Slashdot Mirror

It wasn't originally designed to suck, but when you refuse to spend money on infrastructure improvements,
you end up spending your time putting out fires instead of making improvements.

The Bush administration did spend money, though. They ripped out a working IBM Lotus Notes solution and replaced it with Microsoft Exchange.

It's not like the broken Bush administration e-mail system was something they inherited from a previous administration. It's something they deliberately chose to spend money to install.

Sorry, I've got a very thin skin when it comes to management making any sort of technical claim. They're usually about 50% lie, and of the remaining 50% truth, only about 1/5th of that is factual with the rest being augmented by misunderstanding, disillusions of grandeur, and over-simplification to pull up the full 100%.

This was the first relevant article kicked up by google:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142268/_Lost_Bush_e_mail_settlement_requires_that_White_House_reveal_IT_practices_

The e-mail problem began in 2002 and 2003 after the White House moved from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. As it moved to the new platform, the President's IT staff also discontinued use of legacy, circa 1994, electronic management and archiving system, called Automated Records Management Systems (ARMS.) Development began on a new archiving system that ran into its own issues and wasn't implemented.

Without an automated archiving system, the White House relied on manual processes to archive e-mails, and that's when the problems evidently began. Files were mislabeled and commingled on back-up tapes containing all types of information.

The public didn't find out about this for years until federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disclosed it in 2006 while investigating the outing of Valerie Plame.
The Bush Jr. IT infrastructure was broken from the day they installed it and remained broken for the full 8 years he was in office.

Thank you for living proof that FOSSies are batshit. you still think that I'm a guy that I can't even get along with and to this very day we don't agree on anything OTHER than the fact you're batshit? delusional much? but if its a pimp slapping of your craptastic OS you want, enjoy! See that's the nice thing about reality, while all you have is insults I have facts! Where are YOUR facts? oh right, they don't exist :-(

Get ready, here they come! Kinda makes that koolaid just a little bitter now, don't it? I believe in using the best tool for the job, but to say Linux is secure or better than any other complex OS is frankly bullshit. Hell I was talking to a 15 year Linux admin on one of the other sites that had gotten so sick of Linux fuckups they were going to BSD and if THAT didn't "just work" they were gonna wash their hands of FLOSS on the desktop and just go Mac.

BTW if you'd like a little more food for thought, what OS was 3 of the 4 CAs running that were compromised? take a look and see. Maybe they just had configs? Surely someone with knowledge would be safe right? Guess again and its not a fluke by any means.

Would you like some more reality? well here it comes! Isn't it sad, how like a frightened child afraid to look under the bed, you cower at the truth? if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos even though we are talking a teeny tiny subset of hardware? Oh right because Linux shits itself and dies if you use the default repos! Man that is some excellent product you got there! you think I can get better QA than the third largest OEM on the planet? What, you expect me to tell paying customers "Go to the forum, kiss some loser ass, and maybe, just maybe, in a few days someone will have mercy and give you a big pile of bullshit that may or may not make your sound work again"?

Bleeding yet douchey? want some more? nice thing about having the truth on your side, you can keep throwing punches all day! How about how a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? You got the crazy koolaid drunk enough to say they ALL are paid shills because they won't do your forum dance or CLI horseshit? Meanwhile your "hero" Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!. Why don't you tell them that at work next week, see how quick you get a pink slip? More? How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and excuses .

You see you whiny little delusional mama's boy, I'm your worst fucking nightmare...a retaile

AT&T still maintains the position that less than 5% of its users exceed the 3GB threshold each month.

5% of users hitting 3GB this year means 25% of users will probably be hitting that data limit next year. The amount of data the average person is using is increasing at an incredible speed. To place a limit so low when use is increasing so rapidly makes no sense to me. Plus 5% of about 100 million users means there are 5 million people out there using that much data.

This isn't just an issue of slashdot-types hogging up the network. You're talking about average people at this point.

Right.. more FUD...

What about this?

Don't take my word for it. On privacyscore.com, you can check the privacy comparisons between Google and MS websites yourself and look at the breakdowns.

If you mean windows starter edition you can run as many programs at once as you want. check your facts before posting.

I did:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/04/21/1356245/windows-7-starter-edition-3-apps-only

Yeah, they were thinking about it, and then 3 weeks later dropped that.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9133694/Microsoft_kills_Windows_7_Starter_s_3_app_limit

300 - 400%? Lol you're doing it wrong. Billions of rows? So what? Easily handled by SQL.

CERN has a database with trillions of rows in a traditional Oracle RDBMS. I saw a presentation on it at Oracle OpenWorld this year by a guy from CERN..

Yahoo also has trillion-rowed databases, on PostGreSQL.

Awww...did the poor little FOSSie have his perception bubble busted again? i do find that so delightful. I don't know whether to laugh at you or feel pity at your being so fucking pathetic, I mean I have wrote article on how to make Linux more accessible to small business, what have you done besides wave your tiny penis and scream shill at anybody that won't kiss RMS' sweaty ass? But don't worry i have some nice facts that will make your day, a place where linux is winning? Its vulnerabilities..

Not only does Linux have 4x++ the amount of unpatched security vulnerabilities its competitor Windows Server 2008 does, but it bears 3 remotely exploitable unpatched security vulnerabilities (THE WORST KIND!): one and a two and a three. But hey, what can you expect from an OS that actually has less users than JavaME which is a shitty sub basement OS they put on Tracphones. Of course when you were given an equal chance to compete a decade old Windows beat the shit out of your Linux on netbooks and even ASUS, which invented the whole netbook for the masses with a Linux unit even ASUS has given up on your bullshit How about how you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share ?

But you stick your head under your little blankie and start crying about how "Only a shill wouldn't love our perfect OS!" while ignoring all the bugs, the vulnerabilities, failures, hell even Dell has to run their own repos just to keep your "precious" from crapping itself. How much money you think that costs Alex? wanna bet dell is LOSING money on every sale? I bet you think they can make it up on volume though huh? You just keep telling yourself I'm a bad man, I must be a "M$ Ninja" when in reality I'm your worst fucking nightmare...a retailer that has tried your shit and seen what a turd it is. hell its not even up to WinXP standards, much less OSX Lion or Win 7. Hell Vista was the biggest POS on the planet and even with MSFT not even having a horse in the race they fricking STOMPED you with a decade old creaking POS, how fucking sad and pathetic do you have to be to get beat by an OS that is so damned old it came out before SATA or even dual cores and it STILL kicks your ass?

Maybe instead of calling names you should volunteer to fix some of the mess huh? i'm sure you think of yourself as some kind of programming genius because you can copypasta into a CLI. Of course in Windows we would call that a script kiddie, but I guess that means genius in your world. Oh a final bit of info, just FYI...Kernel.org pwnage , Linux.com pwned too oh and MYSQL.com throwing malware worse than a "look at teh titties" toipsite in case you missed it. Man gotta be impressed by that kick ass Linux security, them eyes that make bugs shallow must have cataracts huh?

You probably won't see it in Apple friendly press because they don't want you to know that part. However if you read other press such as computerworld then you will see it. But since your probably don't I will post a link and quote it there.

Here is the link you requested. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224409/Apple_threatens_to_sue_Chinese_firm_in_iPad_trademark_dispute

and here is the relevant quote

"Monday's letter was sent just days after Proview's founder Yang held a press conference and said the trademark rights were never transferred because Apple had bought them from a Taiwan subsidiary company, and not from Proview itself."

You're dead wrong. Microsoft barely exists ouside the desktop and some AD/Exchange setups.

Sure, because Azure doesn't exist, nobody uses IIS for large website, nobody uses Dynamics and no big software vendor develops using Microsoft technology.

There's a reason MS is as big as it is, people and companies use their stuff. They may not be the biggest player in every market, but they are by no means insignificant.

For those who prefer such things.

https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9224091/Web_based_counseling_Telepsychiatry_is_taking_off

Red Hat used to be in the desktop business along with all the other Linux distributors. Then, they left. As Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's CEO, explained Red Hat's desktop approach to me last year, "There are companies that sell hundreds of products for millions of dollars and there are companies that sell millions of products for hundreds of dollars. Guess which kind of company Red Hat is?"

.... It's not that Red Hat ever gave up on doing things with the desktop. It's just that Red Hat had no plans on making any money from the desktop with a formal desktop product.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9164978/Narus_develops_a_scary_sleuth_for_social_media

Narus is developing a new technology that sleuths through billions of pieces of data on social networks and Internet services and connects the dots.

The new program, code-named Hone, is designed to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies a leg up on criminals who are now operating anonymously on the Internet.

In many ways, the cyber world is ideal for subversive and terrorist activities, said Antonio Nucci, chief technology officer with Narus. "For bad people, it's an easy place to hide," Nucci said. "They can get lost and very easily hide behind a massive ocean of legal digital transactions."

http://www.hotvoipnews.com/blog_87.shtml

VoIP Blocking in Saudi Arabia using Narus Software

VoIP blocking in Saudi Arabia has been around for sometime and was aided by the introduction of the VoIP blocking software provided by the Californian Company Narus. The reasons the Saudi government block VoIP is to protect the national telephone carrier Saudi Telecom from potential competition. By prohibiting VoIP calls people based in Saudi Arabia are forced to use the more expensive Saudi Telecom service.

My comment had nothing to do with giving Google "credit".

It had to do with BSI's decision to cite Chrome's bundling of Flash as a reason for recommendation.
A true security organization would not make that a reason for a recommendation, rather they would cite it as a detriment, a blemish, (even for Flash in a sandbox given Adobe's history).

As for people wanting flash, its value is negative in most people's eyes. People hate it more than you know.

Its nothing but an advertising tool to most people. A source of daily irritation when reading almost any web page due to disruptive graphics dancing around while you try to read. Apple dropped flash both from OSx and iOS , and nobody cared. Even Android users find it mostly an annoyance.

Now take a look at Android handsets. Not Android but the manufacturers that use it. They all have varying support for the latest version of Android with some shipping older versions months after a newer one has been released and many simply not offering updates. I fully admit this isn't up-to-date but here's what I read some time ago (link).

Most manufacturers are sucky in some shape or form, personally I find Apple pretty decent and from my direct experiences better than Nokia and LG.

Of course you have a valid point that nobody ever breaks the law.

The paper from two years ago mentions the problem in relation to

the U.K.'s Orange and Canada's Rogers Wireless

and not in relation to O2. Had they been involved 2 years ago, I would have expected them to be named in that original paper.

How about this one.

Sure, let's avoid the issue. This was from October 2010.

4. Fragmentation

Bad news for Oracle with its "new" Linux: businesses don't want any more Linux choices. On the other hand, this also doesn't bode well for LibreOffice, the OpenOffice fork.

It's not that businesses don't appreciate choice between vendors -- they do. But there's not interested in choosing between half-a-dozen different Linuxes, two or three is much more their speed.

I don't see this as being a big concern. The last important Linux distribution to arise was Ubuntu back in 2004. I don't see any other major new Linux distributions arising in the future for either the desktop or the server. Mobile devices and tablets may be another matter. Android is doing well, but MeeGo may yet turn out to be an important portable Linux, and, who knows, perhaps another one will emerge or an Android or MeeGo variant will emerge.

Well, that's true. Ubuntu is still on top so that's easy for people to pick, right?

>only 10 submissions of fail in the TFA.

Someone already mentioned the Daily WTF, so I'll post its little brother.

Always an interesting read.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/sharky

--
BMO

All this, of course, ignores that Congress and the whitehouse have ALREADY backpedeled on SOPA and that its sounding dead in the water at this point. But yea, the people can make no difference at all, keep telling yourself that.

Dead bills don't get more hearings. We're being placated.

I don't really think there will be much of a change in the percentage of female involvement in open source coding no matter what we do (unless Mattel introduces Open Source Coding Barbie).

Like this one?

Not sure what her stance on GPL is though, doesn't say on the packaging.

Piracy is good, yes. Have you been drinking Rupert Murdoch's Famous Internet Censorship flavored Kool Aid? Piracy is good. Even Bill Gates said that piracy is good - what greater authority on the subject can there be?

http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/2803
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9

WTF is with this globalization, one world government view that pirates are a cancer, eating at the world's economy? There are probably tens of thousands of people in China who could never have been able to buy Windows, who are working in the tech world today, because pirated copies of Windows were available. Ditto with India, and God knows how many other countries. EVEN THE UNITED STATES!!! (How many American parents were unable to purchase, or see the wisdom in purchasing, Windows 95 in 1995?)

Of course, we're back to the definition and purpose of copyright law. Copyright law was never intended to ensure that an author would make a profit. It was only intended to ensure that IF THERE WERE A PROFIT to be made, then the author should get some of that profit.

Piracy is good, if for no other reason than underprivileged people acquiring educational tools. Games and music? I just don't give a rat's ass about the music syndicates, movie syndicates, and games. They can all go belly-up if they lack the imagination to find new business models.

Piracy is good. I got my first Windows NT via torrent. I got my first Linux via torrent. I got my first MacOS via torrent. I'm among the wealthiest 1% of the world's population, and I couldn't afford everything that I've ever played with on the computer. What about that other 99%?

I support piracy, whole heartedly. My counterparts in backwoods African and Asian and South American countries NEED piracy, if they are ever to join the 20th century. You know, the century that we retired a decade ago?

Hey, one of the women I work with went home on vacation a few weeks ago. She has already overstayed her stay. I asked her husband how I could email her. I learned that her hometown only got electricity about 25 years ago, and there IS NO INTERNET!!! Cell phones don't work. If I were to communicate with her, it would be via POTS, at some exorbitant cost.

Now, pull your head outta your butt, and support Pirate Bay, and the Pirate Parties. They provide a crucial service to huge segments of the world's population.

Oh - I'll note here, that I've not personally pirated anything in a long time. Today, I don't need WinNT, anything that Adobe makes, or even Sun/Oracle. With OSS, it's free anyway. I still get most of my stuff via torrent though!

Are there really that many enterprises using Firefox? In recent times Firefox has become ALMOST as bad of a security risk of Internet Explorer.

Firefox seems more focused on adding features (and new versions) rather than fixing bugs.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140582/Firefox_flaws_account_for_44_of_all_browser_bugs.

Not much when non-rad hardened robots for EoD type work start at $60,000 and can go up to $275,000.

While Japan was caught naping, the US had robots for the job and sent some over.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215346/U.S._to_send_radiation_hardened_robots_to_Japan

Funny you should mention dell because they are actually a poster child for how broken Linux is a consumer platform is because Dell have to run their own repos just to keep there teeny tiny subset of hardware from being shat on when the devs scratch their itches. I will bet my very last dollar if Dell will publish their numbers (which they won't BTW, I even asked them out of curiosity and they won't give you the numbers) that Dell is LOSING money on Ubuntu because the costs of keeping a dev team to do nothing but maintain their own repo is costing more than they are making on the machines. Do you propose that ALL the OEMs lose money hand over fist to support you? Did you know that ASUS, the ones that started the whole Linux on tiny machines aka netbook craze has given up on Linux and no longer sells any Linux machines? or that a decade old Windows stomped Linux on netbooks or that even canonical admitted that returns were FOUR TIMES higher than Windows? do you think ALL of these people are lying? That they "just don't git it"?

Its really simple friend, to get the level of polish required to make Linux work on the desktop, where suzy the checkout girl won't have to learn bash or how to navigate a CLI when things break, where frankly things WON'T break in the first place, is gonna cost north of a hundred million easy and the FOSS model simply won't allow you to make that amount in the consumer market. Look at canonical, they haven't made a single cent, not one penny, on the desktop. if you figure in how much shuttleworth sunk in they have lost millions without a single dime of ROI, you think that is sustainable? in fact I'd bet my last buck that canonical will be out of desktops in less than 5 years, probably less than 3, simply because they won't be able to generate the operating capital. RMS may think you can have a utopia where everyone works for free towards the common good but that is a fallacy because we human like doing fun jobs and HATE doing shitty jobs and in the FOSS model the busted shitters don't get fixed. The FOSS model works in business because business is used to buying support contracts and they make money off their machines so spending money to make money is fine by them. the consumer market simply doesn't work like that and without the steady income you can't herd the devs and if you don't herd the devs you get what you have now, with bugs measured in years, updates that fix one thing and break three, hell I have Windows units out in the field that have been running since 2002 on a single install. can you imagine trying to update a Linux desktop from 2002 to current and still have it functional on the other end? it won't happen friend, hell take a distro disc from just 3 years ago and apt-dist-upgrade to current and watch things fall apart.

Next step is to have Windows 8.5 just auto-refresh every few months since Microsoft seems to assume you'll be doing it any how.

Good, because MS has been making it increasingly difficult to be able to do a reinstall even if you have a licensed copy.

Between "upgrade" disks which only work if you have a working install, and the trend to get rid of recovery disks ... it's about time Microsoft realized that the only way to maintain a system over a period of time is to rebuild the OS periodically.

Microsoft recently sued a computer reseller for piracy because they made recovery disks available to users.

In my experience, the recovery software installed by OEMs is complete shit .. the process for creating it on my wife's HP laptop failed, and then said you were only allowed to do it once, leaving us without one. So, Microsoft hopes when your system crashes you'll go buy a new copy ... but if you've already paid for a copy, you might as well pirate it.

I know the last few PCs I've bought I've insisted I receive a full boxed install media ... not the OEM, but the retail one, and I pay for it. Because if you don't have this, when your Windows system needs to be rebuilt, you're probably hosed.

The trend to not give people install media (in order to prevent piracy) has largely left people with systems they can't repair, and an incentive to pirate what they've already bought.

If a crashed/hosed computer means you lose your data and you'll have to spend as much money as a new computer costs ... something has gone seriously wrong.

even windows 7 has infection rate of 4 per 1,000 machines. Let's talk about using real OS instead of Bill Gate's stupid glorified program loader.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216654/Windows_7_s_malware_infection_rate_climbs_XP_s_falls

I had mod points, and I was planning on use them all on this discussion, but as no one said what I wish to say, I'll spend them elsewhere. Here it goes.

You claim that the Raspberry Pi proves Doctorow wrong. Well, tablet computers prove him right. And smartphones, too. These are the two personal computer forms which dominate today's market, and will continue to dominate in the future. The market for laptops is shrinking while the market for tablets has increased 42%, according to some estimates Apple is becoming the world's dominant computer platform, with the dominant product being a closed, locked-down, walled garden of a personal computer.

And what about your home router? It's also a general purpose computer, which has been locked down hard to force you to not fiddle with it. The same applies to NAS and even some external HDs.

If that isn't enough, take a look at every chinese trinket toy which is sold on ebay. I'm referring to stuff such as MP3 players, media players, tablets, video game consoles and all of the sort. You can't fiddle with their software, you can't tweak their OS, you can only use them until it gets bricked. I personally have purchased a cheap, 20 dollar MP3 player with a neat color display which, at the time, put my cellphone to shame, and the damned thing could only be used to display song names and play tetris. And it was a full blown computer, which had a SD card reader.

My media player is also a general purpose computer, which has been castrated by my cable provider. My TV is also a general purpose computer, complete with HDMI input plugs, SD card reader and USB plug. It runs linux, too. But I can't do shit with it. It's from Sony, which also sells other personal computers, such as the Playstation line, playstation portable and playstation vita. And you can't do shit with them, either.

This is what Doctorow is warning about. And you said he has been proven wrong? How?

So no, Raspberry Pi does not prove him wrong. No matter how cool it is or how open it has been designed, it is a very specific product for a very specific market. There is a risk it will be put in the same category as a multitester, oscilloscopes and pulse generators: technical tools which only the technically literate are interested in using. That is, true general purpose computers are being relegated to something that only the fools at the local modern incantation of the homebrew computer club are even interested with, and this is very dangerous.

This artificial limitation already plagues the software development world, where compilers are seen as scary stuff which only technical people care to have. I've seen police reports where they claimed that the target of the raid was somehow a hacker and a pirate because he had linux on his computer, as a dual boot. People already accept these absurd views on computers. They perceive locked down computers as something which is desirable and here to stay, and the hardware vendors are already taking advantage of that ignorance and lack of insight.

The path to a computing world where all computers are tight-down walled gardens is already set, and if we don't acknowledge it and do something prevent this disaster to happen then it will happen. And it will happen in the near future.

I'm sorry I was busy installing 3rd party code on my phone with a apk package installer app that runs without having to root my phone, did you say something?

I had mod points, and I was planning on use them all on this discussion, but as no one said what I wish to say, I'll spend them elsewhere. Here it goes.

You claim that the Raspberry Pi proves Doctorow wrong. Well, tablet computers prove him right. And smartphones, too. These are the two personal computer forms which dominate today's market, and will continue to dominate in the future. The market for laptops is shrinking while the market for tablets has increased 42%, according to some estimates Apple is becoming the world's dominant computer platform, with the dominant product being a closed, locked-down, walled garden of a personal computer.

And what about your home router? It's also a general purpose computer, which has been locked down hard to force you to not fiddle with it. The same applies to NAS and even some external HDs.

If that isn't enough, take a look at every chinese trinket toy which is sold on ebay. I'm referring to stuff such as MP3 players, media players, tablets, video game consoles and all of the sort. You can't fiddle with their software, you can't tweak their OS, you can only use them until it gets bricked. I personally have purchased a cheap, 20 dollar MP3 player with a neat color display which, at the time, put my cellphone to shame, and the damned thing could only be used to display song names and play tetris. And it was a full blown computer, which had a SD card reader.

My media player is also a general purpose computer, which has been castrated by my cable provider. My TV is also a general purpose computer, complete with HDMI input plugs, SD card reader and USB plug. It runs linux, too. But I can't do shit with it. It's from Sony, which also sells other personal computers, such as the Playstation line, playstation portable and playstation vita. And you can't do shit with them, either.

This is what Doctorow is warning about. And you said he has been proven wrong? How?

So no, Raspberry Pi does not prove him wrong. No matter how cool it is or how open it has been designed, it is a very specific product for a very specific market. There is a risk it will be put in the same category as a multitester, oscilloscopes and pulse generators: technical tools which only the technically literate are interested in using. That is, true general purpose computers are being relegated to something that only the fools at the local modern incantation of the homebrew computer club are even interested with, and this is very dangerous.

This artificial limitation already plagues the software development world, where compilers are seen as scary stuff which only technical people care to have. I've seen police reports where they claimed that the target of the raid was somehow a hacker and a pirate because he had linux on his computer, as a dual boot. People already accept these absurd views on computers. They perceive locked down computers as something which is desirable and here to stay, and the hardware vendors are already taking advantage of that ignorance and lack of insight.

The path to a computing world where all computers are tight-down walled gardens is already set, and if we don't acknowledge it and do something prevent this disaster to happen then it will happen. And it will happen in the near future.

What gave you THAT idea?
Blaster worm infected anyone connected directly to the internet(i.e.not going through a router- which ussually runs linux)with RPC active

Sure it is that nearly NOBODY uses Linux (on PC's & Desktops especially vs. Windows)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9116787/Wikipedia_simplifies_IT_infrastructure_by_moving_to_one_Linux_vendor
http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2010072300835NWHESV
etc. etc.

I did even better in posting ones regarding:
1.found and fixed before exploited in the wild.
2.Froyo = 2.2, now on 3.2

->I still do NOT "get" HOW you can say I relied on Linux

When you use the internet, you use much more than just the sinngle machine you are sat on. LAMP is the backbone of the modern internet.
The main reason for this is the security of linux systems. Facebook, for example, is a much higher profile target than you and your worthless windows machine with anything usefull disabled. IIS just never made the grade.

J6P uses windows, because its easy to support by vendors, and easy for the non tech savvy to use. But anyone who cares about security uses linux - and by default anyone who uses the services of those companies uses and relies on linux. This may be "transparent" (i.e. the lowly user never knows they used linux), but then same lowly user is unlikely to know where microsoft stops and where activivsion starts when they fire up that latest game they got for Christmas.

Funny that article shows it's on ANDROID phones thus, it's an ANDROID (& other smartphones') problem (& thus, a Linux problem too, because ANDROID'S A LINUX). I don't see it running on my Windows PC here, for instance...

APK

P.S.=> And to "continue the trend"? Here's MORE Android security issues (8 at a time only: /. won't let me post more links than that):

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18659/cyberthugs_love_smartphones_and_leaky_sneaky_mobile_malware

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/15/6475834-skype-android-app-can-expose-your-personal-information

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17785/sensory_malware_android_app_listens_then_steals_credit_card_data

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/11/1620222/New-SMS-Trojan-Found-In-Android-Markets

http://hothardware.com/News/Malware-For-Android-Users-Increases-In-Frequency-And-Sophistication/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/11/android_marketplace_malware/

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18755/killer_android_app_allows_the_clueless_to_hack_pwn_like_a_pen_tester

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17899/hacked_android_app_racks_up_huge_texting_charges

Would you like MORE? I have PLENTY of them...

... apk

Funny that article shows it's on ANDROID phones thus, it's an ANDROID (& other smartphones') problem (& thus, a Linux problem too, because ANDROID'S A LINUX). I don't see it running on my Windows PC here, for instance...

APK

P.S.=> And to "continue the trend"? Here's MORE Android security issues (8 at a time only: /. won't let me post more links than that):

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18659/cyberthugs_love_smartphones_and_leaky_sneaky_mobile_malware

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/15/6475834-skype-android-app-can-expose-your-personal-information

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17785/sensory_malware_android_app_listens_then_steals_credit_card_data

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/11/1620222/New-SMS-Trojan-Found-In-Android-Markets

http://hothardware.com/News/Malware-For-Android-Users-Increases-In-Frequency-And-Sophistication/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/11/android_marketplace_malware/

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18755/killer_android_app_allows_the_clueless_to_hack_pwn_like_a_pen_tester

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17899/hacked_android_app_racks_up_huge_texting_charges

Would you like MORE? I have PLENTY of them...

... apk

Funny that article shows it's on ANDROID phones thus, it's an ANDROID (& other smartphones') problem (& thus, a Linux problem too, because ANDROID'S A LINUX). I don't see it running on my Windows PC here, for instance...

APK

P.S.=> And to "continue the trend"? Here's MORE Android security issues (8 at a time only: /. won't let me post more links than that):

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18659/cyberthugs_love_smartphones_and_leaky_sneaky_mobile_malware

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/15/6475834-skype-android-app-can-expose-your-personal-information

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17785/sensory_malware_android_app_listens_then_steals_credit_card_data

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/11/1620222/New-SMS-Trojan-Found-In-Android-Markets

http://hothardware.com/News/Malware-For-Android-Users-Increases-In-Frequency-And-Sophistication/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/11/android_marketplace_malware/

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18755/killer_android_app_allows_the_clueless_to_hack_pwn_like_a_pen_tester

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17899/hacked_android_app_racks_up_huge_texting_charges

Would you like MORE? I have PLENTY of them...

... apk

Funny that article shows it's on ANDROID phones thus, it's an ANDROID (& other smartphones') problem (& thus, a Linux problem too, because ANDROID'S A LINUX). I don't see it running on my Windows PC here, for instance...

APK

P.S.=> And to "continue the trend"? Here's MORE Android security issues (8 at a time only: /. won't let me post more links than that):

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18659/cyberthugs_love_smartphones_and_leaky_sneaky_mobile_malware

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/15/6475834-skype-android-app-can-expose-your-personal-information

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17785/sensory_malware_android_app_listens_then_steals_credit_card_data

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/11/1620222/New-SMS-Trojan-Found-In-Android-Markets

http://hothardware.com/News/Malware-For-Android-Users-Increases-In-Frequency-And-Sophistication/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/11/android_marketplace_malware/

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18755/killer_android_app_allows_the_clueless_to_hack_pwn_like_a_pen_tester

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17899/hacked_android_app_racks_up_huge_texting_charges

Would you like MORE? I have PLENTY of them...

... apk

Wrong.

Oh, you don't just disagree with my opinion; I'm wrong. Duly noted.

When Jobs came back and saved Apple, he didn't take your approach. In fact, he killed the Mac clone.

Please note that I never said the Microsoft licensing model was the only possible route to success. Please note that I picked 1989 as a good year to try this; Steve Jobs killed off the Mac clones in 1997. Please also note that I said "Apple does quite well as the BMW of the computer industry."

So Steve Jobs killed off the clones, embraced the premium computers concept, and made it work. I never said that was impossible. That would have been a stupid thing for me to say, since the actual history is that he did make it work.

And he cut Apple's endless confusing product line down to four.

I agree; that was one of the good things Jobs did. The endless confusing product line was a bad thing and he was right on that issue.

But Jobs did not cut margins - they are as high as ever.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that you are incorrect on this point. Or "wrong" if you prefer that word.

In the 80's, Apple was making margins of up to 55% on computers. In 1989, there was no model of Mac that cost less than $3000 (in 1989 dollars; in 2011 dollars that would be over $5200). (source)

That's insane. Today Macs are premium computers but they are not that overpriced anymore.

Apple in those days used to do tricks like bundle in an Apple external hard drive, which was also a high-margin item. People wanted to just buy the Mac and buy a less-expensive external hard drive, but they didn't get that option.

I was pretty sure that Dell and the other commodity computer makers must get by on less than 10% margins. I found an article claiming that the industry average margin on a notebook is 2%. (And on netbooks it's more like 0.6%!)

Apple wants to stay out of commodity markets, which is one reason why we won't ever see a "Mac netbook". Apple hates to compete on price and just refuses to do it. (Which is fine; BMW doesn't compete on price either.)

In the 90's Apple was in serious trouble. I personally believe that their strategy of charging the absolute highest possible price they could manage in the late 80's set them up for the serious trouble. Their margins now are high but not crazy high.

But actually, when I did the Google search to try to find a link backing up my claim of the 50% margin on Macs in the late 80's, I found a lot of articles estimating that Apple is making 50% margins on iPhone and iPad. This is 50% on a $500 product instead of 50% on a $3,000 or $4,000 product, which may help explain why this seems to be more sustainable than a 55% margin on a Macintosh.

Even if the competition from Android does force them to lower their prices, they should still be able to make good money.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9150045/Apple_makes_208_on_each_499_iPad

OBTW, Apple is poised to become the #1 PC maker next year.

So, please tell me what part of "They can continue to make good money by selling nice stuff at premium prices" sounds like I'm surprised or skeptical about the above?

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.

steveha

After hearing yrs. of /. penguins & "Linux = secure, Windows != secure" & the data on android that keeps coming in my posts isn't weakening my case.

* I merely state facts when asked for them... plenty more where that came from too! Here are 8 more (making my total @ this point 25 already in my posts here now up to this one):

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/16/spyeye-targeting-android-users-zeus-strategy/?utm_source=Non-campaign&utm_medium=eNews-newsletter&utm_campaign=eNews-NL-20110912

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/android-traveling-texts

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/15/android_malware_skyrockets/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/08/android-malware-explodes-ios-remains-safe/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/android_trojan_click_fraud_scam/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/07/difference_between_smartphones_and_superphones/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/01/android_trojan_rash/

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17355/zombies_and_angry_birds_attack_mobile_phone_malware

---

* Continuing the trend via continuous data in each of my replies to "naysayer trolls" (especially the AC ones), in proofs of ANDROID security issues over time... 25++ & counting thusfar!

APK

P.S.=> I have 25++ recent issues regarding ANDROID (a Linux variant) security problems as of THIS post... Would you like more?

... apk

How many would ya like? I literally have 100's of posts catalogued on ANDROID security issues of ALL KINDS (hence, my point) year, after year, since I don't KNOW when (start of ANDROID really in 2005):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/22/android_trojan_maytyr/

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/21/0058235/gaining-a-remote-shell-on-android

http://blogs.cio.com/mobile-security/16704/android-app-permissions-may-spark-false-sense-security

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/16/2039237/sprint-orders-all-oems-to-strip-carrier-iq-from-their-phones

http://www.bgr.com/2011/12/14/more-than-1-million-stolen-from-android-users-in-2011-mobile-threats-to-increase-in-2012/

http://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2011/dec/12/fbi-carrier-iq-files-used-law-enforcement-purposes/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/12/android_market_malware/

http://blogs.computerworld.com/19391/mobile_security_at_takedowncon_hackers_handing_out_a_healthy_dose_of_paranoia

(Hey - I'll post even more current examples, as many as /.'s homegrown board engine will let me pack into another single post (I'll have room for more too, Too TOO MANY TIMES, lol!)).

---

* PLEASE /. "CONTROLLERS": FIX THE FORUMS ENGINE: It only let me pack in 8 posts per post for examples that were requested of me... that's beat! What is this 8 links per post I just hit?? A hard-imposed limit by you, or just limits in your code??? String data parse problem??? Get rid of it.

(It leaves room for improvement of a post of mine here, as it would others, ones I could do right away, instead of having to multiply post data as evidences... & added backing)

Yes - where as you know? Hey - I always, deliver, perfectly, & accurately (pats self on back!!!), blowing the doors off of your best technically, in your trolls! Most are cowards & post AC - something they can never take credit for IF they somehow managed to "completely get the better of me" (impossible), technically in computing: Never has happened since I started posting here in late 2004, & never will! LOL...

* So that all "said & aside", by request no less? LMAO - "What's 4 Lunch @ APK's today?

Yes, kids - that's right, you guessed it: A truly, "SMOKED TROLL" named 'burning-toast' (lmao - rather aptly named, wouldn't you say? LOL!)

APK

P.S.=> "Next" (to whatever Pro-*NIX troll wants a shot @ the title of most technically excellent @ /., reigning champion APK on all levels)... lmao!

... apkb

Hell why didn't you bring up toasters while you were at it? See its THIS kind of total flag waving horseshit you ALWAYS get from FOSSies. I said it QUITE clearly we were talking about DESKTOPS, not what your cell phone or TV for that matter runs. Newsflash: Nobody gives a shit, hell unless its Apple nobody even knows what the fuck is on their damned cell phone! Its a screen with buttons and THAT IS ALL. Linux is used there because its FREE and with a locked down cell phone nobody gives a flying wet fart what is behind the buttons, just that the buttons work. Supercomputers? Are nothing BUT CLI, that's it. They are trying to squeeze every little drip drop of horsepower they can so no shit they are using a CLI OS. It also again is the fact its FREE and MSFT frankly has always charged assraping prices on their server products.

Now back to the subject at hand, desktops. if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos? If it is sooo good then why does a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or why has ASUS has given up on your bullshit or why did Walmart run away from linux as fast as it can?

I'll tell you why, its because its too fiddly, too unintuitive, the kernel on up is as solid and stable as the shifting sands, its a geek programmer's toy and NOTHING more ATM. Funny how all the things you mentioned are controlled by......drumroll....geek programmers! who programs cell phone OSes and writes drivers for them? Who sets up Webservers and supercomputers? Why that would be geeky ass nerd programmers! Meanwhile you can't even give the damned thing away for free to normal folks NOR to retailers NOR to OEMs. Doesn't that slap you with the cluebat? or are you too gonna give me a treaty on how "CLI is leet" like this guy?

See i'm the community's worst nightmare, i'm a retailer. i have better things to do than play 'find the fix' on weekends and i don't think staring at your beloved bash prompt is a solution for ANY problem much less EVERY problem. Frankly Windows 98 and System 9 were more polished than the current Linux distros are, and when i have people on this very forum tell me "Well just don't update it" like Linux magically is immune to ALL software exploits? Well i have to think the whole damned bunch has gone stark raving loonie.

Now you be sure to call me a "nigger faggot cocksucker" aka shill troll astroturfer because I dared to point out that after TWENTY YEARS Linux is STILL lower than JavaME. Oh BTW every single lame excuse you used? There is a whole website dedicated to those excuses such as your excuse about supercomputers? Its been there since Dec 2009 so at least try to come up with some new BS, mmmkay?

Chrome spawns one thread for each tab, extension and plug-in in addition to a "Browser" thread and a "GPU Process" thread. A summary of the processes is provided in Chrome's task manager (Shift + Esc or right-click on Chrome's chrome and select Task Manager).

Chrome uses significantly more resources than Firefox however it does not suffer from the horrid memory leaks that have plagued Firefox for years: Mozilla Gets "Tough" on Firefox Memory Leaks

As the article states, the memory leaks are a well-known problem. It's an issue that the developers do not seem to be able to fix.

Chrome's performance is exceptional and stable. Firefox's performance is also exceptional at first launch but it can degrade in a matter of minutes to a choppy, annoying experience. If you're using Firefox and haven't already done so, try the Memory Restart add-on. Be sure to display the add-on bar to watch the memory inflate. In my experience, performance starts to degrade around 600 MB.

In a world where RAM is dirt cheap, Chrome is welcome to all it wants to use as long as it maintains its performance. I have 8 GB of RAM installed and rarely see total usage beyond 3 GB.

I switched to Chrome yesterday after at least five years of primary Firefox usage. I'm a bit sad to leave Firefox behind, but I had tired of restarting it four or five times a day just to keep the memory in check.

Ironically, it was the Google toolbar that had kept me tied to Firefox for the last year. I'm now using the Context Search extension in Chrome to achieve similar functionality to the Google toolbar "buttons" in Firefox.

I guess you could hire RIAA lawyers to calculate the damages for you.

Eleventy Trillion Dollars!!!

Even IBM is returning to water cooling for their mainframes: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9183068/Water_cooling_returns_to_IBM_mainframe

The reasons:

. . . IBM saw fit to offer water cooling to help reduce overall data center cooling needs . . . the optional water cooling system can improve overall environmental needs by about 12%, which may help some IT managers "squeeze the last piece of floor space in before they go buy a new data center . . . Water is more efficient than air in removing heat . . .

Need a reason to justify the higher cost of your PC? Hey, it's "green" . . . !

. . . and my data center is getting full . . . I constantly trip over USB cables when I get up off the sofa . . .

Why? It would appear that Java devs are the ones with the lowest coding intellect.

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/12/09/1533252/java-apps-have-the-most-flaws-cobol-the-least

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222503/Java_apps_have_most_flaws_Cobol_apps_the_least_study_finds

I don't know how about Steve Ballmer saying saying that Windows 7 would be Vista just a whole lot better? Or PC World publishing an article indicating that the early releases of Windows 7 were nearly identical to Windows Vista in not just appearance, but also performance and behavior.

I'm not sure what you don't get about the fact that it's a lot easier to change the name of a product than it is to build a new operating system. Vista isn't the same O/S as XP which wasn't the same operating system as Windows 95 because they're fundamentally different in how they operate. Windows 7 and Vista? Fundamentally the same.

And anyone who doesn't think Windows has a marketing driven naming scheme isn't paying attention.

The Obama Administration would never overstep the law and censor the Internet!

Besides, the 63% of women in IT who have been sexually harassed - double the average across all industries - would also disagree with you.

Being groped by some clod certainly falls within the spectrum of behaviour of men who think women are lesser beings.

So why not read about a study that examined the issues as to why more than half of all women who start out in the field quit well before they hit 50 - sexual harassment, a toxic work environment, *any* failure being the "kiss of death" to a career, isolation, lack of peers and mentors, etc.

None of these have a bearing on how well a woman can do her job. And the 63% of women in IT who report being sexually harassed is double the 31% across all employers - also a scary number.

Here - the results of this study might help put things into perspective http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/319212/Why_Women_Quit_Technology

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/319212/Why_Women_Quit_Technology

It's not "meaningless statistical noise." More than half of all women quit because of the sexist behaviour.

Between ages 25 and 30, 41% of the young talent with credentials in those subject matters (math and computers) are female.
...
The bad news is that a short way down the road, 52% of this talent drops out. We are finding that attrition rates among women spike between 35 and 40 -- what we call the fight-or-flight moment. Women vote with their feet; they get out of these sectors. Not only are they leaving technology and science companies, many are leaving the field altogether.
We found four other more important factors (than "starting a family" that caused women to leave the field) about the culture and the nature of the career path. We call them "antigens," because they repel women.

63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment ... Demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes - who see them as genetically inferior. It's hard to take as a steady stream. It's predatory and demeaning.

The sheer isolation many women cope with daily. She might be the only woman on the team or the only senior woman at a facility. Isolation in and of itself is debilitating, with no mentors, no role models, no buddies. And if you're surrounded by men who don't appreciate you, that can be corrosive.

For many women, the career path is all very mysterious because they don't have mentors or sponsors or folks looking out for them (no "old girls network", etc).

Risky behavior patterns that are rewarded. We found, particularly in the tech firms, that the way to get promoted is to do a diving catch: Some system is crashing in Bulgaria, so you get on the plane in the middle of the night and dash off and spend the weekend wrestling with routers and come back a hero,

... Women have a hard time taking on those assignments because you can dive and fail to catch. If a man fails, his buddies dust him off and say, "It's not your fault; try again next time." A women fails and is never seen again. A woman('s career) cannot survive a failure.

... we found that women across industries will often take a brief break -- like for two years. But our sense is that this is distinctly worse. In many fields, almost 100% of women will try to get back into the industry [later]. Here, only 60% say they would be willing to give it another try if conditions were right. 40% leave the industry entirely. They've been too badly burned.

So, when you eliminate more than half of all those who started out well before they hit 50 ... it's not just statistical noise, it's not "I'm married, and hubby will pay the bills", and it's not a failure to keep up-to-date on skills. Unlike your anecdotal evidence, studies say it's the toxic environment.

But just look at your own "reason" #2 for an example of sexism.

Misogyny isn't the same thing as gender bias. And I see nothing in this to suggest this is anything other than gender bias.

Misogyny - it doesn't mean what you think it means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny

"Misogyny .... is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies

How is being cut out of the job market based on gender not both "a sexist prejudice" and "an oppression of females"?

Here - I'll quote the article linked from TFS again:

Nanci Schimizzi, president of the mentoring and advocacy group Women in Technology, said jobless women 50 or older generally "remain unemployed for years, to the point where many have more or less given up" or changed careers.

Men in the same age cohort aren't facing the same situation to such an extent that it's possible to make such a generalization for them.

Gender bias (to use your term) isn't just limited to women over 50 - it's all-pervasive in the developer world. I guess you've never been confronted with an employer saying "I'll never hire a woman because I can't scream at them." Sure, no woman is going to want to work in such an environment - but to be denied equal access to employment based on gender is the reality in IT, and to those on the receiving end, white-washing it by calling it "gender bias" doesn't change the fact, or the damage, any more than it would if it were "racial bias."