Re: Spam form kerry

From: Paul Sture (nospam_at_sture.homeip.net)
Date: 03/23/04 

Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:28:47 +0100

Wayne Sewell wrote:
>>X-Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
>>Subject: Re: Spam form kerry
>>From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG
>>Message-ID: <00A2F39C.D8B38EF9@SendSpamHere.ORG>
>>Organization: TMESIS Software
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>>...but since everyone here is smart enough not to use crap from the Micro$haft
>>corporation, these viruses will not propagate from our systems... right folks
>>at HP.COM? ;P
>>
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> I *finally* found a way to deal with the billyworld without having to maintain
> an actual billybox and all the problems thereof.
>
> Fortunately, for most stuff I've been able to switch over to mac OSX, which I
> find way more reliable and much easier to use. Work stuff-related I do on the
> vms systems, plus mail, and browsing and quicken and other things I used to do
> on the billybox are now on the mac.
>
> There are only a couple of things that are a problem:
>
> 1. fucking web sites that will work only with a billy browser (and in some
> cases only on an actual billybox because IE for the mac won't work on them
> either).
>
> 2. programs that don't have a mac version. The main one right now is Paint
> Shop Pro, which has only a billy version. There is a photoshop for mac, but
> I already know paintshop and there appears to be a hell of a learning curve for
> photoshop. I'll switch over eventually, but for the time being I'm using paint
> shop fairly often.
>
>
> Here lately I haven't been bothering with 1, because I no longer allow the
> billybox access to the internet for any reason, having no need for the
> accumulation of spyware and other ***, which is what drove me to the mac in
> the first place. I just forget about those billycentric websites.
>
> For 2, yeah I have to fire up the billybox and then shut it done again when I'm
> done. It has access to the local network for ftp, but without a route address
> it can't connect with the internet. There aren't many billycentric programs I
> really need, so the billybox is turned off most of the time and can cause no
> harm to anyone.
>

I can file my tax return online nowadays. Dead easy they say. Ha! As if
I would! Add to that, sorry no Mac version available yet. They assure us
the software they supply is secure, and it probably is. The problem is
what it runs on.

>
> It appears that Virtual PC for Mac will solve these problems. It's basically a
> billybox emulator that runs under mac osx. A sandbox for a billybox, if you
> will. A billysandbox? :-)
>
> The dual-cpu mac G4 is so much faster than the billybox being replaced that
> hopefully the emulation overhead won't be that noticable.
>
> I've already installed paintshop and the companion Media Center, and both
> appear to work normally on the emulation, and with adequate speed. So it looks
> as if that part of the mission has been accomplished. No worries about the
> internet, because when I run in this mode I turn off the simulated network card
> completely. If I want to transfer files into the virtual pc, it's easier to
> just use the regular mac ftp to get them on the system, then a shared folder to
> get them into the virtual disk.
>
>
> As far as the billycentric browsing is concerned, it may be possible to
> actually browse from the simulated billybox in semi-secure fashion. It has to
> do with how the simulated disk is handled.
>
> When you start up the emulation a standard mac drive image (virtual disk) is
> mounted and used for the system disk. However, while the emulation is running,
> write operations to the disk don't actually make changes to the disk itself,
> they are instead accumulated in a separate change file. This goes on for the
> duration of the boot. Then when you shut down, you have the option to commit
> all the changes to the disk, i.e. the changes are made permanently, or you can
> *toss* them and the disk remains as it was before the boot. Any changes to the
> disk during this past boot never actually happened.
>
> Therefore any files added or modified while browsing, including spyware, data
> miners, cookies, viruses, worms, or *whatever*, are *gone* and are never
> written to the real disk. True, you also lose your cache, and any cookies you
> might have *wanted* to keep, but hey, I consider that a small price to pay.
> This is only for web sites that I can't access directly via the mac anyway.
>
> Obviously if you do a *save* operation from the browser, i.e. a .jpg or
> something you want to keep, move it to the shared folder so that it is visible
> outside the emulation and therefore not tossed with the rest of the disk.
>

Thanks for that explanation.

>
> The only drawback to this is that Virtual PC is a product of Micro*** rather
> than Apple. I have much greater faith in the developers at the latter rather
> than the "engineering" department of the former. Haven't seen any problems
> yet, but I've only had the product a couple of days. I'm hoping that it won't
> at least screw up any *more* than a real billybox would have. As long as the
> mac enviroment keeps it encapsulated well enough that it doesn't *** things up
> outside the emulation, that would be sufficient. As far as internal fuckups,
> with the disk images and such, it should be pretty easy to back up and restore
> from the mac.
>
> The other thing was that I swore I would never give billy any more money, not
> even for something non-computer-related like an xbox. But I guess one last
> time to free myself of him completely from now on is worth it. If this works,
> I'll just give the billybox to my brother. Not because I don't like him, but
> because he doesn't know any better. :-)
>

Apart from giving Billy more money, I was stunned to see how much the
various flavours of that product cost. I also couldn't determine if any
of them would run NT. I'm certainly not going to add the cost of W2K or
XP to the price I pay. I'm passing on that one unless someone pays me
lots of money to make it worthwhile.

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