I'm baaaaaaack...

bullshark <bullshark@scubadiving.com> wrote:
>I can't speak to your quote because I don't understand the foundation.
>In setting up an internet connection, XP tries to install a firewall.
>It is a pretty good one, with pretty sophisticated features. Why
>it is rejected or declined, I cannot say, but it is. Turn on
>Internet Connection Sharing, and your machine serves DHCP even
>to you in a single CPU network and all your stuff is going out
>with NAT. Why don't people just accept this? Why don't they know this?

It will remain open season until MS can fill up all of the buffer overflow
holes. Given how many millions of lines of code are involved, this could
take forever, even if they cared about it. The unix/opensource world
spent years on it.

>The latest so-called 'attack' is a case in point. The patch for the
>exploit was available for months. Most of the machines I see day to

The patch was released July 23rd, if memory serves, or no more than a week
prior.

>day, the users have disabled the Microsoft automatic update client.
>(probably on the advice of some brilliant friend that uses words like
>'microshaft' or 'M$').

Patching is always risky, but I don't mind the mode that automatically
downloads them and then asks me if I'd like to install. I would never let
it run on autopilot, however. Staying behind a dsl router that closes off
all the ports makes me pretty immune to most of the exploits.

--
Jason O'Rourke www.jor.com

X-No-Archive: yes
On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 18:35:12 -0000, alan@nonono_irsi.com (Alan Street) wrote:
>
>Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
>
>
>By Rob Pegoraro
>The Washington Post
>Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page F07
>
<snip>

No doubt about it, you can find fault with anything.
To me, this was a populist nonsense.
The author is clearly not a diver, or he would have
added PADI to the list things MS is responsible for.

He is a total crackpot. MS ALREADY provides free fixes to
everyone. His notion that they should mail out CD's is as
stupid as the rest of his cogitations.

I regularly encourage those who don't like MS to cease and
desist with all MS products. For some reason I can't fathom
they never do.

The real issue everyone has with MS is success.

In article <bid8cv$97e$1@news-int.gatech.edu>,
<Jim.Greenlee@cc.gatech.edu> wrote:

€ bullshark@scubadiving.com stopped playing nethack just long enough to say:
€
€ Eh?

He said "I'm a strokon."

--
"We're going to rush the hijackers."
-Jeremy Glick, aboard United Airlines flight 93, September 11, 2001

In article <bie12t$oob$1@216.39.146.232>, jammer@invalid.oz.net says...
>
>In article <bid8cv$97e$1@news-int.gatech.edu>,
><Jim.Greenlee@cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>
>€ bullshark@scubadiving.com stopped playing nethack just long enough to say:
>€
>€ Eh?
>
>He said "I'm a strokon."
>
>

Damn. I just got finished writing a couple of hundred words to bullshark, only
to see Jammer boil it down into five.

I think I'm going to sit back and watch the professionals play for a while.

Alan

Alan Street <alan@nonono_irsi.com> wrote:
>>He is a total crackpot.
>In your opinion. It seemed to me that he brought out a number of interesting
>and well thought out issues with windows. And since I don't see you publishing
>technology columns in a national newspaper, forgive me if I find Mr. Pegoraro's
>opinions in this area a little more credible than yours.

Let's not get carried away. Becoming a technology columnist does not
require great technical expertise, proven weekly by the national ones.
But it's also funny seeing a crackpot like Bullshark calling out
another one.

> MS ALREADY provides free fixes to
>>everyone. His notion that they should mail out CD's is as
>>stupid as the rest of his cogitations.
>I agree with you here. That was an incredibly silly suggestion.

The reason for this suggestion is that for people without broadband, the
patches are too frequent and too big to download. Service Pack 4 for Win2k
was 129M. That's well over 6 hours. The most recent critical was just under
a meg, so 5-10 minutes in the worst case.

--
Jason O'Rourke www.jor.com

bullshark wrote

> Talk about cheap Scott. I'm still running Generic Cadd, and you
> know what? Despite being a DOS program from the early 80's
> XP runs it.

Glad to hear you've been so lucky. I've got some pretty basic programs
running on XP as well. Unfortunately, it does not look like I've got a
software for two of my three Visioneer scanners. Surprisingly, Visioneer
has no e-mail address on their site and has a charge for their help in
getting their older products to work. Scansoft, who owns Paperport software
won't even let you report a problem without having a credit card to charge
it too.

HP did something like this relative to the three HP printers I had, one here
and two at work. They charged for a driver for 2000. You should see how
nice my new Canon printer works. If one or the other can't figure it out,
it will be my displeasure to send Visioneer the pieces of the last of their
products I'll ever own just before I send Scansoft the remains of the disks
they sold me.

Lee

"Lee Bell" <leebell@ix.remove.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:2_y2b.9927$jY2.126@newsread1.news.atl.earthli nk.net...

> HP did something like this relative to the three HP printers I had, one
here
> and two at work. They charged for a driver for 2000. You should see how
> nice my new Canon printer works. If one or the other can't figure it out,
> it will be my displeasure to send Visioneer the pieces of the last of
their
> products I'll ever own just before I send Scansoft the remains of the
disks
> they sold me.

I knew there was a reason I liked you so much.

Besides Jayna, of course.

Scott

In article <vklau9g6gk9v07@corp.supernews.com>, Scott
<scottk@localaccess.nospam.com> wrote:

€"Alan Street" <alan@nonono_irsi.com> wrote in message
€news:vkl2ec2tv7bt69@news.supernews.com...
€> In article <bie12t$oob$1@216.39.146.232>, jammer@invalid.oz.net says...
€
€> >He said "I'm a strokon."
€
€> Damn. I just got finished writing a couple of hundred words to bullshark,
€only
€> to see Jammer boil it down into five.
€
€> I think I'm going to sit back and watch the professionals play for a
€while.
€
€Kneel before His Greatness.
€
€Knave.
€
€That fucker has been here pissing people off since before Wagner made Lance
€Corporal.
€
€Speaking of limericks, Sir Allen of Street, Lord of Ions, Earl of Laboratory
€(pronounced like the limeys prononce it: la-bore-a-tree),
€
€Get after it.
€


With profound acknowledglement to Lady Lieke, who assisted most greatly:

In the interest of self preservation
And maintaining a good reputation
I¹ve been told it¹s past time
To come up with some rhymes
Avoiding, one hopes, humiliation

Limericks - not my cup of tea
I¹d rather play round in laboratories
Ion beams are just fine
ŒCept I can¹t make Œem rhyme
They¹re like apples and oranges to me

Scuba diving, now that I get better
Except on on rec.scuba, where no one gets wetter
Not that I mind
ŒCause everyone here is most kind
ŒCept Angelmoon * I really don¹t get her

DIR is all now the rage
From long hoses to a wrist mounted gauge
Some are right, some are wrong
Some just want to belong
But for sure, Kane will take centre stage

Now my story on here is all through
From apples to oranges * who knew?
Now it¹s time to blow bubbles
And forget all our troubles
ŒLeast for me, that¹s what I¹m going to do

bullshark <bullshark@scubadiving.com> skriver:
>X-no-archive: yes
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 10:57:45 GMT, Alan Street <alan@nonono_irsi.com> wrote:
> What, and linux doesn't? "su" Alan. I got news for you, XP doesn't
> offer logins to the administrator account. If users choose to make
> their user accounts 'administrators', that is their choice. Once again

Well actually I have some news for you XP isn't only Pro XP Home does
create Administrator accounts by default for all users. But Home is
the version were you don't have to know anything to use so you can't
be trusted with the hard option to add your account to an
administartor group or for that matter use a different Administaror
account on the machine.

> Do you have any idea how many linux users log in as root all the time,

To many, far, far to many...

> or keep a root shell running all the time? You can do it anytime you want.

Having a root shell isn't bad, it's hard to explut that I have a root
shell open. Well actually for the most of the time I don't have one
any more, uses sudo instead, as I don't do full time unix
administartion any more.

> do that. Someone leveling this criticism has no idea of the average joe
> on the street, or the problems support staff would face if every attempt
> at program installation was denied for want of privileges.

Thats hardly a problem if the design is right done with distribution
and installation of allpications. To istall software on most OS you
don't need any admin rights, at least as you only install software for
one user5 to use.

> Don't compare the users that don't/can't manage multiple user accounts
> to those that do/can. MS is the 'VolksPlatform'. No particular expertise
> is needed, from my 9 year old niece to my 84 year old FIL, it is equally

Windows is the hardet platform to admin it has the mosrt things that
you have to learn before administrating. That no experteese is needed
is a big lie and the main reason that it goes as bad that it does at
the moment. At the moment Windows is the far most complex and hard OS
to understand and controll everything is based on long and hard acl
access lists were rights can be both added and removed. Getting it
sorted out what a pretilcually user account might do on a specifict
task could take a realy long time to dig out. Saing that windows is
easy is just a plain lie, that could be based on being workly
informaed by someone else that lied. But it still isn't easy and
personally I don't think anyone that couldn't administer OpenBSD with
out any problems should be allowed to do the same with windows. The
BSD administrtation is plain and simple, sometime you get a security
update that need to be installed. All needed information for anything
is in either the bulletin or in the man page for that, usally with
plainer and more simple language that the Windows help page for the
same functionallity.

/ Balp
--
http://anders.arnholm.nu/ Keep on Balping

X-No-Archive: yes
On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 22:08:27 -0000, alan@nonono_irsi.com (Alan Street) wrote:

>In article <3gnkkvolr9lkuf8g2mht47h4nh71he9ku0@4ax.com>,
>bullshark@scubadiving.com says...
>>
>>No doubt about it, you can find fault with anything.

>I didn't find "fault" with anything. I happen to come across an article that
>disagrees with your claim that Windows is now "as hard" as anything out there.

It's not about *you*, alan. It's about you-all(anyone).
Nothing is final, nothing is perfect...

It is as hard as anything out there. You couldn't say that about the
old Windows. You either get that or your don't.

If you want to blame MS for inability to manage what's there, then
you want blame GM your car running a stoplight. Nobody can claim
ignorance, only complacency.

>>He is a total crackpot.
>
>In your opinion. It seemed to me that he brought out a number of interesting
>and well thought out issues with windows.

What issues are those? If you thought the crap he dug up for criticism
was relevant, then there is not much point in discussing it further.
Did you look at the '5 step process' to enable the firewall?
In the first place it's 7, not 5, and 6 of them are how to open the network
properties. Lets grasp at straws now and discuss how you have to
agonize through this nightmare for '*every* internet connection'.
[All one of them] The author, IMO, took pains to leave the lay-user
free to determine that 'internet-connection' = web page.

>And since I don't see you publishing technology columns in a national
>newspaper, forgive me if I find Mr. Pegoraro's opinions in this area a little
>more credible than yours.

I'm sad whenever I hear that someone finds a journalist credible.
Suit yourself. The guy is a crackpot playing to populist culture
that loves to hate MS. He got *you*, and that's all he cares about,
that's his job. If he knew shit about shinola, he wouldn't be writing
about what others are doing, he'd be _doing_.

As for "Mr. Pegoraro", I understand your reverence. Why, hardly a
day goes by that the entire computing world doesn't run to the
Washington Post for technical guidance. It *is* such a giant in the
technological world. Just the other day Donald Knuth was saying that
he's waiting for Pegararo to suggest a topic for his next book.

> MS ALREADY provides free fixes to
>>everyone. His notion that they should mail out CD's is as
>>stupid as the rest of his cogitations.
>>
>
>I agree with you here. That was an incredibly silly suggestion.

If you looked into his other points you would find them equally
well founded.

>>I regularly encourage those who don't like MS to cease and
>>desist with all MS products. For some reason I can't fathom
>>they never do.

>
>MS or windows?

All of them.

>I don't like windows,
>but I have no problem with other MS products.

That is very peculiar but so what?

>Not necessarily. The problem I have with MS is windows, not with their success.

And your reasons are not stated. You speak to nothing that is the real
OS.

>Personally, I *liked* DOS.

Past tense? Don't you know it's still there? By all means fire it up
full screen. It's better than ever. There's more commands, more powerful
scripting and help for every command. I've got a copy of Wordstar sitting
around here someplace, I'll dig it up for you.

>don't like windows because it's a lousy copy of a good operating system.

Finally the mask is off. Yet another MacWhiner. I've listened to you guys
moan for over a decade. All the while, I was using whatever is handy,
including Macs...

As to 'lousy copy', it seems you have no idea what you're talking about.
Evidently, you believe the OS to be pixels on a screen. There's not
much point in exploring that any further.

Nobody stole or copied anything that wasn't already stolen or copied,
and even if they did, it doesn't matter. It's done. Get over it, already.
Somewhere there's a job to be done and an economic tool to do it.

Over the years, I have worked with and developed for MCP, VM-DOS, HASP,
TYMNET, TSO, DX10, DNOS, CPM(-86), UCSD-P system, DOS, Apollo Domain,
Apple, MS/IBM DOS, AS-400, AIX, All Windows versions, OS/2, linux,
unix (bsd,sysV&HPUX) a handful of proprietary systems with no name
and a few I can't even remember...

They are all OS's. That's all they are. They all do the exact same thing.
They all have strengths, they all have weaknesses. You play to one and
work around the other, or get the hell out of the way.

If any one of them stands out, it was Apollo Domain. But I really don't
care. They're just tools. I don't get all emotional about hammers
and saws. I use what is efficient and cost-effective for the job, or
whatever is available.

You shouldn't get emotionally involved with operating systems or
software. It get's in the way of learning what they do and how to
use them effectively.