - don't ask me, that's what ntfs-3g's FAQ says.
About Linux complaining too much - no, I don't think it does. It'd help if it had the necessary tools to fix what it's whining about though.
Yeah, shame on me.
Cygwin has always been very slow for me (might be subjective), and MSYS seemed kind of lacking in features. So it was back to emulation/virtualization. That won't give me the kind of low level access I need to read the GP's usbdisk though..
OTOH, I often have to read my portable media on systems I don't control, so I'd really like a way to read raw device data on a vanilla Windows.
Unless explore2fs hasn't come a long way since I last used it, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Also, your sig's probably making people want to created viruses for Mandrake, and dedicating them to you.
I was wondering what the largest possible UID is, and some superficial googling suggests it's either 2^31 (signed 32 bit), effectively 2^31/2 as UIDs have to be positive, or 2^32 (unsigned 32 bit). But, it seems the maximun UID used to be 2^16, and that's still the recommended maximum. That number is way to small to avoid collisions - well, actually both numbers are, but this one especially.
I wouldn't be surprised when a large amount of open source software would have issues with UIDs > 2^16 anyways.
Does this have the same issue Linux' ntfs-3g has?
-not to be able to mount a partition that hasn't been cleanly dismounted, except by forcing it
-extremely slow performance with large files or fragmented filesystems
-slow performance generally
If so, I wouldn't say OSX has NTFS support. Neither does Linux. Just some experimental hack that works "well enough".
Never mind the lack of casualties - they might drop, but people will find a way around those exoskeletons. Another poster suggested EMP, and difficult terrain will surely decrease the range of soldiers equipped with such a beast.
Heh, you're actually sorry for someone who didn't get the Borg? C'mon, there're more important things for either of you to be doing. Like discussing the merits of space travel as depicted in Star Wars;)
They didn't become teachers to be part time admins. Nobody that didn't choose to should have to be. But that's what personal computing reality is, and if the effort of getting something to work seems to outweigh its benefits, that naturally lowers the giving-up-treshold.
People specialize into stuff for a reason, and based on my observations, few computer-savvy people are good teachers.
Not trying to defend the parent's particular style of discussion, but that's not true.
Posting with an alias gives you an identity in the context of this site, as people can read previous comments and get a clearer picture of the person behind the post. Knowing a poster's true birth name, email address and phone number doesn't really help you in the context of a slashdot discussion, by far not as much as reading their previous posts at least. It just makes the person easier to harass.
I like that forums/blogs or whatever you might call them are kind of self contained, and nobody has to defend whatever they might have said on another site.
As a bit of a reality check, let me describe what happened when my school got one of those "smart boards".
The teacher that ordered it was rather technophile, for a teacher at least. Though also a little older, not quite up to date with current technology. However, when he tried to use it in class, he ran into all kind of problems. The software required a later version of Internet Explorer than was installed on that presumably vanilla Win2k that was supposed to run the thing. Not that it said so outright, it gave a cryptic message about some function not being available. Of course, he had no way of knowing what's the problem was, and sent for some tech support. They took the PC with them, and didn't return it for a week. So, it was back to traditional blackboards.
After the PC was back, it was discovered there were applications missing the smartboard software assumed was there, e.g. Acrobat Reader iirc. So, it was back to tech support again.. And so on, thousands of problems came up that prevented the use of that shiny new toy, and after a while even that teacher gave up.
So, you're saying it's stupid to not be able to install a smart board. I don't think teachers, or anyone except computer professionals, have to have this obscure knowledge about interpreting cryptic error messages, and as computer technology is often portrait as the solution to everything, more people run into that kind of problems, get frustrated and give up.
Contrary to common conception, computers are not the solution to everything - way too often, they create problems where there were none, trying to solve non-issues.
I have yet to experience a use of a smart board, where a traditional blackboard wouldn't have done the job at least as well, without requiring any training on part of the user.
Slashdot Mirror
Bye bye EPIC!
I'm sure they'll be crying themselves to sleep tonight.
Huh. What'd you know, there is justice in this world..
Now that would be something - a network of compromised 360s.
There are some practicability issues though.. These boxes are loud, would not be hard to notice one running even though it seems to be turned off. Then, they need to be fully patched to even connect to XBox live, so you'd need a zero day remote exploit. Compromising those boxes even locally is no easy feat. Maybe I missed something, but I've never heard of a remote exploit for the 360, and last I heard from a local exploit was ages ago, and it only worked for one particular firmware version.
So anyways, I disagree on the detectability part of you message. For most XBoxes (I don't know about those special, more expensive editions), their sheer loudness is a pretty good intrusion detection, harder to miss for the average user than slow PCs with additional software.
If you're after streaming inside your own LAN, ps3mediaserver is the best solution I have found so far. Even though it's originally for the PS3, with which it still works best, its XBox support is workable. It transcodes, so whatever format your media has, it should work.
It can't do online streams though, as far as I know.
I don't quite get all this animosity towards closed down hardware - it's not like that's something that's come up recently.
Sure, theoretically, you should be able to do whatever you want with a device you own. And, as far as I know, you can. It's not illegal to reverse engineer your console/dishwasher/washing machine and make it do stuff it wasn't intended to do.
But you can't really expect hardware companies to make it easy. Naturally, they want their hardware to be used for its intended purpose. Console manufacturers want to sell games, washing machine companies want to sell more features for more money.
I'm not sure I understand your PSP reference, so maybe I'm missing an important point, but isn't it that it's no longer trivial to install a custom firmware on that thing?
It should be illegal to speak in public without some formal education in psychology and rhetoric.
Some kind of attitude test might be a good idea too.
Those same nerds you accuse of lacking any business sense know how much informed tech support (as opposed to a low paid call center agent from India or the local college) costs, and have an idea on how long it takes to walk people through cleaning their systems.
Of course, if you're just talking about an informing e-mail, and a phone call telling the customer to contact some AV company, yes, that's probably covered by the bandwidth saved. Unless of course the customer maxes out the line anyways...
Hm, of the estimated 100 different teachers I had the pleasure of getting taught by, I think about 5 met your criteria. Give or take like 25% due to false memories, and in the best case 90% of my teachers would be losing their jobs under your... regime.
Right now, an average school class has 22 students. That would increase to 198. Those teachers would burn.
About teachers being able to handle 30 students.. Well, that might be true when the students are older, like college age. But 30 kids in puberty, off different backgrounds and of varied cognitive abilities in one class is hell, and getting them to follow instructions is nigh impossible.
I'm not saying what you want is impossible, but it'd take more than firing a bunch of teachers. The school system would need to be different, with kids put in classes according to their learning habits and personalities. And those classes must all reach the same academic level at the end. I wonder if that has been tried before...
Well, obviously with a central register of Unix usernames, with their matching UIDs. Everyone who wants to make a Unix account has to register.
Problem solved, everybody happy.
Funny he managed to pick examples you actually do have an understanding of, but that doesn't make his point less valid. There are bound to be things you have no interest in. You being a hands on guy, I would guess something like.. marketing? management?
But that's all irrelevant - you have incredibly high expectations of what a teacher should be able to do. You shouldn't forget that they're not very well paid, and curiosity doesn't really play a very big role in their profession. They're supposed to convey basic knowledge that's been established for a very long time, and doesn't really change that much over time. Not much room for curiosity there.
What you're after doesn't seem possible - you want less teachers, as you want to get rid of those that don't meet your high expectations, and those that do will certainly want to get paid better than what teachers currently make. On the other hand there are too little teachers to begin with, as shown by there being classes with >20 students.
I'm not going to boast with my Unix experience, but you should be aware that there are better ways to reach people than to diminish their knowledge and experience.
I wonder though, what does background fsck, or the lack thereof, have to do with any of the things I listed? There is no fsck, background or otherwise.
The problem I have with forcably mounting filesystems is that I have no way of knowing what I'm forcing. Sure, it's probably just not been unmounted probably, but do you really know?
And yes, fuse is slow. But that's hardly a defense for ntfs-3g, rather it begs the question, why isn't there a kernel driver?
The whole point of forbidding mounting an unclean fs is to make people run fsck_$FS. Lacking this, $FS support is insufficient.
When forcing a mount, I don't know exactly what I'm forcing. Mount says it's probably an unclean FS, but who's to say there isn't something more seriously wrong with the filesystem?
Defragging on Windows (with its included deframentation tool) doesn't fix the kind of fragmentation ntfs-3g has issues with - don't ask me, that's what ntfs-3g's FAQ says.
About Linux complaining too much - no, I don't think it does. It'd help if it had the necessary tools to fix what it's whining about though.
Yeah, shame on me.
Cygwin has always been very slow for me (might be subjective), and MSYS seemed kind of lacking in features. So it was back to emulation/virtualization. That won't give me the kind of low level access I need to read the GP's usbdisk though..
OTOH, I often have to read my portable media on systems I don't control, so I'd really like a way to read raw device data on a vanilla Windows.
Especially when full!
How do you read that on a Windows box, without installing additional software?
Unless explore2fs hasn't come a long way since I last used it, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Also, your sig's probably making people want to created viruses for Mandrake, and dedicating them to you.
You can split files you know?
Also, as many pointed out, you can retain those permissions on FAT32 by using tar or cpio, and allegedly even zip.
Yeah, pretty sure the compression is faster than USB transfer.
I was wondering what the largest possible UID is, and some superficial googling suggests it's either 2^31 (signed 32 bit), effectively 2^31/2 as UIDs have to be positive, or 2^32 (unsigned 32 bit). But, it seems the maximun UID used to be 2^16, and that's still the recommended maximum. That number is way to small to avoid collisions - well, actually both numbers are, but this one especially.
I wouldn't be surprised when a large amount of open source software would have issues with UIDs > 2^16 anyways.
Does this have the same issue Linux' ntfs-3g has?
-not to be able to mount a partition that hasn't been cleanly dismounted, except by forcing it
-extremely slow performance with large files or fragmented filesystems
-slow performance generally
If so, I wouldn't say OSX has NTFS support. Neither does Linux. Just some experimental hack that works "well enough".
Never mind the lack of casualties - they might drop, but people will find a way around those exoskeletons. Another poster suggested EMP, and difficult terrain will surely decrease the range of soldiers equipped with such a beast.
Heh, you're actually sorry for someone who didn't get the Borg? C'mon, there're more important things for either of you to be doing. Like discussing the merits of space travel as depicted in Star Wars ;)
They didn't become teachers to be part time admins. Nobody that didn't choose to should have to be. But that's what personal computing reality is, and if the effort of getting something to work seems to outweigh its benefits, that naturally lowers the giving-up-treshold.
People specialize into stuff for a reason, and based on my observations, few computer-savvy people are good teachers.
Not trying to defend the parent's particular style of discussion, but that's not true.
Posting with an alias gives you an identity in the context of this site, as people can read previous comments and get a clearer picture of the person behind the post. Knowing a poster's true birth name, email address and phone number doesn't really help you in the context of a slashdot discussion, by far not as much as reading their previous posts at least. It just makes the person easier to harass.
I like that forums/blogs or whatever you might call them are kind of self contained, and nobody has to defend whatever they might have said on another site.
As a bit of a reality check, let me describe what happened when my school got one of those "smart boards".
The teacher that ordered it was rather technophile, for a teacher at least. Though also a little older, not quite up to date with current technology. However, when he tried to use it in class, he ran into all kind of problems. The software required a later version of Internet Explorer than was installed on that presumably vanilla Win2k that was supposed to run the thing. Not that it said so outright, it gave a cryptic message about some function not being available. Of course, he had no way of knowing what's the problem was, and sent for some tech support. They took the PC with them, and didn't return it for a week. So, it was back to traditional blackboards.
After the PC was back, it was discovered there were applications missing the smartboard software assumed was there, e.g. Acrobat Reader iirc. So, it was back to tech support again.. And so on, thousands of problems came up that prevented the use of that shiny new toy, and after a while even that teacher gave up.
So, you're saying it's stupid to not be able to install a smart board. I don't think teachers, or anyone except computer professionals, have to have this obscure knowledge about interpreting cryptic error messages, and as computer technology is often portrait as the solution to everything, more people run into that kind of problems, get frustrated and give up.
Contrary to common conception, computers are not the solution to everything - way too often, they create problems where there were none, trying to solve non-issues.
I have yet to experience a use of a smart board, where a traditional blackboard wouldn't have done the job at least as well, without requiring any training on part of the user.