If your system is compromised, nothing is trustable. Not the kernel, not the sync utilities (which on a FreeBSD system would be the first thing to alter), not anything. I did not miss the part about syncing to master. If there's a rootkit it will either make sure your sync still has its changes, or it will simply not install files silently. It could also modify your compiler to produce backdoors in your executables (For more on this one in particular, look at this http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/Turing Award Lecture by Ken Thompson, one of the original people involved with Unix. This has been done before, and can be done again.
I repeat--If your system has been compromised, you can only rely on things that are non-modifyable by the system (I.E. BIOS ROM, unconnected disks). Your filesystem driver cannot be trusted. Expect it to lie whenever it needs to. Assume that the rootkit will not do anything that will help you find it. Syncing your source tree depends on way too many things that would be compromised to rely on (filesystem, network driver, sync utilities, libc, etc). The same goes for any other software update of any kind (excluding livecds -- assuming said rootkit didn't change your BIOS).
If someone has compromised root, all of your utilities are not what they seem. The install, cp, etc. are not the same. Make is not the same. A 'make world' will not fix this. The utilities will not replace themselves. A rootkit could even run at kernel level and simply update what fake file it has to show to monitoring software. Please read other comments before repeating what has been said (erroneously) several times already.
The native version is actually moving forward pretty quickly. The main issue is that the native port uses kdelibs 4 (which compiles on pretty much everything now) and so it's more waiting for kde 4 to get through the development process (not ready for beta anytime soon).
So yeah, vmware for the moment, but kde4 should fix that problem (you could try building konqueror for windows--just don't expect it to be stable quite yet).
Well, I would say the average/.er would classify as competent. Think of your average myspace denizen, or someone of that nature.
On another note, Norvig seems to have put his foot in his mouth. Nice recovery, though.
Laptops will start shipping with a secondary LCD screen that's accessible when the machine is closed. So you will be able to do things like checking the status of your e-mail, IM, stocks, weather, whatever -- without taking the machine out of sleep mode, spinning up the hard drives, etc.
What?? - Explain to me how one is to interact with a machine in sleep mode. Either A) M$ is only turning off the primary LCD, Touchpad, Keyboard, etc. off and calling it "sleep mode," OR B) The machine continuously displays info on the second LCD. With A - That's a sucky sleep mode, and with B - that would drain power all the time, which is even worse.
Tablet PCs will have touch screen functionality in addition to just pen-based input. In addition, the handwriting recognition will "learn" from the files that Vista has indexed on your hard drive -- so if you're a doctor and you're always using words like "phenylketonuria," it will pick that up and recognize those words more readily.
Ummm... I thought that the whole point of a tablet PC was that it had touch screen functionality. The second idea is good, although rather old. ANY handwriting recognition software uses previous recognition data if there is any room for data storage at all.
As I mentioned in another post, Vista will ship with Windows Collaboration, a Groove-like networking feature that lets wireless users quickly form ad-hoc network and share files and even screen real estate in an easy way.
First off, ad-hoc wireless networking is not new in any sense of the word. File sharing protocols (zero configuration, no less) have been around for a while. Remote Desktop viewing/controlling applications are both old ideas that have been implemented--even on Windows.
Microsoft will stop talking about power states like "Standby" and "Hibernate" when Vista ships. There will only be "on" or "off." When you hit the power button on your laptop, essentially it goes into Standby. Meanwhile it will be writing out a Hibernate file. After it figures out you won't be coming back, it sinks into Hibernate mode. But (and I'm a little unclear on this) even then it will still be sending a trickle of power to the memory only to keep the memory alive. The idea is that fast on and off will be a way of life and people won't be rebooting their computers all the time.
"Standby" and "Hibernate" are not new to Windows either. Most laptops have this feature that activates (wait for it....) when you close the lid. Microsoft's "Fast on" sounds more like a "wakeup" than anything else. [given the confused explanation of this "feature", it's hard to say exactly what they mean]. The other point about this "feature" is the lack of an ability to turn off the laptop with the "off" button.
You will be able to associate with a new generation of LCD projectors wirelessly. No more showing up to a meeting and fumbling with monitor cables etc. Just find the projector and route PowerPoint through it.
Apparently Microsoft has managed to coordinate a zeroconf wireless LCD projector standard without anyone knowing--or is this simply support for bluetooth screens.
Vista is going to be a major, major upgrade... way more than anybody is giving it credit for yet and enough so that Apple should definitely be looking over its shoulder. Maybe Microsoft still won't be able to offer customers anything to compare with the iPod experience on a Mac, but business users in particular are going to be all over this.
On the iPod note -- did you miss Microsoft's press release about their "iPod killer" this week (or was it last week)? As to the "Apple should be looking over its' shoulder," please see the definitions of FUD and vaporware, as that is all that your argument seems to be based on.
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If your system is compromised, nothing is trustable. Not the kernel, not the sync utilities (which on a FreeBSD system would be the first thing to alter), not anything. I did not miss the part about syncing to master. If there's a rootkit it will either make sure your sync still has its changes, or it will simply not install files silently. It could also modify your compiler to produce backdoors in your executables (For more on this one in particular, look at this http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/Turing Award Lecture by Ken Thompson, one of the original people involved with Unix. This has been done before, and can be done again.
I repeat--If your system has been compromised, you can only rely on things that are non-modifyable by the system (I.E. BIOS ROM, unconnected disks). Your filesystem driver cannot be trusted. Expect it to lie whenever it needs to. Assume that the rootkit will not do anything that will help you find it. Syncing your source tree depends on way too many things that would be compromised to rely on (filesystem, network driver, sync utilities, libc, etc). The same goes for any other software update of any kind (excluding livecds -- assuming said rootkit didn't change your BIOS).
If someone has compromised root, all of your utilities are not what they seem. The install, cp, etc. are not the same. Make is not the same. A 'make world' will not fix this. The utilities will not replace themselves. A rootkit could even run at kernel level and simply update what fake file it has to show to monitoring software. Please read other comments before repeating what has been said (erroneously) several times already.
The native version is actually moving forward pretty quickly. The main issue is that the native port uses kdelibs 4 (which compiles on pretty much everything now) and so it's more waiting for kde 4 to get through the development process (not ready for beta anytime soon).
So yeah, vmware for the moment, but kde4 should fix that problem (you could try building konqueror for windows--just don't expect it to be stable quite yet).
Well, I would say the average /.er would classify as competent. Think of your average myspace denizen, or someone of that nature.
On another note, Norvig seems to have put his foot in his mouth. Nice recovery, though.
Laptops will start shipping with a secondary LCD screen that's accessible when the machine is closed. So you will be able to do things like checking the status of your e-mail, IM, stocks, weather, whatever -- without taking the machine out of sleep mode, spinning up the hard drives, etc.
What?? - Explain to me how one is to interact with a machine in sleep mode. Either A) M$ is only turning off the primary LCD, Touchpad, Keyboard, etc. off and calling it "sleep mode," OR B) The machine continuously displays info on the second LCD. With A - That's a sucky sleep mode, and with B - that would drain power all the time, which is even worse.
Tablet PCs will have touch screen functionality in addition to just pen-based input. In addition, the handwriting recognition will "learn" from the files that Vista has indexed on your hard drive -- so if you're a doctor and you're always using words like "phenylketonuria," it will pick that up and recognize those words more readily.
Ummm... I thought that the whole point of a tablet PC was that it had touch screen functionality. The second idea is good, although rather old. ANY handwriting recognition software uses previous recognition data if there is any room for data storage at all.
As I mentioned in another post, Vista will ship with Windows Collaboration, a Groove-like networking feature that lets wireless users quickly form ad-hoc network and share files and even screen real estate in an easy way.
First off, ad-hoc wireless networking is not new in any sense of the word. File sharing protocols (zero configuration, no less) have been around for a while. Remote Desktop viewing/controlling applications are both old ideas that have been implemented--even on Windows.
Microsoft will stop talking about power states like "Standby" and "Hibernate" when Vista ships. There will only be "on" or "off." When you hit the power button on your laptop, essentially it goes into Standby. Meanwhile it will be writing out a Hibernate file. After it figures out you won't be coming back, it sinks into Hibernate mode. But (and I'm a little unclear on this) even then it will still be sending a trickle of power to the memory only to keep the memory alive. The idea is that fast on and off will be a way of life and people won't be rebooting their computers all the time.
"Standby" and "Hibernate" are not new to Windows either. Most laptops have this feature that activates (wait for it....) when you close the lid. Microsoft's "Fast on" sounds more like a "wakeup" than anything else. [given the confused explanation of this "feature", it's hard to say exactly what they mean]. The other point about this "feature" is the lack of an ability to turn off the laptop with the "off" button.
You will be able to associate with a new generation of LCD projectors wirelessly. No more showing up to a meeting and fumbling with monitor cables etc. Just find the projector and route PowerPoint through it.
Apparently Microsoft has managed to coordinate a zeroconf wireless LCD projector standard without anyone knowing--or is this simply support for bluetooth screens.
Vista is going to be a major, major upgrade... way more than anybody is giving it credit for yet and enough so that Apple should definitely be looking over its shoulder. Maybe Microsoft still won't be able to offer customers anything to compare with the iPod experience on a Mac, but business users in particular are going to be all over this.
On the iPod note -- did you miss Microsoft's press release about their "iPod killer" this week (or was it last week)? As to the "Apple should be looking over its' shoulder," please see the definitions of FUD and vaporware, as that is all that your argument seems to be based on.