The 11 tiniest, most powerful computers your money can buy
http://www.geek.com/chips/the-11-tiniest-most-powerful-computers-your-money-can-buy-1627324/
I have my doubts about many things and the arguments here and in the comments section loom large.
Yes, I can see that business sees no need for an 'arms race' escalation of desktops once the basics are there. A few people, gamers, developers, might want personal workstations that they can load up with memory and high performance graphics engines, but for the rest of us, its ho-hum. That Intel and AMD are producing chips with more cores, more cache, integrated graphics and more, well Moore's Law applies to transistor density, doesn't it, and they have to do something to soak up all those extra transistors on the chips.
As for smaller packaging, what do these people think smart phones and tablets and watches are?
Gimme a brake!
My phone has more computing power than was used by the Manhattan project to develop the first nuclear bomb.
These are interesting, but the real application of chip density is going to have to be doing other things serving the desktop. its going to be
1. IoT
2. Servers
3. backbone/communications
And for #1 & #3 Windows will become if not an impediment, then irrelevant.
Its possible a very stripped down Linux can serve for #1 & #3, but somewhere along the line I suspect people might wake up and adopt a proper RTOS such as QNX much in the same way that Linux has come to dominate #2. It is, however, possible, the Microsoft will, not that Gates and Balmer are out of the scene, adopt something Linux like or
work with Linux so as to stay relevant in new markets. The Windows tablet isn't the success they hoped for and the buyout of Nokia seemed more to take Nokia out of the market than become an asset for Microsoft to enter the phone market and compete with Apple and Samsung. many big forms that do have lots of Windows workstations are turning to running
SAMBA on Big Iron because (a) its cheaper than a huge array of Windows Servers that present reliability and administrative overhead, and (b) its scalable. Linux isn't the 'rough beast' that Balmer made out and Microsoft's 'center cannot hold' the way it has in the past.
14 antivirus apps found to have security problems
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/29/antivirus_blood_splattered_as_biz_warned_audit_or_die
Let us pass over the "All A are B" illogic in this and consider what we've known all along. AV doesn't really work; it never did.
Signature based AV, the whole "I'm better than you cos I have more signatures in my database" approach to AV and AV marketing that so bedazzled the journalists ("Metrics? You want metrics? We can give you metrics! How many you want? One million? Two million!) is a loosing game. Skip over polymorphism and others. The boundary between what actually works and what works for marketing blurs.
So then we have the attacks on the 'human firewall' or whatever the buzz-word is that appears in this month's geek-Vogue magazines, whatever the latest fashion is. What's that? Oh right, the malware writers are migrating to Android the industry commentators say. Well they've tried convincing us that Linux and MacOS were under attack and vulnerable, despite the evidence. Perhaps those same vendor driven - yes vendors try convincing Linux and Apple users to buy AV products, just because Linux and MacOS ran on the same chip as Microsoft they were just as vulnerable as Microsoft, and gave up dunning the journalists and advertising when they found that the supposed market wasn't convinced and didn't buy.
That large software production is buggy surprises no-one. There are methods to producing high quality code as NASA has shown on its deep space projects, but they are incompatible with the attitudes that commercial software vendors have. They require an discipline that seems absent from the attitudes of many younger coders, the kind that so many commercial firms hire on the basis of cost and who are drive by 'lines of code per day' metrics, feature driven popularity and the 'first to market' imperatives.
So when I read about, for example, RSA getting hacked by means of social engineering, I'm not surprised. Neither am I surprised when I hear that so many point of sales terminals are, if not already infected, then vulnerable.
But then all too many organization take a 'risk-based' approach that just is not right. The resistance that US firms have had to implementing chi-n-pin credit card technology while the rest of the world had adopted it is an example in point. "It was too expensive" - until it was more expensive not to have implemented it.
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OpenBSD forks, prunes, fixes OpenSSL
http://www.zdnet.com/openbsd-forks-prunes-fixes-openssl-7000028613/#ftag=RSS86a1aa4
Interesting, eh?
At the very least, this will apply a 'many eyes' to some of the SSL code and so long as the ssh pruning isn't wholesale slash-and-burn that cutting it back may prove efficacious for two reasons.
Less code can be simpler code, with decreased likelihood of there being a bug due to complexity and interaction.
Getting rid of the special cases such as VMS and Windows also reduces the complexity.
The Death of Antivirus Software
http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/19386-The-Death-of-Antivirus-Software.html
The real issue here isn't Ubuntu, or any other form of Linux.
Its that AV software doesn't work.
PERIOD.
There are over 50,000 new piece of malware developed and released daily. The very nature of the AV software models that John McAfee foisted on the industry simply can't cope.
This isn't news. Signature-based (and hence subscription based and hence that whole business model) AV is a wrong headed approach. As Rob Rosenberger points out at Vmyths.Com, we are addicted to the update cycle model and its business premise is very like that of drug pushers.
What's that you say? Other types of AV? Like what?
Well, you could have a front-end engine that checks all downloads and all email and all email attachments and all URL responses by emulating what would happen when they run on any PC or in any browser or any other piece of software such as any of the PDF readers you use, or any of the graphical display software you use or any of the word processors you use
or any of the spreadsheet programs you use or any music players you use ... and so on.
Many people in the industry - myself included - have proposed an alternative whereby each machine has a unique cryptographic ID and the legally and properly installed libraries are all signed with that ID, and the program loader/kernel will only load and execute correctly signed code.
Yes, Microsoft tried something similar with ActiveX, but that was signed by the vendor - which can be a good thing, and used PKI, which can also be a good thing. But both can be a problem as well: go google for details. A local signature had advantages and its own problems.
The local signature makes things unique to each machine so there is no "master key" out there. If your private key is compromised then do what you'd do with PGP - cancel the old one, generate a new one and sign all your software with the new one.
The real problem, though, is not in having the key compromised but is the problem that has always existed - its the user. Right now, we have many remote code execution blockers. Your browser might be able to block the execution of Java or JavaScript, but does it? Most people either don't bother setting their defaults to "no execution" or just say "yes" to the pop-up asking them to permit execution.
No technical measure can overcome human frailty in this regard.
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The Decline of the Physical Desktop
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/As-Foretold-by-Desktop-Managment-Tools-588370/
What's interesting here is that this isn't preaching "The Cloud" and only mentions VDI in one paragraph (2 in the one-line expanded version).
Also interesting is the real message: "Microsoft has lost it".
Peter Drucker, the management guru, pointed out that the very last buggy-whip manufacturer in the age of automobiles was very efficient in its processes - it *HAD* to be to have survived that long. (One could say the same about sharks!)
"Keeping desktop systems in good working order is still a labour of Sysiphus .."
Indeed. But LinuxDesktop and Mac/OSX seem to be avoiding most of the problems that plague Microsoft.
A prediction, however.
The problem with DOS/Windows was that the end user was the admin and could fiddle with everything, including download and install new code. We are moving that self-same problem onto smart-phones and tablets. Android may be based on Linux, but its the same 'end user in control' model that we had with Windows. Its going to be a malware circus.
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Fwd: How Quality Drives the Rise and fall of hi-tech products
I'm dubious.
On the one hand I recall a book titled "In Search of Stupidity", which I strongly recommends reading, its about the hi-tech years that this article covers and takes a different view of how "quality" addressed market share.
On the gripping hand, I also lived though the years that book describes and can add detail. One detail is this. MS-Word was crap. Most offices/secretaries preferred WordPerfect, but MS-Word outsold WP by aggressive marketing - nothing else. The quality of MS-Word was the pits and its still full of bugs. Each release formatted historic documents in a different way, which is no-no in the legal (and other) profession. Its handling of nested indents in style sheets is a mess, so much so that many industries such as MILSPEC contractors simply don't use style sheets.
I'm dubious about his claim that Linux has fewer add-on products.
Heinlein has a comment about democracy being like adding zeros.
If you look at those supposed products or Windows you'll find many of them are "me-too" duplicates. We haven't reached that stage yet with portable devices but we are getting there. When you get there, yes you do have one market leader; when people are spoilt for choice like that then a review or a friend's recommendation can trip the balance, and that too can propagate. This has little to do with 'quality' and a lot to do with a cross between humans 'herd instinct' and the way crystals form in a super-saturated medium.
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Are *YOU* ready to give up yet?
Apparently (ISC)2 did this survey ... which means they asked the likes of us ....
Faced with an attack surface that seems to be growing at an overwhelming rate, many security professionals are beginning to wonder whether their jobs are too much for them, according to a study published last week.
Right. If you view this from a technical, bottom-up POV, then yes.
Conducted by Frost & Sullivan, the 2011 (ISC)2 Global Information Security Workforce Study (GISWS) says new threats stemming from mobile devices, the cloud, social networking, and insecure applications have led to "information security professionals being stretched thin, and like a series of small leaks in a dam, the current overworked workforce may be showing signs of strain."
Patching madness, all the hands-on ... Yes I can see that even the octopoid whiz-kids are going to feel like the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger.
Which tells me they are doing it wrong!
Two decades ago a significant part of my job was installing and configuring firewalls and putting in AV. But the only firewall I've touched in the last decade is the one under my desk at home, and that was when I was installing a new desk. Being a Linux user here I don't bother with AV.
"Hands on"? Well yes, I installed a new server on my LAN yesterday.
No, I think I'll scrub it, I don't like Ubuntu after all. I'm putting
in Asterix. That means re-doing my VLAN and the firewall rules.
So yes, I do "hands on". Sometimes.
At client sites I do proper security work. Configuring firewalls, installing Windows patches, that's no longer "security work". The IT department does that. Its evolved[1] into the job of the network admin and the Windows/host admin. They do the hands-on. We work with the policy and translate that into what has to be done.
Application vulnerabilities ranked as the No. 1 threat to organizations among 72 percent of respondents, while only 20 percent said they are involved in secure software development.
Which illustrates my point.
I can code; many of us came to security via paths that involved being coders, system and network admins. I was a good coder, but as a coder I had little "leverage" to "Get Things Done Right". If I was "involved" in secure software development I would not have as much leverage as I might have if I took a 'hands off' roles and worked with management to set up and environment for producing secure software by the use of training and orientation, policy, tools, testing and so forth. BTDT.
There simply are not enough of us - and never will be - to make security work "bottom up" the way the US government seems to be trying We can only succeed "top down", by convincing the board and management that it matters, by building a "culture of security".
One view of Enterprise Information Security Architecure (EISA) Framework.
This is not news. I'm not saying anything new or revolutionary, no matter how many "geeks" I may upset by saying that Policy and Culture and Management matter "more". But if you are one of those people who are overworked, think about this:
Wouldn't your job be easier if the upper echelons of your organizations, the managers, VPs and Directors, were committed to InfoSec, took it seriously, allocated budget and resources, and worked strategically instead of only waking up in response to some incident, and even then just "patching over" instead of doing things properly?
Information Security should be Business Driven, not Technology Driven.
[1] Or devolved, depending on how you look at it.
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Google Phasing out Windows
"According to a report in the Financial Times, Google are phasing
out the use of Microsoft's Windows within the company because of
security concerns. Citing several Google employees, the FT report
reports that new hires are offered the option of using Apple Mac
systems or PCs running Linux. The move is believed to be related to a
directive issued after Google's Chinese operations were attacked in
January. In that attack, Chinese hackers took advantage of
vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer on a Windows PC used by a Google
employee and from there gained deeper access to Google's single sign
on service.
Security as a business decision?
Don't make me laugh!
Look at what precedence they've shown!
Look at Microsoft's attitude and approach to security (no matter how flawed the end result) and compare it with the public stance Google has taken.
No, this is about Business Politics.
Microsoft has been 'staggering' this last decade and now Apple is on the ascendency and the real battle will no longer be in the PC world but in the consumer world with embedded systems.
On the surface this will be Android vs Apple, but since embedded Linux goes so much further, embedded in TVs, GPS units, traffic light controllers, and perhaps it will even replace UNIX in telephone
exchanges (ha-ha-ha!) there's more potential.
(Freudian slip: I just wrote portential.)
Yes, Microsoft hasn't been asleep in the embedded market, or the phone/PDA market, but compared to Linux its a resource hog. To top that, its also proprietary, so vendors rely on Microsoft for the porting to new processor/hardware and for support. Linux/Android doesn't have that limitation. And there are plenty of 'kiddies' eager to play with Android (source) on a new toy.
No, this isn't a security issue, its a business and political issue.
If Google is pushing its range of Android products then it doesn't want to have people - journalists, investors, bloggers - saying "yes, but you USE Windows even though you preach Linux".
Or perhaps you though Google was taking the "High Moral Ground"?
No, I think they are taking the advice of Sun T'Zu and applying it to business
"For them to perceive the advantage of defeating the enemy, they must
also have their rewards."
Betcha Google will be supplying Android phones/slates/pads to its workers.
"He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious."
Look at that ZDNet article and think about the timing of Google's announcement.
"It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct
espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them
instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used."
Think about that one.
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
And look how Android is spreading.
Balmer said Linux was a virus - yes a "meme".
"Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."
Indeed. Microsoft has proclaimed a commitment to "security". Bill Gates said so. That is their "strategy". But Google is working on the fact that Microsoft products still have security flaws. Regardless of the reality, that is "voice" of this announcement. They are saying that Microsoft's strategy isn't working. They are attacking it in the minds of the consumers.
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Unfortunately, SNMPv2 is not secure
You betcha its not!
There are GOOD practices for deploying SNMP.
The BEST practice is to avoid V2.
If you must SNMP then use v3
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid14_gci1078248,00.html
http://www.snmp.com/snmpv3/v3white.shtml
or http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_SNMPVersion3SNMPv3MessageFormat.htm
if you are feeling geekish.
However my personal view is DON'T DO IT.
The Cost of patching
I saw this assertion go by and it stood out:
The bigger cost would be the cost of not patching. Such items as downtime will affect more staff/users than patching will.
That's not a fair statement. There is much more to the discussion than whether to patch or not to patch or "stuff this for a lark, lets convert to MAC or Linux".
The issue so far has been black and white.
There is a black and white difference between devices that face the internet and those that are not accessible to or from the 'Net.
But what about the "grey"? No all patches have the same criticality even for 'Net-facing devices.
And there's more to security - even of the Internet-facing devices - than patching software.
The U.S. has 18 percent of its machines controlled by botnets
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=17459&tag=nl.e589
A short while ago I read an article that tried to present both sides of the issue of whether companies should shut down their desktop machines at night.
The 'pro' was of course the saving of electricity - all good and "Green".
The 'con' was that this saving would be offset by the cost in time as employees waited for the machines to book and waited while they shut down - the latter to make sure that they didn't hang.
The article didn't discuss home users. I'm sure home users would appreciate the savings and be willing to devote the time 🙂 While many people work from home and many children use computers from home, I don't think there is a need for an 'always on' computer in the home.
(Unless you count the fridge or the microwave or the VCR clock ..)
Would turning those computers off affect that botnet? Perhaps. I've certainly met people who when they learn I'm involved with IT ask me why their computer runs slower than when they bought it. I ask if they run AV or other anti-malware software, purge adware ... I rarely hear from them again but when I do its to say that some tool like "Search-and-destroy" told them they had gazillions of malware. And they ask me where it comes from.
I don't know, I run Linux.
But that argument against turning off corporate machines is specious at many levels. Most of the staff at my clients seem to use laptops rather than desktop machines. They take them to meetings and presentations, sometimes they take them home. All this involves turning off and on. If they don't take them home at night those laptops have to be locked away, not left on the desk top. That's been policy everywhere I've worked this last decade.
The limiting case was one year I worked in a port-a-kabin.
The sub-zero overnight temperatures meant none of the workstations were operative. So we turned on the cabin heating all the electrics, all the machinery and went to get a coffee (aka "breakfast"). Half an hour later the cabin was warm enough for the electronics to operate. We were not allowed to leave the cabin powered up overnight.
Would shutting down the home machines each night reduce the level of spam? Perhaps. That's an incentive over and above the Green one of saving electricity. Perhaps some service provider service technician should recommend this over and above regular 'purges'.
The McAfee report doesn't make a clear distinction between commercial and residential hosts for the botnets, though it does mention some government agencies and banking institutions in Russia are
malware-laden. The large corporations that make up my clients have always had IT departments that support good front-end filtering and making sure that the workstations have up to date AV software. That being said, I see a lot of people who turn off their AV software. Myth or not, many still believe it affects performance.
Of course I run Linux and I don't have to worry about rogue ActiveX, and I don't run attachments I get in the mail and there are many sites I simply don't visit!
And I turn my home machines off at night.
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Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Windows 7
- Image via Wikipedia
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/benchmarked-ubuntu-vs-vista-vs-windows-7
Interestingly, even if not that relevant.
And, of course, there's the most important proviso of all: it is very, very likely that a few tweaks to any of these operating systems could have made a big difference to these results, but we're not too
interested in that - these results reflect what you get you install a plain vanilla OS, like most users do.
That's Nonsense! Everyone Tweaks.
All the OS are set up to make tweaking easy!
Temptingly so.
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The IDE of Choice: VI
I do a bit of work on the fringe of the Ruby community, and the Mac is popular there along with an IDE or two. However I'm beginning to see a few articles to the effect that the IDE is getting in the way after a point and that reverting to your favourite text editor as an IDE is actually more productive.
For old-farts like myself that would be VI (or VIM). Such a comment will probably bring cries of derision, more so than the idea of an editor replacing an IDE. But after a few decades editing is no longer a conscious act. Just as some people touch-type and the words appear on the screen (or paper) without any thought about the mechanics, so too with your favourite editor - only it extends to the non-alphanumeric keys too.
Of course I cheat; VIM has panels and Linux has all these windows and other things that make VIM usable as an IDE. Integrated? Yes, in my head. Its the best place for it.
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Why would anyone choose Linux when they already have Windows?
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=760&tag=nl.e101
I could go through a litany of complaints I have about Linux. I could
complain about the confusing number of distributions. I could complain
about the propensity of Linux proponents to cause unnecessary confusion
by abbreviating or using acronyms for Linux-only functions. I could
complain about the silly confusing names they give applications.
How come Linux gets berated for this?
There's a plethora, a confusing plethora, of Microsoft products, since, compared to Linux, that world is unbundled.
But Microsoft aside, look at the auto industry; it was once said that you could order over a quarter of a million different variations given the options on some Chrysler models. There are still many distributor/vendors, and different dealers/outlets offer different deals, trade-ins, offers and options. The auto industry has more acronyms than the computer industry and lots of special functions and tools.
For example, the spring inside my seat-belt buckle slipped out of place so that the buckle wont lock the clip in place. The way the buckle is built you can't take it apart, so the whole assembly has to be replaced. The bolt that fastens it into the seat assembly (remember, the seat has to be able to gyre and gymble without altering the tension of the belt, so the belt is bolted to the seat, not the frame of the car) is a special one, the only one (except for the other seat belt) in the car. Of course it take a special tool. As it turns out, the tool costs more than the over-priced replacement seat-belt assembly. And since it is for that purpose only on that model series (apparently it was changed for another equally unique bolt and matching tool in later models) my mechanic did not have that tool in in his toolbox. He tells me that this is normal, that the auto manufacturers have any twists and turns like this that serve to lock out the independent mechanic by forcing up the cost of operations.
I look at the computer industry and think how easy it actually is to move between vendors of hardware and software. I really can't see why if you are an office worker familiar with MS-Word you will be unable to do any work if faced with OpenOffice - or WordPerfect or WordPro. Once upon a time both Apple and Microsoft "sold" the GUI interface as being something that was "obvious" and wouldn't need training and thick documentation. Whether or not that's so, moving from one word processor to another, one mail user interface to another, has nothing to do with the underlying OS or the names and acronyms used.
As the article says:
An operating system exists only to create an environment for
applications; nothing more, nothing less. Most people sit down at a
computer and just start using it without worrying about what operating
system it is running.
So why the fuss? Gnome and KDE have "skins" that can make them look like OSX or any of the Microsoft Operating systems. The various distributions of Linux are more like the various offerings of the auto industry, they mostly resemble each other and copy ideas from one another. If you can drive a Ford - sorry, SUSE - you can drive a Chrysler - sorry, Mandriva. Or even a Volvo/BSD. And since I've seen Americans cope in England after just a few minutes, I'll add MGB/LinOS.
So Why Linux?
The article has a theme about moving from Windows to Linux. What it doesn't touch on is why one might want to move.
The reason for most people is that they get a new computer. They are probably going to have to change OS - from W/95 or W/XP to Vista. This is likely to be even more traumatic than if they changed to Linux with an appropriate skin. I've certainly seen many reports of application-only users who had their system "regressed" from a Vista they didn't like to to their "old" system which was actually Linux looking like XP. The reality is that most users see the applications and neither see nor want to see the OS. The same applies for most car drivers. They just want to drive.
When Mark Kaelin says that John Sheesley can crash Linux over and over - so what? The issue isn't that someone with John's background and expertise can crash Linux, its how stable Linux is for an ordinary user. And compared to Windows, it seems to be about 15 years further down the road. Windows seems to emphasise 'dressing'. Perhaps that's why Mark Shuttleworth wants to address the image of the desktop.
Its worth reading some of John's articles - he's not rabidly anti-Linux. Or rabidly anti-Microsoft.
When Mark points out that viruses and malware exist for Linux he omits to note that these are 'proof of concept' things that neither exist nor could exist in the wild. The underlying architecture of Linux makes it more resilient to whole classes of malware. The idea that its 'immune' because it doesn't have the market share is a myth.
I've asked many people in the business world why they don't use Linux, and all in all their reasons tend to be emotional not logical.
But to be fair, if security and reliability and security are deciding issues, as many Linux enthusiast claim, then why aren't they using BSD? I ask that of them and I get an emotional response similar to the one I see when I ask Windows enthusiasts about Linux.
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Are these “Top 10” dumb things or not?
At "10 dumb things users do that can mess up their computers" Debra Littlejohn Shinder brings up some interesting common failings. Lets look at her list, because I have a different take.
#1: Plug into the wall without surge protection
#2: Surf the Internet without a firewall
#3: Neglect to run or update antivirus and anti-spyware programs
#4: Install and uninstall lots of programs, especially betas
#5: Keep disks full and fragmented
#6: Open all attachments
#7: Click on everything
#8: Share and share alike
#9: Pick the wrong passwords
#10: Ignore the need for a backup and recovery plan
Well, they seem interesting, but ...
The big "but" gets back to one of my favourite phrases:
Very simply, in my own context most of this is meaningless. It may well be in yours as well.