Now I don't use any of the software referenced in the article, but I am concerned about this development.
I live outside of the U.S. Although there are some citizens of the USA which seem to think (/. being less afflicted than some other forums) that the Web is inherently American, the Web != USA. It's a global thing.
Am I to suspect from this piece that a machine outside of the USA is potentially open to compromise as a result of the whitelisting of software that could be used by American law-enforcement agencies?
The companies complicit in this sorry tale of capitulation need to be chastised - economically. The alternative is that more countries will exercise sufficient political clout to get their sh!tware whitelisted, and the questionable value of security software will be further eroded.
I've been using Win Server 2k3 as primary desktop for about four months - it was constant pestering by XP to install WGA that drove me from it (despite my having a legitimate license). Since then I've only had a couple of irritations, neither of which are insuperable:
[1] Good - the IE sandbox mode disables the MSN Messenger flash ads (which irritated the hell out of me. Yeah, I use MSN - I am aware of Gaim and so on, but just plumped for the easy option). Bad - Server keeps sending notifications that data is being blocked due to sandbox mode.
[2] No Media player 11. Not a major problem, although I found MP10 a bit naff for calculating the duration of VBR MP3s, and the seek bar for DVDs seemed unreliable under V10.
[3] For some reason, Paint Shop Pro 9 seems unwilling to launch files from explorer - PSP9 fires up OK but the document fails to load. It also seems to log application errors whenever it's closed. Again an irritation rather than a problem.
as I quite like the suspend-to-ram from the power button on my keyboard with Win2k3 server.
NB - instead of removing keys you could try Power Options -> Advanced and use the option "When I press the power button on my computer > Ask me what to do".
Not certain if this worked under 2k but was fine for XP. AFAIK very few Linux distributions tend to support these additional buttons.
After he's bought the hardware? Not the best advice that could be offered.
I hadn't heard of this trend in boards (mainly because I'm pretty firmly entrenched in the AMD side of the fence). I recently re-engined my X2-3800 on 939 to an X2-4600 via AM2. If, when I'd got home, I'd found tucked away in the small print (as seems to have happened to the OP) that the one PATA channel on the board was cascaded off some pikey USB chipset and was incapable of carrying a boot device, let's make no bones about this, I would have been absolutely LIVID.
I'll agree that hardware comes and goes. I remember ZIF versus LIF, and VESA versus PCI. Posters above have joked about support for 5.25" floppies being sadly absent (although I'm pretty certain I've bought new hardware in the last five years which would have still been capable of supporting a 5.25, had I had one). That Intel / MSI are retiring a current standard, which is still widely on sale, is extremely disturbing.
Maybe two or three years in the future, when you have to hunt for PATA hard discs fair enough, but at the moment I think this is a cost-cutting measure too far.
For work, I'm having to configure a build machine to replace three life-expired P3 boxen. It's a Dell Opti 260.
It's configured as a triple boot.
Windows 2000 - Fine. Windows 98SE - Patchy, but shouldn't be a problem.
And given the clients we support, I'm also having to install Windows 95.
I am in utter driver hell here. Intel 845G/GL graphics set? I don't think Intel even started to do graphics chips until about '97 - at any rate there's nothing listed in the vanilla drivers. I'm going to try and fudge the '98 driver.
Chipset? Don't make me laugh!
Oh yeah - how are you going to transfer 6meg of graphics driver? USB? Hahahaha! [Before anyone suggests, I'm waiting until 2k is on then I'll use my USB laptop hard-disc].
At any rate, hardware and software are products of their time. When you mismatch them by more than about five years, you're going to have problems. That's life.
DVD = Digital versatile disc. This does not imply whether the content written on the disc is data, video, audio, or anything other than "just data".
An earlier poster suggested there may be legal implications if Sony had used "DVD-Video" but AFAIK DVD is not a guarantee of any specific type of content.
Agree with you. If I am the computer _administrator_, I want complete and utter control over what is running on the machine. It's all or nothing.
The vista model of watered-down administrator may make life easier for migrants from Win 9x, but ultimately restricts the functionality for high-end users.
I'd rather they still allowed full, uber-privileged rights to one account - be it administrator or whatever, irrespectve of what additional restrictions MS choose to place on other "administrator" accounts (which are apparently degraded to "power user" accounts these days anyway).
Anyway, as I may have stated previously, Windows 2003 Server for the win.
To be honest, I don't think I want to see software engineers working on political problems - the respective arenas are too different.
What I'd like to think is that the reason why left wing users are using Windows based products is that they are a hell of a lot more accessible than your equivalent *nix; in the UK , illicit copies of windows are far more easy to find, and have supported than a linux distro, and your kids [possibly the motivators for families buying a PC] can play on it.
There's theoretically little to interfere with your real motivation: voicing your opinions and attempting to influence political thought.
Disclaimer - I work with BSD/Linux/Solaris and have a reasonably liberal viewpoint, and am just asked occasionally to support lefties with children. F_T
Please accept my apologies for calling you brother - I could try to justify this by trying to reference the standard "geek living in parent's basement" meme that is prevalent here, but I'd rather admid I made an unfounded assumption, sorry.
Have a copy of one of the no-one lives forevers (not certain which) - although it was bundled free with a graphics card rather than acquired elsewhere I'd sort of assumed it wasn't up to much. I should really give it a go before MS updates render it unplayable.
I missed System Shock (both 1 and 2), due to largely being into GodSims. However I am eagerly anticipating Bioshock...
F_T
Nice idea, but the number of such companies that give the user control over the installation of WGA will be pretty much zero.
Whether WGA will be installed on such a corporate desktop is debatable - none of the WGATray binaries appear to be running on my corporate machine. There would be little benefit to a large corporation to implement this update, particularly if (as you suggest) such a company had a number of illicit license keys.
Add to that the suggestion that large scale rollouts of updates would tend to be deployed via WSUS or SMS and would run silently, and the user would simply not be given the opportunity to cancel the update if it was deemed important to the infrastructure.
It seems to me that it would be easy enough to determine what port WGA is using to send this stuff, and lock down said port at one's firewall. That's the method I'd choose to deal with it (if I were even running anything with WGA installed -- which, thankfully, I'm not). At a guess I'd suggest port 80 - sure you want to block that one?
"Every place that I know of with a VLK is very strict with who has access to it" If you have read access to the registry you can extract the VLK from a corporate desktop.
I thought it was 6 * 7 = 42 digits, this may be why you're failing. Sorry, couldn't resist.
I found that the system had a bit of trouble recognising two subsequent instances of the same digit, and slowed down my input a bit. Sure, it was a bit tedious, but got an activation code from the IVR just fine. However I did notice the automated line was more than a bit glitchy with dropouts and distortion on the line - it's the type of thing the telco I used to work for wouldn't have considered acceptable.
You may have a point - although what was said above is still worth a try. The e-machine I had in received an OEM board - and changed processor architecture (Celeron -> Socket 939 AMD). However I just booted the machine up "to see what would happen" - to my surprise after an extra few minutes of thrashing the disc, the machine was up and asking for reactivation.
If it had required a rebuild, I may have looked at my 7-in-1 disc or the VLK edition, but as it happened no reinstallation was necessary - XP recovered itself sufficiently.
However I concede the point that you usually need to do an in-place upgrade when changing such a major part of your hardware environment.
Agreed. Talk to them. What does the OP have to lose?
In fact I recently had a pretty identical case to the original poster's query. A friend's e-machine had a blown mobo + processor due to a faulty PSU. I changed the parts across, booted, hit the product activation, phoned the Freephone support number and I didn't even need to speak to a person - the IVR system doled out a new activation code with no hassle.
Admittedly, if the activation hadn't gone as planned I'd just have dug out my VLK edition and performed an in-place upgrade...
Slashdot Mirror
Now I don't use any of the software referenced in the article, but I am concerned about this development.
I live outside of the U.S. Although there are some citizens of the USA which seem to think (/. being less afflicted than some other forums) that the Web is inherently American, the Web != USA. It's a global thing.
Am I to suspect from this piece that a machine outside of the USA is potentially open to compromise as a result of the whitelisting of software that could be used by American law-enforcement agencies?
The companies complicit in this sorry tale of capitulation need to be chastised - economically. The alternative is that more countries will exercise sufficient political clout to get their sh!tware whitelisted, and the questionable value of security software will be further eroded.
isn't so much with those who fail to use spellcheckers, but those who use the damn things and don't bother to proof read it.
Just because the red underlining has gone doesn't mean the document is complete. Proof-reading, people!
Try googling for "Shurdown event tracker 2003". Daniel Petri describes how to disable it here: http://www.petri.co.il/disable_shutdown_event_trac ker_in_windows_2003.htm
I've been using Win Server 2k3 as primary desktop for about four months - it was constant pestering by XP to install WGA that drove me from it (despite my having a legitimate license). Since then I've only had a couple of irritations, neither of which are insuperable:
[1] Good - the IE sandbox mode disables the MSN Messenger flash ads (which irritated the hell out of me. Yeah, I use MSN - I am aware of Gaim and so on, but just plumped for the easy option). Bad - Server keeps sending notifications that data is being blocked due to sandbox mode.
[2] No Media player 11. Not a major problem, although I found MP10 a bit naff for calculating the duration of VBR MP3s, and the seek bar for DVDs seemed unreliable under V10.
[3] For some reason, Paint Shop Pro 9 seems unwilling to launch files from explorer - PSP9 fires up OK but the document fails to load. It also seems to log application errors whenever it's closed. Again an irritation rather than a problem.
The Quickshot 2 (http://www.syntaxerror.nu/joy015.jpg).
Now get off my lawn, you damn kids!
F_T
as I quite like the suspend-to-ram from the power button on my keyboard with Win2k3 server.
NB - instead of removing keys you could try Power Options -> Advanced and use the option "When I press the power button on my computer > Ask me what to do".
Not certain if this worked under 2k but was fine for XP. AFAIK very few Linux distributions tend to support these additional buttons.
F_T
Also didn't get any follow-up e-mails. I wonder if those people who declined to be spamm^h^h^h^h^h marketed to gave up their chance to the discs?
F_T
Caught them almost a year ago in Gateshead, UK. Wasn't certain what to expect but it turned out to be a cracking night. VJamming wins HARD.
There's plenty of clips out there on YouTube of their performances
F_T
I'm sure there's a lot of early *nix users who will find the information in this thread particularly helpful.
F_T
Twelve more and the Chinese Activation Server will overflow.
F_T
After he's bought the hardware? Not the best advice that could be offered.
I hadn't heard of this trend in boards (mainly because I'm pretty firmly entrenched in the AMD side of the fence). I recently re-engined my X2-3800 on 939 to an X2-4600 via AM2. If, when I'd got home, I'd found tucked away in the small print (as seems to have happened to the OP) that the one PATA channel on the board was cascaded off some pikey USB chipset and was incapable of carrying a boot device, let's make no bones about this, I would have been absolutely LIVID.
I'll agree that hardware comes and goes. I remember ZIF versus LIF, and VESA versus PCI. Posters above have joked about support for 5.25" floppies being sadly absent (although I'm pretty certain I've bought new hardware in the last five years which would have still been capable of supporting a 5.25, had I had one). That Intel / MSI are retiring a current standard, which is still widely on sale, is extremely disturbing.
Maybe two or three years in the future, when you have to hunt for PATA hard discs fair enough, but at the moment I think this is a cost-cutting measure too far.
F_T
For work, I'm having to configure a build machine to replace three life-expired P3 boxen. It's a Dell Opti 260.
It's configured as a triple boot.
Windows 2000 - Fine.
Windows 98SE - Patchy, but shouldn't be a problem.
And given the clients we support, I'm also having to install Windows 95.
I am in utter driver hell here. Intel 845G/GL graphics set? I don't think Intel even started to do graphics chips until about '97 - at any rate there's nothing listed in the vanilla drivers. I'm going to try and fudge the '98 driver.
Chipset? Don't make me laugh!
Oh yeah - how are you going to transfer 6meg of graphics driver? USB? Hahahaha! [Before anyone suggests, I'm waiting until 2k is on then I'll use my USB laptop hard-disc].
At any rate, hardware and software are products of their time. When you mismatch them by more than about five years, you're going to have problems. That's life.
F_T
DVD = Digital versatile disc. This does not imply whether the content written on the disc is data, video, audio, or anything other than "just data".
An earlier poster suggested there may be legal implications if Sony had used "DVD-Video" but AFAIK DVD is not a guarantee of any specific type of content.
Agree with you. If I am the computer _administrator_, I want complete and utter control over what is running on the machine. It's all or nothing.
The vista model of watered-down administrator may make life easier for migrants from Win 9x, but ultimately restricts the functionality for high-end users.
I'd rather they still allowed full, uber-privileged rights to one account - be it administrator or whatever, irrespectve of what additional restrictions MS choose to place on other "administrator" accounts (which are apparently degraded to "power user" accounts these days anyway).
Anyway, as I may have stated previously, Windows 2003 Server for the win.
F_T
To be honest, I don't think I want to see software engineers working on political problems - the respective arenas are too different.
What I'd like to think is that the reason why left wing users are using Windows based products is that they are a hell of a lot more accessible than your equivalent *nix; in the UK , illicit copies of windows are far more easy to find, and have supported than a linux distro, and your kids [possibly the motivators for families buying a PC] can play on it.
There's theoretically little to interfere with your real motivation: voicing your opinions and attempting to influence political thought.
Disclaimer - I work with BSD/Linux/Solaris and have a reasonably liberal viewpoint, and am just asked occasionally to support lefties with children.
F_T
Please accept my apologies for calling you brother - I could try to justify this by trying to reference the standard "geek living in parent's basement" meme that is prevalent here, but I'd rather admid I made an unfounded assumption, sorry. Have a copy of one of the no-one lives forevers (not certain which) - although it was bundled free with a graphics card rather than acquired elsewhere I'd sort of assumed it wasn't up to much. I should really give it a go before MS updates render it unplayable. I missed System Shock (both 1 and 2), due to largely being into GodSims. However I am eagerly anticipating Bioshock... F_T
Nice idea, but the number of such companies that give the user control over the installation of WGA will be pretty much zero.
Whether WGA will be installed on such a corporate desktop is debatable - none of the WGATray binaries appear to be running on my corporate machine. There would be little benefit to a large corporation to implement this update, particularly if (as you suggest) such a company had a number of illicit license keys.
Add to that the suggestion that large scale rollouts of updates would tend to be deployed via WSUS or SMS and would run silently, and the user would simply not be given the opportunity to cancel the update if it was deemed important to the infrastructure.
At a guess I'd suggest port 80 - sure you want to block that one?
a couple of weeks ago.
I'm still waiting for my install set though. Did anyone actually receive their discs?
F_T
Loved the first two Thief games, although the third one disappointed me - it was far too easy to escape after being spotted.
And though it's not just first person action, let's hear it for Deus Ex, one of the best games I have played on the PC.
There's no indication whether the drivers are 32-bit or 64-bit - surely the drivers themselves are not cross-compatible?
Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
F_T
I thought it was 6 * 7 = 42 digits, this may be why you're failing. Sorry, couldn't resist.
I found that the system had a bit of trouble recognising two subsequent instances of the same digit, and slowed down my input a bit. Sure, it was a bit tedious, but got an activation code from the IVR just fine. However I did notice the automated line was more than a bit glitchy with dropouts and distortion on the line - it's the type of thing the telco I used to work for wouldn't have considered acceptable.
F_T
You may have a point - although what was said above is still worth a try. The e-machine I had in received an OEM board - and changed processor architecture (Celeron -> Socket 939 AMD). However I just booted the machine up "to see what would happen" - to my surprise after an extra few minutes of thrashing the disc, the machine was up and asking for reactivation.
If it had required a rebuild, I may have looked at my 7-in-1 disc or the VLK edition, but as it happened no reinstallation was necessary - XP recovered itself sufficiently.
However I concede the point that you usually need to do an in-place upgrade when changing such a major part of your hardware environment.
F_T
Agreed. Talk to them. What does the OP have to lose?
In fact I recently had a pretty identical case to the original poster's query. A friend's e-machine had a blown mobo + processor due to a faulty PSU. I changed the parts across, booted, hit the product activation, phoned the Freephone support number and I didn't even need to speak to a person - the IVR system doled out a new activation code with no hassle.
Admittedly, if the activation hadn't gone as planned I'd just have dug out my VLK edition and performed an in-place upgrade...
F_T
That's "grammar".
Couldn't resist.
F_T