Fredrik Olsson wrote:
> But as I understand it Windows Vista should come with better support
> for command line users, hopefully a shortcut to the home directories
> is in there (But probably not ~\ just for spite).

Ever since Windows 2.0, each new version of Windows has been hyped up like the best marketed blockbuster movies. Months or years of it. "It's simply a must-have!" "It'll be an answer for all you ever wanted, and in addition it'll tell you the meaning of life!"

And not long after the release they start talking of the next version that'll do the stuff already promised for this one.

It's like the guy that lends money from you, and always when it's payback time he'll have this amazing story on where the money went, and you end up lending more to him.

I've already learnt that the meaning of life is, reboot, reboot, reinstall, reboot, reboot, lose stuff, reboot. For M$ users, that is.

If we always had only had Macs and Linuxes (and now to an increasing degree Intel-Solaris), and Microsoft came out with (say XP), I don't think anyone would use it after the couple of first reinstalls.

The other systems you can run continuously powered on for as long as it takes to need to totally reinstall one's Windows. Some difference.

Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> Turns out, I did have a trojan rootkit on my system. arrgh!
> 
> It's more and more problematic... from Slashdot today.
> 
> http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/31/0741221.shtml
> 
> As a test, I've a rootkit installed on an Windows machine from 3 years, and it's still undetected. ;-(
> 
> If you are running a business, THAT is a BIG REAL concern for Microsoft...

Mine was Trojan.AbWiz.F. It's a big concern for me. If my system hadn't started to misbehave, I never would have suspected it.

Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> Turns out, I did have a trojan rootkit on my system. arrgh!
> 
> It's more and more problematic... from Slashdot today.
> 
> http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/31/0741221.shtml
> 
> As a test, I've a rootkit installed on an Windows machine from 3
> years, and it's still undetected. ;-(

That made a thought cross my mind.

If I were the *head* of a three-letter government agency [you name it, or then it's one whose name we don't even know] today, I'd sure as heck tell B. Gates to install a for-me-only backdoor to Windows, such that if "we" really feel threatened, then I can shut down all the Windowses in the [non-free] world. Or hopefully, a more accurately defined selection.

Yes, yes, this is not serious, so please no flames from anyone. I'm just jotting down corollaries to the thought.

Anyhow, we all see the trend: computers are becoming more and more essential -- for _anything_ these days. One day (be it next year, or 200 years from now) some bad-butt _will_ launch a major attack upon somebody else (not even necessarily the U.S.). It would be pretty reasonable to hope that there's something we [the "defenders of the Free World", or whoever -- no offense] can do about it. And nukes are no match for a global digital assault.

Next season's "24" might do well to belabor this thought. Seriously.

----

Frankly, I'm not even sure I'd be against such a back door. (Not that I'm for it either, but building a solid opinion on it should not be done off-hand. There are too many implications, pros and cons involved. And the issue is way too important to just dismiss to either side.)

Their [the afore-not-mentioned three-letter agency] problem of course is Linux and BSD. But I would not be surprised if this issue didn't come up somewhere (secretly or publicly) within the next 10 years.

Like laws in every single country stating that Internet Cafes using Linux have to have such a backdoor explicitly installed, lest they face huge fines.

----

No idea where this thought is leading, and I really don't care or know. But thought it'd be appropriate to write it _somewhere_ as soon as it came up.

----

Hmmm. After proofreading, seems Windows is not enough. "I" should go talk with Cisco Systems too. (Routers, backbone HW.)

Dave wrote:
> In article <e0io88$22jc$2@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> At this point, it was apparent that tech support had no idea why this was happening, and I was beginning to worry there was either a rootkit installed, or there was just creeping corruption going on. I gave up on Microsoft tech support, and decided to reinstall Windows.
>> Turns out, I did have a trojan rootkit on my system. arrgh!
> 
> Any idea how that happened / made it onto your system? (it has me worried that
> virus scanning didn't pick it up).

I have no idea how it got on. Being a trojan, I must have run something. I'm usually very careful about not running anything I am not sure of, careful enough that this is the first virus/trojan I've had in 10 years.

I'm almost to the point of using a separate sacrificial machine for web surfing.

Walter Bright wrote:
> Dave wrote:
>> In article <e0io88$22jc$2@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>> At this point, it was apparent that tech support had no idea why this was happening, and I was beginning to worry there was either a rootkit installed, or there was just creeping corruption going on. I gave up on Microsoft tech support, and decided to reinstall Windows.
>>> Turns out, I did have a trojan rootkit on my system. arrgh!
>>
>> Any idea how that happened / made it onto your system? (it has me worried that
>> virus scanning didn't pick it up).
> 
> I have no idea how it got on. Being a trojan, I must have run something. I'm usually very careful about not running anything I am not sure of, careful enough that this is the first virus/trojan I've had in 10 years.
> 
> I'm almost to the point of using a separate sacrificial machine for web surfing.

VMware provide a "Browser Appliance" prebuilt virtual machine, I think it's just a minimal Ubuntu Linux plus Firefox. A VM just for web apps seems a little extreme to me, but it's probably not as extreme as using a dedicated machine and it's cheaper, VMware Player being free.

In article <442D6DD7.8050204@nospam.org>, Georg Wrede says...
>
>Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>> 
>>> Turns out, I did have a trojan rootkit on my system. arrgh!
>> 
>> It's more and more problematic... from Slashdot today.
>> 
>> http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/31/0741221.shtml
>> 
>> As a test, I've a rootkit installed on an Windows machine from 3 years, and it's still undetected. ;-(
>
>That made a thought cross my mind.
>
>If I were the *head* of a three-letter government agency [you name it, or then it's one whose name we don't even know] today, I'd sure as heck tell B. Gates to install a for-me-only backdoor to Windows, such that if "we" really feel threatened, then I can shut down all the Windowses in the [non-free] world. Or hopefully, a more accurately defined selection.
>
>Yes, yes, this is not serious, so please no flames from anyone. I'm just jotting down corollaries to the thought.
>
>Anyhow, we all see the trend: computers are becoming more and more essential -- for _anything_ these days. One day (be it next year, or 200 years from now) some bad-butt _will_ launch a major attack upon somebody else (not even necessarily the U.S.). It would be pretty reasonable to hope that there's something we [the "defenders of the Free World", or whoever -- no offense] can do about it. And nukes are no match for a global digital assault.
>
>Next season's "24" might do well to belabor this thought. Seriously.
>
>----
>
>Frankly, I'm not even sure I'd be against such a back door. (Not that I'm for it either, but building a solid opinion on it should not be done off-hand. There are too many implications, pros and cons involved. And the issue is way too important to just dismiss to either side.)
>
>Their [the afore-not-mentioned three-letter agency] problem of course is Linux and BSD. But I would not be surprised if this issue didn't come up somewhere (secretly or publicly) within the next 10 years.
>
>Like laws in every single country stating that Internet Cafes using Linux have to have such a backdoor explicitly installed, lest they face huge fines.
>
>----
>
>No idea where this thought is leading, and I really don't care or know. But thought it'd be appropriate to write it _somewhere_ as soon as it came up.
>
>----
>
>Hmmm. After proofreading, seems Windows is not enough. "I" should go talk with Cisco Systems too. (Routers, backbone HW.)



If? Thats a good one. If you seriously analize the components of windows - from the context of a data collection system - everything that didnt make sense, begins to make completely perfect sense.

Windows is a government data collection device masquerading as an Operating System.

Alex Stevenson wrote:

> VMware provide a "Browser Appliance" prebuilt virtual machine, I think it's just a minimal Ubuntu Linux plus Firefox. A VM just for web apps seems a little extreme to me, but it's probably not as extreme as using a dedicated machine and it's cheaper, VMware Player being free.

Have you tried this?

Walter Bright wrote:

> Alex Stevenson wrote:
> 
>> VMware provide a "Browser Appliance" prebuilt virtual machine, I think it's just a minimal Ubuntu Linux plus Firefox. A VM just for web apps seems a little extreme to me, but it's probably not as extreme as using a dedicated machine and it's cheaper, VMware Player being free.
> 
> Have you tried this?

It worked for me. I have heard accounts of it being faster than native IE ;)

I used browser appliance only when I need to do lengthy high-risk browsing. Even though it needs huge chunk of memory (256MB out of 785MB) and is definitely slow than native IE, its worth the security.

However for quick and safe browsing, I use Firefox natively with NoScript extension. Its works well for me. Until now I have no complaints in either case.

Sai



In article <e0k4ha$gkk$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Lars Ivar Igesund says...
>
>Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> Alex Stevenson wrote:
>> 
>>> VMware provide a "Browser Appliance" prebuilt virtual machine, I think it's just a minimal Ubuntu Linux plus Firefox. A VM just for web apps seems a little extreme to me, but it's probably not as extreme as using a dedicated machine and it's cheaper, VMware Player being free.
>> 
>> Have you tried this?
>
>It worked for me. I have heard accounts of it being faster than native IE ;)

Walter Bright wrote:
> Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> 
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>> 
>>> Turns out, I did have a trojan rootkit on my system. arrgh!
>> 
>> 
>> It's more and more problematic... from Slashdot today.
>> 
>> http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/31/0741221.shtml

So now we have "yy/mm/dd" in addition to the already ambiguous "mm/dd/yy" and "dd/mm/yy". (Greetings to the guy doing the date library!)

>> As a test, I've a rootkit installed on an Windows machine from 3 years, and it's still undetected. ;-(
>> 
>> If you are running a business, THAT is a BIG REAL concern for Microsoft...
> 
> 
> Mine was Trojan.AbWiz.F. It's a big concern for me. If my system
> hadn't started to misbehave, I never would have suspected it.

I've had a principle (since 1991) that Serious Production Stuff that needs to be on a Windows machine, is disconnected from the net. Like Physically.

Then I have 2nd tier, 3rd tier stuff, that is on various other computers, some more, some less "disconnected". And I've used the ZoneAlarm firewall since I don't even know when. On all of them.

Actually, if I ever install Windows on a machine, (anybody's,) I do it from the (or a) CD, install ZA, configure it, and only then connect the lan cable.

I've removed IE from any menus or the desktop, ever since Win95, I don't allow any scripts or popups, I don't visit "questionable sites", or actually any sites mentioned in spam (those I visit with Linux(!), damn, I must be a bastard pedophile... or a prescription medicine stalker ( :-) ), but since all my girls (since teen-age) have been polite, at least I don't have to visit the Goliathizing sites), and as a result, it's been quite a while (better knock on wood here) since I last had trouble. But it's a lot of drudgery. All of which _should_ not be needed. (Windows???? Nyet, it's Computers, Da? Right.)

I've run a few tests on how often all kinds of baddies knock on the "cow's behind" (made famous by this ugly named guy from Holland) or other "private" parts of my windows, and I've come to the conclusion that between the time I've got a "go" from the Windows Install, and the time I'd then have the firewall copied and installed, on average 350 tries on my integrity are received through the wire. Figure that!

PS, AbWiz souds like something you see after-hours on TV, when you're too tired to touch the red button on your remote. And there's always a gorgeous woman demonstrating it.