It would be more correct to say the vulnerability (flaw) is in the windows kernel and the only currently known exploit is through the safari browser. There are decent odds that some other vector will be found through which to exploit this. But for now it looks like the exploit through safari uses a lack of correct input sanitization (in safari) in order to exploit the Windows kernel vulnerability. It would probably be possible to craft an exe to do privilege elevation using this kernel flaw by passing similar bad parameters to the kernel - but of course local elevation of privilege is much less of a threat than a true drive by like this exploit through safari.
Tons of schools use Google as their email provider. Here's a quote from a Time article from 2009:
Google now manages e-mail for more than 2,000 colleges and universities, enabling students to transform accounts capped at 100 mb into Google-managed inboxes that allow for 70 times as much mail. Microsoft also provides free Web-based mail for thousands of schools, including colleges in 86 countries.
You know, you hit the nail on the head. I have 21 years with my company and I personally started on a help line for Point Of Sale equipment in the Credit Card dept (proprietary card), moved from there to LAN administrator, and on to programming and system images. That POS help line? It is in Manila now. The Credit Card department? Outsourced. Oh, there is still a card with our company name on it. It just isn't handled at all by our company anymore. I wouldn't have even been able to start with the company today without moving overseas and working for peanuts. Low Cost Geography they euphemistically call it. In the same way those of us who are technical experts in the design departments no longer have any internal source to draw on for new hires. The lower end jobs where the best of the workers could have moved up are all overseas. The middle of the road jobs are mostly gone too. It's only the top end design groups that are left in the US. And we have nobody to pull from when folks retire, switch jobs, or get laid off. We supposedly hire from colleges, but those that come in are woefully unprepared. They would have been fine after spending a couple of years in those middle tier jobs - but they just don't cut it for the ones where you need a lot of experience. They will someday, but not right away. It makes long term succession planning for your group more a "rob from Peter to pay Paul" game of musical chairs where you try to poach from other groups.
So now a location-based reminder is a fucking patentable thing? What's next, a patent on something that remembers phone numbers for you?
I think next, they will figure out that simply reminding you to buy milk when you are near a store isn't very smart. You buy the milk, then it sits in your car while you go to work. When you get back out of work, you see the milk is spoiled. Next, the patent will be for "location based reminders that remind you to buy milk when you are on your way home and you are near a store that is within 30 minutes of your house ". I work 38 miles from home - which in the morning is a 40 minute drive and on the way home is an hour and 25 minutes. I don't want milk while I am near work - that would be stupid. I want it when I am almost to my house and on the way home.
Re:WTF does that have to do with IQ?
on
2011 Geek IQ Test
·
· Score: 2
"what color is RMS's beard?"
That's a trick question as it depends on what he has been eating recently. Bazinga!
Thanks for the print view. I had gotten to question 17 and then the quiz started failing. The print view allowed me to finish (and no, I didn't cheat). But, I only got 70 (14 out of 20). It says I am a "geek dilettante". Damn! And I got the Morgan Batesman / USS Bozeman one right too. Where's that trophy? (I'm not interested in the prostitute; just the trophy - see, more geek cred!)
And, they are saying the metadata should travel with the file - and not be a bolted on construct supported in different ways by different file systems. To continue your analogy, the car should still say "Toyota" and "Camry" on it even when it is moved from the parking garage to the parking lot. It should still have other metadata like "2006", the info on the door sticker like the curb weight, etc. Past implementations of this at an OS level have been a bit hit or miss with some file systems supporting an add on structure for meta data and others not supporting it. (This is not to say that some file formats don't already have this built in - certainly some do).
No, he is talking about Majel Barret playing Number One in "The Cage" - the original Start Trek pilot with Captain Pike; the one that was later made into "The Menagerie" where Spock was court martial-ed for returning Pike to Talos IV after his severe radiation burns rendered him wheel chair bound. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059753/
Basically, now that congress limited the amount that banks can charge merchants to 21 cents per transaction for debit card use, the banks are looking for ways to keep their revenue. Some were charging about 44 cents per debit transaction to the merchant. So now, BofA will charge $5 per month per account for each month in which a debit card is used (except at an ATM).
When I was a kid, your commercial for the Commodore VIC-20 convinced me that I had to have one (because Captain Kirk was advertising it!). I used it to learn some programming (both BASIC and assembler) and it was the early foundation for what I do today. The question: Did you actually use one of them day to day or was it just something they hired you to advertise and they gave you one and it sat in the corner?
Well you can take the network difference part out of it by using WiFi for the connection. The idea in the browser benchmark is to see how well the browser can perform with as many other variables (such as network) removed. It would be interesting to see them do a couple of mobile tests. Examples could be the native android browser on 4 or 5 current top of the line phones, and maybe a single android phone with several alternative browsers from the market (firefox, dolphin, etc).
Well, that would work except for the fact that ESPN, Disney, etc. charge the cable company per person who has access to the channel. So, let's say you have that bundle for $50 a month and it includes Disney and ESPN. If I don't subscribe to those in the new model, the cable company no longer has to pay for them (to ESPN and Disney). Since they don't have to pay for them, they can be solvent just fine getting something less than $50 from me for the channels I do subscribe to. Of course this only works for the channels that the cable people have to pay for. However, that seems to be a lot of them these days.
We also aren't going to migrate from NewEgg either. For example, I used to buy bare drive kits from them. Now I buy USB drives. I used to buy a new video card. Now I buy LCD panels. I still buy NAT routers from them. They certainly still get my business, it has just moved up the value chain from components to more finished products.
The tool you want to trouble shoot this is xperf (specifically xbootmgr.exe) from the Windows Performance Toolkit. That is part of the Windows SDK. This tool will give you a look into exactly what is going on during boot and what is hogging disk, CPU, and everything. It is very detailed. Our Windows 7 boot is about 35 seconds from "starting Windows" to being at the desktop with the network icon showing an internet connection and being usable. xperf helped us to get to that state. The Windows SDK is here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8279. With their web installer you can select the components you want and not have to download the rest - for xperf you just need the "Windows Performance Toolkit".
I doubt that it really gets returned to sender though (since it is not first or second class mail). What is more fun (but more time consuming) is to take any two pieces of junk mail, open them both and place the adverts from one (and even folded outer envelope) into the "business reply mail" inserts of the other and then send them back. The only thing you remove is anything personally identifiable - names, addresses, bar codes and the like. So, for example, Capital One gets the adverts from some mortgage company and some mortgage company gets the adverts from Capital One. Imagine what would happen if we could get just 30% of people receiving junk mail to do that! (On the very rare day that we get just one piece of junk mail with a business reply envelope they just get back things from the trash like a Kleenex or possibly a piece of "postcard style" junk mail if it has a label that can be peeled off.)
This is much more satisfying because you know they actually DO receive this and must pay the (admittedly low) rate for the business reply mail. Also it will be kicked out by their automated processing equipment and need to be viewed by a human.
Some of us at work the other day were figuring on this exact scenario. Since Moto had recently been threatening other Android phone makers (who were also members of the open handset alliance) with patent lawsuits, Google saw that they could do a couple of things in one stroke:
- Get a patent war chest to help defend Android
- Neuter a company that was starting to threaten other Android licensees.
We'll have to see if we (and you) are right or not over the next 12 - 18 months.
At least Google is unlikely to cruft up stock Android too heavily.
True, but looking at my new Droid 3 from Motorola - Motorola didn't cruft it up much. They put Blur and Motoprint on it. Verizon crufted the hell out of it. Enough to make me get my rant on here about it: http://gildude.blogspot.com/2011/08/call-to-action-for-verizon-and-motorola.html. Of course, if we just get rid of Blur and maybe the locked bootloader that will be enough of a win. But it would be great to get back to Google Experience Devices that don't have all the carrier garbage on them to begin with.
Wow, some of the times in this thread are just crazy long. We measure the performance of our boot from the "starting windows" screen (simply because different hardware takes a different amount of time in the POST test / BIOS, but typically only about 8 seconds or so). We measure until the network icon in the system tray shows that it is connected to the internet. In our experience, this is about the same time that the machine will start to respond correctly to input and allow the user - for example - to start Outlook or something. On desktops, the time is about 35 seconds on last generation stuff. Slightly faster on the newest machines. On notebooks with spinning drives it is about 45 seconds. Add SSD to the notebook and it drops another 20% off the time. Again, add about 8 or 10 seconds total for the POST test. It is still under a minute from power on until a usable machine. I don't know what other folks are doing to make their time take longer.
Oh, on Wndows 7 we had to set the "WaitForNetwork" time to 1 second (by default it is 30 seconds!!!) to achieve these times. If Windows 7 spends about 40 seconds with a spinning "circle of wait" on the screen saying "welcome" then you are impacted by the extra 30 second delay. It only affects people with home drives and redirected folders though. If you are seeing long boot times on either Vista or Windows 7 you may want to spend some time with the free Microsoft Windows Performance Toolkit (in particular xbootmgr) and find out what is going on. The toolkit comes with the Windows SDK. You can then work with whatever vendor's software is causing the problem and have them fix it.
True, for the rest you simply boot to Windows PE from a USB Key or DVD and mount the host machine's registry and remove the offending entries (typically in services or the typical "run" keys. You can also delete the executables from the file system. Obviously the more experience you have doing this the easier it is to identify what to remove. If the machine is running BitLocker you will need the recovery key to use this method, but as long as you have the key it works fine.
Most of the ones I've encountered in the US, from my first one ever in 1992 in Arkansas through the ones I just went through in Hayward, CA two days ago are problematic for folks who aren't local. They tend to be small, with the signage insufficient for people to find the street they need to exit on (again, locals have no problem). For those of us relying on written instructions or possibly a navigation system the small size of the roundabouts and signage too close to the exits makes it very difficult to manage the proper yielding, speed, merging, etc. while trying to find your exit. It is small wonder that they cause trepidation in folks. I was not too sanguine with the two I went through in Hayward due to this. Once I had been through them a few times it would be fine though. If they were larger with the signage farther from the exits it would also be fine.
Most likely their automated testing always used the correct password so they didn't see the problem. If their testing included using a few incorrect passwords the problem would have instantly shown itself. Probably just a failure in designing the proper test inputs.
The solution is taking the networks away from those who don't want to provide the service they promised to provide when they were given monopolies by the government.
Obviously your argument is simplistic. Now, we all know that it doesn't cost much (if anything) more to run a network running at 50% capacity than one running at 10%, so the straight up "utility" model like electricity or water billing doesn't exactly translate. However, it DOES cost more when you have to split out areas that are currently on one cable loop into two or more cable loops (as an example). So there absolutely is a cost to allowing usage to climb with no limit and no increased price. What the real solution has to be is some form of tiered service. Not a "aha! you went over your limit by 2 GB - you owe $100" type of gouging tier. More of a "all use between 0 and 150 GB per month you pay $0.10 per GB, for use between 150 and 300 GB per month you are billed at $0.15 per GB, and for usage over 300 GB per month you are billed at $0.20 per GB" type of deal. There would be a "connection / account maintenance" base fee (like a meter fee for electricity - for an example say $10), and any rental fees (if you rent your modem, etc.). The rest would be simple tiered usage based.
With my admittedly pulled out of somewhere the sun doesn't shine sample numbers it would look like this:
Use 80 GB per month: Base fee + 80 * $.10 = $18.
Use 200 GB per month: Base fee + (150 * $0.10) + (50 * $0.15) = $32.50
Use 400 GB per month: Base fee + (150 * $0.10) + (150 * $0.15) + (100 * $0.20) = $67.50
Obviously those are just sample numbers, but they contain a penalty for using "a lot" of bandwidth. People can argue about whether there should be "night time GB" and "weekend GB" and all that - but the basics of pay as you go should really end up being the model for network usage.
Computers should be safe to operate without expensive add on software.
That's an interesting thought. How about "cars should be safe to operate without expensive add on software / hardware". Guess what? They are! It is the idiot drivers that crash the cars by going too fast in poor conditions, tailgating, and other poor decisions and unsafe usage. This is the same thing as with computers. All major operating systems ship now with security features in place that help to keep users safe. Firewalls (on by default), ASLR, DEP, etc. have become pretty standard. The thing that hasn't changed is the user. Just like the driver that makes unsafe lane changes, the computer user runs untrusted code that was sent to them by strangers. Often times they "have to install this special video codec to watch [insert celebrity name here] boobs". Not only do they install this "codec", they give it admin rights.
Computers are safe to use without add on software. It is the user who isn't safe because they don't pay any attention to the myriad of warnings they are given and continue to practice unsafe computing.
Actually Stuxnet has been analyzed pretty well and would have attacked Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 - no autoplay required. Remember the purpose of placing a USB key in one of these machines is to copy data from / to it because the machines aren't networked and the data has to be analyzed. In this case, a couple of zero day vulnerabilities were utilized that caused Windows to get infected by just opening the folder. Mark Russinovich did a nice, digestible 3 part write up on it that starts here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/03/30/3416253.aspx.
Exactly. Also some basic, much maligned but still useful, security by obscurity can be used. For example, if you have trouble remembering your ATM PIN, simply put a piece of paper in your wallet with a couple of "phone numbers" on it (for example one would be "Adam - 722-1416" where 1416 is your PIN.) Simple mnemonic - Adam - ATOM - ATM... Simple thieves won't get your PIN from that, but you certainly can remember it. Passwords can be done in a similar fashion.
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It would be more correct to say the vulnerability (flaw) is in the windows kernel and the only currently known exploit is through the safari browser. There are decent odds that some other vector will be found through which to exploit this. But for now it looks like the exploit through safari uses a lack of correct input sanitization (in safari) in order to exploit the Windows kernel vulnerability. It would probably be possible to craft an exe to do privilege elevation using this kernel flaw by passing similar bad parameters to the kernel - but of course local elevation of privilege is much less of a threat than a true drive by like this exploit through safari.
Tons of schools use Google as their email provider. Here's a quote from a Time article from 2009:
Google now manages e-mail for more than 2,000 colleges and universities, enabling students to transform accounts capped at 100 mb into Google-managed inboxes that allow for 70 times as much mail. Microsoft also provides free Web-based mail for thousands of schools, including colleges in 86 countries.
Here's the article: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1915112,00.html. Now, a specific school? Sure, my daughter and I just toured California State Sonoma and they use Google services.
You know, you hit the nail on the head. I have 21 years with my company and I personally started on a help line for Point Of Sale equipment in the Credit Card dept (proprietary card), moved from there to LAN administrator, and on to programming and system images. That POS help line? It is in Manila now. The Credit Card department? Outsourced. Oh, there is still a card with our company name on it. It just isn't handled at all by our company anymore. I wouldn't have even been able to start with the company today without moving overseas and working for peanuts. Low Cost Geography they euphemistically call it. In the same way those of us who are technical experts in the design departments no longer have any internal source to draw on for new hires. The lower end jobs where the best of the workers could have moved up are all overseas. The middle of the road jobs are mostly gone too. It's only the top end design groups that are left in the US. And we have nobody to pull from when folks retire, switch jobs, or get laid off. We supposedly hire from colleges, but those that come in are woefully unprepared. They would have been fine after spending a couple of years in those middle tier jobs - but they just don't cut it for the ones where you need a lot of experience. They will someday, but not right away. It makes long term succession planning for your group more a "rob from Peter to pay Paul" game of musical chairs where you try to poach from other groups.
So now a location-based reminder is a fucking patentable thing? What's next, a patent on something that remembers phone numbers for you?
I think next, they will figure out that simply reminding you to buy milk when you are near a store isn't very smart. You buy the milk, then it sits in your car while you go to work. When you get back out of work, you see the milk is spoiled. Next, the patent will be for "location based reminders that remind you to buy milk when you are on your way home and you are near a store that is within 30 minutes of your house ". I work 38 miles from home - which in the morning is a 40 minute drive and on the way home is an hour and 25 minutes. I don't want milk while I am near work - that would be stupid. I want it when I am almost to my house and on the way home.
That's a trick question as it depends on what he has been eating recently. Bazinga!
Thanks for the print view. I had gotten to question 17 and then the quiz started failing. The print view allowed me to finish (and no, I didn't cheat). But, I only got 70 (14 out of 20). It says I am a "geek dilettante". Damn! And I got the Morgan Batesman / USS Bozeman one right too. Where's that trophy? (I'm not interested in the prostitute; just the trophy - see, more geek cred!)
And, they are saying the metadata should travel with the file - and not be a bolted on construct supported in different ways by different file systems. To continue your analogy, the car should still say "Toyota" and "Camry" on it even when it is moved from the parking garage to the parking lot. It should still have other metadata like "2006", the info on the door sticker like the curb weight, etc. Past implementations of this at an OS level have been a bit hit or miss with some file systems supporting an add on structure for meta data and others not supporting it. (This is not to say that some file formats don't already have this built in - certainly some do).
No, he is talking about Majel Barret playing Number One in "The Cage" - the original Start Trek pilot with Captain Pike; the one that was later made into "The Menagerie" where Spock was court martial-ed for returning Pike to Talos IV after his severe radiation burns rendered him wheel chair bound. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059753/
Basically, now that congress limited the amount that banks can charge merchants to 21 cents per transaction for debit card use, the banks are looking for ways to keep their revenue. Some were charging about 44 cents per debit transaction to the merchant. So now, BofA will charge $5 per month per account for each month in which a debit card is used (except at an ATM).
When I was a kid, your commercial for the Commodore VIC-20 convinced me that I had to have one (because Captain Kirk was advertising it!). I used it to learn some programming (both BASIC and assembler) and it was the early foundation for what I do today. The question: Did you actually use one of them day to day or was it just something they hired you to advertise and they gave you one and it sat in the corner?
Well you can take the network difference part out of it by using WiFi for the connection. The idea in the browser benchmark is to see how well the browser can perform with as many other variables (such as network) removed. It would be interesting to see them do a couple of mobile tests. Examples could be the native android browser on 4 or 5 current top of the line phones, and maybe a single android phone with several alternative browsers from the market (firefox, dolphin, etc).
Well, that would work except for the fact that ESPN, Disney, etc. charge the cable company per person who has access to the channel. So, let's say you have that bundle for $50 a month and it includes Disney and ESPN. If I don't subscribe to those in the new model, the cable company no longer has to pay for them (to ESPN and Disney). Since they don't have to pay for them, they can be solvent just fine getting something less than $50 from me for the channels I do subscribe to. Of course this only works for the channels that the cable people have to pay for. However, that seems to be a lot of them these days.
We also aren't going to migrate from NewEgg either. For example, I used to buy bare drive kits from them. Now I buy USB drives. I used to buy a new video card. Now I buy LCD panels. I still buy NAT routers from them. They certainly still get my business, it has just moved up the value chain from components to more finished products.
The tool you want to trouble shoot this is xperf (specifically xbootmgr.exe) from the Windows Performance Toolkit. That is part of the Windows SDK. This tool will give you a look into exactly what is going on during boot and what is hogging disk, CPU, and everything. It is very detailed. Our Windows 7 boot is about 35 seconds from "starting Windows" to being at the desktop with the network icon showing an internet connection and being usable. xperf helped us to get to that state. The Windows SDK is here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8279. With their web installer you can select the components you want and not have to download the rest - for xperf you just need the "Windows Performance Toolkit".
I doubt that it really gets returned to sender though (since it is not first or second class mail). What is more fun (but more time consuming) is to take any two pieces of junk mail, open them both and place the adverts from one (and even folded outer envelope) into the "business reply mail" inserts of the other and then send them back. The only thing you remove is anything personally identifiable - names, addresses, bar codes and the like. So, for example, Capital One gets the adverts from some mortgage company and some mortgage company gets the adverts from Capital One. Imagine what would happen if we could get just 30% of people receiving junk mail to do that! (On the very rare day that we get just one piece of junk mail with a business reply envelope they just get back things from the trash like a Kleenex or possibly a piece of "postcard style" junk mail if it has a label that can be peeled off.)
This is much more satisfying because you know they actually DO receive this and must pay the (admittedly low) rate for the business reply mail. Also it will be kicked out by their automated processing equipment and need to be viewed by a human.
Some of us at work the other day were figuring on this exact scenario. Since Moto had recently been threatening other Android phone makers (who were also members of the open handset alliance) with patent lawsuits, Google saw that they could do a couple of things in one stroke:
- Get a patent war chest to help defend Android
- Neuter a company that was starting to threaten other Android licensees.
We'll have to see if we (and you) are right or not over the next 12 - 18 months.
At least Google is unlikely to cruft up stock Android too heavily.
True, but looking at my new Droid 3 from Motorola - Motorola didn't cruft it up much. They put Blur and Motoprint on it. Verizon crufted the hell out of it. Enough to make me get my rant on here about it: http://gildude.blogspot.com/2011/08/call-to-action-for-verizon-and-motorola.html. Of course, if we just get rid of Blur and maybe the locked bootloader that will be enough of a win. But it would be great to get back to Google Experience Devices that don't have all the carrier garbage on them to begin with.
Wow, some of the times in this thread are just crazy long. We measure the performance of our boot from the "starting windows" screen (simply because different hardware takes a different amount of time in the POST test / BIOS, but typically only about 8 seconds or so). We measure until the network icon in the system tray shows that it is connected to the internet. In our experience, this is about the same time that the machine will start to respond correctly to input and allow the user - for example - to start Outlook or something. On desktops, the time is about 35 seconds on last generation stuff. Slightly faster on the newest machines. On notebooks with spinning drives it is about 45 seconds. Add SSD to the notebook and it drops another 20% off the time. Again, add about 8 or 10 seconds total for the POST test. It is still under a minute from power on until a usable machine. I don't know what other folks are doing to make their time take longer.
Oh, on Wndows 7 we had to set the "WaitForNetwork" time to 1 second (by default it is 30 seconds!!!) to achieve these times. If Windows 7 spends about 40 seconds with a spinning "circle of wait" on the screen saying "welcome" then you are impacted by the extra 30 second delay. It only affects people with home drives and redirected folders though. If you are seeing long boot times on either Vista or Windows 7 you may want to spend some time with the free Microsoft Windows Performance Toolkit (in particular xbootmgr) and find out what is going on. The toolkit comes with the Windows SDK. You can then work with whatever vendor's software is causing the problem and have them fix it.
True, for the rest you simply boot to Windows PE from a USB Key or DVD and mount the host machine's registry and remove the offending entries (typically in services or the typical "run" keys. You can also delete the executables from the file system. Obviously the more experience you have doing this the easier it is to identify what to remove. If the machine is running BitLocker you will need the recovery key to use this method, but as long as you have the key it works fine.
Most of the ones I've encountered in the US, from my first one ever in 1992 in Arkansas through the ones I just went through in Hayward, CA two days ago are problematic for folks who aren't local. They tend to be small, with the signage insufficient for people to find the street they need to exit on (again, locals have no problem). For those of us relying on written instructions or possibly a navigation system the small size of the roundabouts and signage too close to the exits makes it very difficult to manage the proper yielding, speed, merging, etc. while trying to find your exit. It is small wonder that they cause trepidation in folks. I was not too sanguine with the two I went through in Hayward due to this. Once I had been through them a few times it would be fine though. If they were larger with the signage farther from the exits it would also be fine.
Most likely their automated testing always used the correct password so they didn't see the problem. If their testing included using a few incorrect passwords the problem would have instantly shown itself. Probably just a failure in designing the proper test inputs.
The solution is taking the networks away from those who don't want to provide the service they promised to provide when they were given monopolies by the government.
Obviously your argument is simplistic. Now, we all know that it doesn't cost much (if anything) more to run a network running at 50% capacity than one running at 10%, so the straight up "utility" model like electricity or water billing doesn't exactly translate. However, it DOES cost more when you have to split out areas that are currently on one cable loop into two or more cable loops (as an example). So there absolutely is a cost to allowing usage to climb with no limit and no increased price. What the real solution has to be is some form of tiered service. Not a "aha! you went over your limit by 2 GB - you owe $100" type of gouging tier. More of a "all use between 0 and 150 GB per month you pay $0.10 per GB, for use between 150 and 300 GB per month you are billed at $0.15 per GB, and for usage over 300 GB per month you are billed at $0.20 per GB" type of deal. There would be a "connection / account maintenance" base fee (like a meter fee for electricity - for an example say $10), and any rental fees (if you rent your modem, etc.). The rest would be simple tiered usage based.
With my admittedly pulled out of somewhere the sun doesn't shine sample numbers it would look like this:
Use 80 GB per month: Base fee + 80 * $.10 = $18.
Use 200 GB per month: Base fee + (150 * $0.10) + (50 * $0.15) = $32.50
Use 400 GB per month: Base fee + (150 * $0.10) + (150 * $0.15) + (100 * $0.20) = $67.50
Obviously those are just sample numbers, but they contain a penalty for using "a lot" of bandwidth. People can argue about whether there should be "night time GB" and "weekend GB" and all that - but the basics of pay as you go should really end up being the model for network usage.
Computers should be safe to operate without expensive add on software.
That's an interesting thought. How about "cars should be safe to operate without expensive add on software / hardware". Guess what? They are! It is the idiot drivers that crash the cars by going too fast in poor conditions, tailgating, and other poor decisions and unsafe usage. This is the same thing as with computers. All major operating systems ship now with security features in place that help to keep users safe. Firewalls (on by default), ASLR, DEP, etc. have become pretty standard. The thing that hasn't changed is the user. Just like the driver that makes unsafe lane changes, the computer user runs untrusted code that was sent to them by strangers. Often times they "have to install this special video codec to watch [insert celebrity name here] boobs". Not only do they install this "codec", they give it admin rights.
Computers are safe to use without add on software. It is the user who isn't safe because they don't pay any attention to the myriad of warnings they are given and continue to practice unsafe computing.
Actually Stuxnet has been analyzed pretty well and would have attacked Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 - no autoplay required. Remember the purpose of placing a USB key in one of these machines is to copy data from / to it because the machines aren't networked and the data has to be analyzed. In this case, a couple of zero day vulnerabilities were utilized that caused Windows to get infected by just opening the folder. Mark Russinovich did a nice, digestible 3 part write up on it that starts here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/03/30/3416253.aspx.
Exactly. Also some basic, much maligned but still useful, security by obscurity can be used. For example, if you have trouble remembering your ATM PIN, simply put a piece of paper in your wallet with a couple of "phone numbers" on it (for example one would be "Adam - 722-1416" where 1416 is your PIN.) Simple mnemonic - Adam - ATOM - ATM... Simple thieves won't get your PIN from that, but you certainly can remember it. Passwords can be done in a similar fashion.