Chip with simple program for Toy

In <41FC4062.990C450@hotmail.com>, on 01/30/05
at 02:03 AM, Pooh Bear <rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> said:

By default I'm learning that windows is built on gibberish. It leaks
like a >> sieve. No amount of updating can ever improve it.

I reckon integrating the GUI environment with the disk operating system
it needs to run was the biggest disaster ever.

Actually, an OS with an integrated GUI has a better chance of being
secure. Its when M$ just laid the GUI atop the kernel, and then kept
piling manure atop it, that things began to deteriorate. Of all the PC
operating systems, only microsoft is so very vulnerable to any idiot who
can write a few lines of code. True, it is more popular which makes it a
target, but you would be hard pressed to write a virus that could extract
the address book from an OS/2, Linux, or Mac system and then take over the
OS and propogate itself across a network like the internet. No such thing
as "can't be done" but its pretty close to impossible. This is all the
fault of microsoft and its zeal to maintain is illegal monopoly.

What is really wrong here is folks trying to get the 'criminal' out of
the house after he has broken in and started stealing stuff. The best
solution is not in running a dozen programs three times a week to see if
your computer has been 'broken into' The answer is in keeping the
virus/spyware stuff out of the machine in the first place.

How many of us would buy a house that had no doors, or a car without
locks? Yet we support microsoft which has no locks, and no doors, and no
chance of ever seeing them. Instead, we are content to let the disease
come into the 'home' and then pay more money to try to fight it with
someone else's antibiotics.

Its time to stop supporting microsoft whenever possible, which starts with
the browser and the mail reader, and ultimately gets to the point where
you stop using the faulty software altogether. This would cause the
authors of the crap to either fade into oblivion, or create software with
doors and locks.

This is all really the antithesis of the old axiom about 'closing the barn
door after the horse has gotten out" in that we are now looking for
elegant ways to clean up the manure in the living room, instead of just
closing the door and keeping the horse out in the first place

John

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <frydnTo5KPs7aWbcRVn-rA@scnresearch.com>,
Don Taylor <dont@agora.rdrop.com> wrote:

kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:
In article <_OWdneZoW8wQoWbcRVn-hg@scnresearch.com>,
Don Taylor <dont@agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
[..me..]
yes,
With a modest sized CPLD, you could have a range of tracks protected.
That would do about as well as protecting a whole drive.

Trying to poke holes in my own idea now, if we can't assume, or get
Microsoft to support, directories not needing to be updated as well
as the files in the directories then we could easily protect xyz.dll
and have the net vandals change the pointer in the directory to the
new infected xyz.dll.

If we simply don't let Microsoft change the registry etc, there is no way
it can change what directories it will use on the next boot. The only
remaining problem would be that the PC could be infected and will remain
so until the next re-boot. Since we don't know the purpose for which a
file is read, we don't know if it is to be execed.

This imposes a limit on the benifit we can get from this method but still
it is better than the current situation.

[...]

Probably because the quality of toasters is orders of magnitude better
than what they call software today. I spent a decade of my life
working on what would be called 6-sigma software today. Roughly that
translates into you and two dozen of your friends using this all day
every day for fifty years and there still be better than a 90% chance
that not a one of you would have ever seen a bug, no matter how small.

I just had a distressing situation with much the same sort of code. A bug
showed up in code that we fielded about 10 years ago. It caused a little
wringing of hands and a bunch of fast work. I think all of the customers
will have the free upgrades by the end of Feb.

But, we still have other issues. We need to allow "updates" on a
second by second basis as Windows runs.

I really don't see why. The updates aren't any better.

"The Registry" inside Windows
now controls most of the behavior of the machine. It has to be
modified on almost literally a keystroke by keystroke basis.

Actually it doesn't have to be modified at all but is often. It remembers
stuff like the last program you ran and the last document you edited. I
can live without my PC remembering any of that. The next time I want to
open a file, I'll tell it the name of the file even if it is the same one.
In exchange for that it can always work.

90% of that which we don't need to change, and Windows would lay there
on its back with its little legs wiggling in the air if we made the
entire registry read-only.

Cute image but I think thats a bit unrealistic. Windows doesn't write and
then re-read the info in the registry. So long as it doesn't notice that
all writes are futile, I think it could work nicely.

However, there actually are products, Hard Drive Sheriff is one brand,
built for places like the schools, where we are training armies of
little net vandals, that attempt to provide some protection like this.
I believe they keep a hot backup and when one little vandal leaves
the seat and the next one takes over it restores the system from the
hot backup.

Good idea! Not quite full protection though if the hot backup is
writable.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

"Terry Pinnell" <terrypinDELETE@THESEdial.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:2j5kv05pqvarkhnvn2nfu64248nl2ih6er@4ax.com...

So, given that there must be great overlap, I reckon my
frequently-used combination of Ad-Aware SE Personal and Spybot Search
& Destroy is catching little more than half the malware reaching me.

Didn't you run Linux? I see you're using Agent now.


--

Reply in group, but if emailing add
2 more zeros and remove the obvious.

 

[Ian Malcolm]

Terry Pinnell wrote:

Thanks, Mark, duly installed. I started this thread as 'OT', so guess
it's now at least (OT)˛. So let's push it and try (OT)ł...or I suppose
strictly that should that be OłT? <g

Am I misusing PrefBar or expecting too much for it to handle
http://www.accuradio.com/# like MSIE6 did? I chose 'IE 6.0 WinXP' from
that UA drop-down, went to the page, but cannot get a station to play.

Gotta go for OT^4

Accuradio is working fine here under Mozilla 1.7 and MS Media player
9.00. 'Out the box' the Media player plugin didn't work but after I
created a fake netscape 4.7 install and reinstalled Media player,
Mozilla picked it up just fine

<http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/nonn4.html>

No need to fake your browser for Accuradio or install ActiveX for
Mozilla (though I had to put that in for another site I needed).

Browser spoofing is very handy though, If I'm browsing the seedier side
of the WWW, I like to be 'XBoX 64 (NVidea GForce 3 Architecture)'
Instant result, no more evil browser version targeted scripts (After
all, the script kiddies couldn't bear to mess up their XBoxes).
--
Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk [at]=@, [dash]=- &
[dot]=.
*Warning* SPAM TRAP set in header, Use email address in sig. if you must.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Mark Jones <abuse@127.0.0.1> wrote:

Hmmm, I can't get that page to work either. It is using some funky Flash
plugins though, that's probably where the issue lies. The site does have a
section they say is for "macintosh and netscape users" which is
http://www.accuradio.com/mp3/default.htm - this works for me. The "stations" are
simply playlist files, which redirect to IP addresses - Winamp
(http://www.winamp.com) will play these just fine. Alas, not a wide selection
there though.

For that matter, Winamp's built-in streaming selection is 500x larger than this
website, perhaps try that.

Yes, I had previously tried those four 'minority browser stations' but
they are a tiny fraction of the whole site's offering. And their
content overlaps anyway. (I emailed the web authors and told them of
my dissatisfaction.)

Anyway, pleased to report that I can now get the lot! Yesterday I
installed an ActiveX WMP plug-in that's described in detail here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=206213

Listening to some cool jazz from the station right now in FF.

Thanks for the WinAmp pointer, which I'll also follow up.


--
Terry Pinnell
Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <SbadneDJQeo0-mHcRVn-iQ@scnresearch.com>,
Don Taylor <dont@agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
[...]

Building a little hardware gadget that would fool Windows into
believing that disk writes had been done and keep Windows running
seems substantially harder than building a little gadget that just
simulates a write failure when some little bit of net scum tries
to scribble on a file that we have decided should be read-only.

If Windows doesn't do a verify after it writes, it may be just a matter
of converting the write command into a read command, turning off some
tristate buffers and making the PC hardware think that the read transfers
are write transfers.

This way we make the write work as far as Windows is concerned but the
actual disk is not written.

Depending on how dumb Windows is we could just say "I'm done!" on uS after
Windows does the write command.

Since Windows allows for drivers for disk accesses, we may be able to
write software that blocks writes to the C drive but lets them appear to
work.

[...]

Are there any other ideas for cute small hardware defense or
monitoring projects?

My router has the ability to block a short list of IP addresses. A router
that watches for net attackes, remembers the IP and blocks all further
access from that IP could work to supress a lot of the troubles.

Unfortunately, the physical location of machines can't be determined from
the IP. If it could solutions involving TNT or Plutonium could work.

If we sprinkled the net with PCs that just sat there looking for attackes
and keeping a list, there could be a line of routers that downloaded the
list from time to time so the system would be self updating.

If instead of simply blocking all writes onto the C drive, we made a
circuit that logged them and lit up an LED, there may be something we
could do after the fact. A non-windows program could later paw through
the list and figure out when the changes were made.

if nothing else. (I bought a cheap little plastic imitation of an
English postal box, called the Email Informer. It runs off a usb
port and pops up a flag every time an email message arrives, using
some hook inside of Outlook I imagine. I thought we could reverse
engineer the thing to accomplish a similar goal)

If you had to install a driver, it is likely that it monitors the SMTP
activity.

You are fortunate. I found less and less interest in providing the
updates, few seem to care whether something is correct anymore.

On my product line "we simply don't have bugs". Failure of any kind is
frowned on. The customers are about as far from a service center as you
can get while still being on the Earth.

Actually it doesn't have to be modified at all but is often. It remembers
stuff like the last program you ran and the last document you edited. I
can live without my PC remembering any of that. The next time I want to
open a file, I'll tell it the name of the file even if it is the same one.
In exchange for that it can always work.

But finding a way for a cheap hobby project to accomplish this
seems challenging.

Yes but it is fun to think about. Windows NT has been made to run out of
ROM. Perhaps Windows XP in a ROM would be the way to solve this. If we
can find a company that makes XP in a ROM, we could make a "ROM disk" that
plugs onto the IDE cable and only has the real disk for the stuf that
really needs to change. This way you wouldn't burn a drive letter in the
process.

If you can think of a way to accomplish that without using software
I'd certainly consider trying it.

I suggested the basis for my idea earlier. Make the writes into reads
just to get the timing from the read to pretend it is timeing from a
write. Putting bidirectional tristates of analog switches in the data
lines would prevent the bus conflicts.


[...]

So, what hardware can we feasibly build?
thanks

How much money do you have? The more complex solutions get expensive to
do. If you consider logic in a CPLD or FPGA as hardware, you can make
lots of stuff.

A funny sort of hard drive circuit would be one idea. An image of the
normal harddrive is made and kept. A circuit causes a second hard drive
to write the time and the data every time the systems C drive is written
and what is written is different that the old image.

This would give you a log of all the changes to C drive with the times.
When a virus is detected, you can step the system back in time by going
through the log in reverse order.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <6qfnv01nrcr2co0i924ffh54mse30lto09@4ax.com>,
Kitchen Man <nannerbac@yahoo.com> wrote:
[...]

I do my documents in Adobe, and distribute memos and such in PDF. Screw
them if they don't like it. Some very important documents are required
to be in MS Word, and I have spent many hours getting the outline
numbering to work halfway reliably.

I suggest:
Write it in some other editor, Export as a DOS *.txt file, Read the *.txt
file with MS-word. Write a *.doc file.

If you don't need graphics this will work. (At least the document fits the
letter of the law)

I have a hypothesis that the SW writers at MS deliberately screw up Word
so that other vendors, Adobe and Word Perfect for example, can't open
Word documents. What a bunch of crap.

The format is undocumented.


BTW: If anything you do is secure I think you can discourage Word use
like this:

The next time you get a MS-Word document from someone, do a hex dump of
it. You will find that word saves some large areas of RAM that may or may
not have been written into. These often show up with chunks of other
documents etc in them. If you find a real juicy one show it to the guys
who care about security.

Not too long ago, I got an MS-Word form to fill out from a company a
friend was applying to. I found among other things a number in the form
of ###-##-#### and a name in the trash. The HR person must have had that
in RAM.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

In <pan.2005.01.30.11.12.44.617113@cerebrumconfus.it>, on 01/30/05
at 11:23 AM, Fred Abse <excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> said:

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 20:00:41 -0700, learner wrote:

Actually, an OS with an integrated GUI has a better chance of being
secure.
..........................<snip>.........................

you would be hard pressed to write a virus that could extract
the address book from an OS/2, Linux, or Mac system and then take over the
OS and propogate itself across a network like the internet. No such thing
as "can't be done" but its pretty close to impossible.

But, in Linux (or any other 'nix), the GUI is totally separate from the
kernel ...

So? Read it again. I didn't say a shell 'couldn't be secure'

John

 

[Rich Grise]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 11:17:17 -0800, JeffM wrote:

If you want to get rid of nearly all spy/adware, and even virus
issues,
quit using Outlook and Internet Explorer.
John (learner)

I wondered how long it was going to take
to hear the voice of reason in this thread.
I notice that the article that the OP referenced
doesn't put this at the top of the list--or even mention it.

Heck. I just installed Linux.

The only thing I can't do _yet_ is Mechanical Desktop. For that, I have
two options - block connections to this box on the subnet by way of the
firewall, or just unplug the damn ethernet. Problem solved!

I'm idly shopping around for a Linux distro that's as easy for Aunt Tillie
to use as Windoze. So far, Redmond^H^H^H^Hhat seems to be the closest.

Then, we could just start selling computers with Linux pre-installed, and
be done with it!

Cheers!
Rich

 

In <ctjtqs$peu$1@blue.rahul.net>, on 01/31/05
at 12:23 AM, kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) said:

It shouldn't be that hard. Just download the upgrades, then serve them up
from the Linux box to the Doze box, with the Linux box being the server,
and configure it to emulate M$'s site.

Give it a try. Microsoft's web site refuses to let you download them.

A quick search turned up several sites that profess to explain how to
download updates, and save them for installing later on.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,5255271~root=winme~mode=flat

I found this real quick, didn't read the whole thing to know for sure how
to do it, but this is a issue a lot of folks have, so I am quite certain
there are any number of solutions to the problem, if you have the patience
to dig them up.

Don't use windows much, so I haven't done it myself.

John

 

[Mark Jones]

Ken Smith wrote:

In article <1107042460.352438.158490@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
JeffM <jeffm_@email.com> wrote:
[...]

Reminds me of an Excel purchase order form I used to have to use.
Each one took 250kB of my HDD.


I think Excel also has the security problem I pointed out for Word. A lot
of that extra space is just a snapshot of the RAM in the PC when the
document was created. They allocate big chuncks of memory, don't clear it
and save it as part of the document. Any time you send a MS file out of
your PC you are also sending a chunk of who know what.

I use OpenOffice, http://www.openoffice.org/ , it saves all documents in a
zip-compressed XML format.

 

[Robert Monsen]

JeffM wrote:

Even linux, with it's macrokernel and loaded dlls
Robert Monsen


*n?x does not have DLLs.
There is, however, a similar concept called a daemon.

ah, apparently have a bit to learn about linux. Shared libraries are
dlls by a different name. Daemons are independent processes, that can
load shared libraries if they so choose. The concepts, however, are
almost, but not quite completely dissimilar.

that run in the kernel, is prone to these attacks,
although it's relative obscurity up till now has protected it


Oh, god.
Not the old "Popularity breeds vulnerability* garbage again.

It's obvious. One works to get the biggest payoff. That's why
applications and support for new hardware come out first for windows,
and then grudgingly are ported to mac os, and then finally, to linux.
This is common sense.

One more time
for those who have missed the debunking of this old wives' tale:

The Apache Web Server currently runs 68% of all web servers;
Microsoft Internet Information Server is currently at 21%.
Apache has outstriped M$ in market penetration since 1995.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
The number of exploits against IIS dwarfs those against Apache.
Security is found in good design--not in obscurity.

Tell me what the number of desktop machines is in relation to the number
of server machines. Quick now. 1000 to 1? 10,000 to 1?

If you are going to bother to learn a system to hack it, why not go for
one that is on 100 or 1000 times more desktops, and has a reputation for
terrible security as well?

Another argument for this particular point is the lack of viruses on the
mac. The mac has had from 5 to 15% of the US market for the last 20
years. I know for a fact that the macintosh, at least up to OS9, was
incredibly easy to write viruses for, due to their crappy, non-existent
security. The resource fork scheme was horrifying from this point of
view. Any program could write any file on the system, and easily patch
themselves into any application with a couple of os calls. There was no
memory protection, even for system level data. It was freely avilable
for anybody with a bit of incentive to hack. Microsoft and netscape
wrote browsers for the mac, and the apps were microsoft apps for the
most part. Thus, the software was equally lousy as on Windows. However,
they never had 5 to 10% of the viruses, spyware, etc. Not by a long shot.

--
Regards,
Robert Monsen

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon,
on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

 

John,

I've only just gotten rid of it myself.

Spybot was useless but didn't crash on my machine. Ad-Aware SE
Personal combined with the trial version of Spy Sweeper along with the
new AVG Free and all with the latest definitions finally managed to do
it.

The Spyware/Adware/Malware/Spam E-Mail just seems to be getting worse.
I'm becomming more and more reluctant to go online because of the
immense frustration at trying to get rid of them afterwards.

Good luck.

Andrew.



On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 15:12:38 -0000, "john jardine"
<john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

"Terry Pinnell" <terrypinDELETE@THESEdial.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:2j5kv05pqvarkhnvn2nfu64248nl2ih6er@4ax.com...
I was surprised to learn today that all anti-adware and anti-spyware
programs perform so badly. Here's an extract of the ranking, from
'Anti-adware misses most malware' By Brian Livingston, in
http://windowssecrets.com/050127/

Product Adware Fixed
---------------- ------------
Giant AntiSpyware 63%
Webroot Spy Sweeper 48%
Ad-Aware SE Personal 47%
Pest Patrol 41%
SpywareStormer 35%
Intermute SpySubtract Pro 34%
PC Tools Spyware Doctor 33%
Spybot Search & Destroy 33%
McAfee AntiSpyware 33%
Xblock X-Cleaner Deluxe 31%
XoftSpy 27%
NoAdware 24%
Aluria Spyware Eliminator 23%
OmniQuad AntiSpy 16%
Spyware COP 15%
SpyHunter 15%
SpyKiller 2005 15%

So, given that there must be great overlap, I reckon my
frequently-used combination of Ad-Aware SE Personal and Spybot Search
& Destroy is catching little more than half the malware reaching me.
Unsettling.

--
Terry Pinnell
Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK


I've got some trash called "Cool web search" on my PC at the moment.
*Nothing* can remove the core component.
"Spybot" will crash the PC on finding it. Others just acknowledge that this
POS is present.
Even the purpose written "CW Shredder" crashes on attempting to remove it.
Where are all those oh-so-clever-hot-shot-windows-programmers, when they're
needed to do some real, socially useful work?.
By default I'm learning that windows is built on gibberish. It leaks like a
sieve. No amount of updating can ever improve it.
regard.
john

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <pan.2005.01.31.02.41.46.96998@att.bizzzz>,
keith <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
[...]

HTML files can't carry viruses so I'm safe.

Ah, I thought you did something more valuable than write HTML. I thought
that was simply an example.

I make *.DXF drafing exchange files, *.A51 8051 source code, *.VHD
VHDL source code., *.SCH schematics and a whole bunch more. They all
can't carry viruses.

I also make *.EXE files from the source code, but these can be recreated
so I only need to save the source.

I used myself as the example and not my wife because her computer serves
almost entirely as a machine for playing games. It wouldn't be so bad if
I could just do a clean re-install by poping the CD in and walking away.

[...]

Well, since I'm not foolish enough to use either WinME, or Win98, I
wouldn't have guessed they were quite *that* retarded. I do have to come
up with a Win95 or Win98 system diskette to update the BIOS on my
motherboard, which may be a small problem...

Windows really is that bad.

Dump it and get a real OS. Win2K, if you must.

I run SUSE-Linux on the computer I'm using right now. My wife owns the
WinME and doesn't want to switch to Linux. We don't own Win2K.

So dump Win9x! It'll make your life so much more pleasant.

If the only fault there is with my wife is that she won't switch to Linux,
I don't think I should complain.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Keith Williams]

In article <41fd3f13$2$woehfu$mr2ice@news.aros.net>, learner@juno.com
says...

In <pan.2005.01.30.20.37.52.815264@example.net>, on 01/30/05
at 08:32 PM, Rich Grise <richgrise@example.net> said:


Heck. I just installed Linux.

The only thing I can't do _yet_ is Mechanical Desktop. For that, I have
two options - block connections to this box on the subnet by way of the
firewall, or just unplug the damn ethernet. Problem solved!

I'm idly shopping around for a Linux distro that's as easy for Aunt
Tillie to use as Windoze. So far, Redmond^H^H^H^Hhat seems to be the
closest.

Then, we could just start selling computers with Linux pre-installed, and
be done with it!

There are many places that sell linux preconfigured, even wallyworld
offers a number of them, for a pretty decent low price.

Are you referring to Lindows (now Linspire, IIRC)? I see that as a
step in the wrong direction.

I find that IBMs OS/2 is still a very useful option that can do nearly
everything a windows box can do. I have to use Win2K for my CAD/Layout
work, and so that is why I recommend Mozilla and 'anything but outhouse'
to people who are unwilling, or unable to ditch windows as a simple
alternative to elminate nearly all virus/spyware.

I liked OS/2 and only gave it up because my FPGA tools were all locked
into Win. I went to Win2K in '01, but promised myself that it was only
temporary and that M$ wouldn't get another dime from me. I switched to
SuSE at home last summer, but kept the Win2K system as an interface to
my digital cameras, printers, and such.

No need to start a for/against linux thread, as I have been rooting
for it for years, but am disillusioned by the apparent desire of the
community to splinter, rather that come together and use their powers for
good, instead of silly. We don't need any more editors, partition tools,
file managers, and mp3 players. We need what you suggested. A solid,
consistent desktop, because if we could have something that would keep
people from having to get "under the hood" then my sister and my mom could
use it and get rid of windows.

A DVD player that worked would be nice. ;-)

IBM is deploying linux throughout, and was once purported to be creating a
desktop to do just that, so maybe one day there would be hope for
something useful.

I keep hearing that, but don't believe it. The costs would be
astronomical!

It would be nice. Till then, I can do most everything with OS/2 and am
happy with not viruses, no spyware, and, IMO, the finest operating system
ever, for a PC. Total sales does not define the best <g

It's handling of OO is superb. Want to move an application to another
drive, simple grab it and drag it. Want to put it on another system?
Drag it over the network. Want to do either in WinBlows? ...get out
the installation disk.

--
Keith

 

[john jardine]

<Rubicon> wrote in message news:41fee18f.676656@news.netaccess.co.nz...

John,

I'm glad it worked for you.

One thing to note is that on my old machine it took all three programs
to rid me of it. AVG got two "main?" .exe files while it took the
other two anti-spyware progs to clean up the rest.

Before I downloaded the very latest AVG definitions it'd miss coolWWW
and the anti-spyware looked like they'd gotten everything... but it'd
always promptly return.

Each systems a little different though.

Regards,

Andrew.

Can now confirm, Yes!, it was the AD-aware SE personal that gone and dun the
CoolWWWsearch fu**er!!!!!!.
Thanks for the suggestions.

The glorious feature of these newsgroups is the time and effort saved simply
by hearing from someone else who's been there and got the T shirt.
In this case I could easily have spent the next 10-14 days pursuing the
problem using more inferior software.

I'll look forward running the other 2 prog's to see if they can catch even
more.
What surprised me though, was the quantum leap in ability between the "well
regarded" but markedly inferior progs I'd been using and the "well regarded"
but superior progs that actually did the job.

(Of course, as is my lot in life, I'm usually the last to find these things
out

regards
john

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 16:13:46 -0700, learner wrote:

In <ctjtqs$peu$1@blue.rahul.net>, on 01/31/05
at 12:23 AM, kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) said:


It shouldn't be that hard. Just download the upgrades, then serve them up
from the Linux box to the Doze box, with the Linux box being the server,
and configure it to emulate M$'s site.

Give it a try. Microsoft's web site refuses to let you download them.


A quick search turned up several sites that profess to explain how to
download updates, and save them for installing later on.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,5255271~root=winme~mode=flat

I found this real quick, didn't read the whole thing to know for sure how
to do it, but this is a issue a lot of folks have, so I am quite certain
there are any number of solutions to the problem, if you have the patience
to dig them up.

Don't use windows much, so I haven't done it myself.

I only use Windoze for autocad and MAME (and some MS documents), so I

just unplug the network.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Mark Jones]

Jack// ani wrote:

Hi all,

I'm using El Cheapo PICmicro Programmer by Mike Predko's for learning
uC. I don't know whether the software work in WindowsXP or not?? But
while programming I get error: Programming Failure at Address 0x00,
0x02805 was written, but 0x03fff was Read Back. And when I try to
verify I get, PICmicro MCU does not have Correct Instruction at Address
0x00, 0x02805 was expected, but 0x03fff is the actual. What could be
the problem? Is this hardware problem or operating system problem?
Any help is highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Hi Jack. Does this require your chip to have a bootloader already downloaded
onto it?

"3FFF" is equivalent to "not programmed" so what it's saying is, if the chip is
supposed to have data there, it is either blank or not being programmed.

Make sure the PIC's MCLR pin is being driven to +13v during the programming
cycle. Also MCLR should have a 33k pullup resistor to Vcc. Hope that helps.


-- "We cannot expect to stumble into happiness; it must come from within." MCJ
20050119

 

[JeffM]

IBM is deploying linux throughout,
and was once purported to be creating a desktop to do just that,
so maybe one day there would be hope for something useful.
John (learner)

I keep hearing that, but don't believe it.
The costs would be astronomical!
Keith Williams

A recent article: IBM Desktop Linux Pledge, One Year Later
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/26/0022201&threshold=5&mode=nested

It looks to me to be not a cost, but an investment.
After they get it debugged & tweaked in-house
it will be included in an IBM/Linux solution to compete with Redmond.
I think your view is too short-term.

Lindows/Linspire...a step in the wrong direction

Yeah. Lots of clueless noobs' boxes configured as root.

Aaaaaaaaaaaa!

 

[Keith Williams]

In article <1107196181.841210.102520@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
jeffm_@email.com says...

IBM is deploying linux throughout,
and was once purported to be creating a desktop to do just that,
so maybe one day there would be hope for something useful.
John (learner)

I keep hearing that, but don't believe it.
The costs would be astronomical!
Keith Williams

A recent article: IBM Desktop Linux Pledge, One Year Later
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/26/0022201&threshold=5&mode=nested

Yes, the slashdot thread and the reference article support my
contention: "I don't believe it."

It looks to me to be not a cost, but an investment.

All investments have costs. This one has an *astronomical* price tag
on it. I don't see the "profit" half of "investment" here.

After they get it debugged & tweaked in-house
it will be included in an IBM/Linux solution to compete with Redmond.
I think your view is too short-term.

....by the end of 2005 is too short? Well that was what was claimed. I
haven't seen anything that would make this remotely possible. ...even
by the end of 2015.

Lindows/Linspire...a step in the wrong direction

Yeah. Lots of clueless noobs' boxes configured as root.
Aaaaaaaaaaaa!

;-))

--
Keith