Don't forget he started off by insulting everyone. He called us all rude ignormuses:
Many of the posts here throw out statements like "Washington is bought"; and it reminds me how little slashdot readers understand about the U.S. government.
That means, if you don't agree with him, you are ignorant. That's insulting, but the kind of thing you might expect from a Microsoft whore. Whore, that's someone who does things they don't enjoy or believe in for money but pretend to be very pleased.
I would suggest that before any reader makes a blanket statement about either party or any bill or any political issue, that you take the time to think "how much do I really know about this bill?" Am I reading the full text, or am I being spun? [folows with a basic "don't trust anyone blanket statement" and an exhortation to vote like a good sheep]
Thanks for the high school level lecture. Most of us express opinions here because we DO know something. We are sharing those insights with each other that we have gained from a variety of sources, EFF, FSF, our peers here, and our personal experience at work and play. Many times the blanket statement, "that piece of Legislation was bought and paid for" is TRUE. The DMCA, NET Act, Sony Bono copyright extension and many others were obviously only good for big publishers who paid whores like Mr. Reed and to spin yarns and contributied to the campaigns of many to make this happen.
That any public corporation would spend any money on politics is astoundignly immoral and corrupt. Mr. Reed does a nice job side stepping this issue. Public coproations are owned by the people who invest in them. Those people do as Mr. Reed suggests and vote like good sheep, and want little more from their investments than a reasonable return. Buying politicians does little for the company's core mission and is gnerally only launched into by companies that want nothing more than to screw the public. The money is beter invested in the busines or given back to the owners. Even extravagant pilaging by people like Jack Welch is a more honroable use of company money. People are quite capable of organizing outside their workplace and workplaces of their own free will. Companies that force political organization by their employees are practicing a dispicable form of extortion: believe and work for this or find another job. Companies that waste money on campains and lobiests are doing a diservice to all three of the people the company had a debt to: customers, employees and shareholders. Those who would screw any one of these will get around to screwing the rest. They are a bad investment in any form: you should not own their stock, you should not work for them and you should not buy from them.
So, Mr. Reed, I return insult for insult. You called me a rude ignoramus. I say I know you all too well. Your job is an immoral corruption, a waste of resources and a disgrace to all parties involved. Tell that to your new boss, Bill Gates. I don't own his stock, I don't use his stuff and I would never work for him. "Intelectual Property" is a crock and current laws are close to the perpetual franchises this country stood against at it's founding. Not only do you represent a corruption of the political process and corporate practice, you stand for priciples that violate the spirit of the country in general. I'm going to keep thinking and expressing myself, listening to people who make sense, and I'm going to keep voting, thank you.
Could be. It depends on the state of the manual and the quality of the software it represents. You must be used to the bad meaning, and that's a shame.
In the free software world it's usualy, "Read the Fine Maual, please. Try man command, it's well explained there." What's more, it's true and when you finish you know something and thank the man who wrote it. If you are still confused, you can generally get a good pointer from the local LUG.
If you are in Microsoft land, it means "Read the Fucking Manual." The manual is generally worthless, leads in circles and resolves nothing. It's imposible to fix what's wrong because you don't have the source code even if you did have the talent. Then you get blamed for the problem. So it is also true, the manual was writen by someone who really wanted to say, "Fuck you."
[praise of Microsoft]... Please, people, stop saying "Linux is easy to install and configure", but say instead " Gentoo, RedHat, Whatever distro, is easy to configure and install"
Well, it's not that hard. Anyone who can do a Windoze install can do Red Hat and the Red Hat is easier. Of course there's worlds of free help available through your local LUG. If your want your hand held and can't find a friend to do it, you can wait for an install fest or ask around for someone like me who will go to your house or business for a modest fee.
You are right about the distinction between the distros, but it's best to explain the whole free software thing first. You can do that in about 10 minutes. Intereste users can then read the free software site on their own. I've made a little newbie lectures, including "Where does free software come from." to sum it up for myself and others. After that, the different distros make sense and you can start to try and match the user with a distro that will make them happy.
I think that's what Ian was getting at, keeping the user informed and meeting their needs. It's the user's needs that are important. Everything possible should be done to make meeting those needs easy and the user should never be kept in the dark about the way things work. Lock-in is an evil thing and I hope he's not right about the intentions of some vendors.
Even if he's right, lock in is still difficult with free software. I recently moved a machine from Red Hat 7.3 to Debian stable and was able to keep all of my data. Some of the user configurations were off, but it was much easier than any Windoze move I've ever made.
Propriatory drivers and closed source software tacked onto free software definatly degrades the user experience. I've got a wireless network card from a company that touts, "Linux support". It's got some RPMs that may work on Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0, but I've had a very hard time making them run under Debian. It came with "source" that included a precompiled object module. I've had a hard time matching up that silly module with a particular kernel and I'm about fed up with it. I may try to set up a Red Hat box, but it will be a dead box that will have a kernel fixed for freaking ever. Changing the sofware around it will be a pain. That's not Red Hat's fault, it's the card maker's fault. It shows where things can go.
Patch your stuff and for goodness sake put up a firewall!
That's not going to help much. It can get in through port 80, try blocking that. Patches, M$ style just don't work. Everyone running M$ has to periodically "rebuild". They do that from... the CD they have, sometimes a cracked copy with it's own backdoors. Think that those patches are going to all get back on? Fat chance! M$ uses it's "security patches" to force things that are completely unrelated and are sometimes larger than 500MB in size. The average shop is no more likely to have that patch burt to CD than they are willing to download the latest and greatest again or indeed apply the damn thing that broke their favorite Windoze based program. Even larger institutions with lots of M$ help get burnt because Microsoft continues to ignore best practices for marketing and user control reasons.
I get sick of hearing Astroturfers repeat this mindless "patch" mantra. It implies that there is something that the user of an M$ system can do and that somehow the user is to blame for Microsoft's poor security. It's never the user's fault because Microsoft puts out closed source binary crap that users can't fix if they wanted to. The users are not to blame and the only real solution to Microsoft insecurity is to dump Microsoft software.
Microsoft is now officially a threat to Homeland Security.... We know where they are and they keep putting out a product that threatens our security.
Oh yeah, don't forget about them selling Communist China their source code after swearing that releasing their source code would constitute a threat to national security. They not only comprimise US secutity, they do it willfully. That's called treason. Perjury or treason, take your pick, they are not the kind of people you should trust. Bobming is a bit heavy, but hanging might be too good for them.
I like the advisories. It's the first time the media has had some straight talk and they are getting it right now. All the major news stories are clear about his being a Microsoft problem instead of a "computer" problem. That's a great change from the smoke media writers kept getting blown up their asses by "Computer Experts" in Microsoft's pay.
The advisory's impact statement is especially good. They say your M$ box can be owned and then used to screw other people. Clear?
If all Homeland Security was like this, it would be a much better agnecy. This branch providing information so that people can take care of themselves rather than spying on everyone. I like that.
I do not really care if you hate Microsoft guts, I just don't like the fact that you making thigns up so that Microsoft looks bad. The problem with that is that nobody will take your Microsoft criticism seriously.
Tell it to this asshole. The problem is that I'm not making things up. I read them over and over and am able to point to a few good examples. Microsoft steals code and Bill Gates is a liar. From breaking other people's systems as a business model to dumbpster diving your first program to the exaples of patent infringment and code theft I cited, to bragging about BSD in their code to saying that free software is evil, to federally proven anti-trust violations. The fuckers are so evil the federal government noticed, sheesh. What do you have to offer that I can take seriously, Asstroturf?
MS they would even be interested in what problems *YOU* have with Windows.
I have no problems with Windows because I don't use it. It never worked well, it's security record is the pits, the EULA is unacceptable and don't want to support such an immoral company in any way. So Windows is no trouble.
I do, however, have problems with Microsoft's lame insistance on crap like Winmodems, their hatred of all reasonable hardware or software standards and promotion of Paladium. Microsoft fucks with everyone in their strange attempt to have everyone run their inferior software so that they can take as much money as possible from them. I have trouble with M$ only sites and don't go there. I have trouble with M$ only hardware and don't use it. Mostly, I hate their pressuring my ISP to accept dhcp and block ports at the cable modem so that I can neither send nor recieve email execpt through my ISP's servers, nor can I serve anthing and if I could it would be a pain in my ass to keep up with my IP address because the 1:1 cable system has been fucked around to work like a dial up modem. All of these things are designed not to offer service but to suppress superior service and are things I am unable to avoid.
The Hotmail case, if you bothered to read the link I provided, was not about user complaints. Microsoft switched out FreeBSD for Windoze server and had the team write a report about it. The report was a scathing praise of free software that recognized that technically inferior software had to be used for marketing purposes. It demonstrates that Microsoft already knows what's wrong with their software, does not care and will never fix it. This is just another example of Microsoft doing eveerything for marketing purposes. Things like that and backing the vultures at SCO tend to piss people off.
Tell it to Steve Balmer, Astroturfer. I'm interested only in Microsoft leaving me alone. The only way those morons are going to stop, I'm afraid, is when their bad business practices put them out of business. It's happening faster than you think, Mr.Deranged Unix Nut.
Well, from the 4 links you provided 3 are talking about patent infrigement, not code theft. And if it were somebody else sued for patent infingement I think you will be the first one to post something anti patent.
So they only stole source code once that I can point to outside BSD and all the rest were patent violations. That must make them nice people.
Second, can you give some evidence to your claim that Microsoft uses XP (Extreme Programming) as it's software development process? I somehow doubt it.
Besides Microsoft's continued flaws, nah. It's just something that comes out of their mouths and is reflected in their, "product".
My bad, I mispoke, Microsoft cares, would never steal anything and is constantly striving to imporve my productivity so that all my dreams can come true. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I love Big Brother. Eat me, Astroturfer.
they are going to take that data and use it to improve their products and marketing.
Marketing yes. They already know how they suck but have yet to do much about it, besides lie and sue IBM. This can only be for marketing purposes. They have realized that they are too lame to tell a good lie or even direct PR firms to lie on their behalf.
They are rightfully concerned that if a developer looks at source, they can be sued if s/he produces something similar later.
What crap. You are talking about a company that got it's start from dumpster diving someone else's BASIC. Their whole business model is raping what they call "loss leaders" and publically state they will never enter a "market" untill it's "mature", in other words, they stay out of a technology until someone else has done all the work. Then they come in with the famous $500,000 check to aquire, shutdown or destroy ala Netscape, DRDOS and others. They also advocate "Extreem Programming" in which source code is not touched for the most part, only modified slightly. I imagine that most M$ developer time is put in trying to "integrate" the vast Byzantine raft of other people's code that they have aquired, one way or another. Yeah, and they steal code too, that's why they keep losing lawsuits.
They will probably put Red Hat 6.0 with "everything" installed. Hey, even an M$ tech can figure that one out, right?
All kidding asside, this lab is getting set up because they were tired of how lame their lies were. It was so obvious their FUDsters have no clue. They can't even hire a PR firm to lie for them as is.
Check out the quality of the FUD from just a few articles back in Computerworld The poor meat head tell about chasing down M$ worms and finding "rogue" computers running Linux. Though he's forced to run all over the place by Windoze poor remote administration tools, he worries about the security of boxes he did not know about because they never had a problem. He worries about the security of "third-party" applications like " file transfer protocol, sendmail and Apache. And other open-source software..." Total cluelessness. They don't know what they are talking about, so they can't lie about it. It's as simple as that.
Their biggest problem is going to be finding people with both the comptence to run their lab and the the ability to lie enough to please meat heads like Steve Balmer. The truth, "dude, this is kicking our ass." is something they already know and don't want to hear. I can just hear Mr. Baller, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, tell me something bad about it, bitch or you are out of here!" Yeah, everything I read about life at M$ is like that, they call such abuse "elite". It must take a really wierd combination of high intelegence, low self esteem, big ego, bad morals, and greed to put up with that.
They might start watching you when your computer does go down with the latest worm, like the author had to go hunt down on foot. Runnig from a CD is one of the least secure ways to run free software, but it will never be 1/10 as bad as running Windows. These click and drool administrators live in Microsoft's reality and have no clue.
Microsoft is working hard to eliminate this. Look for them to tell their slaves to password bios till Paladium comes. The idiot author summed up his position in that article with, "We can't eliminate Linux" as if that were a desirable goal. Computerworld sucks.
Security? Give me a break. The article was written by someone plauged by a windoze worm. That's how they made the "discovery", the poor man had to walk all around the building to fix the thing. How does anyone leap to the total non-sequetor:
The weaknesses from the rogue installs...come from the installation of third-party applications and utilities, which can leave a desktop or server vulnerable to attack if set up incorrectly.
Huh? What total Microsoft brain washing! What is a "third party application" in the free software world? This dude has his head shoved so deep into the M$ world that he confuses all the crap and spyware that accumulates on windoze boxes and runs as root with free software. I don't know how he's transfered his complete lack of control over Windoze onto software that works. I don't get it.
He goes on, after mentioning that he might be man enough to run Red Hat. He thinks it could do his company good to replace the hideous pile of Word Docs that is their QA tool because it sucks to have to do a "word search" to find information in the 300 reporst/year they generate. So true, just putting those things on a Samba server so you can use grep and find would be really helpful. Imagine how nice his life would be with a nice little mySQL/PHP webform for entry and search instead of a Word template. Progress, forge on brave man!
But, oh no, he shrinks from the fear of vulnerability:
For example, there always seem to be vulnerabilities associated with programs such as file transfer protocol, sendmail and Apache. And other open-source software is vulnerable, especially when the developer hasn't written the program with security in mind.
Poop. Plain and simple poop. Sendmail handles most email. Apache handles most web sites. Who needs ftp when you've got ssh? Well, anonymous ftp is a nice way to share big piles of files and programs like proftp are plenty secure. This is total shit to scare people who don't know what file tranfer protocal is, but like the ease of windoze file sharing. It's ignorant if not intentionally misleading. This line says volumes:
We can't eliminate Linux
No, but some fools wish they could. Other people everywhere are learning all the good things free software can do for them.
Anyone who's worried about security should use Debian's stable distribution. Not only is it all field tested, upgrades can be applied everyday from http://security.debian.org via shell script. Unlike the windows world, these updates install easily and don't break other "third-party" applications.
You say:
This could make the case for desktop Linux look worse, if people are not securing their dektops and/or keeping up with security updates.
That seems to be the intent of the article. Fortunately, only the very ignorant will pay attention to such nonsense and it can easily be deflated. Microsoft is going to have to try much harder than this to keep people away from superior software. Then again, I'm not sure how they can do that. The thing that makes the best case against the Windows desktop is it's record. That now including the author's laborious treck around his company caused by yet another Windows failure. There is not software anywhere with such bad performance.
some proprietary thing (unlikely, would require new equipment at all the places to print/burn the pics).
I imagine the disposable chunk is the plastic shell. They will crack it open like an egg and put the edge of a board into some little reader that prints out the pictures and burns a CD. You could make such a system for less than $200 and put it in any store. The guts of the camera wuould be shiped to a boxing plant, where a nice clean new shell is put on and it's crammed into a box. It's the only way to assure cleanlyness.
The price of these shells has come down. They can now be made with multiple plastics is a single mold. It's nifty stuff. I think they can even make them with the lens in place now.
Trust ebay to get you a camera that's easier to use. Compact Flash card cameras are the cheapest and most flexible. I hate those dinky usb wires and special programs many cheap cameras require. This thing, while cheap looking, is liable to have DRM on it's dongle to make usb shit look good.
Ah yes, secured for your protection. That way only the central processing plant's TIA enabled computer and everyone who handles your CD on it's way back can get at the super secret digital record of your love.
It pisses me off every time I'm in a store, but I only get really angry when the checker says something like 'Sir, you would have saved $15 on this purchase if you had used your discount card. Would you like me to give you one now that I'll use for this purchase.' If I have to pay outrageous fines to maintain my privacy, I'd rather not know how outrageous they are.
Here, one of the retailers has named their ugly black card the "rewards card". When they tell me that I would have saved x on my purchase, I say something like, "No, your punishment card system cost me that money. It's why I don't shop here much anymore."
Bill Gates will get his gum for free. As a man of power, influence and lots of money to spend, people go out of their way to please him. This is why companies pay much less for things like electricty and water than you do. Guese who gets to subsidise that. You do, if you have a job that is. People like Bill Gates think of you as worker bees to be exploited at will and never alowed to accumulate enough capitol, resources, knowledge or influence to compete.
Price discrimination only works when you have vendor and manufacturer colusion. In the case of bubble gum, it works well. Go to any grocery store and you will see the same brands. Try to find Penguin mints or a reasonable selection of beer. It's not that others are not making these things. Did you see a fall in the price of coffee though one of the worst wholsale coffee busts ever? I didn't either.
With databases and individual identification at purchase time, this can get personal. "Discounts" are offered to people with lots of money to spend, but they come at a price to those who don't. When there is complete colusion and a real lack of competition, the discounts fail to reach fair market value. Even the winners in a situation like that are being screwed. Las Vegas is a pioneer in this effort and it fits their morals: offer "something for nothing and take them for all their worth". It's disturbing that others would follow instead of making something worthwhile and selling it for an honest price.
Consumer lazyness helps those who would screw you. I can't get my own wife to drive a little more to the produce stand she used to work at. Instead, she mostly goes to the big chain store with her little black "reward card" to be shorn with the rest of the sheep. Ugh!
Oh yeah, it all works through greed. Your desire to screw Bill Gates enables others to screw you.
RTFA, jackass. They only examined 50 of the subpeonas. That means that Busta could be mentioned on about 250 of the total.
With the spread of data, I doubt anything would have made much more. That's the beauty of online music sharing, you get to learn people's real tastes as opposed to what the RIAA would shove down their throats. When you are free to pick from everyhting, your tastes tend to drift from top 40 cruft. That's the real dread of the RIAA, their business model depends on being able to make "super stars" by supressing all other music. There you have it - their model is obsolete. It can never work to make them any money, though the artists can make a living. The big music publishers are going to collapse and be bought for the song they were worth all along.
I gave up moderating this thing to post this? Of course, my points couldn't have countered the retards who modded this "Insightful"...
I doubt this too. Only trolls with their bots have mod points these days. Quit whining, jackass.
Actually, gnumeric is about as good as excel. What little it lacks is more than made up for by other free tools. I used to use Excel a lot, so this is high praise on my part.
I was judging Excel's parse tool, which always blew and still does. Lotus had much better parse tool that did a good job of recognizing paterns, seperated strings from numerical values, and did all this with a semigraphical fexible user interface. Excel's little parse wizards are inflexible and feature poor by compairison.
The only thing I've ever heard of that was sweet and sour was pork. You must be a pig.
14 minutes is ~0.23 hours. 360km/h *.23h == 82.8km
That's incredible! The article also said:
Mr Baumgartner said the plane was at 30,000 ft (9,000 m) when he jumped - and he initially reached speeds of 360 km (220 miles) per hour. For most of the freefall, he was travelling at about 220 km (135 miles) per hour, he said.
Well, that's not so incredible now. The BBC diagram makes things reasonably clear. 9km up 36km long, surprisingly enough gives you a path that's not that much longer than 37 km, we'll call it 39 because it was an arc. His maximum speed was 360 km/hr and he slowed down as he got closer to the ground. Fortunately for him, his chute opened and he got that great sudden stop that comes before you get a much greater stop. 14 minutes must have felt like an eternity.
His glide angle was a respectable 1 verticle to 4 horizontal.
I thought the M$ toilet was a lie^H^H^H joke told by a soon to be dismissed representative in London. But here you have it, a confusing graphical interface working trapping and embarassing the user. I wonder if it's been cracked yet. A buffer overflow attack would be simple.
No Commodores
No L.T.D.
No McFadden and Whitehead
No Ashford and Simpson
No Gap Band
No much of anything, was there? Someone is claiming the most popular download had a big 12 people. Call out the National Gaurd, we've got pirates, 12 of them who are responsible for the decline and fall of CD sales! Pathetic.
Slashdot Mirror
Many of the posts here throw out statements like "Washington is bought"; and it reminds me how little slashdot readers understand about the U.S. government.
That means, if you don't agree with him, you are ignorant. That's insulting, but the kind of thing you might expect from a Microsoft whore. Whore, that's someone who does things they don't enjoy or believe in for money but pretend to be very pleased.
I would suggest that before any reader makes a blanket statement about either party or any bill or any political issue, that you take the time to think "how much do I really know about this bill?" Am I reading the full text, or am I being spun? [folows with a basic "don't trust anyone blanket statement" and an exhortation to vote like a good sheep]
Thanks for the high school level lecture. Most of us express opinions here because we DO know something. We are sharing those insights with each other that we have gained from a variety of sources, EFF, FSF, our peers here, and our personal experience at work and play. Many times the blanket statement, "that piece of Legislation was bought and paid for" is TRUE. The DMCA, NET Act, Sony Bono copyright extension and many others were obviously only good for big publishers who paid whores like Mr. Reed and to spin yarns and contributied to the campaigns of many to make this happen.
That any public corporation would spend any money on politics is astoundignly immoral and corrupt. Mr. Reed does a nice job side stepping this issue. Public coproations are owned by the people who invest in them. Those people do as Mr. Reed suggests and vote like good sheep, and want little more from their investments than a reasonable return. Buying politicians does little for the company's core mission and is gnerally only launched into by companies that want nothing more than to screw the public. The money is beter invested in the busines or given back to the owners. Even extravagant pilaging by people like Jack Welch is a more honroable use of company money. People are quite capable of organizing outside their workplace and workplaces of their own free will. Companies that force political organization by their employees are practicing a dispicable form of extortion: believe and work for this or find another job. Companies that waste money on campains and lobiests are doing a diservice to all three of the people the company had a debt to: customers, employees and shareholders. Those who would screw any one of these will get around to screwing the rest. They are a bad investment in any form: you should not own their stock, you should not work for them and you should not buy from them.
So, Mr. Reed, I return insult for insult. You called me a rude ignoramus. I say I know you all too well. Your job is an immoral corruption, a waste of resources and a disgrace to all parties involved. Tell that to your new boss, Bill Gates. I don't own his stock, I don't use his stuff and I would never work for him. "Intelectual Property" is a crock and current laws are close to the perpetual franchises this country stood against at it's founding. Not only do you represent a corruption of the political process and corporate practice, you stand for priciples that violate the spirit of the country in general. I'm going to keep thinking and expressing myself, listening to people who make sense, and I'm going to keep voting, thank you.
Could be. It depends on the state of the manual and the quality of the software it represents. You must be used to the bad meaning, and that's a shame.
In the free software world it's usualy, "Read the Fine Maual, please. Try man command, it's well explained there." What's more, it's true and when you finish you know something and thank the man who wrote it. If you are still confused, you can generally get a good pointer from the local LUG.
If you are in Microsoft land, it means "Read the Fucking Manual." The manual is generally worthless, leads in circles and resolves nothing. It's imposible to fix what's wrong because you don't have the source code even if you did have the talent. Then you get blamed for the problem. So it is also true, the manual was writen by someone who really wanted to say, "Fuck you."
Pick the one you like.
Well, it's not that hard. Anyone who can do a Windoze install can do Red Hat and the Red Hat is easier. Of course there's worlds of free help available through your local LUG. If your want your hand held and can't find a friend to do it, you can wait for an install fest or ask around for someone like me who will go to your house or business for a modest fee.
You are right about the distinction between the distros, but it's best to explain the whole free software thing first. You can do that in about 10 minutes. Intereste users can then read the free software site on their own. I've made a little newbie lectures, including "Where does free software come from." to sum it up for myself and others. After that, the different distros make sense and you can start to try and match the user with a distro that will make them happy.
I think that's what Ian was getting at, keeping the user informed and meeting their needs. It's the user's needs that are important. Everything possible should be done to make meeting those needs easy and the user should never be kept in the dark about the way things work. Lock-in is an evil thing and I hope he's not right about the intentions of some vendors.
Even if he's right, lock in is still difficult with free software. I recently moved a machine from Red Hat 7.3 to Debian stable and was able to keep all of my data. Some of the user configurations were off, but it was much easier than any Windoze move I've ever made.
Propriatory drivers and closed source software tacked onto free software definatly degrades the user experience. I've got a wireless network card from a company that touts, "Linux support". It's got some RPMs that may work on Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0, but I've had a very hard time making them run under Debian. It came with "source" that included a precompiled object module. I've had a hard time matching up that silly module with a particular kernel and I'm about fed up with it. I may try to set up a Red Hat box, but it will be a dead box that will have a kernel fixed for freaking ever. Changing the sofware around it will be a pain. That's not Red Hat's fault, it's the card maker's fault. It shows where things can go.
That's not going to help much. It can get in through port 80, try blocking that. Patches, M$ style just don't work. Everyone running M$ has to periodically "rebuild". They do that from ... the CD they have, sometimes a cracked copy with it's own backdoors. Think that those patches are going to all get back on? Fat chance! M$ uses it's "security patches" to force things that are completely unrelated and are sometimes larger than 500MB in size. The average shop is no more likely to have that patch burt to CD than they are willing to download the latest and greatest again or indeed apply the damn thing that broke their favorite Windoze based program. Even larger institutions with lots of M$ help get burnt because Microsoft continues to ignore best practices for marketing and user control reasons.
I get sick of hearing Astroturfers repeat this mindless "patch" mantra. It implies that there is something that the user of an M$ system can do and that somehow the user is to blame for Microsoft's poor security. It's never the user's fault because Microsoft puts out closed source binary crap that users can't fix if they wanted to. The users are not to blame and the only real solution to Microsoft insecurity is to dump Microsoft software.
Oh yeah, don't forget about them selling Communist China their source code after swearing that releasing their source code would constitute a threat to national security. They not only comprimise US secutity, they do it willfully. That's called treason. Perjury or treason, take your pick, they are not the kind of people you should trust. Bobming is a bit heavy, but hanging might be too good for them.
The advisory's impact statement is especially good. They say your M$ box can be owned and then used to screw other people. Clear?
If all Homeland Security was like this, it would be a much better agnecy. This branch providing information so that people can take care of themselves rather than spying on everyone. I like that.
Tell it to this asshole. The problem is that I'm not making things up. I read them over and over and am able to point to a few good examples. Microsoft steals code and Bill Gates is a liar. From breaking other people's systems as a business model to dumbpster diving your first program to the exaples of patent infringment and code theft I cited, to bragging about BSD in their code to saying that free software is evil, to federally proven anti-trust violations. The fuckers are so evil the federal government noticed, sheesh. What do you have to offer that I can take seriously, Asstroturf?
I have no problems with Windows because I don't use it. It never worked well, it's security record is the pits, the EULA is unacceptable and don't want to support such an immoral company in any way. So Windows is no trouble.
I do, however, have problems with Microsoft's lame insistance on crap like Winmodems, their hatred of all reasonable hardware or software standards and promotion of Paladium. Microsoft fucks with everyone in their strange attempt to have everyone run their inferior software so that they can take as much money as possible from them. I have trouble with M$ only sites and don't go there. I have trouble with M$ only hardware and don't use it. Mostly, I hate their pressuring my ISP to accept dhcp and block ports at the cable modem so that I can neither send nor recieve email execpt through my ISP's servers, nor can I serve anthing and if I could it would be a pain in my ass to keep up with my IP address because the 1:1 cable system has been fucked around to work like a dial up modem. All of these things are designed not to offer service but to suppress superior service and are things I am unable to avoid.
The Hotmail case, if you bothered to read the link I provided, was not about user complaints. Microsoft switched out FreeBSD for Windoze server and had the team write a report about it. The report was a scathing praise of free software that recognized that technically inferior software had to be used for marketing purposes. It demonstrates that Microsoft already knows what's wrong with their software, does not care and will never fix it. This is just another example of Microsoft doing eveerything for marketing purposes. Things like that and backing the vultures at SCO tend to piss people off.
Tell it to Steve Balmer, Astroturfer. I'm interested only in Microsoft leaving me alone. The only way those morons are going to stop, I'm afraid, is when their bad business practices put them out of business. It's happening faster than you think, Mr.Deranged Unix Nut.
So they only stole source code once that I can point to outside BSD and all the rest were patent violations. That must make them nice people.
Second, can you give some evidence to your claim that Microsoft uses XP (Extreme Programming) as it's software development process? I somehow doubt it.
Besides Microsoft's continued flaws, nah. It's just something that comes out of their mouths and is reflected in their, "product".
My bad, I mispoke, Microsoft cares, would never steal anything and is constantly striving to imporve my productivity so that all my dreams can come true. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I love Big Brother. Eat me, Astroturfer.
Marketing yes. They already know how they suck but have yet to do much about it, besides lie and sue IBM. This can only be for marketing purposes. They have realized that they are too lame to tell a good lie or even direct PR firms to lie on their behalf.
What crap. You are talking about a company that got it's start from dumpster diving someone else's BASIC. Their whole business model is raping what they call "loss leaders" and publically state they will never enter a "market" untill it's "mature", in other words, they stay out of a technology until someone else has done all the work. Then they come in with the famous $500,000 check to aquire, shutdown or destroy ala Netscape, DRDOS and others. They also advocate "Extreem Programming" in which source code is not touched for the most part, only modified slightly. I imagine that most M$ developer time is put in trying to "integrate" the vast Byzantine raft of other people's code that they have aquired, one way or another. Yeah, and they steal code too, that's why they keep losing lawsuits.
Either you are deluded enough to think M$ cares about anyone or you are an Astroturfer. What version is the Steve Barkto program up to?
They will probably put Red Hat 6.0 with "everything" installed. Hey, even an M$ tech can figure that one out, right?
All kidding asside, this lab is getting set up because they were tired of how lame their lies were. It was so obvious their FUDsters have no clue. They can't even hire a PR firm to lie for them as is.
Check out the quality of the FUD from just a few articles back in Computerworld The poor meat head tell about chasing down M$ worms and finding "rogue" computers running Linux. Though he's forced to run all over the place by Windoze poor remote administration tools, he worries about the security of boxes he did not know about because they never had a problem. He worries about the security of "third-party" applications like " file transfer protocol, sendmail and Apache. And other open-source software ..." Total cluelessness. They don't know what they are talking about, so they can't lie about it. It's as simple as that.
Their biggest problem is going to be finding people with both the comptence to run their lab and the the ability to lie enough to please meat heads like Steve Balmer. The truth, "dude, this is kicking our ass." is something they already know and don't want to hear. I can just hear Mr. Baller, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, tell me something bad about it, bitch or you are out of here!" Yeah, everything I read about life at M$ is like that, they call such abuse "elite". It must take a really wierd combination of high intelegence, low self esteem, big ego, bad morals, and greed to put up with that.
They might start watching you when your computer does go down with the latest worm is supposed to be "when your computer does NOT go down".
They might start watching you when your computer does go down with the latest worm, like the author had to go hunt down on foot. Runnig from a CD is one of the least secure ways to run free software, but it will never be 1/10 as bad as running Windows. These click and drool administrators live in Microsoft's reality and have no clue.
Microsoft is working hard to eliminate this. Look for them to tell their slaves to password bios till Paladium comes. The idiot author summed up his position in that article with, "We can't eliminate Linux" as if that were a desirable goal. Computerworld sucks.
The weaknesses from the rogue installs ...come from the installation of third-party applications and utilities, which can leave a desktop or server vulnerable to attack if set up incorrectly.
Huh? What total Microsoft brain washing! What is a "third party application" in the free software world? This dude has his head shoved so deep into the M$ world that he confuses all the crap and spyware that accumulates on windoze boxes and runs as root with free software. I don't know how he's transfered his complete lack of control over Windoze onto software that works. I don't get it.
He goes on, after mentioning that he might be man enough to run Red Hat. He thinks it could do his company good to replace the hideous pile of Word Docs that is their QA tool because it sucks to have to do a "word search" to find information in the 300 reporst/year they generate. So true, just putting those things on a Samba server so you can use grep and find would be really helpful. Imagine how nice his life would be with a nice little mySQL/PHP webform for entry and search instead of a Word template. Progress, forge on brave man!
But, oh no, he shrinks from the fear of vulnerability:
For example, there always seem to be vulnerabilities associated with programs such as file transfer protocol, sendmail and Apache. And other open-source software is vulnerable, especially when the developer hasn't written the program with security in mind.
Poop. Plain and simple poop. Sendmail handles most email. Apache handles most web sites. Who needs ftp when you've got ssh? Well, anonymous ftp is a nice way to share big piles of files and programs like proftp are plenty secure. This is total shit to scare people who don't know what file tranfer protocal is, but like the ease of windoze file sharing. It's ignorant if not intentionally misleading. This line says volumes:
We can't eliminate Linux
No, but some fools wish they could. Other people everywhere are learning all the good things free software can do for them.
Anyone who's worried about security should use Debian's stable distribution. Not only is it all field tested, upgrades can be applied everyday from http://security.debian.org via shell script. Unlike the windows world, these updates install easily and don't break other "third-party" applications.
You say:
This could make the case for desktop Linux look worse, if people are not securing their dektops and/or keeping up with security updates.
That seems to be the intent of the article. Fortunately, only the very ignorant will pay attention to such nonsense and it can easily be deflated. Microsoft is going to have to try much harder than this to keep people away from superior software. Then again, I'm not sure how they can do that. The thing that makes the best case against the Windows desktop is it's record. That now including the author's laborious treck around his company caused by yet another Windows failure. There is not software anywhere with such bad performance.
You would have been better served by a laptop with pcimcia wifi.
I imagine the disposable chunk is the plastic shell. They will crack it open like an egg and put the edge of a board into some little reader that prints out the pictures and burns a CD. You could make such a system for less than $200 and put it in any store. The guts of the camera wuould be shiped to a boxing plant, where a nice clean new shell is put on and it's crammed into a box. It's the only way to assure cleanlyness.
The price of these shells has come down. They can now be made with multiple plastics is a single mold. It's nifty stuff. I think they can even make them with the lens in place now.
Trust ebay to get you a camera that's easier to use. Compact Flash card cameras are the cheapest and most flexible. I hate those dinky usb wires and special programs many cheap cameras require. This thing, while cheap looking, is liable to have DRM on it's dongle to make usb shit look good.
Ah yes, secured for your protection. That way only the central processing plant's TIA enabled computer and everyone who handles your CD on it's way back can get at the super secret digital record of your love.
Here, one of the retailers has named their ugly black card the "rewards card". When they tell me that I would have saved x on my purchase, I say something like, "No, your punishment card system cost me that money. It's why I don't shop here much anymore."
Price discrimination only works when you have vendor and manufacturer colusion. In the case of bubble gum, it works well. Go to any grocery store and you will see the same brands. Try to find Penguin mints or a reasonable selection of beer. It's not that others are not making these things. Did you see a fall in the price of coffee though one of the worst wholsale coffee busts ever? I didn't either.
With databases and individual identification at purchase time, this can get personal. "Discounts" are offered to people with lots of money to spend, but they come at a price to those who don't. When there is complete colusion and a real lack of competition, the discounts fail to reach fair market value. Even the winners in a situation like that are being screwed. Las Vegas is a pioneer in this effort and it fits their morals: offer "something for nothing and take them for all their worth". It's disturbing that others would follow instead of making something worthwhile and selling it for an honest price.
Consumer lazyness helps those who would screw you. I can't get my own wife to drive a little more to the produce stand she used to work at. Instead, she mostly goes to the big chain store with her little black "reward card" to be shorn with the rest of the sheep. Ugh!
Oh yeah, it all works through greed. Your desire to screw Bill Gates enables others to screw you.
With the spread of data, I doubt anything would have made much more. That's the beauty of online music sharing, you get to learn people's real tastes as opposed to what the RIAA would shove down their throats. When you are free to pick from everyhting, your tastes tend to drift from top 40 cruft. That's the real dread of the RIAA, their business model depends on being able to make "super stars" by supressing all other music. There you have it - their model is obsolete. It can never work to make them any money, though the artists can make a living. The big music publishers are going to collapse and be bought for the song they were worth all along.
I gave up moderating this thing to post this? Of course, my points couldn't have countered the retards who modded this "Insightful"...
I doubt this too. Only trolls with their bots have mod points these days. Quit whining, jackass.
I was judging Excel's parse tool, which always blew and still does. Lotus had much better parse tool that did a good job of recognizing paterns, seperated strings from numerical values, and did all this with a semigraphical fexible user interface. Excel's little parse wizards are inflexible and feature poor by compairison.
The only thing I've ever heard of that was sweet and sour was pork. You must be a pig.
That's incredible! The article also said:
Mr Baumgartner said the plane was at 30,000 ft (9,000 m) when he jumped - and he initially reached speeds of 360 km (220 miles) per hour. For most of the freefall, he was travelling at about 220 km (135 miles) per hour, he said.
Well, that's not so incredible now. The BBC diagram makes things reasonably clear. 9km up 36km long, surprisingly enough gives you a path that's not that much longer than 37 km, we'll call it 39 because it was an arc. His maximum speed was 360 km/hr and he slowed down as he got closer to the ground. Fortunately for him, his chute opened and he got that great sudden stop that comes before you get a much greater stop. 14 minutes must have felt like an eternity.
His glide angle was a respectable 1 verticle to 4 horizontal.
No much of anything, was there? Someone is claiming the most popular download had a big 12 people. Call out the National Gaurd, we've got pirates, 12 of them who are responsible for the decline and fall of CD sales! Pathetic.