when it starts recording everything and sending it to the police every night at 2am, I will be among the first in the driveway with a soldering iron.
I've got a soldering iron too! The problem is that my car's software is non-free, so I don't know what it's doing. Sadly, I don't think I can use a soldering iron to replace that silly computer and soon the DMCA will be used to make a free alternative impossible. Non-free software has owners and they are not me.
These things record data that can be very useful in collision investigations, give the investigators an idea of what happened by letting them know what each car was doing at the time of impact.
Hey, wow, that's great. Why didn't my car's salesman mention that to me when I purchased my car? If only I'd known, I'd have paid him an extra nickle. You make such a good case, why don't you get out and make a law that specifies what kind of information is collected. That would be more honest than what's happened and what could happen.
A small amount of though shows the evil potential of this technology. The problem is not the data that was recorded or how it's been used in this case. The problem is that no one asked for it or has control of what's recorded. What else can be slipped in without your knowledge, consent or ability to change? GPS position information logs able to phone home and keep track of "potential terrorists"? If it's properly spageti coded into the non-free crap that fires your injectors and sparkplugs, there'd be no way to disable it or even know what's collected.
So, I conceed your point, some information collecting is useful. Now, I'll have to ask you what you can do about the problems I mentioned, which seem so obvious to me.
it allows Mac OS users to run Windows applications? What other application does that (reliably)?
When Windows applications are themselves reliable, we can fault the maker of emulators and hardware for problems. When the hardware maker is bought by M$, it will soon be junk.
I'm sure the previous poster considered the dearth of x86 hardware for Mac. He seems to think that x86 hardware for Mac is more useful for running Linux, BSD and other free software than it is for running M$ junk.
What this means is that Microsoft is moving to put in barbs to mess with anything but Windoze. That these barbs will mess windoze too is not their concern because Microsoft cares even less about Mac users than they care about their own users. They have always done this kind of thing and they always will. The next challenge is the Next Generation Security BIOS which will lock everything but M$ out of commodity hardware. If it's not under M$ control, it won't make money for M$ and M$ can't tollerate that. Wierd, screwed up, agressive and paranoid but true, M$ has and continues to repeate their desire to run everyone's computer.
Well, M$ has a EULA too. Who realy owns the "service"? How dare one nasty monopoly reach out and trurn off another's advert mechanism? Sheesh.
When your software has owners, so does your computer. When they fight you lose. That's what EULA really means.
AOL needs to send out Knppix CDs or similar and just forget about controling the user's computer. They would be better off simply removing the user from Microsoft's control than trying to fight over the platform.
fingerprints are easy to fake. All it takes is a fingerprint from something your victim touched, an inkjet and common household items to make a mask for your finger. A researcher in Japan did just this and then tested it out in stores to verify the whole method. A transparent membrane with the target's fingerprint on it was good enough to fool most readers more than 3/4 of the time, even those that looked for a pulse were fooled - skin itslef is transluscent, that's how the pulse detection works.
First create a problem then collect money for a "solution".
Waiting at airports for screening that solves only half the threat and can be bypassed easily is a problem. If someone wants to comondere an airplane or crash one in a populated area they can shoot it down or hijack it still.
The solution, of taking money to bypass the problem, is just stupid. "How else are we going to fund all of this?" the jackasses will ask us. How indeed?
The problem was stupid, the fix is easy - quit making the problem. Let people buy tickets with cash, get on with a simple metal and explosives sniff test and go. The costs of our reaction to 9/11 is several orders of magnitude more than the event itself. Restrictions on commerce screw everyone.
Can anyone else see large software companies having this problem? Company sends the project overseas to be developed, employees return the finished source, and then toss their NDA in the trash by holding the source ransom over the internet.
Who gives a shit about source code? Think about what the code actually does and what this dude actually did. Any piece of code developed overseas has the potential to pipeline the data out directly. It might be something as stupid as a CD burner driver, but there it is running on your system. If you are running M$, as many private practices do, that process is running as root and you are hosed.
Code audit anyone? In the comercial world, forget it. There is no way these companies shipping all their work to India or China will have the competence, much less the time, to check against this kind of malice. Our own firms were the fist to put in spyware, are we surprised that others pull the same trick?
This is just another good reason for people to use free software and only free software. When your software has owners, so does your computer and it's not you.
he authentification will be done by a server chosen by the author.... I don't have any special knowlwge about what MS is doing. But the described approach sound most sensible to me.
Sensible? User choice? This is Microsoft you are talking about. Remember the company that makes you stick in your orignal CD and reboot if you change your hostname or IP number. It's also the company that won't let you store M$ updates locally, so everytime a computer gets adware or virus hosed, you have do download everything all over again but don't give you a choice on which updates you want and stick nasty EULAs in the updates. We are talking about one paranoid control freak of a company that has demonstrated it could care less about user choice or reason when those things get in the way of user control. When has Microsoft ever made a peer computing modeled product where the end user's machine was an equal player? If there is a way Bill Gates can charge anyone money for the service, you can bet that his software will force the user to pay. A central server completely out of the user's control offered as a "service" to enable this "feature" is very much a possibility.
Now what happens when that central server gets the next Blaster? Everyone is screwed. Nothing new, It's like hotmail, but they are going to pretend you have some input.
Server OS? What a crock. First, what the hell is a "server" and why can't my desktop PC be one? Second, what does this have to do with Red Hat or their shiny new distro with 64 bit support?
You can train the OS all you like with fancy window managers and scalable fonts and all the rest of the eye candy that desktop users want, but at its heart the OS is still yearning to be driven by the commandline.
Duh, any reasonable computer will have a command line for certian chores because thats the best way to do them. Unreasonable software has no CLI or a very poor one and these task just don't get done. Anyone who can figure out Microsoft's ever changing forest of tabs can figure out how to manipulate a few text files in the/etc directory. Software that lacks a decent CLI is just feature poor and hard to maintain. Most of them are 3 year disposables.
This isn't to say that Linux couldn't be ready to overtake Windows on the desktop one day.
I'm not sure why free software has not supplanted Windoze yet. It's better designed, easier to use, more rugged and more flexible. Every modern window manager has virtual desktops, but not Microsoft. SSH -X make RDP, PCAnywhere and all that look like the garbage it is. Email, web browsing on Microsoft platrorms is miserable and will break your silly PC. Free software handles those tasks masterfully and that's just the tip of the free software networking gold mine. I can indeed spare a few clock cycles to run as an sftp "server", or a web "server". Modest hardware, such as a 450MHz K6/2 with 128MB easily hosts myself and my wife at the same time. She surfs, I burn CDs with a graphical client but never have buffer underflows. Free software is lean, clean and does what I want it to on my desktop right now. I did not have to do much training to work any of the 5 or 6 GUIs I'm now familiar with. Click and drool works even better in the free software world than M$ can dream their bloated mess will work.
Red Hat's got your 64bit software! That's outstanding. I'd just love to get my hands on a nice little shuttle and drop this on it. The $800 cost is more than justified in a business environment. It can easily replace 8 windoze bozes by converting them to X terminals with something nice like Debian. Each of those nice little PCs could log onto that box as a "server" for document sharing, email and group colaboration that free software is famous for. I'm sure it would have no problem at all running 8 sessions of Star Office, fetchmail and other nice applications for users. $800 is a little steep for a personal box, but that price will come down and the 64 bit builds will come out in cheaper or free distros. That will be nice, not that I need it yet. I might reconsider that when firewire video gets cheap enough for me and PC video lives up to the hype that M$ has put out since 1995 with it's "multi media" bullshit. Hats off to Red Hat for putting this out.
Bill Gates said that a personal computer would never need more than 640K of RAM. Maybe he knows what a "server" is. He's real smart, I'm told.
Yeah, yeah, I know about turning off services to a computer that's exposed to an untrusted network. I read the Microsoft hotmail report, but already knew most of that. That's why my 486 packet filter has no GUI and has a limited set of software installed. Does this flexiblity somehow keep the software I use for my 486 from being a good desktop machine?
I'm so confused. Here I am, having run Linux and free software exclusively for the last two years on my desktops. I have not figured out what people mean when they say I'm running a server OS yet. Can you help me out here?
Not sneaky? Like installing itself without asking you? Like hiding in the M$ registry to carry out it's primary spy functions even after you try to remove it? Nah, that's not sneaky.
Gator is NOT winning. 23,000 sites with the words gator and spyware. They might as well try to halt peer to peer music trading. By calling themselves, "adware" they will forever malign the name "adware". Gator is scum and anyone who has anything to do with them shall be judged as scum.
I don't admin Windows, but I remember having to update OpenSSH twice in as many days and turn off access to all my users for a few hours because of rumors of an exploit.
Rumors? One or two root exploits for OpenBSD in seven years and you would compare that to Windoze? What kind of computers do you "admin" again? There is no panicea, but free software is way better then windoze.
While Steve Baller is trying to outlaw the GPL, Bill Gates is doing the same for Competion in general. After that they will work on a bill to outlaw free speech.
It's really that stupid. You can't kill the GPL without gutting copyright law. The GPL is a license that is much less restrictive than ordinary copyright. Ordinary copyright forbids copy without the permision of the owner. The GPL has conditions of copy so that permision does not have to be asked. The strength of the GPL is based on the strength of copyright. You can't kill one without the other.
If that's independent news media, give me my biased greedy coporate controlled news anyday.
Comming right up sir! You are just our kind of consumer. Double plus good for you, don't listen to anyone but solid dependable whores we pay. It's not like you need an impartial third party telling you what they think happed. Let the good folks of GE, MSNBC, Disney, and MacDonalds feed you just what does them the best good.
Whatever you do, don't read the internal memos from DiBold's techs. Those people are no longer associated with DiBold for their lack of proper corporate protocal. They should have used Microsoft's famous disapearing ink email, instead of bathering all over the internet. Go back to sleep while they chose your next mayor, govenor, president, forgein policy and conservation laws designed to maximize my^H^H your wealth. Good night, sweet prince!
Linking from slashdot may be less than beneficial in the short term
Ho, ho, ha ha, "Slashdot effect". This joke is more worn out than hot grits. Say something useful, says something funny but quit posting "Slashdot effect" trolls.
Microsoft has taken forever to get a music service. The Register offers two reasons for this:
While Microsoft was under investigation for anti-competitive[**] behavior against Netscape and Sun, it couldn't afford to be too blatant about squeezing utility companies out of the Windows 'ecosystem'. This is, at least, is one possible narrative to explain why Windows Media Player still lacks so many useful integrated features. Another is that Microsoft's notorious bureaucracy and slack coding might explain its failure to produce competive or coherent software, but we shall be charitable here, and if only for the sake of argument, discount this narrative altogether.
I posit a third, there are no Microsoft developers left. No one is going to risk their time, money and energy making something for Microsoft to steal. There was a brief period when Microsoft had the cheapest and easiest platform for developers to get and use. Those days are long gone.
With no developers, nothing left to steal and nothing left to give, Microsoft is useless. Microsoft is stagnant and will remain that way. They are busy trying to make hardware lockouts, digital rights denial and other fuck you tools that no one wants but Microsoft and big dumb companies. They deserve each other.
I've gotta hand it to the toshiba people.. I wouldn't have thought of this... pretty cool.
You might have thought of it if you worked for the Florida company that pioneered it. Can't remember the company, I just remembered they developed barge sized reactors and sold out to Japanese interests in the late 80's or early 90s.
Nuclear does have the best safety record and it is cheap, despite what people say about government subsidies. Whatever subsidies exist at the fuel level are cancelled out by regulations that give "nuclear" it's reputation. The government knows how to make money.
The problem is that when you have an accident at a nuke, you can lose about 5 billion dollars worth of plant. That's like two or three code red worms. The cool thing is that people go home istead of the morge more often with nuclear mistakes than they do elsewhere.
Wow, for less than $1,000 you can buy hardware, run the tests you think are appropriate and tell us all about it on a web page. Then maybe Slashdot can have an artilce from "one guy" that is not "lame". So quit wasting your time whining and start running.
You assert, "This type of stuff can be found in any newsgroup or forum on a daily basis."
Did you ever think that the sum of those posts might reflect something like the truth? SCSI has always performed better than IDE in any box I've ever built. SCSI I with it's pathetic 5MB/s works better than IDE I with 16 in older Pentium class machines. 40MB/s SCSI controlers have worked better for me than more modern IDE drives. I've never bothered to run benchmarks, I just watch the system stall under IDE and curse.
Reading posts from other people reporting the same types of stuff keeps me from being tempted to blow money on fancy IDE controlers. The next time I build a system, I'll give the cheapo IDE controler on the mobo a whirl. If it disapoints me, I can go SCSI. For $40, I can find a nice new card. For less than that, I can get used hard drives on ebay. IDE speeds are impressive, but something does not connect.
This Zealot term is more applicable to people who can't see beyond the start button and comerical software than it is to people who have quit paying the Microsoft tax. I don't mind people using Microsoft junk. I even have a win98 box for talking to an old scanner and other troublesome Microsoft stuff. I do, however, mind being shouted down when I offer my place of work or clients a free solution to their problems. I also mind the damage Microsoft has done and continues to do to the world economy.
Let's compare Microsoft to September 11th. September 11th cost the US economy $100 billion. Microsoft born worms have cost the US many billions as well. Code Red alone cost $2 billion. Sobig cost one billion. If we were to add up the costs of every dinky Microsoft worm all the way back to 1984, I'm sure we could arrive at $100 billion in documented costs. The documented costs, of course, pale by compairson with the undocumented costs of lost work. Those costs further pale when you consider the intentional waste of the upgrade cycle which forces users to ditch their hardware every three years. I just love walking into a 8 year old set up of Unix on PCs and see it working just as well as the day it was made without any adminisrtation. I hate walking into the typical Microsoft nightmare, which has not been "rebuilt" for a few years.
Is this killing anyone? Yes, it is. People in hospitals, cars and subways died in the big blackout a few months ago. It all points back to software that failed in the midwest, and I'm 95% sure that was a Microsoft failure. If we were to look at all the deaths caused by software failure, attributable to a mistaken use of Micfosoft software, I'm sure we could find more than 3,000 people and exceed the 9/11 toll.
Call me a zealot if you like. It does not change the truth.
Keep using that Microsoft junk. Just don't come whining to me when it cost you time, money and heartache. Especially stay away from me if you want to use it in a power plant or to operate traffic lights or some other place it does not belong. Someone will sue you for such negligence.
I first read that as BSoD. Now that's a dead PDA, of the type BMW likes. A "smart" cell phone with a BSoD is equally dead, though most people have the sense to shun the #1 maker of BSoD in their cell phone.
the only thing certain about the future is the existence of millions and millions of lawyers, all suing each other.
How many AI lawyers can you fit on one chip? None, there's nothing inteligent about lawyers. You can, however, run many virtual lawyers so your future may exist in a single box. They will lobby their virutal senators and create enough laws to perpetuate enough of themselves to crash the poor computer in less than 1/10th of a second. The last log will contain something about Ewoks, Endor, Chewbacka and "if it does not fit you must aquit." An astute researcher will comment, "It was terrible, as if millions and millions of souls cried out at once and were no more." The RIAA will win as the smoking piece of hardware will no longer be capable of making coppies of Britiany Spears. It is their ultimate cyber weapon.
Many of my agents want to be able to use exchange with outlook
No they don't. They want some of the features those two programs have to offer. What exactly are the features that you don't know how to replace with free software? Viruses and worms are about all I can think of. Give a list and I'm sure someone here will fix you up.
If someones could get on the ball in that arena, I would think a few more people would be switching over.
Get hopping man, after the last two years of Blasters, Slammers, Red Codes and other blow outs, the person who needs to be on the ball is YOU. You should have a detailed list of real functions your software provides, where it could be improved and how you are going to get those improvments. Exchange should be just one choice on your matrix of functions desired, costs and why the company wants to buy that function. Does that Outlook contact list, clumsy in my opinion, really justify M$'s costs and the risk of further worm inflictied downtime? You should have that chart ready to post.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a soldering iron too! The problem is that my car's software is non-free, so I don't know what it's doing. Sadly, I don't think I can use a soldering iron to replace that silly computer and soon the DMCA will be used to make a free alternative impossible. Non-free software has owners and they are not me.
Hey, wow, that's great. Why didn't my car's salesman mention that to me when I purchased my car? If only I'd known, I'd have paid him an extra nickle. You make such a good case, why don't you get out and make a law that specifies what kind of information is collected. That would be more honest than what's happened and what could happen.
A small amount of though shows the evil potential of this technology. The problem is not the data that was recorded or how it's been used in this case. The problem is that no one asked for it or has control of what's recorded. What else can be slipped in without your knowledge, consent or ability to change? GPS position information logs able to phone home and keep track of "potential terrorists"? If it's properly spageti coded into the non-free crap that fires your injectors and sparkplugs, there'd be no way to disable it or even know what's collected.
So, I conceed your point, some information collecting is useful. Now, I'll have to ask you what you can do about the problems I mentioned, which seem so obvious to me.
it allows Mac OS users to run Windows applications? What other application does that (reliably)?
When Windows applications are themselves reliable, we can fault the maker of emulators and hardware for problems. When the hardware maker is bought by M$, it will soon be junk.
I'm sure the previous poster considered the dearth of x86 hardware for Mac. He seems to think that x86 hardware for Mac is more useful for running Linux, BSD and other free software than it is for running M$ junk.
What this means is that Microsoft is moving to put in barbs to mess with anything but Windoze. That these barbs will mess windoze too is not their concern because Microsoft cares even less about Mac users than they care about their own users. They have always done this kind of thing and they always will. The next challenge is the Next Generation Security BIOS which will lock everything but M$ out of commodity hardware. If it's not under M$ control, it won't make money for M$ and M$ can't tollerate that. Wierd, screwed up, agressive and paranoid but true, M$ has and continues to repeate their desire to run everyone's computer.
When your software has owners, so does your computer. When they fight you lose. That's what EULA really means.
AOL needs to send out Knppix CDs or similar and just forget about controling the user's computer. They would be better off simply removing the user from Microsoft's control than trying to fight over the platform.
Waiting at airports for screening that solves only half the threat and can be bypassed easily is a problem. If someone wants to comondere an airplane or crash one in a populated area they can shoot it down or hijack it still.
The solution, of taking money to bypass the problem, is just stupid. "How else are we going to fund all of this?" the jackasses will ask us. How indeed?
The problem was stupid, the fix is easy - quit making the problem. Let people buy tickets with cash, get on with a simple metal and explosives sniff test and go. The costs of our reaction to 9/11 is several orders of magnitude more than the event itself. Restrictions on commerce screw everyone.
Who gives a shit about source code? Think about what the code actually does and what this dude actually did. Any piece of code developed overseas has the potential to pipeline the data out directly. It might be something as stupid as a CD burner driver, but there it is running on your system. If you are running M$, as many private practices do, that process is running as root and you are hosed.
Code audit anyone? In the comercial world, forget it. There is no way these companies shipping all their work to India or China will have the competence, much less the time, to check against this kind of malice. Our own firms were the fist to put in spyware, are we surprised that others pull the same trick?
This is just another good reason for people to use free software and only free software. When your software has owners, so does your computer and it's not you.
Sensible? User choice? This is Microsoft you are talking about. Remember the company that makes you stick in your orignal CD and reboot if you change your hostname or IP number. It's also the company that won't let you store M$ updates locally, so everytime a computer gets adware or virus hosed, you have do download everything all over again but don't give you a choice on which updates you want and stick nasty EULAs in the updates. We are talking about one paranoid control freak of a company that has demonstrated it could care less about user choice or reason when those things get in the way of user control. When has Microsoft ever made a peer computing modeled product where the end user's machine was an equal player? If there is a way Bill Gates can charge anyone money for the service, you can bet that his software will force the user to pay. A central server completely out of the user's control offered as a "service" to enable this "feature" is very much a possibility.
Now what happens when that central server gets the next Blaster? Everyone is screwed. Nothing new, It's like hotmail, but they are going to pretend you have some input.
You can train the OS all you like with fancy window managers and scalable fonts and all the rest of the eye candy that desktop users want, but at its heart the OS is still yearning to be driven by the commandline.
Duh, any reasonable computer will have a command line for certian chores because thats the best way to do them. Unreasonable software has no CLI or a very poor one and these task just don't get done. Anyone who can figure out Microsoft's ever changing forest of tabs can figure out how to manipulate a few text files in the /etc directory. Software that lacks a decent CLI is just feature poor and hard to maintain. Most of them are 3 year disposables.
This isn't to say that Linux couldn't be ready to overtake Windows on the desktop one day.
I'm not sure why free software has not supplanted Windoze yet. It's better designed, easier to use, more rugged and more flexible. Every modern window manager has virtual desktops, but not Microsoft. SSH -X make RDP, PCAnywhere and all that look like the garbage it is. Email, web browsing on Microsoft platrorms is miserable and will break your silly PC. Free software handles those tasks masterfully and that's just the tip of the free software networking gold mine. I can indeed spare a few clock cycles to run as an sftp "server", or a web "server". Modest hardware, such as a 450MHz K6/2 with 128MB easily hosts myself and my wife at the same time. She surfs, I burn CDs with a graphical client but never have buffer underflows. Free software is lean, clean and does what I want it to on my desktop right now. I did not have to do much training to work any of the 5 or 6 GUIs I'm now familiar with. Click and drool works even better in the free software world than M$ can dream their bloated mess will work.
Red Hat's got your 64bit software! That's outstanding. I'd just love to get my hands on a nice little shuttle and drop this on it. The $800 cost is more than justified in a business environment. It can easily replace 8 windoze bozes by converting them to X terminals with something nice like Debian. Each of those nice little PCs could log onto that box as a "server" for document sharing, email and group colaboration that free software is famous for. I'm sure it would have no problem at all running 8 sessions of Star Office, fetchmail and other nice applications for users. $800 is a little steep for a personal box, but that price will come down and the 64 bit builds will come out in cheaper or free distros. That will be nice, not that I need it yet. I might reconsider that when firewire video gets cheap enough for me and PC video lives up to the hype that M$ has put out since 1995 with it's "multi media" bullshit. Hats off to Red Hat for putting this out.
Bill Gates said that a personal computer would never need more than 640K of RAM. Maybe he knows what a "server" is. He's real smart, I'm told.
Yeah, yeah, I know about turning off services to a computer that's exposed to an untrusted network. I read the Microsoft hotmail report, but already knew most of that. That's why my 486 packet filter has no GUI and has a limited set of software installed. Does this flexiblity somehow keep the software I use for my 486 from being a good desktop machine?
I'm so confused. Here I am, having run Linux and free software exclusively for the last two years on my desktops. I have not figured out what people mean when they say I'm running a server OS yet. Can you help me out here?
Gator is NOT winning. 23,000 sites with the words gator and spyware. They might as well try to halt peer to peer music trading. By calling themselves, "adware" they will forever malign the name "adware". Gator is scum and anyone who has anything to do with them shall be judged as scum.
You mean like Outlook and Exchange? Already done, my friend.
Rumors? One or two root exploits for OpenBSD in seven years and you would compare that to Windoze? What kind of computers do you "admin" again? There is no panicea, but free software is way better then windoze.
It's really that stupid. You can't kill the GPL without gutting copyright law. The GPL is a license that is much less restrictive than ordinary copyright. Ordinary copyright forbids copy without the permision of the owner. The GPL has conditions of copy so that permision does not have to be asked. The strength of the GPL is based on the strength of copyright. You can't kill one without the other.
Comming right up sir! You are just our kind of consumer. Double plus good for you, don't listen to anyone but solid dependable whores we pay. It's not like you need an impartial third party telling you what they think happed. Let the good folks of GE, MSNBC, Disney, and MacDonalds feed you just what does them the best good.
Whatever you do, don't read the internal memos from DiBold's techs. Those people are no longer associated with DiBold for their lack of proper corporate protocal. They should have used Microsoft's famous disapearing ink email, instead of bathering all over the internet. Go back to sleep while they chose your next mayor, govenor, president, forgein policy and conservation laws designed to maximize my^H^H your wealth. Good night, sweet prince!
Ho, ho, ha ha, "Slashdot effect". This joke is more worn out than hot grits. Say something useful, says something funny but quit posting "Slashdot effect" trolls.
While Microsoft was under investigation for anti-competitive[**] behavior against Netscape and Sun, it couldn't afford to be too blatant about squeezing utility companies out of the Windows 'ecosystem'. This is, at least, is one possible narrative to explain why Windows Media Player still lacks so many useful integrated features. Another is that Microsoft's notorious bureaucracy and slack coding might explain its failure to produce competive or coherent software, but we shall be charitable here, and if only for the sake of argument, discount this narrative altogether.
I posit a third, there are no Microsoft developers left. No one is going to risk their time, money and energy making something for Microsoft to steal. There was a brief period when Microsoft had the cheapest and easiest platform for developers to get and use. Those days are long gone.
With no developers, nothing left to steal and nothing left to give, Microsoft is useless. Microsoft is stagnant and will remain that way. They are busy trying to make hardware lockouts, digital rights denial and other fuck you tools that no one wants but Microsoft and big dumb companies. They deserve each other.
You might have thought of it if you worked for the Florida company that pioneered it. Can't remember the company, I just remembered they developed barge sized reactors and sold out to Japanese interests in the late 80's or early 90s.
The problem is that when you have an accident at a nuke, you can lose about 5 billion dollars worth of plant. That's like two or three code red worms. The cool thing is that people go home istead of the morge more often with nuclear mistakes than they do elsewhere.
You assert, "This type of stuff can be found in any newsgroup or forum on a daily basis."
Did you ever think that the sum of those posts might reflect something like the truth? SCSI has always performed better than IDE in any box I've ever built. SCSI I with it's pathetic 5MB/s works better than IDE I with 16 in older Pentium class machines. 40MB/s SCSI controlers have worked better for me than more modern IDE drives. I've never bothered to run benchmarks, I just watch the system stall under IDE and curse.
Reading posts from other people reporting the same types of stuff keeps me from being tempted to blow money on fancy IDE controlers. The next time I build a system, I'll give the cheapo IDE controler on the mobo a whirl. If it disapoints me, I can go SCSI. For $40, I can find a nice new card. For less than that, I can get used hard drives on ebay. IDE speeds are impressive, but something does not connect.
Let's compare Microsoft to September 11th. September 11th cost the US economy $100 billion. Microsoft born worms have cost the US many billions as well. Code Red alone cost $2 billion. Sobig cost one billion. If we were to add up the costs of every dinky Microsoft worm all the way back to 1984, I'm sure we could arrive at $100 billion in documented costs. The documented costs, of course, pale by compairson with the undocumented costs of lost work. Those costs further pale when you consider the intentional waste of the upgrade cycle which forces users to ditch their hardware every three years. I just love walking into a 8 year old set up of Unix on PCs and see it working just as well as the day it was made without any adminisrtation. I hate walking into the typical Microsoft nightmare, which has not been "rebuilt" for a few years.
Is this killing anyone? Yes, it is. People in hospitals, cars and subways died in the big blackout a few months ago. It all points back to software that failed in the midwest, and I'm 95% sure that was a Microsoft failure. If we were to look at all the deaths caused by software failure, attributable to a mistaken use of Micfosoft software, I'm sure we could find more than 3,000 people and exceed the 9/11 toll.
Call me a zealot if you like. It does not change the truth.
Keep using that Microsoft junk. Just don't come whining to me when it cost you time, money and heartache. Especially stay away from me if you want to use it in a power plant or to operate traffic lights or some other place it does not belong. Someone will sue you for such negligence.
It will drink human blood.
How many AI lawyers can you fit on one chip? None, there's nothing inteligent about lawyers. You can, however, run many virtual lawyers so your future may exist in a single box. They will lobby their virutal senators and create enough laws to perpetuate enough of themselves to crash the poor computer in less than 1/10th of a second. The last log will contain something about Ewoks, Endor, Chewbacka and "if it does not fit you must aquit." An astute researcher will comment, "It was terrible, as if millions and millions of souls cried out at once and were no more." The RIAA will win as the smoking piece of hardware will no longer be capable of making coppies of Britiany Spears. It is their ultimate cyber weapon.
No they don't. They want some of the features those two programs have to offer. What exactly are the features that you don't know how to replace with free software? Viruses and worms are about all I can think of. Give a list and I'm sure someone here will fix you up.
If someones could get on the ball in that arena, I would think a few more people would be switching over.
Get hopping man, after the last two years of Blasters, Slammers, Red Codes and other blow outs, the person who needs to be on the ball is YOU. You should have a detailed list of real functions your software provides, where it could be improved and how you are going to get those improvments. Exchange should be just one choice on your matrix of functions desired, costs and why the company wants to buy that function. Does that Outlook contact list, clumsy in my opinion, really justify M$'s costs and the risk of further worm inflictied downtime? You should have that chart ready to post.