In other words, you are expecting a fairy tale. Users can break linux. Why shouldn't they be able to break Windows?
No fairy tale, every day life.
I've yet to be able to break Debian with apt-get and dselect, and corporate users don't need that. I've never seen a person using any software installed that way "break" a computer. That's why I don't think users can break a Linux machine.
Windoze is hobbled with that stupid registry, dll hell and all sorts of other dumb things. It's impossible to use without breaking. That's why I think M$ is annoying.
How about banking, medicine or law?
on
Are You Annoying?
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· Score: 1
Any field that requires a higher degree of knowledge has speciliazed jargon and inside humor.
Good point. I'd say that medicine, law and banking are much more difficult than click and drool M$ Administration.
But wait, those other people don't annoy me! They just get their job done and they like it when I research things that they openly publish and encourage me to know. Wow.
If M$ ran medicine, I'd turn blue once a day and die in two years.
If M$ ran my bank, they would forget how much money I have every month and people would be able to drain bank accounts all the time. Oh dear, that's happening.
If M$ ran law, it would be complicated, tangled, nonsense that constantly changes by secret process but always gets worse. They do run "IP" law. If I had an "IP" attorney, I'm afraid they would be getting very annoying.
It's not wonder that people prefer paying taxes and having root canals to dealing with Microsoft.
I mean, its simple. All you have to do is click on use advanced options radio button, and then click the change advanced settings. No, the little circle first, right. Then the advanced button, and select check hosts file and check Internet Explorer preferences, then click on Next and Continue and, grrr. MOOOVE.
Next time, just ssh into their box and change things for them. No need for you or the user to leave their seat. Can't do that with M$? Something about a lack of human readable text configuration, a registry, and bandwith intense GUI crap? Oh well, it sucks to be you.
All of the problems described are essentially Microsoft's fault. M$ has made software that is easily broken and then labled it "easy to use" and "solid" and "secure". It's anything but those things. It frustrates the users and gives IT a bad reputation. Your comments highlight the typical scenario perfectly:
What it doesn't mention is that what annoys IT people to no end are the people who know nothing about computers but try to interject their opinion. You know, the poeple who don't listen to you when you say don't install program X, or don't install anything, or ingeneral ignore you when you say DON'T DO THAT!.
You will find that kind of interjection in any profession. The difference is that lawyers, doctors and even car mechanics are not hampered by an industry dominating company that tells people not to learn anything and intentionally hides the inner workings of the profession. Everyone else wants the client to be knowledgable enough to use their services.
It's amazing that you can stand there and say "don't do X" as if that's normal. Nothing the user does should be able to break their computer. Users have picked up on this and know that it's a quality issue.
IT users are understandably frustrated and they are going to take it out on you if you swallow M$ BS and regurgitate it without thinking. Almost every IT user has been through one iteration of the upgrade train without reward. The changes between each version of Windoze are confusing, unnecessary and add few real features but the flaws remain. When you start talking about, "don't do this" and "the new version will fix that", the user is going to get that "I've been here before" feeling. God help you if you try blame a user for their daily crashes when they've done everything you said.
In short, the answer is to move people to software that does not have the problems to begin with and remains consistent. That's hard to do with all of M$'s FUD, but it's getting easier than doing the same old thing and getting the same old results for ever more money.
SCO exists solely to make press releases and get them into mainstream press. At his last keynote meeting, McBride proudly thumped on top of two phonebook sized binders of press clippings. They do little more because it's what they are paid by M$ to do.
Where the media is failing is in getting a diverse opinion of the facts presented above. Almost all of the mainstream news outlets covered McBride's presentation of events, "IBM orchestrating an attack on SCO", while McBride proudly thumped on the results of his own media manipulation. How pathetic is that? Turner is right, the wintel press and most media are little more than a big choir all singing the same song.
Spies from Russia, China, France and 120 of the UN 159 not to mention the Republicans proably have been assigned laptops by the Democrats and will have no need to lurk in vans before reporting to their pals in Los Alamos. Quit worrying!
Gates promised us that software not hardware would limit performance. He has worked to make it so. Hardware was made a commodity and he is working to make sure that it will only eat his software. Fifteen years ago, hardware was made everywhere. Now, not even IBM or big Japanese companies can make hardware with anything but slave labor in China.
Free software might not make it possible to compete with slave labor, but it will help. If the largest cost of hardware becomes the "IP" of BIOS and software, free software will reduce those costs and might make manufacturing elsewhere possible. As it is, the world is one big screwdriver plant supplied by China and ruled by IP from two or three companies.
But if tcpa allows those wal-mart "computing devices" to provide their users some basic functionality without ddosing the entire subnet with virus activity, then I'm all for it... as will be most of the joes and janes presently calling tech support every month because their computer caught (yet another) case of the clap.
Why not just give them free software instead? KDE 3 is just as easy to use as XP is but the underlying system takes care of your virus problems. It's what I recommend to my clients. M$ is over unless they thwart the world with BIOS lock outs and bad laws.
publish your mobo specs and sample code on source forge
watch the world make you a richer more awsome bios than you ever imagined
use the last item and save whatever portion of your costs AMI, Phoenix and whoever's bugs were costing you.
Rack up sales because your mobo works, is DRM free and kicks ass.
Watch your competitors try to catch up.
I'm sure there are some catches to the rosy scenerio above. I can imagine chipset makers bowing to M$ giving you trouble and that could ruin your business. The NDA rot is deep rooted and must be attacked where it gets it's most money, the desktop. They propose the following scenario to mobo makers:
use this new DRM BIOS or we drop you and you won't be able to buy parts.
say yes, bitch and give me more money.
screw you anyway.
Smaller mobo makers are going to be eliminated if the NDA people have their way. It's always easier to control a smaller number of rich slaves than a large number of hungry ones.
Leaving is not a bad option. Take what you have learned and go to some place that has sense. You are better off some place where people don't force stupid things like Word Docs and choice of OS on you. M$ force is a sign of much larger issues of clueless belligerence and a sheep like following of bullies.
Since September 11th all the assholes have come out to play. They have used the panic to push all manner of stupid agendas. M$ monopoly in the name of "security" is one of those really dumb agendas.
Actually you just claimed a patent on pretty much all aircraft.
Considerations like that don't seem to matter when it comes to software patents. So we see people patenting the mouse, the GUI, "one click shopping", to do lists, update services and all manner of obvious and done ideas. They don't even bother with a useful description, just a business method or other vague description.
BayStar pulled their investment (well, okay, converted the stock) and said SCO was incompetent because they couldn't win their lawsuits with the management they have. (BayStar is actually stupid enough to think SCO could win and actually make money sueing people.)
They have to say that to keep themselves in the money and out of jail. It's obvious that their goofey plan with SCO is failing. Rather than own up to it, they are saying, "but they did it wrong!" I imagine this is to save face and to protect similar M$ shenanigans. Someone make money on this stock kite and they will defend it as legitimate until jailed and then some.
if it [SCO] dies, then in the dissolution of its assets, some creditor gets the copyrights to the copyrighted work as recompense.
Creditors can get the lint from under McBride's keyboard if they want it. It will be worth more than the copyrights to obsolete software they hold when the rest of these lawsuits play out.
I guess ultimately my question is, does SCO going belly up mean the end of these lawsuits?
No. SCO's financial demise will not put an end to frivolous lawsuits.
The complete and humiliating loss of these lawsuits and the jailing of those responsible for the stock scam they represent will end this class of software rape. Indeed, the jail time might reach back to the source, those at Microsoft who concocted it. The memos have been leaked. The money trail and motives are known. The cases are being ruled on their merits, independent of motives. Those who invested in SCO are losing their shirts as greedheads oft do. A criminal investigation will be able to pick up from there.
Actually, I'm told by pot secret sources, that the MPAA has a much more advanced system. It consists of multiple receiving units, so that the position of the phone can be known to three feet. X ray lasers are slaved to the devices output and will vaporize anyone in the area, so as to make an example of any doctor, firefighter or other emergency responder dumb enough to go to the movies.
Unless OpenTalk and OpenTalk are the same project, it looks like Apple is stealing the name. If the Open Source people were as picky as Apple is with their trademarks there would be further problems. Whats up?
It could not have happened to two nicer companies. I hope Bill Gates and anyone else who ever used "fat line" patents, is thinking about their efforts to use patents as an anti-competitive weapon.
"A vehicle which will transport passengers and cargo trough via a non-proprietary air. It includes steps for providing a distribution service that distributes people and cargo for a plurality of different destinations"
That's it, I own the flying car. All you bitches pay up.
However, any community that does allow this, which is a factory-equipment feature in all of the major webboard packages, was at risk and most likely got hit. All it takes is one user posting an image on an infected server in a popular thread and that site would be spreading the virus to any reader who isn't running a properly protected computer.
So what popular threads were banks running that allowed customers to spread this around? What popular threads were more widely read than something like BankOne?
Pray tell, what's a "properly protected computer", other than one that runs an alternate OS, when M$ has not released a fix? Slashdot and it's community were not part of the problem because Slashdot users have enough sense not to run M$ trash outside of work where they are forced.
You blame the user post is an obvious troll. This mess is Microsoft's from server to browser.
Who are you going to sue with free software? Right, trust the ass who's asking for your money. Another piece of FUD bites the dust again.
Obfuscation is not going to save anyone from lawsuits and in general, lying makes you an accomplice and liable for damages done by others. The damage was done and Microsoft should pay for it. If you lie to cover their ass and your customers suffer further harm, you too are responsible. A good class action suit can be made over this to punish M$ for their negligence, though that won't do end users any good.
Individuals have only seen the tip of the iceburg here. Their computers will have to be fixed, but that pales in comparison to all the money and time it will take from them if their bank account is syphoned dry by the crackers behind the scam.
Corporations with large windoze deployments are going to have real QA to do and that costs money. Those bills should be turned over to M$ directly and payment withheld to make TCO match projections. Banks have a double problem and need to look out for their interests before those of M$.
Banks that don't come clean should be subjected to lawsuits for not doing what they can. Banks infected should let their customers know, so they can for signs of the infection on their own machines before more damage occurs. If they don't every customer should assume they were infected and take corrective action. A good class action suit can be made over that one too. Telling the customer that they might have been hacked is the least the bank can do and not doing that makes them liable for damages.
The best action, however, is for everyone to just to dump M$. Security has been job one for two years now, but the result is more of the same. Free software does everything M$ can but better. Why do people insist on paying more to get less? The cost to fix the results of this latest mess would more than pay for the cost of a linux transition.
It would be much more interesting to see what kind of thoughts increase activity and who can increase it the most. Would an old calculus exam beat someone writing a creative essay? Can you store the signals and play yourself? Does it hurt when the steel ball drops into your lap? Would that pain win the game? I'm not willing to crush my testicles, but I might bite my tongue. As the AC notes, all you have to do is change the rules to play this way.
When you consider that most "broadband" ISPs prohibit your from running your own services, such as websites and other "servers", you have to conclude that your freedom to publish is already lost. Sure, you can go to a "hosting" service and be dependent on someone else, so what? The network, mostly on public land, that you paid for is off limits to YOU for no real technical reason. The ability to censor arbitrarily naturally flows from that kind of setup. Those who wish to share material are forced to break their their terms of service, and use slimy by comparison P2P services. Honest people should be able to do what they do without feeling like criminals but they can't.
If you visit the Internet Watch Foundation's site, you will see they have a form for submitting websites. So they are getting their lists from a kind of internet ostracism.
While it's hard to imagine a better way of getting a list, it's also easy to see that it won't work. It should be possible to DoS any site with that submission form. With enough zombie machines hitting that submission form, you could eliminate everything not on some kind of a white list.
I don't want to even think about what kind of software is sitting on the desks of people who run that organization. I'm 90% certain that it's the same OS that's generating all of those other malware and "accidental" hits. That would be unfortunate, as malware on one of those desks would have the same power as the member of the organization, the arbitrary power to block a website to all of BT's subscribers.
So, the number of hits is nothing but evidence of censorship to me. I have no proof that any of those 10,000 contains child porn, nor do I want any. I all I now is that there's a real chance that the majority of those hits is innocuous material and that real child exploitation will go on through other channels.
A good test should have identified some errors, especially if it blew up IMMEDIATELY.
Good planning would have had an abort procedure, so the show would go on. Everything changed should be undone if it did not work. They could figure it out after the paper was printed.
Errors are inevitable. Good planning and implementation keep you from falling on your face even when you publish seven days a week. It's not the coder's fault.
Slashdot Mirror
No fairy tale, every day life.
I've yet to be able to break Debian with apt-get and dselect, and corporate users don't need that. I've never seen a person using any software installed that way "break" a computer. That's why I don't think users can break a Linux machine.
Windoze is hobbled with that stupid registry, dll hell and all sorts of other dumb things. It's impossible to use without breaking. That's why I think M$ is annoying.
Good point. I'd say that medicine, law and banking are much more difficult than click and drool M$ Administration.
But wait, those other people don't annoy me! They just get their job done and they like it when I research things that they openly publish and encourage me to know. Wow.
If M$ ran medicine, I'd turn blue once a day and die in two years.
If M$ ran my bank, they would forget how much money I have every month and people would be able to drain bank accounts all the time. Oh dear, that's happening.
If M$ ran law, it would be complicated, tangled, nonsense that constantly changes by secret process but always gets worse. They do run "IP" law. If I had an "IP" attorney, I'm afraid they would be getting very annoying.
It's not wonder that people prefer paying taxes and having root canals to dealing with Microsoft.
Next time, just ssh into their box and change things for them. No need for you or the user to leave their seat. Can't do that with M$? Something about a lack of human readable text configuration, a registry, and bandwith intense GUI crap? Oh well, it sucks to be you.
What it doesn't mention is that what annoys IT people to no end are the people who know nothing about computers but try to interject their opinion. You know, the poeple who don't listen to you when you say don't install program X, or don't install anything, or ingeneral ignore you when you say DON'T DO THAT!.
You will find that kind of interjection in any profession. The difference is that lawyers, doctors and even car mechanics are not hampered by an industry dominating company that tells people not to learn anything and intentionally hides the inner workings of the profession. Everyone else wants the client to be knowledgable enough to use their services.
It's amazing that you can stand there and say "don't do X" as if that's normal. Nothing the user does should be able to break their computer. Users have picked up on this and know that it's a quality issue.
IT users are understandably frustrated and they are going to take it out on you if you swallow M$ BS and regurgitate it without thinking. Almost every IT user has been through one iteration of the upgrade train without reward. The changes between each version of Windoze are confusing, unnecessary and add few real features but the flaws remain. When you start talking about, "don't do this" and "the new version will fix that", the user is going to get that "I've been here before" feeling. God help you if you try blame a user for their daily crashes when they've done everything you said.
In short, the answer is to move people to software that does not have the problems to begin with and remains consistent. That's hard to do with all of M$'s FUD, but it's getting easier than doing the same old thing and getting the same old results for ever more money.
Where the media is failing is in getting a diverse opinion of the facts presented above. Almost all of the mainstream news outlets covered McBride's presentation of events, "IBM orchestrating an attack on SCO", while McBride proudly thumped on the results of his own media manipulation. How pathetic is that? Turner is right, the wintel press and most media are little more than a big choir all singing the same song.
Free software might not make it possible to compete with slave labor, but it will help. If the largest cost of hardware becomes the "IP" of BIOS and software, free software will reduce those costs and might make manufacturing elsewhere possible. As it is, the world is one big screwdriver plant supplied by China and ruled by IP from two or three companies.
Funny how publishing specs and simply not suing everone in the world is so difficult to do.
But if tcpa allows those wal-mart "computing devices" to provide their users some basic functionality without ddosing the entire subnet with virus activity, then I'm all for it... as will be most of the joes and janes presently calling tech support every month because their computer caught (yet another) case of the clap.
Why not just give them free software instead? KDE 3 is just as easy to use as XP is but the underlying system takes care of your virus problems. It's what I recommend to my clients. M$ is over unless they thwart the world with BIOS lock outs and bad laws.
I'm sure there are some catches to the rosy scenerio above. I can imagine chipset makers bowing to M$ giving you trouble and that could ruin your business. The NDA rot is deep rooted and must be attacked where it gets it's most money, the desktop. They propose the following scenario to mobo makers:
Smaller mobo makers are going to be eliminated if the NDA people have their way. It's always easier to control a smaller number of rich slaves than a large number of hungry ones.
Leaving is not a bad option. Take what you have learned and go to some place that has sense. You are better off some place where people don't force stupid things like Word Docs and choice of OS on you. M$ force is a sign of much larger issues of clueless belligerence and a sheep like following of bullies.
Since September 11th all the assholes have come out to play. They have used the panic to push all manner of stupid agendas. M$ monopoly in the name of "security" is one of those really dumb agendas.
Considerations like that don't seem to matter when it comes to software patents. So we see people patenting the mouse, the GUI, "one click shopping", to do lists, update services and all manner of obvious and done ideas. They don't even bother with a useful description, just a business method or other vague description.
They have to say that to keep themselves in the money and out of jail. It's obvious that their goofey plan with SCO is failing. Rather than own up to it, they are saying, "but they did it wrong!" I imagine this is to save face and to protect similar M$ shenanigans. Someone make money on this stock kite and they will defend it as legitimate until jailed and then some.
Creditors can get the lint from under McBride's keyboard if they want it. It will be worth more than the copyrights to obsolete software they hold when the rest of these lawsuits play out.
No. SCO's financial demise will not put an end to frivolous lawsuits.
The complete and humiliating loss of these lawsuits and the jailing of those responsible for the stock scam they represent will end this class of software rape. Indeed, the jail time might reach back to the source, those at Microsoft who concocted it. The memos have been leaked. The money trail and motives are known. The cases are being ruled on their merits, independent of motives. Those who invested in SCO are losing their shirts as greedheads oft do. A criminal investigation will be able to pick up from there.
"A vehicle which will transport passengers and cargo trough via a non-proprietary air. It includes steps for providing a distribution service that distributes people and cargo for a plurality of different destinations"
That's it, I own the flying car. All you bitches pay up.
However, any community that does allow this, which is a factory-equipment feature in all of the major webboard packages, was at risk and most likely got hit. All it takes is one user posting an image on an infected server in a popular thread and that site would be spreading the virus to any reader who isn't running a properly protected computer.
So what popular threads were banks running that allowed customers to spread this around? What popular threads were more widely read than something like BankOne?
Pray tell, what's a "properly protected computer", other than one that runs an alternate OS, when M$ has not released a fix? Slashdot and it's community were not part of the problem because Slashdot users have enough sense not to run M$ trash outside of work where they are forced.
You blame the user post is an obvious troll. This mess is Microsoft's from server to browser.
Obfuscation is not going to save anyone from lawsuits and in general, lying makes you an accomplice and liable for damages done by others. The damage was done and Microsoft should pay for it. If you lie to cover their ass and your customers suffer further harm, you too are responsible. A good class action suit can be made over this to punish M$ for their negligence, though that won't do end users any good.
Individuals have only seen the tip of the iceburg here. Their computers will have to be fixed, but that pales in comparison to all the money and time it will take from them if their bank account is syphoned dry by the crackers behind the scam.
Corporations with large windoze deployments are going to have real QA to do and that costs money. Those bills should be turned over to M$ directly and payment withheld to make TCO match projections. Banks have a double problem and need to look out for their interests before those of M$.
Banks that don't come clean should be subjected to lawsuits for not doing what they can. Banks infected should let their customers know, so they can for signs of the infection on their own machines before more damage occurs. If they don't every customer should assume they were infected and take corrective action. A good class action suit can be made over that one too. Telling the customer that they might have been hacked is the least the bank can do and not doing that makes them liable for damages.
The best action, however, is for everyone to just to dump M$. Security has been job one for two years now, but the result is more of the same. Free software does everything M$ can but better. Why do people insist on paying more to get less? The cost to fix the results of this latest mess would more than pay for the cost of a linux transition.
While it's hard to imagine a better way of getting a list, it's also easy to see that it won't work. It should be possible to DoS any site with that submission form. With enough zombie machines hitting that submission form, you could eliminate everything not on some kind of a white list.
I don't want to even think about what kind of software is sitting on the desks of people who run that organization. I'm 90% certain that it's the same OS that's generating all of those other malware and "accidental" hits. That would be unfortunate, as malware on one of those desks would have the same power as the member of the organization, the arbitrary power to block a website to all of BT's subscribers.
So, the number of hits is nothing but evidence of censorship to me. I have no proof that any of those 10,000 contains child porn, nor do I want any. I all I now is that there's a real chance that the majority of those hits is innocuous material and that real child exploitation will go on through other channels.
Good planning would have had an abort procedure, so the show would go on. Everything changed should be undone if it did not work. They could figure it out after the paper was printed.
Errors are inevitable. Good planning and implementation keep you from falling on your face even when you publish seven days a week. It's not the coder's fault.