Posts by Goat Jam 2482 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2008
You gotta admire Google. This is the sort of thing that plenty of folks will find compelling. Even I find it strangely alluring and I understand the privacy ramifications better than most folk will.
Whats that I hear? A disembodied voice? Whats that it's saying? "Come over. Come over to the dark side Luke!"
Oh, if you say so . . .
"I take it you've never read the newspapers then?"
Indeed. But the reality is that what you read in newspapers and what happens in reality are two entirely different things.
They tried exactly that in Australia a few years back. A private organisation offered half a dozen scholarships to men to try and encourage more men in to the primary school system.
The feminists of course went into full female hysteria mode and accused them of all manner of crimes and promptly sued them in the courts under our sex discrimination laws.
The scholarships were pulled and only returned after they promised to offer "an equal number of scholarships to women"
Go figure.
"Now we can't simply inspect a file for an appropriate signature"
SSL Certs have never purported to verify the "goodness" of data. This is a common misunderstanding amongst the plebs but I am shocked, shocked I say, that someone posting on behalf of Sophos would also labour under such a basic misconception.
You should know that digital signatures are no different at all from traditional signatures. All they do is confirm that the signer is who they say they are. They do not have any bearing whatsoever on the quality or veracity of the signed material.
There is no reason whatsoever that Osama Bin Laden himself couldn't sign his latest jihad orders just as George W Bush signed his documents declaring that Waterboarding is AOK and should be actively applied at GitMo.
In neither case do their signatures qualify the ethical validity of the orders, they just confirm that the orders were signed by the person who has the authority to make such orders.
If part of Sophos "security scan" included a "scan for an appropriate signature" then all I can say is I'm glad I don't use Sophos products for security.
"Last time I checked, you don't need two client operating systems"
Hmmm. So I guess that means WinCE, WinMob and XP Embedded are all just figments of my imagination?
That doesn't even take into consideration the umpteen different versions of Windows.
Does Ballmer have even the slightest clue what he is talking about?
Oh, AND WHERE IN GODS NAME IS THE EVIL BALLMER ICON!
That is all
Evil Jobs, because he sort of looks like Evil Ballmer
So, Windows 7 fixes some of the glaring UI issues and retarded bugs that were introduced by Vista. Big Deal
It is still based on the same old flaky architecture with roots way back in 70's era CP/M. Why is that we still need *drive letters* in this day and age?
It is a single user, monolithic OS with a staggering amount of interdependancies. Proper programmers know that good software design will be as loosely coupled as possible. Windows, OTOH has so many critical interdependancies that a flaw in a single component can cascade through the entire system, leading to all sorts of fun and mayhem.
So, you guys saying that Windows 7 is "pretty good" are welcome to go ahead and use it. But don't kid yourselves into believing that Win7 is any less of a rats nest of intertwined components tweetering on the edge of systemic collapse at a moments notice than any previous versions of Windows.
It's just a bit shinier.
Yeah yeah "Complex applications" yada yada
After 25 years in the industry, I can assure you that 95% of users do in fact run nothing but "orifice"
A couple of bods in accounting will have their "complex" financial package and the rest might have access to an inventory system of some type, and these days such things are increasingly browser based,
If your network is set up correctly, your clients shouldn't have critical dependency issues, it's only the windows world where such things have become standard operating procedure.
Hence all the businesses that are unable to even migrate to newer versions of the same OS!
Good on you Mickeysoft! Way to create a virtually unmanageable software ecosystem!
1) What intel/MS want: To sell more high end products driven by their symbiotic "each new Windows release will have much higher hardware requirements" arrangement. Quad Core CPU + Win Ultimate = $$$$!
2) What people want: Small, cheap computers for accessing the web and maybe editing a few documents. Small, low powered Linux device sans Windows Tax = Far less $$$ for intel, none for MS.
When people start getting access to #2, Microsoft flies into a panic and dusts off XP to ensure that the unwashed masses are not exposed to that filthy Linux, just in case the find out they like it.
The problem is that Netbooks dont have the hardware to cope with even a legacy MS OS from 2000, despite being perfectly capable of running most Linux distros from 2009.
Solution: bump up the hardware specs of netbooks to allow XP to run.
Result: People see the new bastardised "netbooks" as "little notebooks" and begin to prefer them over their more expensive cousins for a number of reasons.
Problem #1: Intel's precious high end i7 sales are now being undermined by low end Atom sales because people really don't need that much power in notebooks.
Problem #2: Come Windows 7, MS high end Windows "Ultimate" sales will be undermined by low end sales of Windows Starter Edition.
Solution: Use monopoly control of the market to enforce arbitrary restrictions on products in the "netbook" market. In other words cripple netbooks to push people towards more expensive notebooks.
Result: Bastard Netbooks are more expensive in order to accommodate Windows requirements, have lower battery life, are less robust and are functionally crippled. They are still currently popular because they are the only way you can still purchase XP.
Problem: People still want cheap and cheerful devices but they are no longer able to buy them. When Win7 hits, it remains to be seen whether people will still want to buy machines loaded with crippleware.
Solution: ARM based netbooks loaded with ChromeOS and Ubuntu Netbook Remix arrives.
Result: Microsoft can no longer support ARM processors with their mainline Windows codebase due to the massive amounts of inter-dependancies that the bloated spaghetti monster called Windows has evolved in to. The best they could hope for is to port WinCE to the new netbooks. Intel too have no comeback because ARM have been making ultra low powered CPU's for the embedded market for a LONG time and intel have consistently failed to match them, despite numerous attempts to do so.
I can't wait to see this play out, it should be fun.
"All that will happen is that the viruses/trojans/attacks will mutate to exploit the new architecture or applications."
Who says that ChromeOS will even have applications? Maybe it will run from nonvolatile memory and just save whatever minimal user data or configs it needs to keep to a small amount of flash RAM?
If the device just boots a minimal linux kernel and then straight to the Chrome browser and all of that is kept in NV memory then there is bugger all left to infect with malware.
Hello Jim
Xandros !=Linux
Were you to have tried Ubuntu you would have not experienced any of the problems you mentioned.
Asus screwed the pooch by offering a poorly customised version of what is an already dodgy commerical distro that virtually nobody in the Linux community uses it's true.
But just because Asus/Xandros is crap doesn't mean all other Linux distros are equally flaky.
Personally, I have several friends and relatives who choose to use Ubuntu. Basically whenever they come to me with their malware infested XP PC's, I setup dual boot Ubuntu and tell them they can use whichever one they prefer. They aren't "text file hackers" for them they just want something that works, and doesn't run like a three legged mule due to all the malware and/or malware protection they are constantly fighting against.
Linux already has decent game support. Game devs simply choose not to develop for it. When they do games work just as well. See Doom 3, Quake 4 which both had native Linux versions and ran fine. Unfortunately, most devs aren't interested so the choice is not huge </understatement>
So, in the meantime I am forced to rely on Wine with mixed results. The good news is that Steam and a lot of other games works OK. The bad news is that most of the new games don't.
Even that can be turned into a positive though. Now I simply wait a year or three until a game hits its "Platinum edition" release, then check the Wine compatibility for it. Usually if it is a good game it will have a reasonably high rating by that time. The advantage of doing it this way is;
1) Platinum releases are *far* cheaper than new release games.
2) Your PC hardware is always up to the task.
3) You can easily avoid the dud games because a) Wine devs don't bother supporting them so they have a dud rating and b) you should know the duds by then anyway.
4) All the bugs (should) have been fixed in platinum releases.
Disadvantages are;
1) (Usually) can't play the latest and greatest games
2) Sometimes there are glitches in the in-game menus and sound.
3) You won't be able to run every game you want to run.
4) Not counting Steam, most of them require a NoCD crack because the stupid copy protection crap doesn't work in Wine. (This may count as an advantage to some, including me)
Currently I'm playing Half-Life 2 under Wine. Prior to that I played a lot of Elders Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
Over the last 4 years I've played;
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 with both expansions.
Quake 4 (native)
Doom 3 (native)
Call Of Duty
Civilization IV
C&C Generals with both expansions
GTAIII - San Andreas
I don't have time to play all the time but when I do I get by.
Show a few pictures.
Write the somthing similar to the following;
"Samsung has released a new "Netbook". It is exactly the same as all other current netbooks with the following exceptions:
1) It has a crap battery life.
2) It comes in four colours.
That is all.
"
The majority of this article was totally superfluous, especially the benchmarks. It is a netbook, not an uber l33t gaming rig FFS.
"The reason manufacturers sell PCs with an OS installed is so that their customers can have a working system out of the box"
This can easily be achieved by pre-loading Windows and requiring the user to activate the OS with a credit card should they decide to use it.
It can also be achieved by allowing OEMs to, oh, I dunno, preload Ubuntu Linux so that their customers can have that "working PC out of the box" experience as well.
The problem is that oems are forced to load and *pay* for Windows on every PC they sell (whether it comes loaded with Windows or not) and their OEM agreements do not allow for preloading any alternatives on to PC's, which is a fact that the BeOS folks discovered to their detriment.
I've said it before and I'll say it again;
Most Linux users don't care whether Joe Sixpack wants to use Windows or not. We want two simple things.
1) The ability to buy the PC/Netbook/Notebook of our choice without paying the MS tax.
2) A free and open internet that is not held hostage by one company and their insistence on polluting it with their own proprietary, patent encumbered and platform dependent "standards"
It's not much to ask for. One wonders why so many people are so determined to stop that scenario from developing.
"So because this *WILL* benefit microsoft I don't think they will try to close the door"
That may well be true, but it is the nature of the Redmond Beast to constantly re-evaluate what will benefit themselves the most and change policy accordingly.
Right now they want to see more projects using mono. Later on that may, and most likely *will*, change.
"Erm.. bit behind the times. Vista's much maligned UAC does pretty much EXACTLY what Ubuntu Linux does"
Erm, not really. In linux, sudo requires you to type your password in order to do dangerous stuff. It forces users to let go of the mouse and type a password. This has a number of effects. The fact that a password is required should automatically trigger the recognition in even the stupidest of users that something "security related" is happening. That, and the fact that they have hadf to stop flailing with their mouse button for a second gives them time to hopefully understand what is going on, at least a little bit.
All Vista UAC does is reinforce the already far too ubiquitous behaviour pattern common to most Windows users where you just CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK until all the windows go away.
It achieves nothing.
The documentation is pretty appalling. Obviously such a system requires multiple servers to the build the cloud on so why is the documentation riddled with instructions such as "Copy the x509 cert to your machine" and "type sudo somecommand" without telling you which actual machine you should be working on.
Then there are annoying things like "Check that the Cloud Controller is running before continuing". erm, OK, how the fuck do I do that then?
I did get it working eventually (I think), but I still haven't figured out how to actually host a virtual machine on it.
Having said all that, I am STILL struggling to understand what the difference between this sort of "cloud" versus say, a vmware or virtualbox hosted machine.
Paris, because I'm obviously easily confused too.
"Why would you want to upgrade your existing WINDOWS OS with a new one? Surely anyone would do a complete wipe before installing a new WINDOWS OS and have a zippy fresh system"
There, fixed that for you.
Everyone else who uses a proper OS that does not behave like an industrial strength kruft magnet can continue on doing regular upgrades as usual.
"If Linux is so damn good why is Windows still the MARKET PLACE leader which is the ONLY real measure of success"
Are you for real? You are aware that MS are a convicted monopolist who are found time and time again to be abusing that position, right?
Do you have any clue how Microsoft got themselves into the market dominance position they enjoy and abuse to this very day?
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS_1.html
You do know that MS leverages their position to force oem manufacturers to pay for a Windows licence for every PC they sell regardless of whether the PC is shipped with Windows on it, right?
Has it also escaped you that MS will threaten OEMs with price hikes across the board should they even consider offering alternative products?
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS_4.html
Is it any surprise that they have the majority of the market share? Do you really believe that they have acheived this position through the quality of their products?
You know, this is the sort of attitude that 'dozers have that really piss me off. Do you know what Doug, I couldn't care less whether you want to use Windows or not, I really don't. In fact morons like you probably deserve to be stuck with that craptastic bodge job for the rest of your natural lives.
What I don't understand is why you feel that it is necessary and good that everyone else must be forced down to your level and have no choice in the matter.
All I want is two things, and I'm sure that most Linux users would agree.
1) I want to be able to go and purchase a notebook, netbook or PC of my choice and have it come with the OS of my choice or none at all. I DON'T want to pay the Microsoft Tax.
2) I want to know that the market leader will not have the power or ability to lock me out of large parts of the public internet by deliberately polluting it with proprietary, patent encumbered platform dependent "standards"
That is all.
So Windows fanbois, answer me this, why is it that our desire for these two simple things can cause you all to rise up into a histrionic frenzy and howl down any anyone who has the audacity to want to live a Windows free existence?
Why do we frighten you so?
"google isn't often this critical of competitors, or defensive of its work like this. i wonder why they feel the need to be so bitchy."
Oh, lessee, Google Guy is standing on stage with Microsoftie, who is busy waffling on about how hard it is to build a super scalable data center infrastructure which is something Google Guy has already actually done.
Google Guy would not be human if he could resist making a few well placed jibes at the other guys expense.
Microsoft will NEVER make a decent scalable infrastructure network, not while they continue to try and build it on top of a kludgy single user OS that evolved from DOS with hacked on multi-user bits and a gui.
I have no problem with Google et al scanning books and claiming copyright on the particular scan they made, as long as everybody else is retains the right to take the same book and scan it again for their own use or free distribution via a site like Project Gutenburg.
If, OTOH, if these corps are claiming ownership of the original works then that is another matter altogether . . . .
"Seriously, Win7 is an excellent OS"
Only to someone who has no grasp of proper OS architecture and design principles.
Due to several serious and fundamental design flaws deep in its underlying framework every version of Windows up to now AND into the future is and will continue to be a poorly designed steaming turd.
They just keep on polishing it with every new release.
""Protecting children from inappropriate content is a legitimate objective, but this is an inappropriate means and is likely to have a broader scope," US trade representative Kirk argues."
Yes, it is bad when governments push mandatory censorship on their citizens, so how come this bozo isn't bellowing his righteous indignation and sanctimonious claptrap in the direction of Australia and that Conroy numpty?
"When was the last time that Microsoft produced something that was innovative and compelling? Not for a very, very long time."
When did they ever?
BASIC - First invented 1964, copied to Altair by Gates & Allen in mid 1970's
MS-DOS - Originally named qDos which was itself a clone of CP/M, purchased by MS in 1981
Windows - Copied from MacOS, which was itself based on a prototype from Xerox. Took MS 4 tries to come up with a barely usable version.
WindowsNT - Designed by David Cutler who MS hired from DECs VAX/VMS design team and was heavily based on VMS code and techniques with plenty of additional kludge applied to enable it to conform to previous MS "standards"
Word - Just another word processor which were first invented in 1972. An animated paper clip does not equate to innovation.
Excel - A copy of Visicalc, which was first invented many years earlier.
Internet Explorer - MS bought the rights to the Mosiac browser code and have been extending that code ever since.
Active Directory - A MS proprietary version of LDAP with a MS proprietary version of Kerberos for authentication, both of which are open standard products with previously existing open source implementations.
There is not ONE successful, innovative product that I can think of to come out of Microsoft R&D. Not one. If anybody can name one then please do so, because I would love to know of just one.
"...because users are idiots who run every "lolcat.jpg.exe" they get in the mail, with admin privileges, and then click OK/YES on every warning that pops up without reading? That's the attack method I mostly see around, and there's not much the OS can do about it."
Utter tosh.
If Windows users weren't *required* to run with admin privileges then they quite simply wouldn't be able to damage the entire OS through their stupid clicking.
If Windows apps didn't install themselves into the OS system folder often even overwriting the original DLLs at the same time and then go on to run with full system privileges then dodgy apps couldn't damage the OS.
If the Windows designers had had even the tiniest understanding of the need to partition users from apps from the OS then these things would rarely if ever happen.
"What it boils down to is that the application may add portions of itself to the operating system. (This is one of the reasons why Windows needs to be rebooted after an application has been installed or changed.) That means that the installation procedure introduces third-party code (read: uncertified code) into the operating system and into other applications that load the affected DLLs. Furthermore, because there is no real distinction between system level code and user level code, the software in DLLs that has been provided by application programmers or the user may now run at system level. This corrupts the integrity of the operating system and other applications. A rather effective demonstration was provided by Bill Gates himself who, during a Comdex presentation of the Windows 98 USB Plug-and-Play features, connected a scanner to a PC and caused it to crash into a Blue Screen. "Moving right along," said Gates, "I guess this is why we're not shipping it yet." Nice try, Mr. Gates, but of course the release versions of Windows '98 and ME were just as unstable, and in Windows 2000 and its sucessors new problems have been introduced."
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS_2.html
Let me get this straight. I want to edit a document that is in sharepoint, so I, erm, upload it to the zoho server, download it to my web browser for viewing/editing, upload it back to zoho who then in turn download it back to the sharepoint server.
What, exactly, is the point of all that?
Paris, because she is also good for uploading to (or so I've heard)
"Although the demo was transmitting only about one or two watts at a distance of over a meter, Cooper claimed that in Intel's Seattle lab, they've managed to power a netbook at distances of between one and two meters, providing between 14 and 20 watts. She also said that lab tests had powered 40 and 60-watt light bulbs."
Right. So why not demonstrate a 60watt bulb at the show instead of a 1 watt speaker then? Could it be that to power a 60 watt bulb you need to pump a Kw out of the transmitter with the unused energy being dissipated throughout the room in the form of heat or emf?
Which brings us to the unstated efficiency of this system. For every watt received, how many watts need to be transmitted into the ether? How is that efficiency effected by distance?
One would imagine that these are fairly important questions which have either gone unasked or unanswered.
"Typical netbooks have limited resources"
That may have been true in 2006. In the present, MS have successfully managed to "convince" OEMs that netbooks need 1Gb of RAM and a spinning disk HDD so that all "netbooks" now provide the minimum hardware requirements to allow MS bloatware to run.
It is usually considered best practice to transfer keys physically whenever possible, thereby bypassing the network and any potential man in the middle attackers.
In one example I bring my USB stick over to you and copy my public key onto your PC or device.
Alternatively, a mutually known and trusted intermediary can also act as a key signer who can use their copy of your key to confirm/sign your own copy which you may have have received insecurely via the network.
Another way is to print the key onto paper and mail it via snail mail. Sure, it will be a bit of a pain to hand type but not impossible. OCR can work too, as long as you hand verify it afterwards.
Once you have a signed (known trustworthy) key you are then pretty much set in stone safe.
Microsoft has killed them dead.
The only way we will see Linux netbooks out there (short of US regulators growing a pair and making MS exclusive OS deals with OEMs illegal) is for google to partner with a well known CE manufacturer to produce an appliance style product.
That CE manufacturer has to be free from current Microsoft connections but wanting to make inroads into the PC industry. Samsung, Pioneer, Sharp are three that spring to mind. If they don't have existing reliance on Microsoft products then Ballmer and his band of thugs can't pressure them into dropping products that they don't approve of.
They could start off small with really cheap and light netbooks with fixed functionality (like the original eee, only supported properly with a decent app store for both free and paid for apps) .
Then, as Android/Linux gains market acceptance they could expand the product lines to include more PC like products much like companies like Honda moved from being motorcycle manufacturers to car manufacturers. The first hondas were tiny, shoebox like things that were little more than 4 wheeled motorcycles with a capsule. Now look at them.
What is it with all the ipod docks coming out these days? A few years back I bought a Logitech dock and the ipod slides into the slot and mates with the connector at the bottom. The ipod is held in place and the stress on the connector is virtually nil.
Theses days all the docks come with a connector sticking out of the top and the ipod just sits on top, and the connector takes 100% of the mechanical strain.
I realise that this is simply a cost saving measure to accommodate all the different sized ipods (the logitech came with adaptor sleeves which you would select based on the ipod model) but it still strikes me as crappy design, especially in the case of such an uber expensive device such as this.
Paris, because her dock is one size fits all too
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