Re: OT: Computers

XaQ Morphy wrote:
On Nov 5 2008 12:49 PM, Kyle T. Jones wrote:

I think in 50 years, everyone will develop their own OS. Compatibility will be a bitch, but security will be the tops.

We need a serious change in the security paradigm. AV and SW scanning simply becomes too cost-intensive (in terms of time and resources) at a certain point. Nobody likes using their PC when Norton's actively scanning, for instance... everything runs twice as slow!

We need better prevention (better firewalls, I suppose)... but also, more diversity in terms of OSs helps.

At the deepest level, of course, there has to be standardization... not sure how you deal with that.

Yeah, agreed on all points. AV scanning is too reactive, firewalls don't
help if something comes in via other methods and is already on the inside,
and the myriad of patches that come out usually end up being a pain in the
ass and can cause all sorts of issues. Example: this past weekend we
patched our production servers (1000 maybe) with the newly released patch
for this new exploit that was found. We had maybe 40 servers fail to come
up for one reason or another. That's a low number as far as percentages
goes, but when it means that one poor chap is stuck with having to
remediate all 40 on his own weekend time just because he's the one stuck
in the on call rotation, it flat out sucks. App server in who the hell
knows where India goes down and we have no remote access to it. What do
we do? Wait until our team in China comes online late Sunday night our
time to find someone at that location and try to walk through the language
barrier and technical issues to bring it up. So by proactively trying to
prevent a security hole from wreaking havok we've put an entire location
out of commission until someone can get it fixed. Not good.

Yeah, that's generally the case... increasingly, though, I'm finding it's the other way around (websites are designed for firefox/navigator/chrome/safari/etc instead of just for IE). And Firefox alone has grabbed a *huge* chunk of Explorer's market over the past two years.

It's a very discernible trend. Pluseth, as you use both, you're certainly aware that the majority of the "improvements" in Explorer 7 were directly ripped off from those third-party browsers (tabbed browsing, multi-engine search tool, etc).

And the truth remains: IE is probably the *least* secure way to browse online... in fact, I was reading a interview with some big security guru in PC Magazine a few months back (guy was a big time Black Hat in the day, did some prison time, and got hired right out of prison making serious cheese because of his expertise), and he sited IE as the #1 reason there are so many network based security issues today.

Yup, agreed again. I went to IE7 when Firefox just wasn't cutting it, and
only within the last 6 months did I go back to Firefox. Firefox still
doesn't know how to stream media without having to install some POS
software from Apple for quicktime which I refuse to install on my
machines. So I'm stuck with having to wait for media files to download
and then remember to clean them off the drive instead of just streaming
them which IE does with no issues. I also can't do easy FTP within
Firefox, my bank site freaks out with it as do a few other financial
sites, so no matter what I'm stuck using IE to hit the web.


That's pretty much been my experience as well (in terms of the firefox shortcomings).

Yeah, it's always the bank/bill sites that hate my poor firefox.

Hey, one thing I do like, that you might appreciate, since you're probably on a million computers during the course of the week: portable firefox on a flash drive... so you have all yer add-ins and bookmarks, whichever PC you're using. Portable Thunderbird is also pretty cool, if you like Thunderbird (I realize that many folks do not).

Some other portable apps I've found useful:

audacity
clamwin
nt registry tweaker
sciTE
openoffice
afterwork
winrar
infrarecorder

of course, if it's worth the time and effort, you can make any program portable.

I was told, for instance (by some newsgroup know-it-alls) that it was impossible to rig photoshop or dreamweaver to run off a flash drive... all I'm saying is that they were wrong.

Cheers.

PS: perhaps one of the shifts will be having PCs with locked hard drives that just contain the basics: the OS, a browser, etc... stuff that you wouldn't be able to change, but wouldn't nec. need to change... then running all the other programs off a removable drive of some sort, that you could change.

at least there, if you get a virus on the main drive, you just shut it off and on and it's history.


---
Morphy
xaqmorphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.donkeymanifesto.com
"SHUT UP IDIOT" --The Great Patholio

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