I believe the difficulty you ascribe to the removal task is unfounded. Especially the assertion that people HERE would have a hard time. Seriously, a bootable OS with an AV on it, and you've got the name-> google and BAM you know exactly what you're dealing with.
Most of us with non-technical friends have probably removed it once or twice years ago. Yet you say "most of you guys won't even have a clue, why you would have to read a Microsoft article! That requires mad skillz."
OK, here is what I believe. 1. You're an idiot. There. I said it. 2. Go re-read my actual input. Then re-read it until you get it. 3. People HERE in the main - in this thread have talked bollocks. I think a level well below 50% have some idea of what they deal with, the rest are the idiot majority. 4. Cleaning up conflicker off a single machine re your none technical friends is totally irrelevant. And thats before I smash you over the head and point you at baselines. What the *fuck* is the point in walking round with your glorious bootable AV disk, when after you 'clean' it and turn on the re-infection takes place.
I would go into the facts that you have to quaratine and create a controlled environment, fix the base problems, and do the patching. The cleaning off the virus from individual machines is the easy part. The scale is the difficult part, not the removal from a box.
*I've worked large conflicker clean ups. Unless you have - shut your fucking cake hole.
Where did I advocate buying new machines? I didn't.
But to answer you dubious point, new machines nominally don't have some (but not all of it is answered so simply, weak passwords for example remain a problem unless that is addressed..) the bad baselines.
No, conflicker has worm elements. So, the hard part of the clean up is not per se an individual machine. Its that you need to solve the baseline problems that allow conflicker to do its thing.
Re-installing 'stuff' won't make this go away. Doing it wrong just reinfects the machine. So, as I said, what has to be done is the cause and baselines that allow conflicker to replicate have to be solved (harder part) - and then machines with good baselines go through clean up and go back on the network (easier part..)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007 Any tech learning about conflicker can read about it, and start to understand what needs to be fixed. Patch, correct password weakenesses, stop autorun etc etc. Today, this is somewhat simple as a lot of tools and detection tools exist.
People in threat waving around Fdisk and re-install media saying 'they could fix this' - probably in fact are clueless and need to understand the problems involved. Conflicker breeds off poor security and bad baselines. Thats how it gets in. Thats how it replicates. Thats how it hangs around and re-infects.
This thread is disappointing. So much hate. Hate leads to fear, and fear leads to the dark side.
Anyway. Conflicker. Nasty. Simple. Old. A clean up is not easy, but conflicker requires some bad baselines to be operating for it to get through and thrive. If you fix the baseline issues, the clean up can follow. A clean susyem thats updated properly isn't infectable via conflicker. So frankly a system sorted put back in should be fine. You'll obviously have to do this step by step and yes, there is a price. Most orgs this size have IT staff so I don't know how the figures are drawn up.
I also have to say, the clean up tools and detection tools mean attacking conflicker infection is on the easier end of security clean up. The story is sad because it seems to indicate ever present stupidity in public services. Advocates and supporters of public services need to understand that its not a ob creation scheme. If someone has a role or job, they must be competant. Trained. Skilled. People who are not have no place in it.
Raring Ringtail is just too close to Raring Ring Piece... and for some reason has me thinking of a bad night on the curry. I really hope they use better names in future..
Re:Can who killed the start menu / Metro apps in w
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Seems they did this. But then they are now directing her to put back in the start button and to reverse course somewhat (speculative).
Assuming the board over-rules the current windows team - and force a change from the disaster that is Win 8 - will she quit?:)
Re:Microsoft is in deep shit now!
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So, XP level security and no UAC and no sandboxing in IE and other windows level engineering changes were not needed.
How about I just say you seem to have no idea about what you are talking about. And you _deserve_the modding down.
First.. this thread is already amazing for the shit being peddled, and the non factual based opinion.
From what I've read, the X devs don't like X. They don't think its network transparent, and they really don't like this idea that X is it. They are trying to fix a lot of problems through wayland. It seems to me that Linux should really put a lot of weight behind wayland, not so it purely replaces X, but so the underlying work can be done to find the best solutions.
X has serious problems. And these are not likely to be fixed by throwing more into X.
These Devs seem to laugh at people who 'defend X'. And I'll take theor view over that of the less than educated baying mob..
Most posters so far don't seem to know or understand what happened in Winh8.
Its_not a UI change. Its a UI and core system change, and a turning most of what was Windows to 'Legacy'.
The problem is much deeper than the UI. The problem is MS has explained very poorly what the new core OS and APIs are, and what tools and development was needed to make it fly. Most ordinary windows devs were left simply not knowing what APIs were going to be new or legacy.
I've fitted and made Windows 8 work for me (care of classic shell, and a few tweaks), and under the bonnet frankly there are good engineering works to be had. But the new UI is on par with the poorest touch interfaces I have seen. Its compounded by brilliance like the keyboard shortcuts that MS pushed in relation for it. Nobody in the Windows team seemed to realise that requiring bucketloads of keyboard shortcuts in a UI that is supposed to be touch based is an absolute fail.
You can add in more brilliance - like screwing with Explorer and putting in the appalling ribbon menu bar. Only, they did not fix the ribbon. So its got groupings of small icons mixed in with some that are good enough for touch - and these are too small to work in a touch interface. Sheer fucking genius. And either make the control panel in the dekstop side, or in the new UI. In 8 for some reason the control settings and options get split on both sides and its a plain mess. How it passed UI testing and end user testing is beyond comprehension.
It was fascinating during the development cycle to read some of the justification for the changes. They took feedback collected from end user machines. But not mine. And probably not yours. I know of nobody sane who does not turn that off. So, they collated data from the wrong userbase - and then decided that 'no one is using the start button, lets get rid of it' (I know I simplified the background, but hey..)
The only place where Windows 8 with the new UI works is on ARM, and its been a mistake to put and drive this into the X86 and X64 world. Windows 8 with an option for he new UI should have been the default there, with desktop as the default OS and with legacy and current customer support for the long term being the objective.
And a couple more things from the new UI angle. The applications are tedious, poor, and low quality. And thats before you get into the full screen nature of them UI, and the horrendous square everything. Every single part of it is sharp edged, square, old. There is nothing fresh about it. It reminds me orf the simplifed UI from win2k. This may have reduced system load and it may have been required, but it does not look nice. It does not feel nice. It does not feel modern, or fresh. It just feels bad. And in doing this they had to throw away features from 7 that were previously touted and positive steps forward.
The bottom line is as a release OS - it is a trainwreck. And not just in look and feel, but way beyond. Its a train wreck at the API and engineering level too. Now 99% of the audience is on the wrong track. Moving them over requires that they are going to have to change the gauge on all their wheels.
This is an incredible uphill problem. Move everyone from what they know and like, to what they don't. and.. don't.
The real problem is that the Windows end client is actually the grounding for the MS server and application layers. If the end client fails, these will fail also. And this means that_right now_ the board at MS should be rolling heads.
A really really dumb idea. Its one of those areas where people need to comprehend what a tablet is good and not good at. Reading office documents is viable, but actually doing office level work? No no no.
I was young when you arrived a PM. This country was on its knees. It was backrupt, dead people were in the streets unburied and weeks of garbage strewn the streets from leftism gone mad. Labour and the Unions were in full wrecking ball mode.
Yes, you were a bitch, but the medicine we had, and it was not nice, was in the most part - needed.
You played a part in ending the cold war, in hauling down the wall, and in supporting Solidarity in Poland when you'd normally prefer to drive a stake through any other union's heart.
And you helped pull a wall down and break up the cold war.
No fucking wonder Linux on the desktop has failed. I'm looking at Wayland on youtube and it looks..... unready. The windows have no bordering. The applications are jerky. Applications are crashing. I've used X, and multiple windows managers, and I use all the remote tech out there, from NX, VNC, through to RDP. And given the educated commentry, X is more complete, only because its older. And its a somewhat cleaned up mess.
I see the attraction. The currency is global, which means that unlike some things (paypal) I might be able to do things with people in some countries that could not happen before. Its breaking the ice and allowing anyone to barter goods or services in exchange for coin. Its not really monitored by government yet/or heavily - and as such it has certain nice features.
The downside, is that it can and is being used for illegal things. An Iranian man can pay for a server outside Iran. This may be illegal to the zealots who run a theocracy there. A man in the US might pay for something outside of US gov finance circles and the gov may deem this non legal. And criminals may use it for finance. And certainly I know that people are buying drugs on the silk road via it.
Given in the US there is some talk of ending the drug way, the better way for them to face that off would be to legalise then tax it.
As its a small internet currency, my personal take on this is that if someone is doing something illegal - its not the coin that is the crime. It will largely be the end product, drugs, violence. These are often dealt with under existing law. I think it terms of small sized bartering, Its creating people opportunities for goods and services. I don't mind the governments saying large transactions or repeating transactions should have monitoring, but I hope they allow it room to operate.
I may change my view on this, but thats roughly what I think at the moment.
I've done some testing. I tried to create conditions for success.
1. I had handy an M18 R2 - with dual 7970s. 2. I work a lot of hours and my kit is used by my employer. In trade off I use some juice for testing. 3. CPU bitcoining is worthless - just forget about it totally. Anyone telling you that only high power GPUs, FPGAs or ASICs offer a return are correct, and thats before ever discussing power. 4. I am vaguly able to generate 0.05 BTCs a day in test conditions. This currenty equates to 1/20th of a bitcoin per day, so 20 days would get me around $75.
Notes: At current rates, it will take 400 days to recover the cost of the laptop - assuming power was free, which it is not. Power draw is not far off a nasty P4 desktop box - but daya by day 24/7 I don't like the look of the power costs.
ASICs and FGPAs seem to be full of start ups, and small companies offering various now and future hardware and G/hs rates. These offer performance that will - as far as I can see eliminate GPUs in the near future, and make BTC mining the home of specialist miners only. Which is perhaps where it needs to go given the silly power required now on commodity hardware for minimalist return.
I can't really equate this being green, in any way, no matter how I cut it. I think the idea is to cut your power use, not get creative in trying to generate money of silly power usage.
I think previously, some crazy folks might have been able to make large btc mining operations on commodity hardware - I think its moved away from that now. At least where I live, and with energy costs what they are.
And the figures now are not what they were, when BTCs fell to 2$ - its fairly scary to see the loss basis if you make assumtions of hardware costs/ profit. For me, it has to be hobbyist mining, and with no direct aim 'to make' money.
If someone else buys your hardware for you; and if someone pays your power costs and colling / air con costs - then on the surface money could be made... but its a mirage really. Someone has to pay
No, Terminal was originally simply the crippled ways users (I'm using the term with some sarcasm) had to use just to get access to a computer..
And the age of the 56k modem is applicable in a minority of cases, move on. And to quote jobs, when he was at Parc Xerox - and he saw the future, he said once seen all computers will work that way. It was just obvious.
And further, friendly to users is a good thing. I meet many who argue otherwise, and they are wrong. Nuff said.
The terminal is an echo from the past, even with all the things added like shells and so on. It makes sense that someone make a terminal that can in fact operate just like a window manager can, with the added power that can bring. Seems to me that with things like HTML5 - that weaving this into a nice terminal (which care of the video seems to be what they have done).
Its still a little rough around the edges, and it looks a bit like it needs more work in terms of UI and polish, but someday all terminals might work this way.
So what happened to "Security: it's not a piece of software or hardware. It's a process."?
It's a process and that process must be taught.
If users are taught that giving their passwords away is wrong on every level, even to IT professions who are upgrading their work PC (happened!), and yet they still do it, they need more training. If that training involves sleeping rough for a week because they lost their job because they're too stupid to learn and follow a simple rule, so be it.
We've just established that Bruce, and to most degree's 'I' - don't believe user training works. And the first thing you say is 'If users are taught'. You can teach monkeys not to do something. Which is fine. You can, really. The problem is thats not really training, its simply repetitive rinse, repeat. Once this is understood, the next social engineering attack will process the new method of countering this, and go through the flawed engineering in any case.
I'll give you an example. You teach your monekys not to click links in email.. You rigorously enforce and train your monkeys again and again, until you are old and grey, and you hit 100% success. The hackers comprehend your switch. So instead of providing a clickable link, they simply provide a text string - and let the users know to copy this to the browser. And make sure to emphisise the fact that its not a link and is totally safe (yay) to paste into a browser. Monkey now has a process problem. This is not a click link. Cue robot human stupid - its a process I don't understand. I know, lets paste into the browser and que boom-baddabing-baddaboom.
You cannot 'train' people as the solution to fundamental breakage or engineering issues. Well, you can, but your failure rates will be high, and your success rates are low. And the fact is hacking and entry is not a percentage game. Its not as portrayed as being a risk question where if the risk falls to a sort of low amount - its all ok. Hackers need single entry at high enough priv. Its a zero/ or a one digital divide. You are either compromised, or you are not. Its ruthless Its brutal. And its combatted by utter bullshit and fantasy that if you have some training, or some security, or some product - that you are OK.
I don't blame anyone who argues with Bruce. Thats a choice and a viewpoint people hold. But as I said earlier, the real world out there is operating with eggs all in backets and the fixes are sticking plaster stupid. And the engineering is piss poor and you can do piss poor engineering because there is no real price for doing it. The bridge can fall down, and everyone shruggs. All bridges are like that. Its no one's fault. Its just how the world is. Right?
He is correct. User training is largely a waste of time, and both in development, and deployment, the systems are not designed or setup for security. So yes, users clicking a link is not safe, and it should be. Users opening an application and reading data should be safe, but isn't.
These problems have to be engineered out. They cannot be socially controlled out, the audience has neither the inclination, knowledge or interest in resolving this. And even after training, once its established how you've trained your monkeys, a new method will be established that undoes the training.
The whole industry is still in its infancy. Its building bridges that are made from cardboard, and without any form of certification or regime. This will only be resolved when it becomes apparent that software providers cannot ship things like 'our software cannot be held accountable for anything, have a nice day'. Nobody in the world making bridges gets away with 'if this bridge falls down, we are not accountable'.
The Adobe and Java scenario is exactly like this. Both are wholly unaccountable, and yet frankly directly responsible for perhaps billions upon billions of dollars of data loss, theft, security breaches, and so on.
There is no_fundamental_reason why people should even bother to make their software secure - so they only ally a baseline effort to the task. Until this is addressed, the rinse, shampoo, rinse, shampoo will repeat. And its actually why the security landscape is degrading. Things like Metasploit may have seemed to help. But fundamentally the white hat hacking and info security folks have ultimatly not helped. Its only highlighting how bad things are, putting guns in hands that should not have them, and making things globally worse. The vendors have not changed by very much.
I'm kinda sick of this horseshit. If someone breaks the law, or if a corp or company breaks the law - then_you_already_have_legal_premise. And thus far I see lots of people have been investigated, and have been dealt with. Nowhere is this a basis for turning round and eliminating, or wiping out a free press. Why would anyone be unhinged enough to not understand that MP's and 'famous' people have decided to have their pound of flesh and gain revenge. Only this is a revenge on everyone. Its detrimental to our world and our way of life.
And be clear about something else - BEFORE this round of lunacy, the UK ALREADY has the some of the world's most ludicrous and insane libel laws.
I understand what the MPs and famous people are complaining about. I understand that applying the law is tedious. However, this brings shame on them and our society. Destroying freedom to presumably have freedom doesn't function. I expect more of the MPs.
I hope the press globally simply refuse to sign up. And the same for all bloggers and free people.
You mean this society where burglers and car theieves steal other people's gear for the 500th fucking time and get yet another slap on the wrists?
So, no, I don't accept your thrust. I think MS should have got the fine, but this isn't a fine. This kind of money is legalised theft. Its taking wholly undue amounts for what is today a minor issue, no longer a monopoly, and some of you just see it as 'sticking it to the man'. Its not. All it does is hurt the market, the end users, the shareholders, and the employee. Even in a court, they seek to balance justice with effect.
Without looking deeper, the EU just took 1/6th of the money off them for a browser infraction. Whatever you or others think, I can't say I think thats fair. Not today. Not when nobody could claim that they are denied a choice in the market on systems or browsers.
Its basically legalised theft, from employees, and from shareholders, into the EU, which can;t account or pass its own audits. I'd not celebrate this so quickly is my view.
I think the fine is outrageous. Yes, MS did breach a commitment. From what I've read, this was a mistake, and an oversight.
The reality is that they did include the browser choice window in their OS - and basically did so over a timeframe where the raw market truth is that not only are MS no longer a dominant monopoly. But that the PC itself has moved into an area where it no longer exists in the monopolistic position in technology.
Its simply not possible to make a claim today, or even in the past year that the IE browser in their OS is what it was 2, 3, 5, years back. And this personally I think should have been also considered carefully in the decision. Things have changed, and they are not as they were.
And I fail to see why people celebrate this. The dictatorship called the EU has simply hammered a business. It won't use the money well. It can't even pass its own accounts or audits. Why are the European people accepting huge fines against employers, in a harsh economic time, from an instution that is corrupt, non democratic, and incapable of even doing its own accounts.
And I'm not saying don't hit MS hard. But this is 732 Million dollars for a browser infraction. At a time where the reality is the citizens of Europe do not have a broswer monopoly problem. Its fucking lunacy.
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I believe the difficulty you ascribe to the removal task is unfounded. Especially the assertion that people HERE would have a hard time. Seriously, a bootable OS with an AV on it, and you've got the name-> google and BAM you know exactly what you're dealing with.
Most of us with non-technical friends have probably removed it once or twice years ago. Yet you say "most of you guys won't even have a clue, why you would have to read a Microsoft article! That requires mad skillz."
OK, here is what I believe.
1. You're an idiot. There. I said it.
2. Go re-read my actual input. Then re-read it until you get it.
3. People HERE in the main - in this thread have talked bollocks. I think a level well below 50% have some idea of what they deal with, the rest are the idiot majority.
4. Cleaning up conflicker off a single machine re your none technical friends is totally irrelevant. And thats before I smash you over the head and point you at baselines. What the *fuck* is the point in walking round with your glorious bootable AV disk, when after you 'clean' it and turn on the re-infection takes place.
I would go into the facts that you have to quaratine and create a controlled environment, fix the base problems, and do the patching. The cleaning off the virus from individual machines is the easy part. The scale is the difficult part, not the removal from a box.
*I've worked large conflicker clean ups. Unless you have - shut your fucking cake hole.
Where did I advocate buying new machines?
I didn't.
But to answer you dubious point, new machines nominally don't have some (but not all of it is answered so simply, weak passwords for example remain a problem unless that is addressed..) the bad baselines.
Yeah, no infection. Sadly no working system either.
Fail. Go away.
And how would that fix the problem - exactly?
Wipe - reinstall - re-infect. Well done. Do you like wasting your time and everyone else's?
No, conflicker has worm elements. So, the hard part of the clean up is not per se an individual machine. Its that you need to solve the baseline problems that allow conflicker to do its thing.
Re-installing 'stuff' won't make this go away. Doing it wrong just reinfects the machine.
So, as I said, what has to be done is the cause and baselines that allow conflicker to replicate have to be solved (harder part) - and then machines with good baselines go through clean up and go back on the network (easier part..)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007
Any tech learning about conflicker can read about it, and start to understand what needs to be fixed. Patch, correct password weakenesses, stop autorun etc etc. Today, this is somewhat simple as a lot of tools and detection tools exist.
People in threat waving around Fdisk and re-install media saying 'they could fix this' - probably in fact are clueless and need to understand the problems involved. Conflicker breeds off poor security and bad baselines. Thats how it gets in. Thats how it replicates. Thats how it hangs around and re-infects.
This thread is disappointing. So much hate. Hate leads to fear, and fear leads to the dark side.
Anyway. Conflicker. Nasty. Simple. Old. A clean up is not easy, but conflicker requires some bad baselines to be operating for it to get through and thrive. If you fix the baseline issues, the clean up can follow. A clean susyem thats updated properly isn't infectable via conflicker. So frankly a system sorted put back in should be fine. You'll obviously have to do this step by step and yes, there is a price. Most orgs this size have IT staff so I don't know how the figures are drawn up.
I also have to say, the clean up tools and detection tools mean attacking conflicker infection is on the easier end of security clean up. The story is sad because it seems to indicate ever present stupidity in public services. Advocates and supporters of public services need to understand that its not a ob creation scheme. If someone has a role or job, they must be competant. Trained. Skilled. People who are not have no place in it.
Just has a bad feeling... starting with the name.
Raring Ringtail is just too close to Raring Ring Piece... and for some reason has me thinking of a bad night on the curry. I really hope they use better names in future..
Seems they did this.
But then they are now directing her to put back in the start button and to reverse course somewhat (speculative).
Assuming the board over-rules the current windows team - and force a change from the disaster that is Win 8 - will she quit? :)
So, XP level security and no UAC and no sandboxing in IE and other windows level engineering changes were not needed.
How about I just say you seem to have no idea about what you are talking about. And you _deserve_the modding down.
First.. this thread is already amazing for the shit being peddled, and the non factual based opinion.
From what I've read, the X devs don't like X. They don't think its network transparent, and they really don't like this idea that X is it.
They are trying to fix a lot of problems through wayland. It seems to me that Linux should really put a lot of weight behind wayland, not so it purely replaces X, but so the underlying work can be done to find the best solutions.
X has serious problems. And these are not likely to be fixed by throwing more into X.
These Devs seem to laugh at people who 'defend X'. And I'll take theor view over that of the less than educated baying mob..
Most posters so far don't seem to know or understand what happened in Winh8.
Its_not a UI change. Its a UI and core system change, and a turning most of what was Windows to 'Legacy'.
The problem is much deeper than the UI. The problem is MS has explained very poorly what the new core OS and APIs are, and what tools and development was needed to make it fly. Most ordinary windows devs were left simply not knowing what APIs were going to be new or legacy.
I've fitted and made Windows 8 work for me (care of classic shell, and a few tweaks), and under the bonnet frankly there are good engineering works to be had. But the new UI is on par with the poorest touch interfaces I have seen. Its compounded by brilliance like the keyboard shortcuts that MS pushed in relation for it. Nobody in the Windows team seemed to realise that requiring bucketloads of keyboard shortcuts in a UI that is supposed to be touch based is an absolute fail.
You can add in more brilliance - like screwing with Explorer and putting in the appalling ribbon menu bar. Only, they did not fix the ribbon. So its got groupings of small icons mixed in with some that are good enough for touch - and these are too small to work in a touch interface. Sheer fucking genius. And either make the control panel in the dekstop side, or in the new UI. In 8 for some reason the control settings and options get split on both sides and its a plain mess. How it passed UI testing and end user testing is beyond comprehension.
It was fascinating during the development cycle to read some of the justification for the changes. They took feedback collected from end user machines. But not mine. And probably not yours. I know of nobody sane who does not turn that off. So, they collated data from the wrong userbase - and then decided that 'no one is using the start button, lets get rid of it' (I know I simplified the background, but hey..)
The only place where Windows 8 with the new UI works is on ARM, and its been a mistake to put and drive this into the X86 and X64 world. Windows 8 with an option for he new UI should have been the default there, with desktop as the default OS and with legacy and current customer support for the long term being the objective.
And a couple more things from the new UI angle. The applications are tedious, poor, and low quality. And thats before you get into the full screen nature of them UI, and the horrendous square everything. Every single part of it is sharp edged, square, old. There is nothing fresh about it. It reminds me orf the simplifed UI from win2k. This may have reduced system load and it may have been required, but it does not look nice. It does not feel nice. It does not feel modern, or fresh. It just feels bad. And in doing this they had to throw away features from 7 that were previously touted and positive steps forward.
The bottom line is as a release OS - it is a trainwreck. And not just in look and feel, but way beyond. Its a train wreck at the API and engineering level too. Now 99% of the audience is on the wrong track. Moving them over requires that they are going to have to change the gauge on all their wheels.
This is an incredible uphill problem. Move everyone from what they know and like, to what they don't. and .. don't.
The real problem is that the Windows end client is actually the grounding for the MS server and application layers. If the end client fails, these will fail also. And this means that_right now_ the board at MS should be rolling heads.
A really really dumb idea. Its one of those areas where people need to comprehend what a tablet is good and not good at. Reading office documents is viable, but actually doing office level work? No no no.
This needs to be handled with a great deal of delicacy.
I believe I'd tend to put half the subs there, and open all the nuke doors, and lets the news coverage speak for itself. Other words are not needed.
Its hard to shell the SK Capital if your army has been turned to glass.
I was young when you arrived a PM. This country was on its knees. It was backrupt, dead people were in the streets unburied and weeks of garbage strewn the streets from leftism gone mad. Labour and the Unions were in full wrecking ball mode.
Yes, you were a bitch, but the medicine we had, and it was not nice, was in the most part - needed.
You played a part in ending the cold war, in hauling down the wall, and in supporting Solidarity in Poland when you'd normally prefer to drive a stake through any other union's heart.
And you helped pull a wall down and break up the cold war.
Rest in Peace.
No fucking wonder Linux on the desktop has failed. I'm looking at Wayland on youtube and it looks..... unready. The windows have no bordering. The applications are jerky. Applications are crashing. I've used X, and multiple windows managers, and I use all the remote tech out there, from NX, VNC, through to RDP. And given the educated commentry, X is more complete, only because its older. And its a somewhat cleaned up mess.
What a crap shoot. What a mess.
I see the attraction.
The currency is global, which means that unlike some things (paypal) I might be able to do things with people in some countries that could not happen before.
Its breaking the ice and allowing anyone to barter goods or services in exchange for coin.
Its not really monitored by government yet/or heavily - and as such it has certain nice features.
The downside, is that it can and is being used for illegal things. An Iranian man can pay for a server outside Iran. This may be illegal to the zealots who run a theocracy there. A man in the US might pay for something outside of US gov finance circles and the gov may deem this non legal. And criminals may use it for finance. And certainly I know that people are buying drugs on the silk road via it.
Given in the US there is some talk of ending the drug way, the better way for them to face that off would be to legalise then tax it.
As its a small internet currency, my personal take on this is that if someone is doing something illegal - its not the coin that is the crime. It will largely be the end product, drugs, violence. These are often dealt with under existing law. I think it terms of small sized bartering, Its creating people opportunities for goods and services. I don't mind the governments saying large transactions or repeating transactions should have monitoring, but I hope they allow it room to operate.
I may change my view on this, but thats roughly what I think at the moment.
I've done some testing. I tried to create conditions for success.
1. I had handy an M18 R2 - with dual 7970s.
2. I work a lot of hours and my kit is used by my employer. In trade off I use some juice for testing.
3. CPU bitcoining is worthless - just forget about it totally. Anyone telling you that only high power GPUs, FPGAs or ASICs offer a return are correct, and thats before ever discussing power.
4. I am vaguly able to generate 0.05 BTCs a day in test conditions. This currenty equates to 1/20th of a bitcoin per day, so 20 days would get me around $75.
Notes: At current rates, it will take 400 days to recover the cost of the laptop - assuming power was free, which it is not. Power draw is not far off a nasty P4 desktop box - but daya by day 24/7 I don't like the look of the power costs.
ASICs and FGPAs seem to be full of start ups, and small companies offering various now and future hardware and G/hs rates. These offer performance that will - as far as I can see eliminate GPUs in the near future, and make BTC mining the home of specialist miners only. Which is perhaps where it needs to go given the silly power required now on commodity hardware for minimalist return.
I can't really equate this being green, in any way, no matter how I cut it. I think the idea is to cut your power use, not get creative in trying to generate money of silly power usage.
I think previously, some crazy folks might have been able to make large btc mining operations on commodity hardware - I think its moved away from that now. At least where I live, and with energy costs what they are.
And the figures now are not what they were, when BTCs fell to 2$ - its fairly scary to see the loss basis if you make assumtions of hardware costs/ profit. For me, it has to be hobbyist mining, and with no direct aim 'to make' money.
If someone else buys your hardware for you; and if someone pays your power costs and colling / air con costs - then on the surface money could be made... but its a mirage really. Someone has to pay
No, Terminal was originally simply the crippled ways users (I'm using the term with some sarcasm) had to use just to get access to a computer..
And the age of the 56k modem is applicable in a minority of cases, move on.
And to quote jobs, when he was at Parc Xerox - and he saw the future, he said once seen all computers will work that way. It was just obvious.
And further, friendly to users is a good thing. I meet many who argue otherwise, and they are wrong. Nuff said.
The terminal is an echo from the past, even with all the things added like shells and so on. It makes sense that someone make a terminal that can in fact operate just like a window manager can, with the added power that can bring. Seems to me that with things like HTML5 - that weaving this into a nice terminal (which care of the video seems to be what they have done).
Its still a little rough around the edges, and it looks a bit like it needs more work in terms of UI and polish, but someday all terminals might work this way.
So what happened to "Security: it's not a piece of software or hardware. It's a process."?
It's a process and that process must be taught.
If users are taught that giving their passwords away is wrong on every level, even to IT professions who are upgrading their work PC (happened!), and yet they still do it, they need more training. If that training involves sleeping rough for a week because they lost their job because they're too stupid to learn and follow a simple rule, so be it.
We've just established that Bruce, and to most degree's 'I' - don't believe user training works. And the first thing you say is 'If users are taught'.
You can teach monkeys not to do something. Which is fine. You can, really. The problem is thats not really training, its simply repetitive rinse, repeat. Once this is understood, the next social engineering attack will process the new method of countering this, and go through the flawed engineering in any case.
I'll give you an example. You teach your monekys not to click links in email.. You rigorously enforce and train your monkeys again and again, until you are old and grey, and you hit 100% success.
The hackers comprehend your switch. So instead of providing a clickable link, they simply provide a text string - and let the users know to copy this to the browser. And make sure to emphisise the fact that its not a link and is totally safe (yay) to paste into a browser. Monkey now has a process problem. This is not a click link. Cue robot human stupid - its a process I don't understand. I know, lets paste into the browser and que boom-baddabing-baddaboom.
You cannot 'train' people as the solution to fundamental breakage or engineering issues. Well, you can, but your failure rates will be high, and your success rates are low. And the fact is hacking and entry is not a percentage game. Its not as portrayed as being a risk question where if the risk falls to a sort of low amount - its all ok. Hackers need single entry at high enough priv. Its a zero/ or a one digital divide. You are either compromised, or you are not. Its ruthless Its brutal. And its combatted by utter bullshit and fantasy that if you have some training, or some security, or some product - that you are OK.
I don't blame anyone who argues with Bruce. Thats a choice and a viewpoint people hold. But as I said earlier, the real world out there is operating with eggs all in backets and the fixes are sticking plaster stupid. And the engineering is piss poor and you can do piss poor engineering because there is no real price for doing it. The bridge can fall down, and everyone shruggs. All bridges are like that. Its no one's fault. Its just how the world is. Right?
He is correct. User training is largely a waste of time, and both in development, and deployment, the systems are not designed or setup for security. So yes, users clicking a link is not safe, and it should be. Users opening an application and reading data should be safe, but isn't.
These problems have to be engineered out. They cannot be socially controlled out, the audience has neither the inclination, knowledge or interest in resolving this. And even after training, once its established how you've trained your monkeys, a new method will be established that undoes the training.
The whole industry is still in its infancy. Its building bridges that are made from cardboard, and without any form of certification or regime. This will only be resolved when it becomes apparent that software providers cannot ship things like 'our software cannot be held accountable for anything, have a nice day'. Nobody in the world making bridges gets away with 'if this bridge falls down, we are not accountable'.
The Adobe and Java scenario is exactly like this. Both are wholly unaccountable, and yet frankly directly responsible for perhaps billions upon billions of dollars of data loss, theft, security breaches, and so on.
There is no_fundamental_reason why people should even bother to make their software secure - so they only ally a baseline effort to the task. Until this is addressed, the rinse, shampoo, rinse, shampoo will repeat. And its actually why the security landscape is degrading. Things like Metasploit may have seemed to help. But fundamentally the white hat hacking and info security folks have ultimatly not helped. Its only highlighting how bad things are, putting guns in hands that should not have them, and making things globally worse. The vendors have not changed by very much.
Listen,
I'm kinda sick of this horseshit. If someone breaks the law, or if a corp or company breaks the law - then_you_already_have_legal_premise. And thus far I see lots of people have been investigated, and have been dealt with.
Nowhere is this a basis for turning round and eliminating, or wiping out a free press. Why would anyone be unhinged enough to not understand that MP's and 'famous' people have decided to have their pound of flesh and gain revenge. Only this is a revenge on everyone. Its detrimental to our world and our way of life.
And be clear about something else - BEFORE this round of lunacy, the UK ALREADY has the some of the world's most ludicrous and insane libel laws.
I understand what the MPs and famous people are complaining about. I understand that applying the law is tedious. However, this brings shame on them and our society. Destroying freedom to presumably have freedom doesn't function. I expect more of the MPs.
I hope the press globally simply refuse to sign up. And the same for all bloggers and free people.
You mean this society where burglers and car theieves steal other people's gear for the 500th fucking time and get yet another slap on the wrists?
So, no, I don't accept your thrust. I think MS should have got the fine, but this isn't a fine. This kind of money is legalised theft. Its taking wholly undue amounts for what is today a minor issue, no longer a monopoly, and some of you just see it as 'sticking it to the man'. Its not. All it does is hurt the market, the end users, the shareholders, and the employee. Even in a court, they seek to balance justice with effect.
They made 5.11$ Billion in 2012.
Without looking deeper, the EU just took 1/6th of the money off them for a browser infraction. Whatever you or others think, I can't say I think thats fair. Not today. Not when nobody could claim that they are denied a choice in the market on systems or browsers.
Its basically legalised theft, from employees, and from shareholders, into the EU, which can;t account or pass its own audits. I'd not celebrate this so quickly is my view.
I think the fine is outrageous. Yes, MS did breach a commitment. From what I've read, this was a mistake, and an oversight.
The reality is that they did include the browser choice window in their OS - and basically did so over a timeframe where the raw market truth is that not only are MS no longer a dominant monopoly. But that the PC itself has moved into an area where it no longer exists in the monopolistic position in technology.
Its simply not possible to make a claim today, or even in the past year that the IE browser in their OS is what it was 2, 3, 5, years back. And this personally I think should have been also considered carefully in the decision. Things have changed, and they are not as they were.
And I fail to see why people celebrate this. The dictatorship called the EU has simply hammered a business. It won't use the money well. It can't even pass its own accounts or audits. Why are the European people accepting huge fines against employers, in a harsh economic time, from an instution that is corrupt, non democratic, and incapable of even doing its own accounts.
And I'm not saying don't hit MS hard. But this is 732 Million dollars for a browser infraction. At a time where the reality is the citizens of Europe do not have a broswer monopoly problem. Its fucking lunacy.