open source
that is a problem. it's like giving everybody the plans to the fortress. sooner or later someone will find a flaw.
these security appliances like firewalls should be completely closed source.
Posts by vincent himpe
803 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Aug 2006
Worm breeds botnet from home routers, modems
Apple plays catch-up with new iPhone features
Friday 20th March 2009 17:25 GMT 
@stuart dell : i used apple and threw it out
Stupid overpriced flimsy plastic box. The lid would never quite stay on right. Plug in cards were horrible to mount. Ribbon cables to hook up very expensive floppy drives. An oversized powersupply. Clunky keyboard that was mounted way too high up on the case. A brain dead 6502 cpu that had to spend 50% of its time to retrace the screen because they were too cheap to make real video hardware. All the chips in the cheapest sockets they could find. Every once in a while you needed to push em down because you would have a bad contact. The board was only mounted with a few support points.
Stupid apple 2. I switched to the IBM PC and never looked back.
Apple iPhone to get OLED screen, claims mole
Philips 42in Ambilight LED array TV
Web scam hoodwinks web founding father
Monday 16th March 2009 19:38 GMT
now there is an idea.
some of the nasties out there use specific communication messages to call home.
how hard would it be for a provider to close the downstream port when such a packt is detected. you would get a fixed page that your machine is infected with some nasty. the only pages accessible would be virus scan sites...
Swedes say nej to Sofia 'Dark Knight' Englundh
Google tosses free texting
Wednesday 11th March 2009 19:43 GMT
that's the problem these daysd
averybody wants free free free. And if it's taken away its whaaa whaaa whaaa.
Ask them if they will work for free and they will claim you are nuts ...
in real life nothing is free.
It doesn't take a rocket surgeon (why does it always have to be a scientist ? ) to figure out that text messages cost money. So this money has to come from somewhere. If someone offers you an application .. eh make that 'sell an application' that lets you send messages fro free the warning bells should start ringing and you should have been headed for the hills ... but no.
Google plugs your surf history into ad money machine
Apple restyles iPod Shuffle
Concerted Linux-netbook effort needed to beat Microsoft
Wednesday 11th March 2009 12:18 GMT
ehhh
netbook. like surf the internet ? sorry bub. you need internet explorer there ... or firefox on windows , or opera.. half of the 'popular' websites for joe average don;t work well on linux ... no activex , flash doesnt work and a ton of other plugins don't work either ....
so that would be eh .. pretty uselees now wouldn't it ?
I always wondered why the people that pump all this effort in linux don't write a windows clone that exposes the entire windows API so you could run any existing windows application but on a bulletproof core.
Apple ogles location-based iPhone ads
Inside the world's greatest TV remote
MS coughs to hokey-cokey IE8 option in Windows 7
Microsoft aims 'non-security' update at gaping security hole
Wednesday 25th February 2009 22:58 GMT
@BRENT GARDNER
So according to you its a crime to try to make computers more user friendly and easier to use.
- If you pop a dvd in your player you'd expect it to start playing.
- if you pop a music cd in the audio system you'd expect it to satrt playing.
- if you remeber old tapedecks in car radios : pop in the tape and they start playing.
so why should a computer be different ?
Microsoft boffins devise 'secure' Gazelle browser
Shuttleworth gets cloudy with Ubuntu 9.10
'Lenny': Debian for the masses?
Friday 20th February 2009 23:19 GMT
@cerretelli
Please do remind people not to drive over the first suspension bridge you build, or live in the first 100 level apartment building you design.... people will get hurt...
Luckily the engineers at boeing and airbus don't have that mindset....
A step by step approach is more controlled and overal more effective.
Friday 20th February 2009 15:21 GMT
@schroeder
you make some interesting points
first of all. there is no such thing as 'linux'. There are distro's like Suse, red hat , debian , slackware , ubuntu and 25 gajillion different ones out there. Get your shit together and first finish ONE system before forking and building more. The problem with all these distros is that applications have to be ported. Yhis distro uses that package manager , that distro uses another , this installer doesn't run on version yaddayadda blabla.
So this raises the question : if computer manufacturers would sell computers with linux preinstalled : which distro ? Mac : MacOsx of course. Pc ? XP or vista ( i have not found a single program that is 'vista only') Wanna go the linux way ? That is a whole different can of worms .... al off as sudden your support goes from 2 Os's to 500 ... your helldesk will get SWAMPED.
As for paying the Microsoft 'tax'. I have built over 200 computers . I buy OEM versions of MS when i need them to run MS. i install Whatever distro of linux / solaris / BSD when i need those.
So where is this fabled 'microsoft tax' ? Here in the valley there are plenty of computer shops that sell prebuilt and tested machines without OS installed , or will install your choice.
As for usablitiy. I have a couple of maxhines running XP SP3. All are solid stable. No crashes. I have an installed base of programs like Adobe Premiere , Altera Quartus , Office 2007 , Photoshop , Paintshop , and about 10 or 12 other frequently used programs (some cad applications, Visual studio 2005 and 2008). And some tools (Nero, printer driver for my networked printers). I run Norton Is2009. I do NOT have to wait for this 'endless scanning' , or whatever. My machines boot in under 30 seconds and are very snappy. My quad core zooms through HD video editing.
and those viruses you speak of ? i don't download crap from 'tuh interwebs' like illegal software , filesharing, flash video and other 'junk' . I have a good spam filter like google mail, For browsing I use Opera and have java, flash and other crap disabled. As far as i know there is no such thing as a pure HTML virus ... My network router has built in firewall and all unneeded incoming ports are closed. Only one machines sits in the DMZ : my LAMP box and if that goes titsup i simply re-image the drive. There is no mission critical stuff on that one, only my collection of vacation pictures and movies for friends and family. In other words : i use common sense.
And as for the comment : installing drivers for the latest game. Of course you never have to do that on Linux, because there are no games for linux. It's as simple as that. As for me : i dont play games. I'd rather take the car out for a spin, take a walk in the mountains or on the beach. Life is too short to sit inside by the monitor light... The computer is a tool like a screwdriver , knife or fork. I use it when i need it. My life does not revolve around it ( at least not my private life). My professional life does 'literally' revolve around it. I develop harddisk technology : The chips that make the platters spin.
Linux on the desktop ? sorry it's not ready for prime time and as long as the development community cannot stop their 'twit race' ( monty python sketch where every runner takes off in a different direction : read the endless forking of os and applications so that they never get completed ) then it will never get to 'showtime'. The whole community is in a race with itself, who can bring some gadget first, who gets the 'bragging rights' so to speak, and endless discussions of gnome vs kde or vi vs emacs, firefox vs iceweasel. Move on ! Go do something usefull, like actually finishing a piece of software that people can use.
choice is good. too much choice leads to confusion and spending a lot of time figuring out what you really need and or want. Life moves fast, if you don't stop once in a while and look around ,you may miss it (F.Bueller)
Thursday 19th February 2009 20:33 GMT
@david hicks
quote : "it helps me learn about real computer systems rather than how to click a box over and over again."
That is the whole pivoting point. Linux users are ( more ) inclined towards learning about how computers work.
Win/Mac users don;t CARE !. they run APPLICATIONS. The computer ( hardware + Os) is only a tool to get their real work done. ( writgin a book , publishing a paper , organising their photo's , making a presnetation , doing some math using matlab , designing a board , chip , bridge , drawing a plan for a home bridge , mechanical piece. )
Linux users are the type that like having a 'classic' car in the drivewy , that is in perpetual state of disarray , parts laying around, set on wooden blocks. It'll get finished some time, at which point they envision themselves driving around and gloating at passerby's with a smuggness on their face 'look at what i can do / did. i restored / built this car from scratch. It took me 20 years and my entire savings. And yes. you are entitled to that. Bravo. I couldn't do it. I don;t have the patience / time or interested.
I go to the dealer and buy a car i like. It gets me from home to work / grocery store / beach / airport or any other place i want to go. I do not care , who makes the injection system, who welded the exhaust pipe, and if they used leather from organic or hormone treated cows for the seats. I just want to drop the roof when the sun comes out and drive it to go to a restaurant at the beach.
My only questions are : is the trunk big enough to hold 2 suitcases and the golf bag , can it fit 4 people, can i connect my MP3 player to play through the sound system, how does the navigation system work, and will the wife like the color...
That is the fundamental difference between linux advocates and windows/mac advocates ( with mac advocates driving it further : can only use 'approved' dealers / gas stations / roads , and it only comes in white. At least windows users can change the sound system / color / wheel rims and may install a trailer hitch themselves.)
Until the 'linux world' does not 'understand' this, they don't stand a chance 'selling' ( or even giving away ) their product to the 'windows/mac world'. The win.mac world doesnt care that you can install different colors of lights for you dashboard illumination, that you can remove the fuel manifold and replace it with a hand built one, or install a mr-fusion. All they wan to do is DRIVE the thing !
You can lead horse to water, but you can't make it drink !
Thursday 19th February 2009 00:31 GMT
@aj stiles...
tsss. have you used any decent kind of photo editing software lately ? In Adobe or Jasc Photoalbum ( now corel ) you just select the images you want , do the resizing once ( unsign a nice gui ) and then hit the apply to all button. done. and you even get an undo.
if you make one typo in that commandline fo yours who knows what will happen.... wake me when command lines get an 'undo function'. 'k ?
Monday 16th February 2009 23:50 GMT 
oh goodie
'The latest X.org brings some nice new features like hot-swappable support for input devices such as mice and keyboard and enhanced support for touch screens and tablets.'
Wow. even DOS could do that in 1984 ... Support for wireless networking and bluetooth should be right around the corner. Real soon now. Yes , i can almost smell it. It'l definately be less than 25 years ... On a cosmic scale that is infinitesimal. In the mean time we will make do with pieces of wood and bearskins in the cave...
Come on guys, it's 2009. Get with it !
VIA spins mini-mobo disk array
Wednesday 18th February 2009 01:02 GMT
via ...
Is not getting my data.
Overall crummy chipsets, not 100% compliant with either usb pci, pci express and anything else you need to pay a licence for. They can't even do proper PCI busmastering...
I have a homeserver. Intel 33 motherboard. Disabled all things that it does not need in the bios ( audio,power options etc. )
Bios is configured to automatically boot after power failure.
Installed home server.
I use 6 drive bays (vantec. the ones with the LCD that support hotplug)
Currently 4 are loaded. All SATA-II.
I added an additional Pci-x sata card that gives me 2 extra internals and 1 e-sata (besides mobo 4).
Windows home server lets you 'eject' a drive. Go to the config panel. Tell it which drive to 'disconnect', wait for the message that the data has been migrated, turn key on drive rack and remove tray. Slap a new drive in the tray and slide tray back in chassis.Turn key, at that point WHS detects the new drive and ask if i wan tot join it to the storage pool.
Machine is hooked up to an APC ups with usb software installed. even during long power breaks the thing gracefully shuts down, to restart after power is restored and battery charged.
It's been runnin g24/7 for the last 9 months. not a single reboot. it backs up my other computers at home, acts as main file server.
Obama's BlackBerry still hackable, warns Mitnick
Apple fights iPhone unlocking (again)
Hacking the Apple TV
Friday 13th February 2009 18:30 GMT
@paul
it'l keep running until you get a power outage . at which point you need to rebuilt the entire filesystem using a command prompt omly. no thanks.
Want a media player ? get a box like Dvico's Tvix. That just works. period.
And none of that 'fake HD'. I don't know why people think that 720 is HD.... 720 is ED ( enhanced definition ) only 1920x1080 or higher is HD.
Now, on to something completely different. These two articles are titled 'hacking' : when does the soldering iron come out ? all i see is stupid software tricks. I would like to see 'expanding' this thing. Slap a 1.5 T harddisk on it , maybe two and RAID them ? take out the board and put it in a bigger case. How about moving to 1000 base -T. ? Make a fileserver out of it. instally dyndns so you can get to your files from anywhere int the world...
Oh.. right its made by apple.. maybe if you are lucky you can spraypaint the case... that is if the paint doesnt peel off after a while ...
Freeway-averse Peapod runabout to go on sale in April
You did what? The trials of supporting remote users
Tuesday 10th February 2009 19:27 GMT
How win95 hacked Solaris
These were the early days of window95. For those who don;t remeber : in win95 or 98 ( with network logon ) you can just create a new logon by entering a name and password on the welcome screen. if the name is not registered it will create an account.
I had a brand new win95 box and jokingly created an account called 'root' with 'user' as password. and proceded to map the drive shared out using a samba session on a solaris fileserver.
I copied some stuff over to the server. all was well... until poepl on the Sun network tried accessing those files.. permission denied ... hmmm. a quick ls later : owner is root ? wtf ? i ran back to the win95 and using a single drag and drop just moved entire directory structures around. whoa. Talk about a mayor bug in samba... Samba must have 'trusted' me since i was apparently successfully logged on as 'root' on the pc. This was flagged and took weeks to fix...
Mozilla comes out in support of Brussels IE on Windows findings
Monday 9th February 2009 21:47 GMT
chicken - egg problem
No browser also means no way to download a different browser ..
I don;t care about internet exploder or vilefox. IE runs once on a Win installation : just to grab opera download and that;s it. I set Opera as default browser and remove the shortcuts to IE. game over.
There is nothing that prevents you from doing the same . Just make sure there is a basic browser included so people can download what they want.
Brits and Yanks struck with embarasment embarrassment
Monday 9th February 2009 21:02 GMT 
Aoccdrnig to rseerach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy
Aoccdrnig to rseerach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
Sony demos ultra-expensive, ultra-thin OLED telly
California to get 'space age' three-wheel EV
Thursday 5th February 2009 23:57 GMT
last thing i heard
this thing is goign to be controlled by a neimann-marcus kitchen computer ..... it'll probably go the same way too. Must have been designed by that bloke from IBM that proclaimed he saw a total world market for about 50 computers or so ...
come on.. they have to be joking. 35 grand for a plastic toy like this. Even a Prius at base price and converted to full electric is cheaper than that ...
Thursday 5th February 2009 23:57 GMT
@AC 'i see the luddites'
Sledgehammer yes ... Hummer , Cadillac escalade , Toyota Tundra , err.. that would be a no
yes a sledgehammer can deliver some serious punch, but the place of impact is small. apply the same amount per square inch over the total surface and this thing is flatter than a french crepe that was run over repeatedly by a big steamroller...
IT questions Obama's IT stimulus
Thursday 5th February 2009 16:27 GMT
of course they don't find IT people
willing to work for a reasonable salary. Most IT people expect 100K+ dollar a year with no skills, simple because they buy a house and car way out of what they can afford ( or could ever afford).
Everybody want a very well paid job ( and that is a perfectly normal human behaviour ) but only the ones with experience will get it. If you don't bring something to the discussion table , you won't get it.
I know lots of 'specialists' driving around in luxury cars , living in upscale homes, that have 0 dollars ( or most of the time negative) in the bank. When they have to do something really difficult they bomb out. When they get sacked those are the first ones to complain they got replaced by a foreigner. Those foreigners get the same salary ( can't get a visum if you don't pay the same salary ) but are willing to work to build a future. And they will put in the extra effort. I know a bunch of immigrants too. Their kids are in all sorts of extra classes (mathematics sciences etc) do all sorts of extra work. Western kids are hanging in front of the xbox or wii nad drive big cars when they are 16...)
The parents work fulltime, do weekend or evening school to get an additional degree or training. Westerners ? we loaf around in shopping malls and the beach.
My point is : have reasonable expectations, do an honest days of work , put in some extra effort , and you will get and keep a job. These days it's all gimme gimme gimme.
Unfortunately too many people are being led by example ( examples being: the fat cats in wall street and corporate top) Don't fall in that trap.
One observation : most of the time the real specialists blend in. Over the years i have learned to shy away from the spit and polish guy that arrives in a suit, Nissan Z. and lives in a 750K dollar condo , yet comes straight out of school, or only has 2 or 3 years of 'experience'. That is an alarm bell going off.
Windows 7 UAC flaw silently elevates malware access
Microsoft SKUs Windows 7 clarity
Linux to spend eternity in shadow of 'little blue E'
Tuesday 3rd February 2009 21:51 GMT
@pierre
inkscape ? you're joking right ? Try going to a publisher with drawings made in inkscape... Sorry bud its AI or EMF files they want... none of which inkscape can produce.
it can't even grab correctly from the clipboard. Most (windows) programs post graphics data as EMF to the clipboard so you can grab it as vector data. Illustrator : no problem. Inkscape ? sorry does not work in a lot of cases ( especially elliptoid arcs ).
Sure SVG is a neat format. except nobody in the printing industry uses it yet. I had really nice drawings in inkscape... all for nothing
Monday 26th January 2009 20:54 GMT
we have millions of very smart people
all wasting their time fighting endless vi vs emacs , gnome vs kde, ubunut vs redhat vs debian vs suse battles.
Wanne topple microsoft ? Write a Windows clone: something that can run any of the bajillion existing windows applications straight from the box, and can use any of the windows drivers.
The API's are known. The driver interfaces are known. You could rewrite it from scratch and make it bulletproof.
An Os is picked in function of the applications that run on them. And right now ... windows wins..
Exploding mobile phone kills Chinese man
Unpatched web vulns turn internet into drive-by warzone
Toshiba wows crowds with sexy touch smartphone
Third-gen Apple iPhone in development?
Thursday 29th January 2009 22:51 GMT
maybe
This one will have stereo profile on bluetooth. Imagine that.... world's best music player / phone can only handle mono audio...
And maybe the GPS will have a 3d view and vvoice turn by turn naviagation instead of only being a dumb map reader .... and maybe there sill be an SD card slot like any normal phone...
and maybe just maybe you will be able to save GPS map information so you can find your way around places that have no cell phone coverage , maybe they will even let you install tomtom ...
ah one can only dream. until the above things are not possible , i'm not interested. wake me when something usefull comes along ...
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB hard drive
2TB drives arrive down under
Opera sings praises of Microsoft-browser statement
419ers take Canadian for $150,000
Prolific worm infects 3.5m Windows PCs
Friday 16th January 2009 00:28 GMT
unix is secure...
A couple of years ago this happened. An all Sun/Solaris network. I plugged in a Win95 based ( yes you read that correclty Win95) machine. As you know( or don' know ) you can create as many accounts as you want. Just type a new name in win95 propmts you for a password and creates the account. So i jokingly created an account called 'root' with a blank password on the win95 box. Plug it onto the network , map network drive , and map to the samba server on Solaris.
Guess what .... i had the keys to the kingdom... any file i wrote to the Sun machines had as user 'root'. I could even delete files labeled as root.... i could move systems files. for all that mattered ; i was root... That was an eye-opener ... I don't trust any operating system, even if i have the source. An Os is so large and has so many lines of source you can never be 100% sure that something is not lurking in a corner...
Experts trumpet '25 most dangerous' programming errors
Wednesday 14th January 2009 20:59 GMT
@alain williams
How about the firmware that makes a diskdrive spin ? That is megabytes of embedded firmware. ZERO dynamic memory allocation ! For some portions of that firmware they go so far as to hand allocate the memory locations. This byte here, that word there. And the real critical code is handcrafted assembly. Interrupt handling has to be absolute and deterministic
Wednesday 14th January 2009 10:55 GMT
i blame the likes of RAM and FLASH memory and Von Nuemann architectures
It's all the fault of running code from RAM and FLASH and Von Neumann architectures
If you have a true harvard machine then there is no such thing as code injection from data space. There is code memory and data memory. you can not execute from data memory. Simple as that. And there is also I/O space. And only code can go to I/O space.
Then there is the memories : when processors only had ROM (mask rom or antifuse rom or OTP ) to run from, there were far fewer errors. First of all the code could not be overwritten by something malicious. The rom was masked during fabrication and that was it. Second point: quality control was much bette.r The attitude now is , oh well we'll fix it in the next release . If you have to shell out for a new maskset you will think at least 500000000 times about each and every instruction you put down.
What's my point ? Why does nobody make an OS that can boot from write protected flash ? you install on a clean machine. Load the OS core and drivers that you need. ONce this install is done : powerdown , flip WP switch and restart. If your machine catches a bug : hit the reset button. bye bye virus, spyware or whatever. I don't care. This could easily be done. Make a split registry and program files directory. The stuff that is critical sits in WP block. The visible file system is a logical OR between the flash and harddisk with the flash having priority. So if a nasty throws a couple of DLL's in virtual 'c:\windows\system' . Let it ! who cares. Those files end up on the harddisk. During boot the OS does not load anything from HDD. THe files on the flash have priority. If a duplicate file is found betwene flash and HDD you get a message after boot that file so and so is in location so and so and a duplicate exisits in flash. Cleanup ? yes-no?
Given that an OS + APPS is small. Couple of gigabyte and flash cost pennies : what are we waiting for ? I would immediatel ybuy such a machine. Primary volume : 8 or 16 or 32Gbyte flashdrive with mechanical WP ( a switch ), data volume : standard harddisk.
The only pain : when you need to install or do an upgrade you need to power down flick a switch and then do that again. Advantage : you always boot from a known good system. If an update is in order : download file. power down. flick switch , launch system ( now in known good state ) deploy update , power down , flick switch to safe , power up. Done. But then again. how many times a year do you install new software ? And when installing software you can give option : to safe zone or to harddisk. ( remember the visible filesystem is a logical OR between flash and HDD ( not at bit level of course but at file/directory level), with the files in flash having priority. So you can install your game to harddisk. but some app that is more critical to flash, in whihc case the installation procedure requires you to do the switch toggling. I would make the switch toggle something like : you need to press this button while powering up. That way you force people from doing the safe procedure.
It's so simple , i wonder why nobody has thought about this before. Especially these days when flash is 1$ a gigabyte...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
