Personally I find it ironic as hell that they FINALLY fix this problem...with less than 4 months left before EOL. They did the same thing IIRC with Win2K and reminds me of Mozilla with their "There is NO memory leak, it "works for me", the problem is you"...denial right up until they quietly fixed the memory leak they had said didn't exist. I know I submitted my first "SVCHOST hangs system in XP" bug report back when I was running the RTM of XP X64 and XP in a dual boot back in...wow that was 2005, how time flies.
I'm just glad I got my customers all switched to Win 7 ages ago so I won't have to play "race to the finish" with XP. There is a couple dual boots but the customers haven't booted into XP in ages so no worries there, I can just remove those next time they come in for work.
Flag on the field, 15 yard penalty for "magical thinking".
Would you too like to know how to write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps icebike? Its trivial and uses the exact. same. methods. that the Windows viruses use, in fact it would be quite trivial to make them cross platform! Oh but "that wouldn't work IRL" you say? Might want to tell that to the owners of all these infected Android systems. BTW please note the date of the second article, last figures I saw now had the number of infected over the million and a half mark but since I couldn't find a reliable source for those figures and didn't want anyone saying I'm picking facts I went with the older article.
Go ahead and try the first article for yourself icebike, you ARE running Linux, correct? It has step by step instructions and works just like the "KDE Look" bug that spread through the KDE community did a couple years ago. When you do and see that they infect the system just fine maybe then you'll accept that Linux security is security by obscurity and realize these companies buy windows FOR A REASON and its because you have one company to call that is in charge of the whole stack. Oh and don't bring up servers, those are stripped to the bone, have nothing running that is not absolutely required AND locked way the hell down. I can do the exact same with Windows embedded and NOT have to rewrite a couple hundred grand to a couple million in code to work on an OS that is unsupported unless I write big checks per unit to Red Hat.
Sorry icebike but no matter how you slice it? Your math don't work. if it did these banks would be happy to switch, think they have ANY loyalty to anybody but their own bottom lines? But just as al the retailers large and small refuse to carry your brand in house because they have found it wanting so too has the financial sector tried your OS and with the exception of a few server roles its been passed on.
What I want to know is this....are the website operators going to take responsibility and pay for the damages the malware carried in their precious ads cause? No? Then please DIAF you greedy little self centered shits, your "business model" is a blight upon the planet and needs to die!
Do you guys have ANY idea what happens when you take the average Windows PC and block 100% of the ads? Or block them on an *Android phone or tablet? Honestly you might as well not even have AV as its never gonna get anything to attack, infections drop right of the map. Leave their precious POS business model intact? Say hello to a PC that has more nasties than a Bangkok Whore on Sunday morning after shore leave as infected ads are the #1 source for zero days, drive bys, and social engineering and these greedy little piggies want the profits but they want to take ZERO responsibility for the messes their profits make.
So sincerely, from the bottom of my heart...go fuck yourselves website owners. Do you guys have any idea how fucking TRIVIAL it is to make ads that waltz right pass the ad blockers? 1.- Make ads first party (so they have to actually wake the fuck up and see what they are shoveling), 2.- Make them text or basic images like JPG or GIF (but then they couldn't hijack your speakers and blow your ears off, what fun is that?) and NO FLASH ADS because flash zero days are one of the biggest attack vectors out there (but then they couldn't get "teh big bux" for having the most annoying Goatse of ads spewed on their pages)
So do what old Hairy does, when a site "appeals to turn off your blocker" I head straight to their forums and ask them right out "Are you gonna take financial responsibility when one of your ads infects one of my customers?" and then point out how trivial it is to bypass the blockers with non-threatening content. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that those pieces of malware they "just keep getting somehow" are coming from assholes like in TFA and spreading the word is required to bring this to a head. They are making profits from a risky business, they should have to assume the downsides as well as the profits and clean up their own messes.
*.-The Googleits can piss and moan like the Cult of Jobs how "But but but...those don't count!" but from my seat at the shop the #1 source of Android malware? Social engineering, tricking the user into installing that.APK from an unknown source and taking control of the system...where are they seeing the social engineering instructions that take them to the website and show them how to bypass the appstore? The same place Windows users are getting social engineering, through ads.
Uhhh you DO realize that every one of those companies have MUCH higher support fees than MSFT does for Windows, yes? It is THIS that bites guys like you right in the ass, because you either pay for supporting your own fork with your own dev team (NOT CHEAP) or you pay several hundred per unit to get support from Red hat.
I'm sorry icebike but like with most little niche "solutions" once you dig below the surface and start plugging numbers? the math just isn't on your side. Oh and just FYI but when i was working IT at a medium sized company? I heard from MSFT engineers a couple of times when we had issues, one even sent a custom patch to mitigate a problem we were having with a service pack not playing nice with a mission critical piece of software. How many times have you actually gotten a Red hat engineer on the phone?
What I don't understand is why anybody would get their panties in a bunch over this. I mean how many years did we hear "MS don't do enough to protect its users" while all those worms and bugs ran amok? Now we see MSFT getting rid of a program that 1.- Is out of date, 2.- Many users may not even know they have, 3.- Isn't being used by the users (or else it would have been updated) and most importantly 4.- Is being used in a major malware infection.
As someone who fixes and sells PCs I can tell you that if you want to have ANY effect against the thousands of new nasties that appear every week you WILL have to do things like in TFA to help remove control and keep things from spreading. Heck most of my customers if they saw the word Tor in the ad remove programs would assume it is something important and would be afraid to touch it.
And who EXACTLY would they call when things go wrong? With Windows if anything goes wrong you have exactly ONE vendor to call, Microsoft. Quick...who is in charge of the networking stack? who do we call if we have a problem with a widget? Whose phone do we ring if there is a problem with the sound?
Sorry icebike but saying "Here is the code, fix it yourself" might be fine for your hobbyist program but NOT when you can literally lose millions with a single mistake.
Yeah but the high TDP chips are always in their high end chips and since most folks don't get them it really doesn't matter.
Take my own system as an example. Now it would have been considered a "midrange" CPU when i got it a couple years ago since its a hexacore but this 1035T Phenom II only cost me $155 for it AND a nice Asrock board that'll do crossfire and hold 16Gb of RAM. Now right now I'm converting an FLV to AVI on a couple of cores, using a couple more cores for browsing and background tasks and according to Asrock IES I'm using...a whole 39.3 watts, 41 watts when the turbo kicks the CPU up to 3.1Ghz. Most of the time it idles at just 7 watts with IES dropping it to a two phase. Again this is for a HEXAcore CPU. Even with an HD7750 discrete my power draw is crazy low and the whole unit? whisper quiet, in fact the old C2D at the shop makes more than twice the noise even though the C2D is just a 1.8Ghz and the hexacore a 2.6Ghz!
This is why I have NO trouble being an AMD exclusive shop, the bang for the buck means that you can get a really nice quad for less than $500 hand built by me or a hexa for often less than $550. The biggest steal at the moment? look at the Athlon X3 455, those chips are seeing more than 80% unlocks (in fact there is a guy on eBay selling them "tested unlocked" so you can be sure to get an unlockable) and these can be had for less than $55! Pair this with a $45 Asrock board that has ACC and for less than $100 shipped you an have a 3.3Ghz quad and a nice new board to put it in...you can't beat that, no way. hell they are such a good deal my youngest is gaming on his as we speak, unlocked to a Phenom II X4 and playing all the latest shooters no problem, for a set that cost just $110 with 6gb of RAM? No way you can score anything close to that on the Intel side, no way.
But how many of those single threaded apps are rigged? After al if I shoot your horse when it starts out the gate my horse will "win the race" even if its a nag on its last legs, doesn't mean my nag was better or yours worse, just means the race was rigged.
Look up "Intel cripples compiler" and next time you run into a single threaded program that jumps way up on an Intel CPU? WRITE THE COMPANY, you'd be surprised how many of them have not heard about Intel rigging their compiler and when its pointed out will be happy to offer an AMD64 compiled with GCC. Once you compare the same program compiled with GCC you'll find its less than 20% on the high end and often single digits on the low and midrange.
So do some checking, see for yourself. And the benchmarks BTW are 100% rigged, they receive large checks in the form of Intel ad dollars and won't use anything but ICC and therefor are totally worthless for judging squat anymore. The only place where benches work anymore are on the GPU side but just like "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run" I'm sure Intel is hard at work trying to figure out a way for ICC code to cripple any non Intel GPU and when the day comes they find it? You'll find the Intel HD6k suddenly "stomps" the latest from nvidia and AMD...its rigged, its a scam, look up the tests for yourself and see.
I do agree on bulldozer though, which is why I stuck with Phenom II until the better Piledriver units came out. Bulldozer was a server chip that the former CEO tried to shove down the throats of the populace because he fired most of the engineers on the consumer side to get a stock bounce. Luckily he's gone now and the new guy hired back one of the leads on Athlon64 so the new chips should be a lot better but as long as ICC is pulling a quack.exe you can't trust the numbers, you have to find out what compiler was used for the code.
Not to mention how many of those first gen iPhones and iPads are already rotting in a drawer somewhere because they won't run the latest and greatest and are therefor worthless to their owner?
The Apple fans can mod me down but working here at the shop i talk to a LOT of iPhone and iPad owners and ya know what? A hell of a lot of the appeal is to be seen with it, its fashion like Air Jordans. notice that the only other thing folks line up days in advance for ARE the Air sneakers because like the Jordans its just not hip to have last years model.
Anyway what these articles always fail to mention is whether they are counting devices sold or devices still being used because when we are talking mobile? We are talking disposable. Between my cousins and my aunt there is 5 first and second gen iPhones sitting in sock drawers because they aren't hip, between me and dad there is another 4 Android 1 and 2 phones, in a way its a lot like the PC during the Mhz wars where what you used last year is on the trash heap this year. With Windows its the opposite, that 2K7 C2Q will do everything a 2014 Core i7 will do so there is no reason to replace every other year like with the phones.
Uhhh...where is he gonna get a phone that will actually play the resulting 64kbps Vorbis? Like it or not while most phones will play MP3 from what I've seen very few will play Vorbis and while most phones have hardware MP3 decode to cut down on battery usage Vorbis is strictly CPU decode which will end up costing more in battery life.
I'd say he'd be better off encoding to 128kbps MP3 or simply investing in a bigger microSD, not like you can't get those cheap nowadays.
Why is this not modded up? The only ones that believe in free trade and multiculturalism anymore are the 1%ers and politically correct, the rest of us can plainly see the only "trade' is the importing of slaves and the exporting of misery.
In my own area not only is the local college shutting down the programming courses (because only a fool would go 60K+ in debt to compete with someone who paid peanuts for theirs in India) but construction USED to be a good job for those that weren't able to go to college, now? you can go by any job site and yell "immigra!" and watch them scatter like deer. oh and if they take a header from a scaffold YOU PAY for their medical bills as they are dropped off by the nearest ER with a "tough luck Paco".
I've been all over the flyover states and have seen first hand what "free trade" has gotten us, its gotten us abandoned factories, boarded up buildings, and for many areas the only "jobs" are applying for government handouts and flipping burgers. To quote George Carlin "You know why they call it The American Dream? because you have to be asleep to believe in it"
What made you think they don't? They have multiple CPUs that are just CPUs including the best CPUs under $110 according to Tom's Hardware. I have built several with both and can say they are nice chips, in fact I've started using the FX 4 and FX 6 pretty exclusive now that the Phenom IIs have thinned out.
That said your best steal on a "quad" would be the Athlon X3 455, it looks like nearly all of those were perfectly good Propus quads with just a core disabled and they can be had for crazy cheap. There is even several dealers on eBay selling "pre-unlocked" 455s where its been tested and guaranteed to unlock for less than $50 shipped, can't beat that.
Sorry but I call bullshit as the ONLY way you can compare a dual to a quad is if frankly you aren't even stressing the dual. If all you are doing is web surfing or watching videos? Then sure but by that argument a C2D will serve you just as well. If on the other hand you have more than 2 tabs on Chrome or are using any other SMP supporting software you WILL notice a difference between a dual core and a quad, I don't care who makes what.
And before you trot out the usual benchmarks it might do well to remember that thanks to most if not all of them using ICC they are as rigged as quack.exe and to this very day any code compiled with ICC will be crippled and there is no way to stop it, all Intel does in later releases is tell you its rigged, that is all. Why Intel didn't get an antitrust for this I don't know, other than the DOJ is toothless because this is NO different than "Windows isn't done until lotus won't run" as in both cases you are dealing with a market leader using dirty tactics to rig the market against competition. Go down that page and see what happened when they changed the CPUID of a Via chip (the only chip you can softmod the CPUID) from "Centaur Hauls" to "Genuine Intel" because when they did that? Tada, the "Intel Via" suddenly scored 30% higher on the benchmarks with the ONLY change being the CPUID.
Try running your own tests using programs compiled with GCC and I think you'll find there is MAYBE 20% - 30% difference on the high end and much lower once you get to the i5 and below. Personally after finding out about the compiler rigging, the bribing of the OEMs and the killing of the Nvidia chipsets I stopped carrying Intel and my customers couldn't be happier with the performance. I urge all of those that believe in a free market to not support market rigging and stay away from Intel. Chips like these only make it that much easier IMHO.
I've been using WMP 12 myself and it works but ya know what? I miss Winamp. It always had the best skins, nice EQ, it was just a sweet little player. And man would that thing run on anything, I had an old Celeron 733Mhz stuffed full of drives at the shop I used to use for a dedicated Winamp player, it was always well behaved.
But after V5 I started moving away and soon after I did I remember reading an article by one of the original founders on why he quit and I'll never forget it as it was like "Oh so THAT is why its going to crap!" He said "I knew when we were in trouble was when all AOL would do is talk about "the service" (AOL Dialup), no matter what we said it was every conversation...how were we gonna push the service? What were we gonna do to bring more users to the service? It was ALL they cared about and I was never able to get them to see that winamp users had no desire to use AOL dialup".
So here is wishing them nothing but the best but I do have one question....how in the heck are they gonna make money in the era of free media players bundled into everything? The only ways I can think of I shudder at the thought,either spamming it with ads or crippling the hell out of the player and then charge you to uncripple it, and if either is the case maybe it'd have been better off dead. The last thing I want to see is Winamp get crippled and spammed for a few years before slinking off and dying.
What games? Because I just built a kit using one of the APUs (this one if you want to check it out) and its playing World Of Warplanes just fine. Also Bioshock I & II, TF2,Burnout Paradise, and a half a dozen more I can't recall at 3AM.
So unless you are trying to go 4K which you shouldn't be doing with a "budget gaming rig" then I seriously doubt your friend will have a bit of trouble out of one of these APUs. And the nicest part? He can always go hybrid crossfire or add a discrete later and with a price THAT low? he can add more RAM, maybe a SSD to go with the HDD and still come in under budget. Give them another look, go type the name of the APU into YouTube and see what games real users are playing and what the framerates are, you'll probably be surprised.
One word of advice though, from someone that has an APU in his laptop...buy the fastest RAM that the board will take, as unlike a regular system where it doesn't matter as much with an APU it DOES matter. I went from 1066 to 1333 and it gave me a good 20% framerate increase, so get the fast RAM, its only a couple bucks diff anyway.
Oh it wasn't just TFA, look above and below you and see how every single post that said anything positive about AMD was downmodded. Not just one, or two, EVERY SINGLE ONE. If that doesn't prove that the mod system is completely broken here? Then honestly I don't know what does.
But watch how quick they burn this...AMD has the "bang for the buck" sown up, nowhere can you get a quad CPU with a graphics chip capable of BF4 in the Intel camp for less than triple that, nowhere at all.
Oh and before the fanboys trot out any benchmarks? might help you to know they are as rigged as "quack.exe" was back in the day as Intel's compilers put out crippled code that it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to disable, and guess what compiler is used by most if not all the major benchmark suites? You guessed it. Try running a real world test with programs compiled with GCC or even AMD's compiler (as AMD doesn't "return the favor" and rig their compiler, in fact they hand out the code so you can see what it does for yourself) and you'll find nearly all the tests come within less than 20% of each other and the only ones they manage to pull away to a whole 30%? The top o' the line i7. 300% price increase for less than 30% real world performance difference...sorry but the bang for the buck is still with big red.
What they should do is frankly what Google and Apple figured out years ago which is have ONE OS for the desktop and ONE OS for the mobile!
But lets just cut the bull and speak truth, okay? We ALL know what this was, this was the Sweaty Monkey trying to do a "EEE" like in the old days only Ballmer is so out of touch he didn't realize Windows? just ain't that big a draw anymore. I mean sure your business and PC gamers use it, but Joe and Jane? they don't even know what an OS IS, much less what is running on a particular device. All they know is they can get a tablet for $60 at the local minimart and hey! My phone contacts and stuff carry over when I sign in, sweet!
I think the pundits are right, either Gates steps up to the plate and takes over as CEO or he gets off the pot and steps down, him and ballmer can't keep "making suggestions" while standing behind the scenes anymore, this ain't 1997 and that shit ain't gonna cut it.
Actually they are usually on the order of HALF what the Intel chips cost, for example an AMD quad will run you around $89-$99 whereas the entry quad from Intel runs right at $200.From the looks of it the quad A8-7600 is running at $120 which or a quad with decent graphics performance? Is a steal.
This is why I still build and sell exclusively AMD units as the "bang for the buck" just can't be beat. I have a friend that mainly plays older flight sims with a few mainstream titles and when he comes by the shop next month to get a kit? If i can find this put in a decent kit I'll be happy to recommend it. After all if it can play BF4 at 1080P it'll have no problem playing his games on his 720P set while still giving him plenty for his video streaming and office apps.
Of course the dirty little secret that neither AMD or Intel want to talk about is that if your PC is less than 7 years old its probably overpowered for what you do IF you are Joe and Jane Average. After all 7 years ago I was selling Phenom I quads with 4Gb of RAM and 400Gb HDDs and for Joe and Jane Average? That unit will spend most of its life idling because they simply can't come up with enough useful work to max out the cores. Heck even we gamers don't have to upgrade like we used to, my two boys and I all play FPS yet our 4 year old AMD X6s and the youngest's X4 have no problem playing the latest games when paired with an HD7750 or HD7790. Of course we aren't trying to play BF4 on 4K widescreens but ya know what? Most desktops here are 1600x900, a few 1080p and at those resolutions it plays the latest games just fine.
But for those people with the first gen Athlon X2s or even worse, the Pentium D like my friend has? I would have ZERO problem recommending this chip, it'll give you a quad CPU and decent graphics OOTB and you can always add a discrete down the line. A win/win in my book.
O rly? I use the cableco's VoIP? No cap. Vonage? Cap. I use Windows, updates don't count against the cap, Linux or OSX? Cap. I use their PPV? No cap. netflix? Cap.
Sorry but THE ENTIRE REASON that anybody started talking about NN was the ISPs WERE ALREADY BONING US and walling of as much as they could. More and more of the USA now has caps and if you were to bother to look just a liiiiittle bit closer? they ALL punish you for not using THEIR services.
Sadly there is NO left or right wing in the USSA anymore and hasn't been for several decades. What we have is "pro media fascists" and "pro wall street fascists" and that is it, the so-called "left" is just as fascist as the right the ONLY difference is one is pro media cartel while the other leans more towards Wall street. Oh and one gets a really big stiffie when they can kick a poor person, but that's really it.
As the late great Bill Hicks put it over 20 years ago "I think the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well i think the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute, there is one guy working both puppets!"
Not to mention a site like Demonoid attracts members of the P2P community and is thus a VERY good target for a honeypot.
With joining a swarm they ONLY get those that use that particular swarm,whereas with a honeypot they get the trackers, those that use the forums, those that upload, its a one stop shop for FBI raids and lawsuits and so is a much better score than just hitting the swarms.
How is it racist? Are you no longer allowed to see anything if someone is now a "protected class" because its "racist" to bust them, even when they broadcast their crimes to the fricking world for all to see?
You might want to look up " Muslim child trafficking ring busted UK" and see how they were allowed to keep selling little kids for years because "They are Muslim and it would be racist to bust them" because THAT is what your politically correct bullshit gets you dumbass.
Exactly, western corps don't see ANYTHING but being #1, if your product is #2, then its shit, its worthless, why aren't you #1?
But as much as I hate those "its the gubmint!" posts I have to say that I truly believe in this case? Yeah, its the government. When Ronnie Raygun threw billions of taxpayer dollars into the stock market overnight it turned the entire thing into "through the looking glass" where it no longer mattered if your company was doing well or not, all it matters now is it APPEARS to be hot enough to get a stock bounce so you can cash out on the upswing, that's all. What do you think the bailout was? The corps fired the workers with 401Ks for "mcJobs" and then the stock market fell apart without all that extra cash.
I truly believe the financial bubble WILL burst, possibly before 2020 and when it does? It'll make the depression look like a flash crash. I believe all the fascist bullshit we are seeing is those in power trying to get the populace to put up with a crackdown after the crash but like the USSR I think it will ultimately end up with the USA as we know it falling apart. The only reason the people put up with what they do now is the so-called "47%" that get some form of handout don't want to bite the hand that feeds. the right wing though have proven they have more gall than common sense and will most likely pull some Ayn Rand "fuck the peasants" bullshit which won't last 30 days before cars are burning and buildings looted. It'll be an UGLY time and I hope you and yours are ready for it.
If the rumors are true frankly Ballmer won't be able to quit because they can't get anybody to take the job!
All the rumor sites are saying that every CEO prospect have said first thing "I'll kill Metro" and when they find out Ballmer and Gates are still on the board and that isn't an option? they pass. Until they get Ballmer to accept that Windows 3....errr...windows 8 metro is a massive FAIL! that nobody wants? You can give it up Chuck.
The ONLY thing that gives me any hope at this point when it comes to MSFT is that Mary Jo Foley is reporting that Gates has just about convinced the board to go "old school" as in the way it was when we had Win9X and WinNT so you'll have "Metro" suck on consumer (although many on the board is supposedly pushing for a choice at starftup, as the rest blame metro for the nosedive and rightly so IMHO) and businesses (and gamers if its like the old days of 9X versus 2K) will get the "pro" version which will have good old Windows 7 UI complete with Aero. If they do this? Then they have a shot. If they continue to try to bitchslap us with a cellphone UI when the majority of PCs do not have and frankly NEVER will be touch UI? Stick a fork, short the stock, the corp is toast.
But if the rumor mills are true? Pop some popcorn as its about to be good, round 3 will be Billy Gates versus the Sweaty Monkey for the title, as Ballmer is fighting tooth and nail as he sees Metro as his "legacy"...yeah legacy of fail, but as long as he has ANY pull at Redmond he's not gonna let them dump metro. Meanwhile Billy finds Metro irritating (as do anybody that isn't grandma) and is getting tired of watching his company tank.Pop the popcorn, its gonna be good guys.
I knew the Googleites would rush to downmod me but truth is truth and just look at their history the past year or two since Brin took over, its been house clearing of ANYTHING that doesn't "blow big" within a set period is trashed. And look at how they are practically bitchslapping us with G+, its gotten so bad I now have Pale Moon as my "YouTube browser" just so I won't have Google harping "But don'tcha wanna use your real name and tie into G+? Please? pretty please?" FUCK OF, if I say NO then i mean NO, quit fucking asking me Google!
Mark my words and mark them well the next year and a half Google will continue to bug the shit out of anyone using their services (next up Chrome G+ integration, you watch) until they realize it won't be the next FB and then it'll rot for a year before having its plug pulled. And I wouldn't count on search and maps either if anybody ever takes that #1 slot, just look at how MSFT shat all over Windows when tablets blew up and took the #1 slot.
And to answer your question? The Asian corps value profits, both big AND relatively small, and so as long as a group isn't in the red? it'll tend to stay going. Look at how many of the Asian corps still make tablets even though they aren't Apple, whereas HP puts out ONE model and when it doesn't just blow up and make iPad money? Firesale and dump.
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Personally I find it ironic as hell that they FINALLY fix this problem...with less than 4 months left before EOL. They did the same thing IIRC with Win2K and reminds me of Mozilla with their "There is NO memory leak, it "works for me", the problem is you"...denial right up until they quietly fixed the memory leak they had said didn't exist. I know I submitted my first "SVCHOST hangs system in XP" bug report back when I was running the RTM of XP X64 and XP in a dual boot back in...wow that was 2005, how time flies.
I'm just glad I got my customers all switched to Win 7 ages ago so I won't have to play "race to the finish" with XP. There is a couple dual boots but the customers haven't booted into XP in ages so no worries there, I can just remove those next time they come in for work.
Flag on the field, 15 yard penalty for "magical thinking".
Would you too like to know how to write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps icebike? Its trivial and uses the exact. same. methods. that the Windows viruses use, in fact it would be quite trivial to make them cross platform! Oh but "that wouldn't work IRL" you say? Might want to tell that to the owners of all these infected Android systems. BTW please note the date of the second article, last figures I saw now had the number of infected over the million and a half mark but since I couldn't find a reliable source for those figures and didn't want anyone saying I'm picking facts I went with the older article.
Go ahead and try the first article for yourself icebike, you ARE running Linux, correct? It has step by step instructions and works just like the "KDE Look" bug that spread through the KDE community did a couple years ago. When you do and see that they infect the system just fine maybe then you'll accept that Linux security is security by obscurity and realize these companies buy windows FOR A REASON and its because you have one company to call that is in charge of the whole stack. Oh and don't bring up servers, those are stripped to the bone, have nothing running that is not absolutely required AND locked way the hell down. I can do the exact same with Windows embedded and NOT have to rewrite a couple hundred grand to a couple million in code to work on an OS that is unsupported unless I write big checks per unit to Red Hat.
Sorry icebike but no matter how you slice it? Your math don't work. if it did these banks would be happy to switch, think they have ANY loyalty to anybody but their own bottom lines? But just as al the retailers large and small refuse to carry your brand in house because they have found it wanting so too has the financial sector tried your OS and with the exception of a few server roles its been passed on.
What I want to know is this....are the website operators going to take responsibility and pay for the damages the malware carried in their precious ads cause? No? Then please DIAF you greedy little self centered shits, your "business model" is a blight upon the planet and needs to die!
Do you guys have ANY idea what happens when you take the average Windows PC and block 100% of the ads? Or block them on an *Android phone or tablet? Honestly you might as well not even have AV as its never gonna get anything to attack, infections drop right of the map. Leave their precious POS business model intact? Say hello to a PC that has more nasties than a Bangkok Whore on Sunday morning after shore leave as infected ads are the #1 source for zero days, drive bys, and social engineering and these greedy little piggies want the profits but they want to take ZERO responsibility for the messes their profits make.
So sincerely, from the bottom of my heart...go fuck yourselves website owners. Do you guys have any idea how fucking TRIVIAL it is to make ads that waltz right pass the ad blockers? 1.- Make ads first party (so they have to actually wake the fuck up and see what they are shoveling), 2.- Make them text or basic images like JPG or GIF (but then they couldn't hijack your speakers and blow your ears off, what fun is that?) and NO FLASH ADS because flash zero days are one of the biggest attack vectors out there (but then they couldn't get "teh big bux" for having the most annoying Goatse of ads spewed on their pages)
So do what old Hairy does, when a site "appeals to turn off your blocker" I head straight to their forums and ask them right out "Are you gonna take financial responsibility when one of your ads infects one of my customers?" and then point out how trivial it is to bypass the blockers with non-threatening content. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that those pieces of malware they "just keep getting somehow" are coming from assholes like in TFA and spreading the word is required to bring this to a head. They are making profits from a risky business, they should have to assume the downsides as well as the profits and clean up their own messes.
*.-The Googleits can piss and moan like the Cult of Jobs how "But but but...those don't count!" but from my seat at the shop the #1 source of Android malware? Social engineering, tricking the user into installing that .APK from an unknown source and taking control of the system...where are they seeing the social engineering instructions that take them to the website and show them how to bypass the appstore? The same place Windows users are getting social engineering, through ads.
Uhhh you DO realize that every one of those companies have MUCH higher support fees than MSFT does for Windows, yes? It is THIS that bites guys like you right in the ass, because you either pay for supporting your own fork with your own dev team (NOT CHEAP) or you pay several hundred per unit to get support from Red hat.
I'm sorry icebike but like with most little niche "solutions" once you dig below the surface and start plugging numbers? the math just isn't on your side. Oh and just FYI but when i was working IT at a medium sized company? I heard from MSFT engineers a couple of times when we had issues, one even sent a custom patch to mitigate a problem we were having with a service pack not playing nice with a mission critical piece of software. How many times have you actually gotten a Red hat engineer on the phone?
What I don't understand is why anybody would get their panties in a bunch over this. I mean how many years did we hear "MS don't do enough to protect its users" while all those worms and bugs ran amok? Now we see MSFT getting rid of a program that 1.- Is out of date, 2.- Many users may not even know they have, 3.- Isn't being used by the users (or else it would have been updated) and most importantly 4.- Is being used in a major malware infection.
As someone who fixes and sells PCs I can tell you that if you want to have ANY effect against the thousands of new nasties that appear every week you WILL have to do things like in TFA to help remove control and keep things from spreading. Heck most of my customers if they saw the word Tor in the ad remove programs would assume it is something important and would be afraid to touch it.
And who EXACTLY would they call when things go wrong? With Windows if anything goes wrong you have exactly ONE vendor to call, Microsoft. Quick...who is in charge of the networking stack? who do we call if we have a problem with a widget? Whose phone do we ring if there is a problem with the sound?
Sorry icebike but saying "Here is the code, fix it yourself" might be fine for your hobbyist program but NOT when you can literally lose millions with a single mistake.
Yeah but the high TDP chips are always in their high end chips and since most folks don't get them it really doesn't matter.
Take my own system as an example. Now it would have been considered a "midrange" CPU when i got it a couple years ago since its a hexacore but this 1035T Phenom II only cost me $155 for it AND a nice Asrock board that'll do crossfire and hold 16Gb of RAM. Now right now I'm converting an FLV to AVI on a couple of cores, using a couple more cores for browsing and background tasks and according to Asrock IES I'm using...a whole 39.3 watts, 41 watts when the turbo kicks the CPU up to 3.1Ghz. Most of the time it idles at just 7 watts with IES dropping it to a two phase. Again this is for a HEXAcore CPU. Even with an HD7750 discrete my power draw is crazy low and the whole unit? whisper quiet, in fact the old C2D at the shop makes more than twice the noise even though the C2D is just a 1.8Ghz and the hexacore a 2.6Ghz!
This is why I have NO trouble being an AMD exclusive shop, the bang for the buck means that you can get a really nice quad for less than $500 hand built by me or a hexa for often less than $550. The biggest steal at the moment? look at the Athlon X3 455, those chips are seeing more than 80% unlocks (in fact there is a guy on eBay selling them "tested unlocked" so you can be sure to get an unlockable) and these can be had for less than $55! Pair this with a $45 Asrock board that has ACC and for less than $100 shipped you an have a 3.3Ghz quad and a nice new board to put it in...you can't beat that, no way. hell they are such a good deal my youngest is gaming on his as we speak, unlocked to a Phenom II X4 and playing all the latest shooters no problem, for a set that cost just $110 with 6gb of RAM? No way you can score anything close to that on the Intel side, no way.
But how many of those single threaded apps are rigged? After al if I shoot your horse when it starts out the gate my horse will "win the race" even if its a nag on its last legs, doesn't mean my nag was better or yours worse, just means the race was rigged.
Look up "Intel cripples compiler" and next time you run into a single threaded program that jumps way up on an Intel CPU? WRITE THE COMPANY, you'd be surprised how many of them have not heard about Intel rigging their compiler and when its pointed out will be happy to offer an AMD64 compiled with GCC. Once you compare the same program compiled with GCC you'll find its less than 20% on the high end and often single digits on the low and midrange.
So do some checking, see for yourself. And the benchmarks BTW are 100% rigged, they receive large checks in the form of Intel ad dollars and won't use anything but ICC and therefor are totally worthless for judging squat anymore. The only place where benches work anymore are on the GPU side but just like "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run" I'm sure Intel is hard at work trying to figure out a way for ICC code to cripple any non Intel GPU and when the day comes they find it? You'll find the Intel HD6k suddenly "stomps" the latest from nvidia and AMD...its rigged, its a scam, look up the tests for yourself and see.
I do agree on bulldozer though, which is why I stuck with Phenom II until the better Piledriver units came out. Bulldozer was a server chip that the former CEO tried to shove down the throats of the populace because he fired most of the engineers on the consumer side to get a stock bounce. Luckily he's gone now and the new guy hired back one of the leads on Athlon64 so the new chips should be a lot better but as long as ICC is pulling a quack.exe you can't trust the numbers, you have to find out what compiler was used for the code.
Not to mention how many of those first gen iPhones and iPads are already rotting in a drawer somewhere because they won't run the latest and greatest and are therefor worthless to their owner?
The Apple fans can mod me down but working here at the shop i talk to a LOT of iPhone and iPad owners and ya know what? A hell of a lot of the appeal is to be seen with it, its fashion like Air Jordans. notice that the only other thing folks line up days in advance for ARE the Air sneakers because like the Jordans its just not hip to have last years model.
Anyway what these articles always fail to mention is whether they are counting devices sold or devices still being used because when we are talking mobile? We are talking disposable. Between my cousins and my aunt there is 5 first and second gen iPhones sitting in sock drawers because they aren't hip, between me and dad there is another 4 Android 1 and 2 phones, in a way its a lot like the PC during the Mhz wars where what you used last year is on the trash heap this year. With Windows its the opposite, that 2K7 C2Q will do everything a 2014 Core i7 will do so there is no reason to replace every other year like with the phones.
Uhhh...where is he gonna get a phone that will actually play the resulting 64kbps Vorbis? Like it or not while most phones will play MP3 from what I've seen very few will play Vorbis and while most phones have hardware MP3 decode to cut down on battery usage Vorbis is strictly CPU decode which will end up costing more in battery life.
I'd say he'd be better off encoding to 128kbps MP3 or simply investing in a bigger microSD, not like you can't get those cheap nowadays.
Why is this not modded up? The only ones that believe in free trade and multiculturalism anymore are the 1%ers and politically correct, the rest of us can plainly see the only "trade' is the importing of slaves and the exporting of misery.
In my own area not only is the local college shutting down the programming courses (because only a fool would go 60K+ in debt to compete with someone who paid peanuts for theirs in India) but construction USED to be a good job for those that weren't able to go to college, now? you can go by any job site and yell "immigra!" and watch them scatter like deer. oh and if they take a header from a scaffold YOU PAY for their medical bills as they are dropped off by the nearest ER with a "tough luck Paco".
I've been all over the flyover states and have seen first hand what "free trade" has gotten us, its gotten us abandoned factories, boarded up buildings, and for many areas the only "jobs" are applying for government handouts and flipping burgers. To quote George Carlin "You know why they call it The American Dream? because you have to be asleep to believe in it"
What made you think they don't? They have multiple CPUs that are just CPUs including the best CPUs under $110 according to Tom's Hardware. I have built several with both and can say they are nice chips, in fact I've started using the FX 4 and FX 6 pretty exclusive now that the Phenom IIs have thinned out.
That said your best steal on a "quad" would be the Athlon X3 455, it looks like nearly all of those were perfectly good Propus quads with just a core disabled and they can be had for crazy cheap. There is even several dealers on eBay selling "pre-unlocked" 455s where its been tested and guaranteed to unlock for less than $50 shipped, can't beat that.
Sorry but I call bullshit as the ONLY way you can compare a dual to a quad is if frankly you aren't even stressing the dual. If all you are doing is web surfing or watching videos? Then sure but by that argument a C2D will serve you just as well. If on the other hand you have more than 2 tabs on Chrome or are using any other SMP supporting software you WILL notice a difference between a dual core and a quad, I don't care who makes what.
And before you trot out the usual benchmarks it might do well to remember that thanks to most if not all of them using ICC they are as rigged as quack.exe and to this very day any code compiled with ICC will be crippled and there is no way to stop it, all Intel does in later releases is tell you its rigged, that is all. Why Intel didn't get an antitrust for this I don't know, other than the DOJ is toothless because this is NO different than "Windows isn't done until lotus won't run" as in both cases you are dealing with a market leader using dirty tactics to rig the market against competition. Go down that page and see what happened when they changed the CPUID of a Via chip (the only chip you can softmod the CPUID) from "Centaur Hauls" to "Genuine Intel" because when they did that? Tada, the "Intel Via" suddenly scored 30% higher on the benchmarks with the ONLY change being the CPUID.
Try running your own tests using programs compiled with GCC and I think you'll find there is MAYBE 20% - 30% difference on the high end and much lower once you get to the i5 and below. Personally after finding out about the compiler rigging, the bribing of the OEMs and the killing of the Nvidia chipsets I stopped carrying Intel and my customers couldn't be happier with the performance. I urge all of those that believe in a free market to not support market rigging and stay away from Intel. Chips like these only make it that much easier IMHO.
I've been using WMP 12 myself and it works but ya know what? I miss Winamp. It always had the best skins, nice EQ, it was just a sweet little player. And man would that thing run on anything, I had an old Celeron 733Mhz stuffed full of drives at the shop I used to use for a dedicated Winamp player, it was always well behaved.
But after V5 I started moving away and soon after I did I remember reading an article by one of the original founders on why he quit and I'll never forget it as it was like "Oh so THAT is why its going to crap!" He said "I knew when we were in trouble was when all AOL would do is talk about "the service" (AOL Dialup), no matter what we said it was every conversation...how were we gonna push the service? What were we gonna do to bring more users to the service? It was ALL they cared about and I was never able to get them to see that winamp users had no desire to use AOL dialup".
So here is wishing them nothing but the best but I do have one question....how in the heck are they gonna make money in the era of free media players bundled into everything? The only ways I can think of I shudder at the thought,either spamming it with ads or crippling the hell out of the player and then charge you to uncripple it, and if either is the case maybe it'd have been better off dead. The last thing I want to see is Winamp get crippled and spammed for a few years before slinking off and dying.
What games? Because I just built a kit using one of the APUs (this one if you want to check it out) and its playing World Of Warplanes just fine. Also Bioshock I & II, TF2,Burnout Paradise, and a half a dozen more I can't recall at 3AM.
So unless you are trying to go 4K which you shouldn't be doing with a "budget gaming rig" then I seriously doubt your friend will have a bit of trouble out of one of these APUs. And the nicest part? He can always go hybrid crossfire or add a discrete later and with a price THAT low? he can add more RAM, maybe a SSD to go with the HDD and still come in under budget. Give them another look, go type the name of the APU into YouTube and see what games real users are playing and what the framerates are, you'll probably be surprised.
One word of advice though, from someone that has an APU in his laptop...buy the fastest RAM that the board will take, as unlike a regular system where it doesn't matter as much with an APU it DOES matter. I went from 1066 to 1333 and it gave me a good 20% framerate increase, so get the fast RAM, its only a couple bucks diff anyway.
Oh it wasn't just TFA, look above and below you and see how every single post that said anything positive about AMD was downmodded. Not just one, or two, EVERY SINGLE ONE. If that doesn't prove that the mod system is completely broken here? Then honestly I don't know what does.
But watch how quick they burn this...AMD has the "bang for the buck" sown up, nowhere can you get a quad CPU with a graphics chip capable of BF4 in the Intel camp for less than triple that, nowhere at all.
Oh and before the fanboys trot out any benchmarks? might help you to know they are as rigged as "quack.exe" was back in the day as Intel's compilers put out crippled code that it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to disable, and guess what compiler is used by most if not all the major benchmark suites? You guessed it. Try running a real world test with programs compiled with GCC or even AMD's compiler (as AMD doesn't "return the favor" and rig their compiler, in fact they hand out the code so you can see what it does for yourself) and you'll find nearly all the tests come within less than 20% of each other and the only ones they manage to pull away to a whole 30%? The top o' the line i7. 300% price increase for less than 30% real world performance difference...sorry but the bang for the buck is still with big red.
What they should do is frankly what Google and Apple figured out years ago which is have ONE OS for the desktop and ONE OS for the mobile!
But lets just cut the bull and speak truth, okay? We ALL know what this was, this was the Sweaty Monkey trying to do a "EEE" like in the old days only Ballmer is so out of touch he didn't realize Windows? just ain't that big a draw anymore. I mean sure your business and PC gamers use it, but Joe and Jane? they don't even know what an OS IS, much less what is running on a particular device. All they know is they can get a tablet for $60 at the local minimart and hey! My phone contacts and stuff carry over when I sign in, sweet!
I think the pundits are right, either Gates steps up to the plate and takes over as CEO or he gets off the pot and steps down, him and ballmer can't keep "making suggestions" while standing behind the scenes anymore, this ain't 1997 and that shit ain't gonna cut it.
Actually they are usually on the order of HALF what the Intel chips cost, for example an AMD quad will run you around $89-$99 whereas the entry quad from Intel runs right at $200.From the looks of it the quad A8-7600 is running at $120 which or a quad with decent graphics performance? Is a steal.
This is why I still build and sell exclusively AMD units as the "bang for the buck" just can't be beat. I have a friend that mainly plays older flight sims with a few mainstream titles and when he comes by the shop next month to get a kit? If i can find this put in a decent kit I'll be happy to recommend it. After all if it can play BF4 at 1080P it'll have no problem playing his games on his 720P set while still giving him plenty for his video streaming and office apps.
Of course the dirty little secret that neither AMD or Intel want to talk about is that if your PC is less than 7 years old its probably overpowered for what you do IF you are Joe and Jane Average. After all 7 years ago I was selling Phenom I quads with 4Gb of RAM and 400Gb HDDs and for Joe and Jane Average? That unit will spend most of its life idling because they simply can't come up with enough useful work to max out the cores. Heck even we gamers don't have to upgrade like we used to, my two boys and I all play FPS yet our 4 year old AMD X6s and the youngest's X4 have no problem playing the latest games when paired with an HD7750 or HD7790. Of course we aren't trying to play BF4 on 4K widescreens but ya know what? Most desktops here are 1600x900, a few 1080p and at those resolutions it plays the latest games just fine.
But for those people with the first gen Athlon X2s or even worse, the Pentium D like my friend has? I would have ZERO problem recommending this chip, it'll give you a quad CPU and decent graphics OOTB and you can always add a discrete down the line. A win/win in my book.
O rly? I use the cableco's VoIP? No cap. Vonage? Cap. I use Windows, updates don't count against the cap, Linux or OSX? Cap. I use their PPV? No cap. netflix? Cap.
Sorry but THE ENTIRE REASON that anybody started talking about NN was the ISPs WERE ALREADY BONING US and walling of as much as they could. More and more of the USA now has caps and if you were to bother to look just a liiiiittle bit closer? they ALL punish you for not using THEIR services.
Sadly there is NO left or right wing in the USSA anymore and hasn't been for several decades. What we have is "pro media fascists" and "pro wall street fascists" and that is it, the so-called "left" is just as fascist as the right the ONLY difference is one is pro media cartel while the other leans more towards Wall street. Oh and one gets a really big stiffie when they can kick a poor person, but that's really it.
As the late great Bill Hicks put it over 20 years ago "I think the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well i think the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute, there is one guy working both puppets!"
Not to mention a site like Demonoid attracts members of the P2P community and is thus a VERY good target for a honeypot.
With joining a swarm they ONLY get those that use that particular swarm,whereas with a honeypot they get the trackers, those that use the forums, those that upload, its a one stop shop for FBI raids and lawsuits and so is a much better score than just hitting the swarms.
How is it racist? Are you no longer allowed to see anything if someone is now a "protected class" because its "racist" to bust them, even when they broadcast their crimes to the fricking world for all to see?
You might want to look up " Muslim child trafficking ring busted UK" and see how they were allowed to keep selling little kids for years because "They are Muslim and it would be racist to bust them" because THAT is what your politically correct bullshit gets you dumbass.
Exactly, western corps don't see ANYTHING but being #1, if your product is #2, then its shit, its worthless, why aren't you #1?
But as much as I hate those "its the gubmint!" posts I have to say that I truly believe in this case? Yeah, its the government. When Ronnie Raygun threw billions of taxpayer dollars into the stock market overnight it turned the entire thing into "through the looking glass" where it no longer mattered if your company was doing well or not, all it matters now is it APPEARS to be hot enough to get a stock bounce so you can cash out on the upswing, that's all. What do you think the bailout was? The corps fired the workers with 401Ks for "mcJobs" and then the stock market fell apart without all that extra cash.
I truly believe the financial bubble WILL burst, possibly before 2020 and when it does? It'll make the depression look like a flash crash. I believe all the fascist bullshit we are seeing is those in power trying to get the populace to put up with a crackdown after the crash but like the USSR I think it will ultimately end up with the USA as we know it falling apart. The only reason the people put up with what they do now is the so-called "47%" that get some form of handout don't want to bite the hand that feeds. the right wing though have proven they have more gall than common sense and will most likely pull some Ayn Rand "fuck the peasants" bullshit which won't last 30 days before cars are burning and buildings looted. It'll be an UGLY time and I hope you and yours are ready for it.
If the rumors are true frankly Ballmer won't be able to quit because they can't get anybody to take the job!
All the rumor sites are saying that every CEO prospect have said first thing "I'll kill Metro" and when they find out Ballmer and Gates are still on the board and that isn't an option? they pass. Until they get Ballmer to accept that Windows 3....errr...windows 8 metro is a massive FAIL! that nobody wants? You can give it up Chuck.
The ONLY thing that gives me any hope at this point when it comes to MSFT is that Mary Jo Foley is reporting that Gates has just about convinced the board to go "old school" as in the way it was when we had Win9X and WinNT so you'll have "Metro" suck on consumer (although many on the board is supposedly pushing for a choice at starftup, as the rest blame metro for the nosedive and rightly so IMHO) and businesses (and gamers if its like the old days of 9X versus 2K) will get the "pro" version which will have good old Windows 7 UI complete with Aero. If they do this? Then they have a shot. If they continue to try to bitchslap us with a cellphone UI when the majority of PCs do not have and frankly NEVER will be touch UI? Stick a fork, short the stock, the corp is toast.
But if the rumor mills are true? Pop some popcorn as its about to be good, round 3 will be Billy Gates versus the Sweaty Monkey for the title, as Ballmer is fighting tooth and nail as he sees Metro as his "legacy"...yeah legacy of fail, but as long as he has ANY pull at Redmond he's not gonna let them dump metro. Meanwhile Billy finds Metro irritating (as do anybody that isn't grandma) and is getting tired of watching his company tank.Pop the popcorn, its gonna be good guys.
I knew the Googleites would rush to downmod me but truth is truth and just look at their history the past year or two since Brin took over, its been house clearing of ANYTHING that doesn't "blow big" within a set period is trashed. And look at how they are practically bitchslapping us with G+, its gotten so bad I now have Pale Moon as my "YouTube browser" just so I won't have Google harping "But don'tcha wanna use your real name and tie into G+? Please? pretty please?" FUCK OF, if I say NO then i mean NO, quit fucking asking me Google!
Mark my words and mark them well the next year and a half Google will continue to bug the shit out of anyone using their services (next up Chrome G+ integration, you watch) until they realize it won't be the next FB and then it'll rot for a year before having its plug pulled. And I wouldn't count on search and maps either if anybody ever takes that #1 slot, just look at how MSFT shat all over Windows when tablets blew up and took the #1 slot.
And to answer your question? The Asian corps value profits, both big AND relatively small, and so as long as a group isn't in the red? it'll tend to stay going. Look at how many of the Asian corps still make tablets even though they aren't Apple, whereas HP puts out ONE model and when it doesn't just blow up and make iPad money? Firesale and dump.