<<
Supermicro has offered AMD solutions for a quite while now - just not under their "main" brand name. If you don't know that their Aplus products exist, you won't find them.
>>
That's funny because A plus, in French, means "See you soon". This is probably a disguised message Supermicro is sending to Intel:-)
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If theres anything sophisticated enough to bypass this level of paranoia then it can damn well have my credit card number and I'll gladly send spam for them.
>>
This may very well astonish you, but such sophisticated infection mechanisms already exist and have already been demonstrated. See this rootkit concept overwriting your BIOS to create a permanent backdoor.
Note: removing the CMOS battery will not destroy this rootkit because the CMOS battery erases the NVRAM, not the BIOS flash chip. The only known way to recover from a BIOS rootkit is to reflash your BIOS... but what if the rootkit is intelligent and tries to re-corrupt the new image being flashed ? This is a possibility. In this case your only option is to physically change the flash chip with a known good one. And don't forget that a modern computer has a lot of flash chips that can theoretically be infected: hard disk firmware, video card BIOS, DVD drive firmware, etc.
And here is the quicker: Google could do that by releasing their Linux Distribution on a Live CD. Users would not even have to install Linux, instead they would merely boot on this Live CD. The environment would be heavily linked to the on-line Google services, and users could edit/modify/save their document transparently over the Internet.
If there are not enough resources for everyone to prosper, you would like to see the US stop outsourcing, so that we are the ones to profit the most of the scarce remaining resources ? This is kind of egoistic:-( That's why I am for outsourcing because if one thing, it levels out the economies and everybody would get the same access to the world's resources.
I totally agree. This is so well said. Many people only care about their job, their salary, etc, but they don't understand that on the long term, outsourcing is a good thing.
The question is will these sharks run Linu... I mean in Soviet Russia, do sharks get spie... huh no will they be equipped with freaking lasers ?! Damn it becomes harder and harder to keep track of the Slashdot subculture's memes.
Vista's Aero interface uses 3D hardware acceleration to render mostly bitmap graphics. Basically the UI
spends some CPU time rendering 2D images, and then uses them as textures applied to 3D objects.
But when you think about it, the 3D hardware acceleration could be used in a much better way: the UI
could feed the video card directly with vector graphics. For example, I am thinking about all these
efforts to develop Open Source X11 SVG desktop environments: everybody seems to try to do software-only
implementation of SVG, but many SVG features map perfectly to typical 3D acceleration features: vector
graphics, animation, alpha blending, etc. Is anybody aware of such development efforts (hardware accelerated
SVG support) ?
I bet Grandma would be even more disappointed if she switched from Linux to Windows. Sure she could probably run TurboTax, but do you realize that:
First she would be surprised to learn that Windows cost hundreds of bucks compared to most Linux distros which are free.
Then she would discover viruses, worms, adwares, etc. She would have to install and maintain anti-virus and anti-malware softwares. Is she qualified for that ? Does she have enough time to handle this ?
I could stop right here because for an hypothetical alternative OS user having never used Windows before, the 2 points above are sufficient to make him refuse the switch. Most Windows users are so used to their OS that they don't even realize that.
Then she would discover that her printer does not work anymore, since the drivers are not included by default in Windows (Ubuntu for example ships with printer drivers pre-installed). She would have to search them on the maker's website, download and follow the steps of a non-standard installer. And do the same for some other devices. Why does she have to download something manually while Ubuntu does it automatically ?
Then she would be annoyed by the fact that she cannot play a couple of videos, because most video codecs are not installed by default on Windows. Ubuntu ships with various media players pre-configured with most codecs (except MP3 for legal reasons). She would ask how can I play my videos ? Since of course she would not know what a codec is (Ubuntu hides the complexity of the subsystem).
Then she would ask "where is Adept (Ubuntu's package manager) ?". And you would have to explain her that Windows doesn't provide a single easy-to-use package manager. She has to search independently on the web for EVERY SINGLE APP she wants to use. While on the other hand Adept references more than 17,000 applications: it's easy to search for apps, install them, and remove them. Oh and in just 2 clicks Grandma is able to upgrade the whole system to have it up-to-date. But no, with Windows all this has to be done manually for every single app.
And the list goes on and on...
You might find the above scenario highly improbably but I am pretty sure that's how my father and brother would react if I replaced their Kubuntu by Windows. You might also say that some things have to be done only once under Windows (driver/codec installs, etc), but I would reply that it's the same for Linux: configure it once and it works; with the exception that Linux will never (or extremely rarely) break while Windows will probably have to be reinstalled more often than Linux. It has been a bit more than 1 year that my father and brother have been using Kubuntu (KDE-based Ubuntu), since I removed the whole Windows thing:-) They are the main users of the computer, and they are very happy with this distro and consider it particularly easy to use. When my brother plugs his PSP in, a file browser window automatically pops-up and lets him access the files on the PSP memory card. Same thing when they plug in the digital camera. And when an audio CD is inserted in the drive, a window shows virtually encoded audio files which can be dragged-dropped directly on the desktop (audio encoding is done on-the-fly). They also have successfuly configured the printer themselves by running the Printer Manager application and by following the 3 or 4 easy steps of the Wizard. My father uses OpenOffice.org2 Writer as if it was MS Word. They don't complain about games because my brother plays only on his PS2 and my father is not a gamer. My brother also found an IM app (with Adept) that lets him chat with his friends on MSN, I believe the configuration setup must have been easy since he didn't even ask for my help:-) The only problem they have got so far is that they couldn't find an app able to uncompress password-protected RAR files (turns out a GUI frontend was complaining that 'unrar' was not installed).
Slashdot Mirror
A quad-opteron box. /. reading sessions.
I real need it to optimize my
I am astounded to to see a /.er that was astounded to encounter teen interns who looked astounded at the concept of sub-Gigahertz machines !
Ouch. I hereby name this bug, the Smiley Scalping Bug, rated PG-13.
And you a second (or close)...
The solution is to not fart.
That's all I wanted to say.
UNIX is not UNIX ! Hmm wait... no sorry I heard that or something close somewhere else.
That's funny because A plus, in French, means "See you soon". This is probably a disguised message Supermicro is sending to Intel :-)
This may very well astonish you, but such sophisticated infection mechanisms already exist and have already been demonstrated. See this rootkit concept overwriting your BIOS to create a permanent backdoor.
Note: removing the CMOS battery will not destroy this rootkit because the CMOS battery erases the NVRAM, not the BIOS flash chip. The only known way to recover from a BIOS rootkit is to reflash your BIOS... but what if the rootkit is intelligent and tries to re-corrupt the new image being flashed ? This is a possibility. In this case your only option is to physically change the flash chip with a known good one. And don't forget that a modern computer has a lot of flash chips that can theoretically be infected: hard disk firmware, video card BIOS, DVD drive firmware, etc.
She said yes !! Look I got an email !!
Subject: ILOVEYOU
We are working on that too. It's in Alpha stage right now. Expect the Beta to be out by April.
- Larry Page
Internet, will you marry me ?
Like Script Daddiez.
Don't ask. Just do it :)
And here is the quicker: Google could do that by releasing their Linux Distribution on a Live CD. Users would not even have to install Linux, instead they would merely boot on this Live CD. The environment would be heavily linked to the on-line Google services, and users could edit/modify/save their document transparently over the Internet.
I am just wondering... Is that what you would say to your own children: "see kids, China and India are in trouble, but we ain't help them, ok ?"
If there are not enough resources for everyone to prosper, you would like to see the US stop outsourcing, so that we are the ones to profit the most of the scarce remaining resources ? This is kind of egoistic :-( That's why I am for outsourcing because if one thing, it levels out the economies and everybody would get the same access to the world's resources.
I totally agree. This is so well said. Many people only care about their job, their salary, etc, but they don't understand that on the long term, outsourcing is a good thing.
The question is will these sharks run Linu... I mean in Soviet Russia, do sharks get spie... huh no will they be equipped with freaking lasers ?! Damn it becomes harder and harder to keep track of the Slashdot subculture's memes.
Vista's Aero interface uses 3D hardware acceleration to render mostly bitmap graphics. Basically the UI spends some CPU time rendering 2D images, and then uses them as textures applied to 3D objects.
But when you think about it, the 3D hardware acceleration could be used in a much better way: the UI could feed the video card directly with vector graphics. For example, I am thinking about all these efforts to develop Open Source X11 SVG desktop environments: everybody seems to try to do software-only implementation of SVG, but many SVG features map perfectly to typical 3D acceleration features: vector graphics, animation, alpha blending, etc. Is anybody aware of such development efforts (hardware accelerated SVG support) ?
I bet Grandma would be even more disappointed if she switched from Linux to Windows. Sure she could probably run TurboTax, but do you realize that:
You might find the above scenario highly improbably but I am pretty sure that's how my father and brother would react if I replaced their Kubuntu by Windows. You might also say that some things have to be done only once under Windows (driver/codec installs, etc), but I would reply that it's the same for Linux: configure it once and it works; with the exception that Linux will never (or extremely rarely) break while Windows will probably have to be reinstalled more often than Linux. It has been a bit more than 1 year that my father and brother have been using Kubuntu (KDE-based Ubuntu), since I removed the whole Windows thing :-) They are the main users of the computer, and they are very happy with this distro and consider it particularly easy to use. When my brother plugs his PSP in, a file browser window automatically pops-up and lets him access the files on the PSP memory card. Same thing when they plug in the digital camera. And when an audio CD is inserted in the drive, a window shows virtually encoded audio files which can be dragged-dropped directly on the desktop (audio encoding is done on-the-fly). They also have successfuly configured the printer themselves by running the Printer Manager application and by following the 3 or 4 easy steps of the Wizard. My father uses OpenOffice.org2 Writer as if it was MS Word. They don't complain about games because my brother plays only on his PS2 and my father is not a gamer. My brother also found an IM app (with Adept) that lets him chat with his friends on MSN, I believe the configuration setup must have been easy since he didn't even ask for my help :-) The only problem they have got so far is that they couldn't find an app able to uncompress password-protected RAR files (turns out a GUI frontend was complaining that 'unrar' was not installed).
If yo
Hey smart ! Who would have guessed ?
WOW I can't wait !
Usually they are both.
Not Kidding.
Oh wwait...