We've placed a file with our unlisted phone number somewhere on the harddrive. The first one who can hack in, get it and call us on that number wins the prize. And by the way, we're packet sniffing all packets to figure out how you did that.
You don't necessarily need to write a virus to compromise a computer.
Well, this is hear-say, but there is a honeynet project that loads computers up with various unpatched operating systems and they've found that the newer linux distros can last about 3 months before someone succeeded at a compromise.
I think the average for windows is about 3 minutes before a successful compromise.
That alone says a lot. Given that linux is open source, means the bugs are exposed and can be found and eliminated by a large group of people. As long as the security flaws are found and eliminated, this development model is by far better than the typical flawed model of closed source development. Security through obscurity is not really security, and in 2005 a lot of people are gunning for exploits and they will be found. Obscure or not. A few months back there was an article that said microsoft found a security hole traced back to NT 4.0 large enough to park a city bus in.... sideways..... loaded with hackers.
If linux gained even 50% market share, I'd venture a guess that it would stay up far longer than windows in the same hostile environment.
So, it does not surprise me if microsofts fud machine keeps running unabated.
I should have said probably *NOT ALL* documented. Note I also did say 'probably'.
I haven't done a whole lot of windows specific development for a while and can't say with absolute certainty, but the libraries that are shared between IE and windows help for example, might not be completely documented outside microsoft.
While it might be true that some documentation exists for html rendering, for example, using those web APIs, can you say with 100% certainty that all documentation provided by those DLLs are 100% accurate?
And thus, is it not conceivable that in the process, microsoft has used some of these 'uncommon' API calls to their advantage for certain integrated windows functions such as URL parsing, etc?
If you take away IE and those libraries, then the rest of windows will break unless a third party can provide a plugin that is functionally similar.
What he's saying is that IE uses fully documented core OS system calls and thus any monkey can come up with an IE equivalent
What's he's also saying is that IE itself provides functionality that other applications rely on and thus, because is relied upon by other applicaitons, is considered part of the OS. The API calls it provides are probably *NOT* documented and thus make it hard for someone to write an IE equivalent, probably so they can maintain control over the browser war.
For example, the latest form of microsoft help that uses chm files (compiled html ?macro? files? I understand the html part of chm).
I had to write a device driver for windows NT 4 and talk about a nightmare.
The api had at least 6 memory pointers for device read/write and depending on what you were doing or the cycle of the moon, had to know which one to use.
Contrast that with all the other OSes I had to write device drivers for, they only required two. One was a virtual memory pointer the other was a physical memory address.And they even gave kernel calls to translate from one to the other.
I'd say based on the glimpse of the internals, that the NT kernel by the time it got to NT 4 got hacked so bad, quite well designed is not the description I'd use.
MS should have turned that stupid dog into some kind of tamagochi where you have to feed it, clean up after it, etc, and if you neglect it a little, it screws up your searches and if you neglect it too much for too long, it dies and doesn't bother you again when you do a search.
I've played the download songs from the internet game and went back to buying CDs.
The simple truth is that at 10meg/min for CD quality, nobody's gonna download. I don't care what people say, I DO NOTICE A DIFFERENCE WITH AUDIO COMPRESSION.
For now at least, I can still rip the songs from CD and create my own MP3s and DRM be damned. For background noise, MP3 is fine, but for home entertainment, I pop in the original CDs.
I really wonder how credible these shows are when they are the equivalent of CSI.
While it's true that CSI is pretty much based on real science, it's been fictionalized and dolled up to make it 'fun' and entertaining. It's fast paced and skips far too many little details that is the glue of real science, that it's essentially brain candy.
I like CSI, but it seems each episode is the same thing hashed over and over.
The real science of chemistry and physics, etc, drones on with the formulas and equations and for most would be tediously boring. Anything less just creates an audience of neophites easily distracted or moving on to other brain candy like shows such as monster garage or mythbusters.
If you can't find science fun on its own merits, I don't see how a program like "bill nye the science guy" or equivalent will be anything more than edu-tainment.
Yes, the extra ten minutes you need to spend going through config dialogs every time you upgrade to a larger hard drive
Oh, and don't forget that the guy said 'you COULD put swap and temp on a separate drive, but the upgrade is a nightmare, so just stick to putting it on a separate partition', but if all you're putting on it is swap and temp files that is next to useless on reboot, how is this a nightmare, I wonder?
I agree. To avoid wear and tear, it's better to have the swap file on a separate harddrive whose main task is that alone (perhaps a drive for periodic archival?). That would also give the extra performance.
If you need the extra performance by moving the swap, moving it to a separate partition will just slow everything down because the head has to move further on the platter to get there. If it's interspersed among your data, the chances it needs to hunt for the right track is that much reduced because it's already pretty close to being there already. If you're not actively using more virtual memory than physical ram, where the swap space is doesn't do a whole lot of difference because you're not doing a whole lot of swapping.
However, until we can figure out a way to get a wireless transceiver implanted directly in our brain and we ourselves become a super duper wireless PC, then the PC is here to stay.
I was thinking of writing my own virus that packet sniffs all the devices and triggers on outgoing port 25 requests. It gathers statistics about how many emails are sent in a given hour and if it detects more than say 20 emails per hour, pops up a dialog box stating that there's an unusual amount of email being sent from that computer each hour and that it could very well be infected with a mass mailing relay bot.
If I was clever enough, I'd have it monitor all incoming and outgoing packets, looking for patterns and log them. Then it could take those logs and send them to authorities to investigate the source of the spam abusers (looking for common source ip addresses for example, then tracking it back to the individual(s) who has been controlling these bots).
Of course, I'm clever enough to know that even a benign or beneficial virus like that would be a bad thing as far as the law is concerned, so I'm not going to bother.
I set up a honey pot and got it up to 55 different spywares on it. It should be noted that Rogers up here has the usual suspect ports blocked halfway up stream which means an unpatched XP box won't get hit right away with things like MSBlaster, etc.
This might at least partially explain why we got such a low score.
I want to see 5 lights. I really do want to see 5 lights.
If I lived in the US. In canada, my brother wrote a registered letter to the CRTC (canadian radio-television and telecommunications commission) *AND* to the offending telemarketer who thus was obligated by law not to call him back for at least one year and it still didn't help.
It's the same reason why spammers don't feel it's unfair to continue spamming people. At best, it's a slap on the wrist and the law is not nearly strict enough to make a sufficiently serious example of these people.
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What *WOULD* be responsible is something like:
We've placed a file with our unlisted phone number somewhere on the harddrive. The first one who can hack in, get it and call us on that number wins the prize. And by the way, we're packet sniffing all packets to figure out how you did that.
You don't necessarily need to write a virus to compromise a computer.
More like this:
1. Someone writes a virus
2. ?
3. Profit.
Well, this is hear-say, but there is a honeynet project that loads computers up with various unpatched operating systems and they've found that the newer linux distros can last about 3 months before someone succeeded at a compromise.
I think the average for windows is about 3 minutes before a successful compromise.
That alone says a lot. Given that linux is open source, means the bugs are exposed and can be found and eliminated by a large group of people. As long as the security flaws are found and eliminated, this development model is by far better than the typical flawed model of closed source development. Security through obscurity is not really security, and in 2005 a lot of people are gunning for exploits and they will be found. Obscure or not. A few months back there was an article that said microsoft found a security hole traced back to NT 4.0 large enough to park a city bus in.... sideways..... loaded with hackers.
If linux gained even 50% market share, I'd venture a guess that it would stay up far longer than windows in the same hostile environment.
So, it does not surprise me if microsofts fud machine keeps running unabated.
They went on to say "FYI, RTFA"!"
Since when does anyone here read the f---in' article?
I should have said probably *NOT ALL* documented. Note I also did say 'probably'.
I haven't done a whole lot of windows specific development for a while and can't say with absolute certainty, but the libraries that are shared between IE and windows help for example, might not be completely documented outside microsoft.
While it might be true that some documentation exists for html rendering, for example, using those web APIs, can you say with 100% certainty that all documentation provided by those DLLs are 100% accurate?
And thus, is it not conceivable that in the process, microsoft has used some of these 'uncommon' API calls to their advantage for certain integrated windows functions such as URL parsing, etc?
If you take away IE and those libraries, then the rest of windows will break unless a third party can provide a plugin that is functionally similar.
What he's saying is that IE uses fully documented core OS system calls and thus any monkey can come up with an IE equivalent
What's he's also saying is that IE itself provides functionality that other applications rely on and thus, because is relied upon by other applicaitons, is considered part of the OS. The API calls it provides are probably *NOT* documented and thus make it hard for someone to write an IE equivalent, probably so they can maintain control over the browser war.
For example, the latest form of microsoft help that uses chm files (compiled html ?macro? files? I understand the html part of chm).
Maybe word crashed and he had to retype it and didn't wait for spell checker to kick in.
The api had at least 6 memory pointers for device read/write and depending on what you were doing or the cycle of the moon, had to know which one to use.
Contrast that with all the other OSes I had to write device drivers for, they only required two. One was a virtual memory pointer the other was a physical memory address.And they even gave kernel calls to translate from one to the other.
I'd say based on the glimpse of the internals, that the NT kernel by the time it got to NT 4 got hacked so bad, quite well designed is not the description I'd use.
I refuse to switch to KDE or GNOME because it's easy to use. Hell I still use FVWM without any fluff and my computer kicks ass.
You can take away the fluff of linux. You CAN'T take away the fluff of windows XP.
MS should have turned that stupid dog into some kind of tamagochi where you have to feed it, clean up after it, etc, and if you neglect it a little, it screws up your searches and if you neglect it too much for too long, it dies and doesn't bother you again when you do a search.
Is the windows virus beagle (the dog) or bagel (as in that hard bready like donut?)
BTW, seeing as beagle is this new search engine, could it be like novell trying to give a name to the concept of that stupid dog in XP search?
You can get super spammed and still not run out of space.
I was on slashdot reading all this stuff when my browser redirected to porn sites......
Oh wait. I got bored and did a search for porn...
I guess that's different.
I've played the download songs from the internet game and went back to buying CDs.
The simple truth is that at 10meg/min for CD quality, nobody's gonna download. I don't care what people say, I DO NOTICE A DIFFERENCE WITH AUDIO COMPRESSION.
For now at least, I can still rip the songs from CD and create my own MP3s and DRM be damned. For background noise, MP3 is fine, but for home entertainment, I pop in the original CDs.
I really wonder how credible these shows are when they are the equivalent of CSI.
While it's true that CSI is pretty much based on real science, it's been fictionalized and dolled up to make it 'fun' and entertaining. It's fast paced and skips far too many little details that is the glue of real science, that it's essentially brain candy.
I like CSI, but it seems each episode is the same thing hashed over and over.
The real science of chemistry and physics, etc, drones on with the formulas and equations and for most would be tediously boring. Anything less just creates an audience of neophites easily distracted or moving on to other brain candy like shows such as monster garage or mythbusters.
If you can't find science fun on its own merits, I don't see how a program like "bill nye the science guy" or equivalent will be anything more than edu-tainment.
Hey, here's an idea!
Create a ram drive and put the swap file on that. That'll speed things up.
Or you could always get a life.
About as useless as tits on a wet rooster.
If you need the extra performance by moving the swap, moving it to a separate partition will just slow everything down because the head has to move further on the platter to get there. If it's interspersed among your data, the chances it needs to hunt for the right track is that much reduced because it's already pretty close to being there already. If you're not actively using more virtual memory than physical ram, where the swap space is doesn't do a whole lot of difference because you're not doing a whole lot of swapping.
A dedicated drive gives the speed AND longevity.
After all, 640k ought to be enough for anyone.
However, until we can figure out a way to get a wireless transceiver implanted directly in our brain and we ourselves become a super duper wireless PC, then the PC is here to stay.
I was thinking of writing my own virus that packet sniffs all the devices and triggers on outgoing port 25 requests. It gathers statistics about how many emails are sent in a given hour and if it detects more than say 20 emails per hour, pops up a dialog box stating that there's an unusual amount of email being sent from that computer each hour and that it could very well be infected with a mass mailing relay bot.
If I was clever enough, I'd have it monitor all incoming and outgoing packets, looking for patterns and log them. Then it could take those logs and send them to authorities to investigate the source of the spam abusers (looking for common source ip addresses for example, then tracking it back to the individual(s) who has been controlling these bots).
Of course, I'm clever enough to know that even a benign or beneficial virus like that would be a bad thing as far as the law is concerned, so I'm not going to bother.
I tried so hard... I really tried.
I set up a honey pot and got it up to 55 different spywares on it. It should be noted that Rogers up here has the usual suspect ports blocked halfway up stream which means an unpatched XP box won't get hit right away with things like MSBlaster, etc.
This might at least partially explain why we got such a low score.
I want to see 5 lights. I really do want to see 5 lights.
You betcha...
Oh wait, you mean the computer! Nope.
Gives the term 'computer bug' a whole new meaning.
If I lived in the US. In canada, my brother wrote a registered letter to the CRTC (canadian radio-television and telecommunications commission) *AND* to the offending telemarketer who thus was obligated by law not to call him back for at least one year and it still didn't help.
It's the same reason why spammers don't feel it's unfair to continue spamming people. At best, it's a slap on the wrist and the law is not nearly strict enough to make a sufficiently serious example of these people.