SECURITY FLAWS in NIC drivers by tons of name brand vendors

[Brian Frank 0]

Yeah, that is bad news.

[duhmez 0]

Thats the first thin I thought of too when i heard this. Pad the damn thing with zeros...... how hard is that?

 

Another benefit with padding 0's,

 

They will compress really well too speeding up transmission just a wee little bit more

[Brian Frank 0]

Hopefully the next time a new networking protocol comes out, they'll make sure to fix this issue. Or the next time they update TCP/IP and the like (if they can get that going)

[crusherBRZ 0]

But the problem itself is not the protocol, is how device drivers are being written and implemented, or am I wrong?

 

And for our sorry Alec, no one is concern about security in these days. Specially in computer industry...

[crusherBRZ 0]

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It's sad I guess, when accounting, finance, & marketing does the designwork if you ask me... I have been developing programs now for a decade almost professionally (& for a decade on my own before embarking upon it as my life's work, for now @ least).

Finally someone agree with me. It seems that people, and not only the final user, but the admins and IT professionals, are more concern in "how beautifull the application is", than "how beautifull it works"!!!! That´s something to think about, when you look the "skin", not the code. (Not bashing MS, don´t misunderstand me...Like the Linux people say: SHOW ME THE CODE! )

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I've been TOLD to issue programs with "known issues"... that's right! Small or intermittent bugs that another week of work or so would have cured... why?

Deadlines... driven by bank loans or venture capitalist's money. Yes, I can understand that... it is someone's cash. BUT, on the other hand, as the maker of any particular program I would rather issue something that is 110% solid in ALL cases. A real "catch-22" situation...

(The reasoning being you can issue documentation listing known issues & do a patch update later... probably same deal here, but what a horrendous thing to overlook!)

I had a friend that started a Lan-House for games. Believe me, i take one year to convice him to install Windows 2000 in the machines. You can imagine the result: better performance, less problems (he uses Windows 98 for networking gaming and internet access!!!) Expand the concept and I known what you talking about. He prefer to use Ghost one time a week, than work two weeks for planing and installing Win 2K and solve the problems forever...

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P.S.=> It's all changing so fast now, & it's still a relatively NEW field really... we are in the "industrial revolution" stage of it now I figure, so this type of thing is inevitable... apk

So, that is no use to do "sabotage", like the workers in the past?

[ ]´


PS:BTW, I know you develop very usefull softwares. In the old times of NT and my Voodoo 2, i´ve used A LOT your control panel for my video card. And, IMHO, your Registry Cleaner for NT and 2K reduces Norton Windoctor, MS Registry Cleaner, AATools Registry Cleaner, and others programs in this category to dust, and throw them in the trash!
A nice piece of software Alec. A nice piece of software... 8)

[crusherBRZ 0]

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Both are important... but the FIRST THING TO DO is make it work as "rock-solid" as possible!

No questions about that Alec, it´s how I think too...

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So, that is no use to do "sabotage", like the workers in the past?

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Heh, you went over my head on this one... what do you mean?

In the past, when the machines become to be introduced in factorys, the workers throw his shooes, called "sabots", into the machines to stop them, hence the word "Sabotage". This practice had worked, right? 8)

What I want to say, that is no use to blame and scream about how the applications, hardware and thecnology are being used today, and do only this, scream! It´s better to advice and alert people what they can do about it, and what the best choice for a piece of hardware or a program, for example. If they listen, good for them. If they don´t listen, you can´t forced them to accept that. And for my experience, they don´t listen you in the first time you say.

Like some folks that I known, who say: MS is crap, is no worthy, and bla, bla, bla. The future is Linux, and bla, bla, bla. There some very good MS products, and there are bad ones. There are very good Linux filosophy onto how implement a system, and there are bad ones. But force me to choose for one or another???

"Things are not equal all the times, captain."(Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)

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Yea, the old "APK 3dFx Tuning Engine 2000++" was a real hit... amazes me to this day when I query that in quotes online at GOOGLE for instance, how much/how many times it STILL shows up as a downloadeable (and, got nice reviews too, bonus) to this day even 5 years ++ later.

And remembering me that people said you can´t run a game with 3dfx Voodoo 2 in NT 4.0. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, they just don´t known it....



http://download.com.com/3000-2094-8071032.html?tag=lst-0-1

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I am glad you like it... very safe & solid.

That is the first reason I choose it! In fact, all my programs are chosen that way. Yes, it take much more time to scan the registry and clean it than others programs, but you need to do it just one time, and when you erase some key, there are no some "collateral effects" :-).

[ ]´s

PS: BTW...do you like Veronica Zemanova???

[crusherBRZ 0]

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It's a "good formula"... works for me professionally as well as in shareware/freeware! Build right once, never have to mess with it again... Funny, & I have to mention this:

In fact, I talked to a guy last night who is a techie @ one of the companies I did nearly a million line program for 1999-2000, & he said to me "You should be proud of the Equal2New System: She's running like a dream 3 years later now without modification!"

That system's VB6 thru Oracle8 middleware client drivers cross platform thru Windows Terminal Server into Oracle 8i on SUN Solaris 2.6... multiuser & multicampus with over 150 users beating on it everyday...

Running like clockwork to this day & HOOKED INTO EVERYTHING at that company (a networking equipment reseller), sales, crm, mrp, shop floor, reporting, managerial data, security... heck, it's "SKYNET" (from terminator film's reference lol) for them!

Good design, & we had a VERY powerful & talented group of guys (4 of us) working on it & built it in 11 months 110% solid & stable (and, like I said above, RUNNING LIKE A DREAM TO THIS DAY!) as well as EASY to use & very flexible & powerful... completely database option driven for security, user rights, & more and is object oriented to-the-max using 2.5 tiers (TS is the .5) & stored procedures multi-user design engines!

Most of the IS/MIS/IT work I have done out there still is, some of it (smaller ones than that) is out there running strong since their Windows 3.x days but running on 32-bit boxes now.

I known what you mean. I´m in Brazil, just to you know, and I work for small offices and mid-sized companys. I never worked for a "big name", except one time with IBM Brazil, in 1992/1993. But in every companie or office that I worked on, the adm system and methods I implemented work better than the previous one, and they keeped on since them. I´m proud of that, when you get something that not work "the way you want" and change it to something that actually work better than you expected.

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Absolutely... I am VERY resistant to change here myself, & it's the experimental types of folks (my nephew mainly this year in things food-wise, & also computer programs & hardware-wise too) who turn you onto potentially better things!

It got me to try a variety of antivirus, disk defragging, & file sharing programs this year in fact... glad I did too! I use 4 antivirus (not resident scanners, only Norton is still) to do virus scanning here now, all excellent, & 2 watch email as well. Defrag I stayed with Diskeeper 7.x, but found Raxco is a CLOSE contender. File sharing saw me go from WinMX to Kazaa on my nephew's insistence (after I told him about it, lol, but did not use it myself) & I did not look back!

Good to try new things on the advice of others!

Funny you say that. I´m willing to test new methods and programs to find if they worked or not. But I´m not pretend to reinvent the wheel... And if you liked Kazaa (I use Kazaa Lite 2.1), you´ll like SoulSeek, do you know it? It´s a P2P program too, very simple, but more directed to music and video-clips. I like it more than WinMX. You´ll find it in http://z.cccp.at/soulseek

And funny you mentioned Raxco software. I used to use Diskeeper, but since I discover Perfct Disk, I change it. And I think it´s better than Diskeeper: faster, lighter and work better in old machines. But is my opinion, Diskeeper is a good program also (there´s another one, O&O Defrag that is good also, from a german company, I tested it too, but it´s a resource eater!!!! What a heavy application & layout, God...)

For antivirus, if I tell you, you´ll don´t believe: I don´t use one, in my home. It´s funny, but don´t using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, don´t opening .EXE attachs in e-mail, and don´t enable Java save a lot of work for you. Yes, i know, my knowledge is far greater than the ordinary user, I know what I can do and what I can´t. But is a strange thing: the media and the companies said you´re in great risk and all that stuff, but if you take some precautions and change some habits, you minimize the risk 90%!!! And I don´t use a AV loaded in memory for more than 2 years now, but had Norton AV installed for some files I download or recieve. My firewall, Agnitum Outpost Firewall, scans attachs that comes in e-mail (if they are trojans or if the SO is with hidden extensions enable, the firewall rename or erase the files, you choose. The default is rename it). Only if you give some files on floppy or CDR, or the site that I downloaded the files is suspicious, then I scan it. Otherwise I don´t even botter. Of course, all of this is in my home, not in the companies I work for.

Java and Active X is another issue. Go to www.computerbytesman.com and chosse the option "Browser Crashes". Apart the specific problems related to Internet Explorer/Windows (so, it´s a SO design problem, not a browser problem) every other web-page designed to crash you browser work in Opera, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator/Mozilla. So, I ask you: the problem is the browser or the Java/Active X language? It´s something to think about, since any e-mail redirection, virus, trojans, system crasher that loads in a web page only work if Java/Active X are enable. Tested with Opera 6.03/6.05 with JRE 1.3.6 and 1.4.x, IE 5x and 6x with MS JVM and Navigator/Mozilla in Windows 98, 2K Pro and XP Pro with 256 MB ram (in 2K and XP, the memory hog bug don´t crash your system, but slow it down "a bit" ).

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Oh, absolutely! She's a beautiful woman, & I do like beautiful women...

If you ask me, I prefer Aria Giovanni... (twisted smile)
But I don´t have anything against VZ, "au contraire"...

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(Yes, God's own engineering & "GOD DON'T MAKE NO JUNK!"... especially women! They're a part of what makes life worth the living... don't you agree? Heh, of course, they are also part of what makes it difficult @ times, but nothing's perfect really! Every razor has 2 sides & all that as the saying goes...)



She's gorgeous, & I also lately seem to admire a French actress named "Emmanuel Beart" (known in states here from her role in "MISSION: Impossible" with my fellow Syracusan, Tom Cruise)... beautiful girl!

Well, nobody is perfect, even God... Like we said here:
Women: you can´t live with, you can´t live without it.

Emmanuel Beart is beautifull too. If you had a chance to see her in a french movie, try "La Bûche", is a drama/comedy, but very funny and enjoyable.
If you asked me, the goddes of cinema is Ingrid Bergman! What a woman! And it seems that is genetic, ´cause Isabella Rossellini are the same type of woman: goddess! HAHAHAHAHA...

[crusherBRZ 0]

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Well, welcome to this site from a U.S.A. citizen here... it's a decent site with alot of folks who are knowledgeable in this field on ALOT of levels first of all, I think you will like it here.

Thanks for the welcome. I knowm the site a long time, but only now I begin to participate the forums.

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"Reinventing the wheel"... heh, how many folks can say that they have TRULY done that & done absolutely 1000% better job? Not many... not many come up with absolutely original ideas (there is a saying "There is no original thought", I think actually there is very little, but there IS some!).

One such program I created back in 1997, "APK RamCharge 6.0++" was a shareware of the year & first of its kind, went commercial for 3 years thru Sunbelt Software & then got copied a year later by a kid in Germany who kept asking me questions about it...

I did not think I gave him too many clues on its operation, it appears I did & U.S. Patent laws don't affect him either so he went off & did one & got the same award as I did from Windows Magazine the next year later lol...

That killed my market, because his work was the first of many copies of my idea (there are loads of memory freeing programs out there now & more coming everyday).

Imitation: THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY!

This is inevitable. When you do a good and new work, some people will imitate you a lot, it´s part of the game. The only side effect in this is when HIM is recognized for the work, and not YOU, who invented and implemented the ideas. But, like I said, it´s part of the game.

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I should have been more specific: Kazaa Lite 2.1 user here, this is a GOOD program & improves with each release... a wonderful tool!

I am mostly video related seeker, I like films & older T.V. shows like StarTrek original series, Twilight Zone, Reboot, & the new Star Trek "Enterprise" series... films also, of course.

Music data I loaded up on when Napster was big, before it went under... but you are right, Kazaa & others do the job here also!

Now, this´s one kind of an example how better improvement you can do in a software! :-) Mainly because the people behind this make it for fun, not for money... Kazaa Lite is a lot BETTER than the original Kazaa Media Desktop, and without adware and spyware. And talking about that, adware, that´s something the companies needs to pay attencion: the inclusion of adware and spyware, wich they claim "pay their bills", is more a problem than a solution. Today, people avoids a software or system, not matter how good it´s, if adware is included.

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Yes, they are used here ONLY when other browsers will not work for me on SOME sites... IE is left with cookies, Java, ActiveX, Flash, & most options left "open" for me just in case I hit ones I have to use that stuff for... I don't very often, & hence use it very little.

Internet web browsers was another "experiment" area I neglected to mention I tried this year & Opera 7.1 (pure C code, this appeals to me as a technologist/programmer/performance freak) & Phoenix (mozilla mod, better one folks here turned me onto) are my favs now: extremely capable/flexible!

Compression programs was another comparing PowerArchiver, WinZip, & WinRar (& I ended up staying with PowerDesk 5.0, probably the MOST capable filemanager on the planet & easy to use as well, has zip/unzip (& most formats in native Win32 form in it) plus built-in FTP as well).

EDIT PART (Opera 7.03 update here in case you do not know, I just found out on main page of this site here today courtesy of another member who updated the news forums there, ChristianB):

ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/703/en/java/ow32enen703j.exe

Oh yes, i know this! Opera is a hell of a browser, 7.0 had a lot of drawbacks and problems, but they are correcting it. I never like IE, since version 3.0 (2.0 doesen´t count, a mere Mosaic copy... :-)) He behaviour is a lot like Windows Explorer or any Windows program, and the web doesen´t work that way. Fortunally they corrected this with the follow versions, but i don´t like it, it´s only my taste. I think I´m too accustomed with Netscape, since version 0.98!!! Well, this version is a lot old, i think I´m a tech-dinosaur!!!

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and don´t enable Java save a lot of work for you.

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This is one thing I agree with & disabled it here years ago (even though it was said its 'sandbox' area was 110% safe, I knew that was nearly impossible, & later was proven I was correct). Plus, using it slows up your surfing... but there are times it IS needed & I keep IE able to use it here (SUN Microsystems model latest one).

Yes, some sites even only work with one type of browser! This is insane...8O

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My firewall, Agnitum Outpost Firewall, scans attachs that comes in e-mail (if they are trojans or if the SO is with hidden extensions enable, the firewall rename or erase the files, you choose. The default is rename it).

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That sounds NICE... is that hardware? If so, is it Win32 OS compatible & how much does it cost (if you do not want to convert U.S. Dollars that is ok, I am just curious...). I use a LinkSys BEFSR11 here, but it is a rudimentary "NAT Firewalling" solution @ best (for cablemodem/dsl), not as complete as the one you have there... that sounds VERY nice!

Well, no, it´s a software firewall, believe it or not! You can get a copy here, www.agnitum.com. I tested every major firewall software in the market. Zone Alarm is ok, but I think too intrusive. Sygate Firewall is a pain in the ass for tuning and configuration, and no matter how good your software is, if is too damn hard and needs a lot of work from you to configuration, it´s no good. Hey, a software is supposed to "easying" our job, not the contrary. And Norton Personal Firewall was a good firewall, but like others Symantec products, it became uselles!!! I don´t know, since Peter Norton left the company, their products became worst...and only function well in the windows 9x series and MS-DOS. I don´t see a single product of theirs working well in NT, except NAV. BTW, if you look into NAV 2001, NAV 2002 and NAV 2003 there´s no diference between them. It´s all the same engine and code, but NAV2K and NAV2K3 are hog eaters with a heavy interface!!!

Since I discover it, i recommend it to every person who asks me about firewalls. Had a built-in ad blocker, stealth mode, gif blocker, html advertise blocker, attack detection, Active X controller, etc. And the better: is free! The free and pro version are the same software, with the same functions, the only difference is that pro version is pay, had tech support and all that stuff.

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Really? That was my next question & you seemed to have answered it... is it on EVERY browser that occurs? Looks like it, those are the ones I keep here along with the Phoenix variation of Mozilla.

Some things don´t change Alec, no matter how people try to tell you...

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Yea, I was wondering if NT/2k/XP would fall down, I was thinking not... but I was thinking it probably would do as you say, & tie them up a bit slowing them down some.

I see a lot of Linux guys scream and kick 2K and XP, but they are very good products. Point. With exception of Windows Me, of course. THIS version I pass it blank. Urghh, what a crappy system, a mixed Windows 2000 and Windows 98, don´t liked. But, you really can´t blame MS for all, we were in the PCChips times, do you remember? At least here in Brazil...

And, for payback (You make it here, here you pay), most of the invasions and exploiting in these days are being doing in Apache/Linux servers.

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I just saw her in a film recently, it was VERY good (older film)... Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (with Spencer Tracy)...



She did a great job in it as the young singer in a club whom Jekyll meets initially (but has a wonderful fiance he is engaged to & will not betray due to his being a good man), but the evil side of him as Hyde seduces her & brutally abuses mentally & physically...

* A story about alcoholism or drug abuse if you ask me, a classic.

Yes, this is one of her great movies. There´s one, wich I can´t remember the name, and is a Alfred Hitchcock movie (what a shame of my!!!) that´s performanced part of it in Rio de Janeiro, very good too. And she´s beatifull in this movie too. Well, waht movie that she isn´t beautifull!

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P.S.=> BOY! Did we ever get off-track... lol, still nice meeting you, good conversation. What EXACTLY do you do with computers for work, are you also a developer, or are you a network admin. etc.? apk

I´m a network consulting, system integrator and support for Windows and Novell, and now Linux. I do not make server applications or programming, like you, but had a basic knownledge about it, and also I teaching network and support in Windows environment in a technical school in Brazil (Senai, if you ask).

[ ]´s

PS: BTW, I had to ask this: how is the Novell market in the US? Here in Brazil it´s being still used for some companies, but the majority of NOS is Windows 2000.

[crusherBRZ 0]

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Aha, I see... a "lurker", converted! Ha, We'll "give you religion" yet... lol!

Not a lurker, just a bit lazy... :-)

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Yes, when I was still "green" in this trade (1997) when I first created it, I actually QUIT a job @ an NCR subsidiary/partner where I was making good money (in Kennesaw Georgia, I lived in Marietta only minutes away from 1995-1999)... my boss told me "Nice work, expect to be COPIED!".

No matter how I protect my apps against disassembly, which is a variety of methods (including watching all resident windows for disassemblers like SOFTICE etc.), I answered TOO many questions by another coder (I felt like helping a young person out) for him, & that did me in: Sometimes, being helpful, does NOT pay off!

Too bad, it was easy money... once the work was done, between the payments I got each month & shareware checks (I used to put massive timeouts & nags in my work, folks paid more), my ex-girlfriend from up here that came down to live with me there said "WoW... I see you build these things in 1-2 weeks time & put in another week to patch them, & I cannot believe folks pay you for them!"

She never complained though when I spent some of the cash on her (other than paying bills etc.) lol!

If you want my sincerity, I don´t see ANY woman complain about the money we spend with hers, only the money we don´t (twisted smile)

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That's the REAL reason to do any of this... to have fun, get a sense of accomplishment, seeing others use your work & be happy to use it (BIG PLUS), to get your name around this field... & for the love of this thing called computers, where in the world of today in Windows?

Where "Art & Science" collide... & interact! To quote Steve Jobs: "We're changing the way folks think... & communicate!"

A friend of mine, wich is a programmer too, tells me that no matter if you´re a company president or a waiter, you always had to do the best in the job you chosed. I agree with him...

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I never tried that... what bugs me is, most of the artists out there, like musicians & such? Don't CARE if their work is on it, they do it so their thoughts & ideas can be heard... only the money grubbing leeches (middlemen resellers, societies' LARGEST problem, the inflators of prices that bump prices up by 300% @ least on anything) do!

They don't do a lick of the work either really, NOT as much as the creators do & often RIP THEM OFF!

Like Courtney Love said, I work for the tip... Do you imagine Michelangello screaming for copyrights? Or Da Vinci? I think humanity will loose a lot of knownledge if they think that way...

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Yes, that's the "leeches" talking... those middlemen types, I have dealt with them & it put a BAD taste into my mouth.

I won't do it again...

I beat those with CUSTOM HOST FILE entries here... I never see adbanners in browsers, OR apps that have bannerware in them...

No question about that my friend...

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Opera to me @ least, is a technological marvel... built in PURE C, fast! Must have taken them a LONG time to build it, but now the core is done & it's patchwork. I like it AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, RESPECT IT!

(Sounds weird maybe, but I do... to me, it is the difference between a mass-production vehicle, & a Lamborghini, a limited edition car that REALLY flies!)

I like Delphi, LOTS, & build in it nearly exclusively with inlined Assembler code &/or C created DLL's ONLY! Delphi often even outruns C++, especially with good algorithm system in code that is optimized & uses inlined ASM code, but C is fantastic & really fast...

(Provided you can stand the buildtimes involved, there is a difference building with the SDK vs. MSVC++ or even Borland Delphi C++ Builder. 10x as long to create same type of app for same purpose... but you end up often with a HOTROD of a program with LOW memory occupancy!)

Heh, I remember early IE myself... it WAS a MOSAIC rip-off. Much of MS' software is, like the IP Stack itself & its character mode tools in the OS... or bought from others, like FrontPage & the disk defragger largely was ExecSoft code built ontop of MS file movement API's to make it work right! Also, Symantec licensed watered-down apps like AntiVirus & 9x Defrag are more examples.

It's how things get done: Cheaper to lease or buy out code entirely than build from scratch & them improve upon it: "GOOD ARTISTS COPY, GREAT ARTISTS STEAL" - Pablo Picasso, a quote from him & SO true in this field.

In MS case? Add onto the STEAL part "buy out & improve"... lol!

I agree with you: most of the software and tweaks I tested is concern in how god the application is and how lighter (memory or resources, i mean) it can be. For MS concern, they do a lot of mass market and even dirty tatics, but let´s be honest: Bill Gates and Microsoft become waht they are because of competent work, a lot of lucky and A LOT of BAD work and mistakes of theirs competitors.

Let´s take Sun Microsystems, for example. They complain about the Windows JVM and request MS to take it out of Windows. So MS did it. Now, it complain for the court to judge the case more faster, because the people don´t give a damn about that, and the participation of Java in the market is decreesing. Because Sun had requested MS to take out JVM from Windows!!! Do they known what they really want, i ask myself some times?

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You know... you would like Mozilla or better still, Phoenix then... MUCH more flexible, elegant, & powerful builds of modern Netscape.

Try them sometime, I did... like them both, but still Opera 7.03 reigns supreme here!

Heh, you are a "dinosaur" in this field, you're quoting tools I used to use & the versions of them as well!

I´ll download Phoenix and give it a try.

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Thank-You for the link, I will download it & give it a shot... I am always up for trying new & better... quite often, the MOST known are NOT the best!

While in College for an MIS degree back in 1984, I had an MIS class that my teacher told us "IBM is NOT the best always" & most of us were like "WHAT?"... He then said "Their BIGGEST strength is marketing power!" & now, the last decade or so only, I TRULY think I understand!

Why you understand that? Because other certain company learn this?

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Can I tell you why, from what I have seen? Again, accountants & finance control corporations more than anyone... along with stockholders screaming "MAKE ME MORE MONEY OR YOU ARE GONE!" to mgt.

So, I have seen that once a major software is done? The main development team (guys with REAL skills & experience) gets fired, & then college kids with less experience take over, for like 1/3 the salary... I know, I used to be one of those guys in the early to mid 90's. Those kids write often inefficiently (I know I used to) & make HUGE fundamental or foundational mistakes... this is lack of experience.

Don't wonder what happened to the 9x codebase either, it is EXACTLY this... too many cooks in the soup, too much BADLY done patches, & no one @ end (ME) knew what was REALLY going on it anymore from foundations to final code... bad bad bad!

Now that I am a "more experienced" programmer, & hold title of "Application Developer" or "Software Engineer" & no longer junior title often of "programmer/analyst" that's happened to me once already... makes you ANGRY! You get used to it, as how it really is.

Getting fired for doing GOOD job, because you are told "YOU COST TOO MUCH TO HOLD ONTO"... I discovered you are better off contracting & underwriting your own benefits packages... PLUS, you make 3x as much contract programming as you do taking fulltime jobs for companies, only to be let go when project (s) are done.

You can only be a sucker for so long, when you see that the leaders out there today in industry are no longer owners of the company (how many are privately held & owners have them that take pride in them?), but stockholders = money grubbing speculators.

U.S. Business NEEDS to change this... & develop QUALITY again, not shabby goods, & folks wonder WHY U.S. folks buy Mercedes or BMW vs. our products (even the "made in USA" ones are made of imported parts via the NAFTA agreement to beat trade tarriffs... we got burnt by our leaders, politicians, the best money CAN (& does) buy, in the interest of big money)...

Good leaders? LEAD BY EXAMPLE... I don't see too many GOOD examples out there nowadays, & neither do others here... take the heart out of you, & wind out of your sails.

Humm...Alec, Alec, if I tell you that we tell exactlly the same thing here, we need to develope more thecnology and quality, and stop this "rush" for stockholders = money grubbing speculators? And I had many friends that live in others countrys, like Germany, and Italy that say the same thing! You are a competent and skilled worker, but today, the rules of the market says that is no good if you belong more than 3 years in a company & the employee that contracted you, said you can´t cost much money (that´s why they are taking kids with lack of knownledge).

This is stupid. I don´t known if you are aware that we had a Aircraft company called Embraer, wich clashed with US & Canada, in economic forums, for making very good comercial planes & and sell them to almost every country with the world, but I don´t see one of their employees that don´t had at least a ten years contract. It´s a specialized and skilled job, you can´t fire this people only because the market says!!! I think that´s why our planes are cheap and good, the people envolved in fabrication is skilled and learned from their mistakes so next time, they project and produce something more faster and without mistakes, wich turn the product more cheap in the end. Opposed to China, who produces everything so fast and in mass quantity, but with a total lack of quality. But China are changing this, so is better we start to keep an eye on him.

Or like my brother, who started a Lan-House (50 machines for gaming and internet). The person responsible for the administration and systems management are very skilled and had almost 15 years of knowledge in computers. He pay 3 times the average market salary for him, who demands that this kind of worker had to be "cheaper". Well, most of the others competitors followed this rule, and contract young and unskilled people. The result? His lan-house don´t suffer ten percent the problems the others lans suffer: machines that don´t work, games that don´t work, slowly internet connections and so on.

Maybe is time we change the model that things are being doing, but I don´t see this changes coming faster.

That's the one application I'd wager still has its original development team OR little change is left to do in it... mark my words as a guy in this field in development MOSTLY the last 10 years ++ now.

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NOW, that sounds GOOD! You seem very "enthusiastic" about it (as well as someone who seems to be somewhat of a 'software-connoiseur' who's seen alot of software come & go & tried many)... that to me, signals a flag to give it a go!

Absolutelly! I test a lot of software and hardware, mainlly because WE had to known what´s good and what isn´t. After all, is our work...and the fun behind it, it´s good to see some good aplications that are new in the market.

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Another saying here in U.S. - "The more things change, the more they stay the same!"

Now that´s something I´ll recorded in my memory. Very true....

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Those are the sheep... inexperienced ones, who do what marketers call "hopping on the bandwagon"... I had a NICE little shoot-out with a bunch of them over LINUX vs. NT & not a one of them could really dispute my points... was over the MindCraft tests, see here, you will laff after you read it:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-05-14-016-05-NW-SM

(Read near bottom where it was debated, lol!)

Yes, after "King Billy" (what I call Mr. Gates, not mockingly, out of respect for him as a businessman really) bought out the designer of VMS from Digital to create him a masterpiece, he got what he paid for: SOLID AS STONE Operating System, that & his ripping off IBM (Os/2 code & build-style, HPFS for example is iirc, the foundation of NTFS (while MS did work for them here too)) & Apple (GUI API code) for code, well... we have our fine NT based stuff of today!

Linux is NO better - It's just another Unix, built off the MINIX foundation code Linus Torvalds took to form his foundations. I respect it though, it has come a LONG ways since 1994 or so when I tried Slackware 1.02! Pnp, nice KDE, I do like it & respect it as a "socio-cultural" phenomenon that proves people of the earth CAN work together to produce something NICE!

Agree with you, true, very true! when someone bash MS i asks: what knowlegde you had in Windows NT? Most people don´t even know you can resize clusters in Windows XP and make it 16KB. Altought is a high number and waste some disk space, the benchmarks results prove that it´s beat FAT 32 more than 20%. Now, this is a expressive gain in disk performance, but if you say to someone that use his machine most for gaming and trivial work, they are afraid to do this. And you know why? Because they don´t know how to work with NTFS disks. They don´t know you had Recovery Console if everything goes down. They don´t known if you just loose your boot record it´s only need the Win2K CD-ROM to fix it. And if you really needs to boot in MS-DOS, you had Sysinternals NTFS-DOS to do it. So they stay in FAT32...

(In 2K you can do this too, but the disk defragment programs stop to work on it, because 2K had a 4KB cluster limitation for defragment.)

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Still more 9x series than NT based, trust me on that... it only had SMALL elements of NT, & nothing from its core. I was hoping it would be NT without the security & as much HAL restrictions... no such luck.

Yes, Windows 2000 in the interface and Windows 98 in the kernel...

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But, you really can´t blame MS for all, we were in the PCChips times, doyou remember? At least here in Brazil...

PCChips times? You have me here again... only PC Chip I know of is a european PC magazine my work has appeared in in the past... please explain, over my head again... thanks!

(Unless you mean DOS or even Pre-DOS days, ugh... I remember that from my 80's coursework on DEC Pdp-11 timeshared slave terminals, Unix, & VMS on VAX-1180 thru highschool & college... I don't miss it, not at all. It was ugly & not fun to work with... DOS & Windows were, & I saw DOS & liked it but Win3.1 really did it for me! I said "I am going to learn that stuff inside-out & be GOOD at it, make a career"... boy, long time ago! Win3.x & DOS made me love computing again, after nearly a 7 year absence from them, when I got into other types of work, mainly mgt. & acc'ting stuff, some sales!)

Let me explain so.
In 1999 and 2000 we had a flood of Motherboards called PCChips. In the US I think they are known by another mark (Amptron, ECS, Gigabyte, Shuttle, Tomato and many others, they are all from the same company, PCChips Tawain or PC-100), they are the Microsoft of Main Boards. In every place in every where.

But the quality of the board is...humm...is...allrigth, is a piece of shit, pure and simple! All on-board, incompatibility with everything and all, a nightmare to work on it. So, if everything goes down when we are working in a computer, we joke the person, and say that the motherboard is a PCChips. In this country, is a offense...HAHAHAHAHA....

www.pcchips.co.tw

Oh, and for the link I discover it. In the US you know it for "PC Wave"

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You could, it's just work like anything else... you learn tricks as you go, you experiment. I too, do what you do, but it has been less & less the more that I got into coding... pays a bit better, but more pressure & work if you ask me. Less job stability though in coding, due to how I told you it works above!

Personally? I think the network engineer of "tomorrow" will be a combination coder & network engineer... like hackers today are, the GOOD ones! Funny part is, if you are as old as I think you are?

Well, for my defense I do most of the scripting and batchs files of my servers. I just need to learn C ou C++ to make a program. No man, I´m not in programming, I prefer to "put the things to work properly". But I´m studing VB6, to make some front-ends for commands and routines in the network.

I´m not SO old...let´s say that I play a lot with ZX-80 when I´m just a child... :-) But, in the other hand, when the most people today only known DX4 and Pentiums, I think I´M OLD...

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That's just returning to around, oh, 1988 or so... heh, the more things change the more they stay the same. How can I prove this to you if you are not? Well, in the "olden days" you had to OFTEN build your own solutions in code yourself, to fix network problems (like login scripting needing custom tool).

Take a look if you ever are able, at a PC Computing magazine circa 1989-1991 & you will see there was LOTS more programming information in them... had to be, turnkey solutions just were not as abundant as now, & internet was like a mystery to most folks as the military & academia really only had access to it.

BBS (old time bulletin board systems) were the best most folks could use.

Now you have confirmed: I´M OLD!!!! 8) :-) I used BBS a lot in the past... hahahahahahaha...

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One day, I would like to teach others... especially youngsters, to try to influence them to go to this field of endeavour... it's interesting & everyday, due to constant change & flux in it, I learn a new thing. That's always cool!

I try to teach them to always do their best, not the best they can do. And that is a lot of alternatives out there, not just "Microsoft Word" or "Internet Explorer", do you understand what I mean? When you build a system, or a network, there always better solutions, you just need to think, search and research for solutions. But to be honest, the worst part is to teach them is this, think and search...

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Same here... NDS keeps them alive if you ask me, it is still one heck of a directory service, superior to AD (I only played with this a bit, & 2k model only & I like NDS better).



APK

P.S.=> Well, it's FRIDAY @ last! If you reply (take your time on our "novel" lol, here) & I do not, you know I am out enjoying life... have a nice weekend man! apk

Yes, I this too, the NDS model is much more matture than 2K AD. And more simple to be implemented too.

Good weekend and take care.

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