One good thing about vista, crackers and wormware writers will start focusing on that and, hopefully, leave my PC alone:o) [ Reply to This ]
Crackers concentrate on the weakest link, not on the toughest. Old (and unpatched) Windows releases are what they target, Vista will be targeted only if it's significantly easy to exploit (which, if we believe the features, won't be the case).
No time for more refined. Unfortunately that's it.
It's obvious there's lots of patchwork in it. I browse the control panel and display properties and get the same feeling I have when looking at work I did in the last minute with a glue and duct tape.
IE7 still crashes like mad on Google Maps for some reason, and what's with the single tab display properties? What's the point of a tab bar, when you have always one single tab in it? We'll never know.
My Wacom tablet works terribly with Vista newfound tabletPC intelligence, it keep sassuming clicks I never have done, I had to go and basically disable all smart features and it still is funky (I can barely use a combo box with my Wacom in Vista).
It's apparent they'll be shipping it to the factory in few days either way, so I'm just hoping once they're done, they start working on a SP1 to be done for the January release that will fix all this mess.
IE7 will come with the WGA checks, and we know more than half of those 8x% that have IE6 now don't have legit Windows. They will not get IE7, even if they want it (of course, a small minority of them wil crack it).
Unless they go on a crackfest, all of them, we can expect steady 50% or more of IE6 for the next few years. Pitty, but remember IE5.0 guys! IE6 is bearable in my humble opinion (I'm a web dev).
The couple of points where IE's adoption increased: we have over a million people (half a million only official downloads of RC1 if I remember, counting bittorrents etc., companies will spread it internally to multiple test machines) or more, trying out Vista. Vista comes with IE (7).
Also hundreds of thousands testing their sites in IE7 (not just web devs). So there we go with this. Notice the IE7 share is around 2-3 % before release. It's those guys.
You know, the idea that Lenovo would put spying software/firmware in the system is an entirely logical one. It wouldn't even be the first time such a thing happened, although it would probably be the first time it happened on such a large scale.
Ever think that maybe people are paranoid because they know just how plausible it is?
The ThinkPC's were produced in China even before Lenovo owned the department. So are most other laptop brands, macs and even mp3 players, including iPod.
If you feel it's plausible, throw away all parts from your PC produced in China. You won't have much left.
I'd like to defend my viewpoint since I've been called, by some, an idiot and uninformed.
Consider you have to hack into Us givernment servers with confidential data. Even if you're not an incredible hax0r, it's obvious that if they find out about you, you're totally screwed. So the first thing you do, the MOMENT you grab the data, is cut the PC off the network.
Then encrypt and record the data on a mobile media (CD, DVD, Flash, whatever), and securely format the PC or even just destroy the original HDD.
Even before this, you'd turn off all possible logging activity, lock up the security, stop unneeded services, so that you can be relatively secure during the attack.
How is it that so much evidence in logs and what not was found on the "source" machines. This is WAY too much evidence. The contrast between the Windows hacked machines and the linux machines may be just a decoy to get the investigators stop tracing right there.
If the boxes were so secure, how did they get in there?
Why were the Windows boxes having "logs" of where the data was sent and so on. What kind of trojan would log their own activity on the compromised machine?
And the million dollar question is: how the f*ck they tied the Chinese *GOVERNMENT* with a Chinese *HACKER*... In fact, the first thought to occur to a government trying to hack into US's servers would be to hire hackers from another country to do it.
All the "evidence" presented is incredibly shallow and inconvincing if you try and put yourself in place of the people who did the attack.
Add to this the constant FUD that US spread that Lenovo puts spying chips in ThinkPads and similar conspiracy theories. It's apparent US find China a convenient target to blame, just the way they did with Iraq after 9/11.
I know a guy who used to work on test suites at Microsoft who has since quit, given their awful attitude towards bugs in Vista, and got a Mac
You'll see this kind of attitude in every bigger software company. I've had personal experiences like this in Adobe and Macromedia with their flagship products. Features are dropped, specs constantly changing and inconsistent between teams.
In some cases, you can spot the same feature implemented twice in source, with different interfaces, in different locations, and code linking randomly to one or the other, or even both (imagine updating this).
The bugs to be fixed are selected first for how obvious they are (likely to occur) and not how critical they are. This is why it's common that bugs that can totally wreck operation and lead to data loss may be left, if the occurence is rare or unlikely.
Everybody is in stress and the main goal is that you get the reviewed bug off your shoulders: if it's mildly reminiscent to something else, it's marked duplicate. If you can't reproduce it quickly, it's marked as fixed or not reproducible. Tricky bugs are marked "fact of life" or "deffered".
Successful companies and their products grow, but the way the products and resources are managed does not scale. Instead, programmers are expected to churn a major release every X months, screw everything else, and keep the cash flowing, the investors happy.
With Windows, we have a successful product that supports a huge ecosystem of applications (including legacy support), localization, usage cases etc. It's natural that in time, updates will become more rare, and will be much slower and more expensive to produce.
The trend of software-as-a-service is not coincidental with this situation. In 5 to 10 years the base software we use might be so complex and tough to work on, that the only way it can be sustained is by small, regular payments, and the updates will be small, incremental, security/performance oriented. No more big releases, no more rushes to fix bugs in the last moment.
This is the way evolution works. The other route is, of course, revolution...
Anyone else see a conflict between those two statements:
...being almost impossible for anyone else to observe........A video shows it all in action...
I suppose the solution to this paradox is that the tactile mouse will display pointer only during tests, and in actual situations nothing will be observable.
That could make it hard to quickly enter a password even if you know it.
-------
The biggest flaw of this method is that it does nothing for keyloggers. Yea, maybe if your boss wants to know your password by peaking over your shoulder, it'll help.
It won't help to protect you from your competitor or a black hat hacker who installed spyware on your PC.
I'm not so good at humor... "Be afraid. Be very afraid." was a reference to "The Fly" and also "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." I meant it to be funny.
Don't worry, you're getting the idea accross;)
Whatever happens, I have this (suicidal?) philosophy that we'll work it out, even if I don't live to see it. People has a tendency to do BS most of the time when they are not under real and desperate pressure, but once we realize the devastating results of what we're doing, we wise up.. and ultimately survive.
That's basically saying: humanity will survive through global warming, third world war, meteors and what not. Maybe we'll also outlive our planet, and our Sun.
The only thing that will definitely not survive is the current attitude of world leaders towards their internal and international politics.
It's like a big huge photorealistic RPG, with devastating consequences.
Here's how things will play out:
US denies this was a nuclear test, Korea demanding it is US will collect intelligence (only a guess:), realizing it's not real, at which point they will most likely start saying the opposite publically, to gain support for invading the country from the general public.
The big and very tricky part is, you gotta be insane to invade a country that has nukes in their arsenal. USA will only attack Korea if they're sure they don't, but will have to claim officially they do and YET convince people that an invasion is the correct course of action anyway (remember Iraq).
US attacks North Korea, no nukes, repeat same mess as in Iraq.
Iran switches to defensive and performs a "nuclear test"... Repeat until all target countries invaded.
You see, the governments of those countries know that invasion is inevitable. Those tests, claims and so on they push are a last measure in attempt to scare US away. Of course US has the resources to bend all this in their favor.
You're so smart and brave to say this! I'm glad you're not a country president.
Even if it's not a nuke, it's a lot more sad: it's the desparate attempt of a nation to protect itself against inevitable invasion from hostile forces.
If it's just a big pile of TNT, they can't react in the case of an actual attack.
Pretty much like this butterfly trying to convince this guy that it simply wants to be left alone.
Eleven of the twelve corporations in the original Dow Jones Index died. Elvis Presley died. The Soviet Union died. The United Society of Believers (Shakers) died. The Roman Empire died. Kepler's supernova died.
Quite on topic with the kind of article we're given here, I'd like to run a little improvised poll/research here.
When do you think Slashdot jumped the shark? That is, versus giving us actual news that matter about OSS and IT, we started getting 80% of this crap like this one.
You know Taco, if it is a slow news day, it's better to leave the front page alone than to post "stories" like this just for the sake of filling space.
Yea! And this in the middle of a breaking news: Firefox's source code leaked!
I have the link to prove it: Firefox's leaked source code
Grab it before Mozilla Corp. manages to shut down the server!
Apparently every human being dies sooner or later, but my fanboy club says I'm living forever since I'm better than the rest of the humans. Makes sense right?
We're living in a world were obscurity will become more and more invalid method of cheating, securing, confusing, misrepresenting, lying, disinforming, profiting, whatever.
'IT' just makes it easier to find what is already out there. I'd say good for Google, another good step to their goal of "indexing the world".
If someone intentionally plays high pitched unbearable sounds in attempt to "repel" me like a friggin insect, I'd feel compelled to put some earplugs on and come wreck his shop with my friends.
He assumes none of us have Vista ready PC-s (512 RAM or more, DirectX9 card optional).
Even if we ignore this very important flaw, a Vista basic ready machine from dell is sub $600. Including a laptop. I bought one myself a month ago, and it has 512 RAM and is Vista ready. Very decent machine for the money.
Add maximum $100-$150 for a DirectX9 card (Aero Glass), and you have a full blown Vista desktop for sub $750.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000.
Existing Office versions work just fine in Vista. Many people use Office 97 in XP.
Also "depending on your volume purchases" is quite a stretch. Notice the prices of Office and Vista (the corporate editions) and you're looking into more like sub $500 for both, if you're that keen on the new Office, that is.
Office Pro 2007 upgrade is $320-ish. And most people don't need Pro, they need the basic Word/Excel/PowerPoint pack. Upgrade: $239.
Vista Business upgrade is somewhere in those figures too, so sub $500 for all goodies, and sub $250 for Vista.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers?
Again he presumes we need Office 2007, while his heading says "Vista" upgrade: misleading. If the back end is good for your business, good enough to outweight the cost, the cost doesn't matter.
If it doesn't, then you don't buy it, simple as that.
---------- Totals:
Vista upgrade only - ~$250 Vista + Office upgrade - ~$500 Vista + Office + PC upgrade if outdated hardware (avg) - ~$750 (pessimistic: $1000)
I believe this is some sort of real piece of conspiracy going on here.
So QRIO and AIBO were discontinued, but almost every next day you can read about yet another freeky appendage or a robot designer to be inserted up your ass and crawl your intestines.
Slashdot Mirror
One good thing about vista, crackers and wormware writers will start focusing on that and, hopefully, leave my PC alone :o)
[ Reply to This ]
Crackers concentrate on the weakest link, not on the toughest. Old (and unpatched) Windows releases are what they target, Vista will be targeted only if it's significantly easy to exploit (which, if we believe the features, won't be the case).
No time for more refined. Unfortunately that's it.
It's obvious there's lots of patchwork in it. I browse the control panel and display properties and get the same feeling I have when looking at work I did in the last minute with a glue and duct tape.
IE7 still crashes like mad on Google Maps for some reason, and what's with the single tab display properties? What's the point of a tab bar, when you have always one single tab in it? We'll never know.
My Wacom tablet works terribly with Vista newfound tabletPC intelligence, it keep sassuming clicks I never have done, I had to go and basically disable all smart features and it still is funky (I can barely use a combo box with my Wacom in Vista).
It's apparent they'll be shipping it to the factory in few days either way, so I'm just hoping once they're done, they start working on a SP1 to be done for the January release that will fix all this mess.
IE7 will come with the WGA checks, and we know more than half of those 8x% that have IE6 now don't have legit Windows. They will not get IE7, even if they want it (of course, a small minority of them wil crack it).
Unless they go on a crackfest, all of them, we can expect steady 50% or more of IE6 for the next few years. Pitty, but remember IE5.0 guys! IE6 is bearable in my humble opinion (I'm a web dev).
The couple of points where IE's adoption increased: we have over a million people (half a million only official downloads of RC1 if I remember, counting bittorrents etc., companies will spread it internally to multiple test machines) or more, trying out Vista. Vista comes with IE (7).
Also hundreds of thousands testing their sites in IE7 (not just web devs). So there we go with this. Notice the IE7 share is around 2-3 % before release. It's those guys.
Read and weep.
The ThinkPC's were produced in China even before Lenovo owned the department. So are most other laptop brands, macs and even mp3 players, including iPod.
If you feel it's plausible, throw away all parts from your PC produced in China. You won't have much left.
I'd like to defend my viewpoint since I've been called, by some, an idiot and uninformed.
Consider you have to hack into Us givernment servers with confidential data. Even if you're not an incredible hax0r, it's obvious that if they find out about you, you're totally screwed. So the first thing you do, the MOMENT you grab the data, is cut the PC off the network.
Then encrypt and record the data on a mobile media (CD, DVD, Flash, whatever), and securely format the PC or even just destroy the original HDD.
Even before this, you'd turn off all possible logging activity, lock up the security, stop unneeded services, so that you can be relatively secure during the attack.
How is it that so much evidence in logs and what not was found on the "source" machines. This is WAY too much evidence. The contrast between the Windows hacked machines and the linux machines may be just a decoy to get the investigators stop tracing right there.
If the boxes were so secure, how did they get in there?
Why were the Windows boxes having "logs" of where the data was sent and so on. What kind of trojan would log their own activity on the compromised machine?
And the million dollar question is: how the f*ck they tied the Chinese *GOVERNMENT* with a Chinese *HACKER*... In fact, the first thought to occur to a government trying to hack into US's servers would be to hire hackers from another country to do it.
All the "evidence" presented is incredibly shallow and inconvincing if you try and put yourself in place of the people who did the attack.
Add to this the constant FUD that US spread that Lenovo puts spying chips in ThinkPads and similar conspiracy theories. It's apparent US find China a convenient target to blame, just the way they did with Iraq after 9/11.
I know a guy who used to work on test suites at Microsoft who has since quit, given their awful attitude towards bugs in Vista, and got a Mac
You'll see this kind of attitude in every bigger software company. I've had personal experiences like this in Adobe and Macromedia with their flagship products. Features are dropped, specs constantly changing and inconsistent between teams.
In some cases, you can spot the same feature implemented twice in source, with different interfaces, in different locations, and code linking randomly to one or the other, or even both (imagine updating this).
The bugs to be fixed are selected first for how obvious they are (likely to occur) and not how critical they are. This is why it's common that bugs that can totally wreck operation and lead to data loss may be left, if the occurence is rare or unlikely.
Everybody is in stress and the main goal is that you get the reviewed bug off your shoulders: if it's mildly reminiscent to something else, it's marked duplicate. If you can't reproduce it quickly, it's marked as fixed or not reproducible. Tricky bugs are marked "fact of life" or "deffered".
Successful companies and their products grow, but the way the products and resources are managed does not scale. Instead, programmers are expected to churn a major release every X months, screw everything else, and keep the cash flowing, the investors happy.
With Windows, we have a successful product that supports a huge ecosystem of applications (including legacy support), localization, usage cases etc. It's natural that in time, updates will become more rare, and will be much slower and more expensive to produce.
The trend of software-as-a-service is not coincidental with this situation. In 5 to 10 years the base software we use might be so complex and tough to work on, that the only way it can be sustained is by small, regular payments, and the updates will be small, incremental, security/performance oriented. No more big releases, no more rushes to fix bugs in the last moment.
This is the way evolution works. The other route is, of course, revolution...
As mentioned before, the attack are most likely not from China at all.
No decent hacker would leave traces from his own machine when he could easily use a zombie network to carry out the attacks and collect information.
They keep claiming China, China, China.. I'm starting to think it's convenient for them to stick to that version for their own internal affairs.
I suppose the solution to this paradox is that the tactile mouse will display pointer only during tests, and in actual situations nothing will be observable.
That could make it hard to quickly enter a password even if you know it.
-------
The biggest flaw of this method is that it does nothing for keyloggers. Yea, maybe if your boss wants to know your password by peaking over your shoulder, it'll help.
It won't help to protect you from your competitor or a black hat hacker who installed spyware on your PC.
This device is a very nice and tender approach to a problem.
Sort of like killing a fly with a bulldozer.
Don't worry, you're getting the idea accross
Whatever happens, I have this (suicidal?) philosophy that we'll work it out, even if I don't live to see it.
People has a tendency to do BS most of the time when they are not under real and desperate pressure, but once we realize the devastating results of what we're doing, we wise up.. and ultimately survive.
That's basically saying: humanity will survive through global warming, third world war, meteors and what not. Maybe we'll also outlive our planet, and our Sun.
The only thing that will definitely not survive is the current attitude of world leaders towards their internal and international politics.
Now THAT is what I call constructive thinking.
It scares the hell out of me.
:P
It scares me more than it scares you, alas there's no +6 Insightful to mod me appropriately
It's like a big huge photorealistic RPG, with devastating consequences.
Here's how things will play out:
US denies this was a nuclear test, Korea demanding it is
US will collect intelligence (only a guess:), realizing it's not real, at which point they will most likely start saying the opposite publically, to gain support for invading the country from the general public.
The big and very tricky part is, you gotta be insane to invade a country that has nukes in their arsenal. USA will only attack Korea if they're sure they don't, but will have to claim officially they do and YET convince people that an invasion is the correct course of action anyway (remember Iraq).
US attacks North Korea, no nukes, repeat same mess as in Iraq.
Iran switches to defensive and performs a "nuclear test"... Repeat until all target countries invaded.
You see, the governments of those countries know that invasion is inevitable. Those tests, claims and so on they push are a last measure in attempt to scare US away. Of course US has the resources to bend all this in their favor.
It's not a nuke
You're so smart and brave to say this! I'm glad you're not a country president.
Even if it's not a nuke, it's a lot more sad: it's the desparate attempt of a nation to protect itself against inevitable invasion from hostile forces.
If it's just a big pile of TNT, they can't react in the case of an actual attack.
Pretty much like this butterfly trying to convince this guy that it simply wants to be left alone.
Eleven of the twelve corporations in the original Dow Jones Index died. Elvis Presley died. The Soviet Union died. The United Society of Believers (Shakers) died. The Roman Empire died. Kepler's supernova died.
Elves Presley didn't die you bastard!
Quite on topic with the kind of article we're given here, I'd like to run a little improvised poll/research here.
When do you think Slashdot jumped the shark? That is, versus giving us actual news that matter about OSS and IT, we started getting 80% of this crap like this one.
Thanks in advance for your opinions!
OMGWTFBBQ! Someone edited my post to remove the link... Are Slashdot and Mozilla working together to take over the world!?
Conspiracy! How's that for a SLOW NEWS DAY..
Yea! And this in the middle of a breaking news: Firefox's source code leaked!
I have the link to prove it: Firefox's leaked source code
Grab it before Mozilla Corp. manages to shut down the server!
... will *I* die? There's no conclusive evidence.
Apparently every human being dies sooner or later, but my fanboy club says I'm living forever since I'm better than the rest of the humans. Makes sense right?
Let's see, but I bet I won't die ever.
We're living in a world were obscurity will become more and more invalid method of cheating, securing, confusing, misrepresenting, lying, disinforming, profiting, whatever.
'IT' just makes it easier to find what is already out there. I'd say good for Google, another good step to their goal of "indexing the world".
If someone intentionally plays high pitched unbearable sounds in attempt to "repel" me like a friggin insect, I'd feel compelled to put some earplugs on and come wreck his shop with my friends.
That's the kind of peace we're talking.
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000.
He assumes none of us have Vista ready PC-s (512 RAM or more, DirectX9 card optional).
Even if we ignore this very important flaw, a Vista basic ready machine from dell is sub $600. Including a laptop. I bought one myself a month ago, and it has 512 RAM and is Vista ready. Very decent machine for the money.
Add maximum $100-$150 for a DirectX9 card (Aero Glass), and you have a full blown Vista desktop for sub $750.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000.
Existing Office versions work just fine in Vista. Many people use Office 97 in XP.
Also "depending on your volume purchases" is quite a stretch. Notice the prices of Office and Vista (the corporate editions) and you're looking into more like sub $500 for both, if you're that keen on the new Office, that is.
Office Pro 2007 upgrade is $320-ish. And most people don't need Pro, they need the basic Word/Excel/PowerPoint pack. Upgrade: $239.
Vista Business upgrade is somewhere in those figures too, so sub $500 for all goodies, and sub $250 for Vista.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers?
Again he presumes we need Office 2007, while his heading says "Vista" upgrade: misleading. If the back end is good for your business, good enough to outweight the cost, the cost doesn't matter.
If it doesn't, then you don't buy it, simple as that.
----------
Totals:
Vista upgrade only - ~$250
Vista + Office upgrade - ~$500
Vista + Office + PC upgrade if outdated hardware (avg) - ~$750 (pessimistic: $1000)
or a robot designer to be inserted up your ass
ok.. that was a curious type of typo to make...
I believe this is some sort of real piece of conspiracy going on here.
So QRIO and AIBO were discontinued, but almost every next day you can read about yet another freeky appendage or a robot designer to be inserted up your ass and crawl your intestines.
What are these guys preparing for us !?
Man, I'm so no taking the red pill.