The objection is not that Microsoft's software is insecure, but rather that their closest competition has at least two orders of magnitude fewer exploits and viruses than they.
If hundreds of exploits per month were discovered for Macs or Linux, your point would be valid. Problem is, the number of exploits available for all computers systems since the 50's is easily less than the number discovered in Windows in one year.
To make matters worse the rate at which exploits are being discovered is increasing, not decreasing, or even remaining stable. And this from a company making three billion dollars a month. How is it then, that a bunch of ragtag volunteers put together a more secure OS than a company which can spend a billion dollars a month on development?
Microsoft Windows, and the attendant problems it has experienced has brought shame on the entire profession. It isn't a matter of a few human errors here and there - Microsoft releases code with wanton disregard for the effects it will have on the user. You would expect more from a such a successful company, but apparently, Microsoft believes the professional standards followed by the rest of the industry simply do not apply to them.
And that, is why they get bashed. They dismiss the wisdom gained by years of computer science, and when their systems run rampant with bugs and security holes, they claim that such lofty goals as security and reliability are unattainable - in spite of the fact that their peers who did heed the lessons of computers science have managed to build such systems.
Software written by humans will always contain errors.
Should read:
Software written by Microsoft will always contain errors.
I write software that doesn't contain errors, every day, on systems which deal with far more data than the average MS app. It seems to me that Microsoft's has no idea what constitutes professionalism:
Bug-free code isn't hard to write if you use good design principles. I do, and I don't see why Microsoft can't. My job depends on writing bug-free code; I don't have the option of simply letting it go - I either fix it, or I'm fired.
Even if you can't write bug-free code, a well-designed, modularized project won't take long to debug. Given that most MS software is written in languages which encourage good design principles such as encapsulation, modularization, and well-defined interfaces, I'm at a loss as to explain how their software quality is so much lower than normal. The typical enterprise data system works more reliably than the most reliable Microsoft software.
There is no excuse for not properly testing an application. You don't have to walk through every possible execution path to test well - rather, you can construct data and test sequences which will likely trigger the most common forms of bugs (like opening a document larger than the available memory, for example...).
Even if you can neither design well nor write perfect code, a professional has an obligation to at least debug his code before release. People are going to spend billions of dollars on your software, and probably tens of billions of dollars cleaning up the security holes and bugs; these bugs are not mere inconveniences, and the software maker has a moral obligation to fix them before release.
I understand why the majority of the world runs windows. Most people don't want to complicate things any more than necessary. But the inability of users to grasp technical details does not justify releasing a product, which in any other industry, would be a prime lawsuit candidate under fraud and lemon laws.
US drug prices remain at the highest levels in the western world...
Hmm... What could possibly cause this? Could it be:
Drugs are more heavily regulated and must be more thoroughly tested than in any other western country, and thus cost much more to bring to market.
Americans insist on "taking a pill" for even some of the most minor inconveniences.... I mean, heartburn?! - I'd just as soon deal with it.
There is a lucrative market for those who tell a patient that their shortcomings are not of their own laziness or lack of character, but rather, some enigmatic syndrome, which can be treated by a rather expensive pill.
The higher US prices compensate for the losses that drug companies would be taking in supplying life-saving drugs to third world countries. Without the high prices in the US, third world countries couldn't afford some drugs at all.
Yes, it is possible that drug companies play on consumers' collective ignorance. But it is also possible that if Americans unwilling to pay such high prices for drugs, some lifesaving drugs might not have been discovered yet. It is even more likely that drugs to treat deadly diseases such as AIDS would never have been developed had the disease remained in Africa. Just something to think about.
It just so happens that I share a first name, last name, and middle initial with a convicted felon. Debt collectors and private investigators can't tell from a phone listing that I'm not the same person.
At one point, my house would get several calls a week from debt collectors and private investigators. They would impersonate police officers, threaten legal action, etc...
It became really annoying. Finally, itcame down to this:
I have a habit of answering the phone in a jovial manner, i.e., with phrases like, "Mort's morgue, you stab 'em, we slab 'em...." Generally speaking, I only get calls from close family, so everyone's in on the joke.
But one time, I decided to answer "Dominoes Pizza, how may I help you..."
And the reply was not whom I expected, but the voice of our least-favorite sheriff impersonator. Yes, it was the collection agency. But to my surprise, he played along:
"Dominoes pizza, eh... I'd like a large pepperoni pizza.."
Well, I continued to take his order, address, phone number and all. I thanked him and then hung up.
Turns out, he was across the state in a major city. Still not a problem, though. I looked up the phone number for the local Dominoes, and relayed his order.
Forty five minutes later, I got a call, "Very funny, wise guy..."
To which I replied, "Dominoes pizza, may I take your order?"
"Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do." We work to minimize the bugs in the software we ship, but they'll always be there.[emphasis mine]
And Microsoft thinks they're ready for the Enterprise Market....
I did RTFA. I'm trying hard not to flame, but this guy is a downright pathetic programmer. I've fixed more complicated bugs in the last week than this. And his defense - Word is complicated - just doesn't cut it:
I work with production systems which have over ten thousand modules, with dozens, if not hundreds of interconnected and interdependent systems. Yet, in spite of this, the average bug fix takes around two weeks.
The last time I remember hearing of a data-integrity bug was last year. I can't remember any before that. But, the interesting thing is that it was fixed within a week and the corrupted file was rebuilt from other, known good files. In the end, we lost NO data.
We as programmers cannot release a system with any known bugs. If we do, we won't expect to hear, "Well, we haven't fully debugged humans yet," but rather, "If this continues, I'll have to ask you to re-evaluate your employment here..."
Our systems are more complicated, yet contain fewer bugs than MS's software.
We are given as much time as we need to test. We aren't allowed, nor expected, to release buggy software simply to meet a deadline.
We have professional technical architects working for us. Because of the quality of our design, debugging even very large, complex programs is actually manageable. Furthermore, we don't have to do much of it because QA keeps buggy code from getting into production in the first place. The majority of our fixes revolve around ease-of-use and additional functionality issues.
We can't just release code "as is" and think about fixing it later. Failure of our systems could cause very serious damage to our clients; perhaps bankrupt some of them. We don't have the liberty to be unprofessional.
There used to be a time when programmers were more professional.
What the amateur coder says: "we can't fix every bug..."
What they really mean: "I'm an idiot programmer who can't be bothered to actually employ good design principles, nor debug the code I've written. I, quite frankly, could care less about the idiot end user, 'cause, I like, know computers and I'm smarter than you so just whine about bugs to someone who actually cares. Oh, and what about my stock options?"
Quite frankly, I hate to see this attitude in programmers. If you are charging for the code you write, you should at least have the professionalism to fully debug it before release. Your customers deserve better than to have your software ruin their business.
'Cause dat wood be really tragic, yuh know... I might get so depressed I jest disappear, if yuh know what I mean...
And den, yuh know da cops - they is gonna come aroun' an' investuhgate, yuh know. I mean, da cops findin' all dohs tapes wit ya tellin' me ta do all dat illegal stuff, an all...
You've obviously never written a device driver... modern drivers issue a few "start" instructions, then sleep; eventually the device completes the I/O and issues an interrupt to inform the CPU it's done. The last computer I had that stalled on disk I/O was running MS-DOS - nine years ago.
So you're obviously not using x86 architecture anymore...
It doesn't matter whether you're running Linux, Win2k, XP, or whatever on x86 hardware. The problem is that the disk controller (whether through the IDE chip or via DMA chip) and CPU cannot access RAM simultaneously. What happens is that the disk driver issues the instruction, sleeps, and then the disk locks the CPU out of the memory bus when it transfers data from its internal buffer into RAM.
I've noticed that regardless of OS, an x86 system becomes less responsive when copying a large directory tree. Typically, this is what happens during a file copy operation:
Process P1 issues a disk read request.
The IO driver isssues a request for a given group of sectors from a file. Then it sleeps.
The CPU continues with another task, say P2, - but -
When the drive completes the IO operation, it locks the bus as it transfers data to RAM. The CPU is effectively stalled at this point - it can only execute instructions and data out of its local cache. If even one instruction references memory not in cache, the whole instruction stream is suspended until the bus becomes available again.
When the bus is relinquished, an interrupt is issued. The driver is woken from sleep, and the OS restarts process P1 - which requested the read. This process then proceeds to request a write operation to another group of sectors.
The disk driver is invoked; it issues a write instruction, and sleeps.
The OS swaps out the process P1 (waiting on IO), and restarts P2.
The drive controller locks the bus as it reads the memory buffer. Process P2 is effectively stalled.
The drive controller relinquishes the bus. Process P2 continues, and then -
The drive issues an interrupt - IO complete, which restarts the driver. The driver reports IO complete to the OS, which restarts P1. Notice that IO isn't necessarily complete - but rather, the buffer has been copied into the drive's internal cache and is still being physically written to disk.
P1 is restart, and requests another read, which effectively sends us back to 1.)
This is admittedly better than stalling the CPU during any IO operation, but it still allows an IO intensive process to lock out the CPU.
Because the stall is caused to the DMA or IDE controller, assigning a lower priority to P1, or even the disk driver, will have only a negligible effect. Because P1 is constantly stalled waiting on disk IO, its real priority class, in terms of timeslice, is far below that of process p2. For example:
Suppose P1 has a priority of 1/100 that of p2. Supposedly, p2 would get 100 times the CPU timeslice that P1 would have.
Suppose that P1 issues a disk read instruction for 32 sectors (16kB). Suppose it takes 4 instruction cycles to issue this request.
The disk driver issues the read instruction.
Process P2 is started by the OS.
The drive controller locks the bus for 4096 instruction cycles as it reads the buffer into RAM.
An interrupt is issued which restarts the disk driver. The disk driver reports IO complete to the kernel.
The kernel sees that P2 is executing, while P1 is waiting on an IO which has just completed. P2 has been executing for greater than 4000 instruction cycles, where P1 has executed only 4 instruction cycles. Thus, P2 has used up its timeslice, and P1 is owed another 400 instruction cycles before P2 is restarted. Notice that P2's timeslice is completed based not on the number of instructions it actually executed, but rather on the amount of time it controlled the CPU. Thus, the IO process initiated by P1 is effec
While dual cores on a chip might be nice, it won't produce any serious performance increases.
The underlying problem with Intel and AMD's processors is that they are at the mercy of the architecture:
These chips must share a relatively slow memory bus with other devices.
Currently, the fastest FSB to date is 1033MHz - almost 1/3 of the max clock speed of the processor. Given that Intel's integer units operate at twice the clock speed, the fastest parts of the chip operate at 6 times faster than memory.
The monolithic, synchrous, central-processing-unit design of the architecture prohibits optimizations such as using memory controllers for block moves and having dedicated IO processors. Contrast this with Mainframes in which the CPU passes off IO instructions to ancillary processors and continues to work. In PC-land, when the IDE controller seizes the bus for a transfer from disk into memory, the CPU has to execute out of its cache for ~256 instruction cycles, or risk stalling.
The ironic thing is that even though AMD and Intel are out-clocking mainframe processors by factors of 2 and 3, mainframes still get more work done simply because they aren't choked by a slow and overcrowded system bus.
Back in my day, bullies didn't mess around with IM...
If the school bully didn't like you, he just showed up and pummelled your a**. Or worse, brought his buddies with baseball bats and tire irons after school. And if you fought back, well, you'd have to worry about getting stabbed or shot.
Now, you get called bad names on IM. And this is a problem? To those of us who grew up in a time when kids brought guns and knives to school, this seems like a godsend. Getting called bad names is a lot better than getting shot because you were looking at someone else's girlfriend...
So why not write my whole app in shell scripts, then?
I mean seriously, this is probably the worst example I've seen of Java's so-called "portability". Java's proponents rant about how "Java is so cool because it removes the #ifdefs of C and C++..." and then go on to further complicate the issue with CLASSPATH - which requires a different configuration for each architecture. So, I guess if you really hate the word "ifdef", Java must seem a godsend. But it doesn't qualify for the holy grail of "write once, run anywhere..." Basically, its a stripped-down, slower C++.
I do write in Java. But I realize that it isn't good for anything but internal development:
The long startup times of the JVM (15 seconds is a _good_ time...) prohibit using it for commercially distributed applications. Slow startup times will leave a very negative impression with the end user.
Swing is ok for internal use, but it has too many bugs and quirks - like "forgetting" to repaint menus, leaving areas unpainted, etc. Overall, it gives the impression that quality wasn't a concern. And it is painfully slow.
An end user can run a native executable by simply copying it to their desktop. This works great for support applications - I need only send them an email attachment or CD. But with Java, I have _no_ idea how their particular JVM is configured, where _their_ CLASSPATH should point, etc... Let's face it - end users won't bother to download a JVM so they can use my app; if it doesn't start on the first click, they'll delete it and tell me it "didn't work".
Sorry to rain on your parade, but Java isn't the be-all, end-all of languages. It's okay for a narrow range of applications, but not good at anything, unless you count teaching CS.
How many of them had the FBI break down their doors and seize their computers? Or was it more like "Mr Spammer, after you've called your attorney, we'd like you to come down to the station for a few hours..."
If your business model suffers from the possibility of a FBI raid, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate your business? Just a thought...
The problem is that almost every business has proprietary secrets that it can't afford to share with the general public. This usually means using encrypted communications - which may draw the suspicion of the FBI. Take for example:
A publisher of children's stories: the publisher wants to communicate with the author regarding changes in the manuscript, but without encryption, a hacker could intercept emails and post the manuscript online before the date of publication. (An activity which is perfectly legal, too, according to a recent court ruling!)
Their student body is only about 20,000. And most of those live off-campus; NIU is called a suitcase school because it's close enough to Chicago that a substantial number of students go back to their homes in the city and suburbs every weekend.
And, incidentally, NIU is one of the few computer science schools in the country that still teaches operating systems and data structures courses in mainframe assembly language. Think coding a binary tree in C++ is hard? - try doing it in IBM mainframe assembler!
They are able to irrationally magnify their fear outside the actual scope of the threat - again with the help of mass media. Hence we got a million people marching on Washington to ban guns, when lightning strikes and airbags both killed more children that year than school shootings.
I think this pretty much sums up the "how" of tyranny. September 11 was a wake up call; suddenly, I felt more afraid of my own countrymen than of the terrorists. I realized, that just like Nazi Germany, the "fear of terror" would be used to justify and defend truly reprehensible, un-American practices.
What really rankles me is that I'm hearing people defend unjust practices with the fear of what might happen. Anything could happen. The Sun could blow up tomorrow and kill us all. But are we buying heat sheilds and fighting a "war on solar expansion"? No. Instead, we are committing offenses against human dignity in an effort to stop what might happen in the future.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Those whom have become slaves to fear are a far greater threat to freedom than Al Queada could ever be. 9/11 was merely a catalyst that allowed our government to commit atrocities on a scale far greater than the terrorists could have ever imagined. My country has been hurt by 9/11, but sadly, it was our own countrymen who did the greatest damage; they poured out the gasoline; Al Queada threw the match.
That's not the purpose...
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Cheating Made Easy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Most colleges are not intellectual instituions, but economic:
A college degree differentiates those who can and will learn, from those who won't. Though programmers take learning for granted, you'd be surprised the number of workers in other professions (particularly the blue-collar types) who have a steadfast refusal to learn anything new. Not as in, its-too-hard-for-me-to-learn, but as in, why-do-I-have-to-know-this-crap-let's-go-watch-foo tball-and-drink-beer.
Colleges regulate the supply of skilled labor, thus keeping professional salaries high.
Colleges provide a set of credentials which can be used to back up one's assertions about ability.
I too, was sadly disappointed by college. But after being in the workforce for a few years, I've realized that the challenges in the profession often are far greater than the textbook problems presented in college. I realized a few years ago that going back for a masters was pointless from an intellectual perspective - there's very little in a master's program that I don't already know. Unless I needed a masters for a promotion or career move, there's little point in spending the money.
Myth 7: IT Journalists know the field...
on
IT Myths
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Its amazing just how little these supposed journalists truly know.
Any technology is scalable...
Really? I happen to know of a case where someone was fired because they believed this religiously; they insisted that any performance issues the new system might produce could be handled with a server upgrade.
So they upgraded the server, and what do you know - response times fell. From 300 seconds to 90. The system still wasn't usable, and the manager was fired. Perhaps the most embarassing part was the fact that a back-of-the-napkin analysis would have revealed the flaws in the "Use disk space for memory" design.
Most IT projects fail...
Well, well. This is spin at its worst. Yes, only 34% of IT projects come in on time. Another 50% are "a day late and dollar short..." - that is, after the project schedule slips, they end up shipping a product with missing features. General hint for journalist: if you have to redefine words to prove your point, you're probably not telling the truth.
No, perhaps 70% of projects aren't unmitigated failures, but I'll bet that IT projects fare far worse than other industries:
How many unfinished bridges do you know of?
How many unfinished housing projects can you name?
How many unfinished/incomplete decks and swimming pools have you seen?
How many times do EE's scrap a project after a successful prototype has been built, due to project management failure?
How many automobile engine projects have failed? The last I can remember is Chevrolet's Vega engine - glass lined cylinders should have been a tip-off right there....
Yup, IT is still at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to delivering on promises. Not good.
Collateral damage? Unavoidable -- any solution strong enough to work is going to cause collateral damage...
No, collateral damage is not unavoidable, nor is it necessary for a solution to SPAM.
The problem with SPAM isn't technical, but social; people like the simplicity of email more than they hate the nuisance of SPAM. There already exist several proposed, effective solutions to the SPAM problem; many of which could be implemented without *any* collateral damage, as they add on to existing systems. But, people don't care.
All interesting, however, they omitted a major flop in early versions of Windows XP where the 51st and 52nd states were labelled Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively...
I mean, how could you be so ignorant of US geography? It's your own country!
This idea that you can sit on patents until someone else is making millions on the same idea and then pounce on them is ridiculous...
Yes, it is. And the law agrees with you. Of course, IANAL, though...
The Doctrine of Laches states that a plaintiff who unreasonably delays action to the detriment of the defendant loses the ability to collect damages due to the delay.
In the case of intentional delay, the plaintiff would not be able to collect royalties for past infringement. If the defendant continued to infringe, the plaintiff could collect damages for that.
Thus, there are two mitigating factors in favor of the defendant:
If the defendant changes the code so that it no longer infringes, he will bear little or no liability for patent infringement. In the case of open source, where the plaintiff should have known of the infringement from the release date (or shortly thereafter), the Doctrine of Laches could be applied to have the case dismissed.
In cases where the defendant continued to infringe, they could still end up owing no royalties. It could be argued that the value of the patent lies not in the actual utility of the method, but rather in its widespread adoption by industry, and the compatibility with existing devices. Hence, as it was the plaintiff's delay in bringing action which caused such widespread adoption, it could be argued that the defendant owes no royalties past, present, and future, because the value of the patent is entirely contingent on the plaintiff's prejudicial behavior toward the defendant.
There are over 740 tons of Sarin alone unaccounted for...
Okay, let's do some math here. How do you transport 740 tons of Sarin out of the country without being noticed? Remember, we can track individual trucks by satellite. So:
Sarin is a gas. But let's ignore that, and suppose that it's a liquid and can be easily transported in drums. A military truck could load perhaps 2 tons of barrels.
740 / 2 = 370 truck loads would have had to cross the Iraqi border in order for Saddam to have completely eliminated his Sarin stash before the war.
How is it that we picked up individual "chemical weapon lab" trucks on satellite, but missed the 370 trucks moving across the border? If they were spaced only 150 feet apart, the convoy would have stretched for more than ten miles! How did we miss that?
But Sarin is not a liquid. As a gas, its density is far lower than that of liquid, and to put 2 tons of gas in compressed cylinders on a military truck would be quite a feat. Even if the weight of the delivery vehicle (shell, bomb, etc...) was included in those 740 tons, it's still iffy. 740 tons of 100 lb artillery shells is 14,800 rounds. At 100 rounds/truck, you're still looking at 148 vehicles.
How did we miss that?
Or, maybe he really didn't have any "WMD".
Saddam Hussein may certainly have been very evil. But his "crime" was not his oppression of people, but rather that he tried too hard to be like the U.S. - a sovereign nation possessing weapons of strategic deterrence.
Is not nearly as bad as XP in regard to security problems. In fact, I too, have benefitted from the fact that my legacy systems running Win98 aren't vulnerable to the latest security exploits. Yes, you can recommend 98, but:
The average Windows user can't/won't install Windows 98 over his existing XP installation.
It won't be around for very much longer.
Other than that, I think it's probably the best of the Windows "home" editions. Granted, you'll always have the shoddy drivers issue, but as long as you don't use MS Office or IE, you can actually make a Win 98 box pretty secure.
I'm still running RH 7.3, and I will for the forseeable future. Nice thing about open source is that I don't have to worry about copies becoming scarce when the vendor discontinues it.
If you noticed, I didn't start with the Windows user completely re-installing the OS. Here's a typical after-install security sequence for Windows:
Reboot and verify network card drivers loaded.
Configure the network, including the firewall.
Reboot for changes to take effect.
Reboot.
Install AV software.
Reboot.
Download anti-spyware and anti-adware programs. Install them.
Reboot.
Disable the firewall so you can use Windows Update.
Reboot.
Get infected by Blaster or other assorted worm while downloading Windows Update, or SP2, if you prefer....
Re-enable the firewall, have the AV software "clean" your machine.
Reboot.
Wait another hour as AV software scans and cleans your machine. 155 viruses found. All cleaned.
After 15 minutes of blank pages, you realize you no longer have a network connection. Somehow, Windows "lost" your network card drivers...
Reinstall network card drivers.
Reboot.
Reconfigure networking, including the firewall.
Browse the Microsoft site, attempting to figure out which services you can disable, and which ports you can block. 10 hours.
Disable said useless services, block unnecessary ports - 15 minutes.
Reboot.
Oops! - you've accidentally disabled a key service that Windows needs to boot. Get out your recovery disk and attempt to fix your machine....
Reboot.
Finally, you can now start to reinstall all of your applications. Hope and pray that you have the original CD keys.
Disable the firewall so you can register your copy of MS Office. Get infected by another internet worm in the process.
Run the AV scan again: cleaned 12 viruses and trojans.
Reboot.
Now continue to reinstall your Windows-only software. Curse when you realize that you've misplaced some of your CD's; curse more as you realize you've lost some of the CD keys....
Spend another 5 hours trying to figure out why your favorite app doesn't run. Oops - SP2 is not compatible with it!
Congratulations - you've restored your machine to almost the way it was before. You didn't need those other applications anyway.... It's been a hard week - kick back and have a beer.
Next week, you'll reinstall Windows again, and repeat the process. But this time, you'll only download a few of the key updates, in an attempt to get your favorite app to work.
And two months later, you'll repeat the process yet again. It seems you forgot to apply the latest patches while on vacation, and some internet worm has taken over your machine....
Is this really any worse than installing Linux, once?
Slashdot Mirror
The objection is not that Microsoft's software is insecure, but rather that their closest competition has at least two orders of magnitude fewer exploits and viruses than they.
If hundreds of exploits per month were discovered for Macs or Linux, your point would be valid. Problem is, the number of exploits available for all computers systems since the 50's is easily less than the number discovered in Windows in one year.
To make matters worse the rate at which exploits are being discovered is increasing, not decreasing, or even remaining stable. And this from a company making three billion dollars a month. How is it then, that a bunch of ragtag volunteers put together a more secure OS than a company which can spend a billion dollars a month on development?
Microsoft Windows, and the attendant problems it has experienced has brought shame on the entire profession. It isn't a matter of a few human errors here and there - Microsoft releases code with wanton disregard for the effects it will have on the user. You would expect more from a such a successful company, but apparently, Microsoft believes the professional standards followed by the rest of the industry simply do not apply to them.
And that, is why they get bashed. They dismiss the wisdom gained by years of computer science, and when their systems run rampant with bugs and security holes, they claim that such lofty goals as security and reliability are unattainable - in spite of the fact that their peers who did heed the lessons of computers science have managed to build such systems.
From the article:
Software written by humans will always contain errors.Should read:
Software written by Microsoft will always contain errors.
I write software that doesn't contain errors, every day, on systems which deal with far more data than the average MS app. It seems to me that Microsoft's has no idea what constitutes professionalism:
I understand why the majority of the world runs windows. Most people don't want to complicate things any more than necessary. But the inability of users to grasp technical details does not justify releasing a product, which in any other industry, would be a prime lawsuit candidate under fraud and lemon laws.
US drug prices remain at the highest levels in the western world...
Hmm... What could possibly cause this? Could it be:
- Drugs are more heavily regulated and must be more thoroughly tested than in any other western country, and thus cost much more to bring to market.
- Americans insist on "taking a pill" for even some of the most minor inconveniences.... I mean, heartburn?! - I'd just as soon deal with it.
- There is a lucrative market for those who tell a patient that their shortcomings are not of their own laziness or lack of character, but rather, some enigmatic syndrome, which can be treated by a rather expensive pill.
- The higher US prices compensate for the losses that drug companies would be taking in supplying life-saving drugs to third world countries. Without the high prices in the US, third world countries couldn't afford some drugs at all.
Yes, it is possible that drug companies play on consumers' collective ignorance. But it is also possible that if Americans unwilling to pay such high prices for drugs, some lifesaving drugs might not have been discovered yet. It is even more likely that drugs to treat deadly diseases such as AIDS would never have been developed had the disease remained in Africa. Just something to think about.They should just change their names...
It just so happens that I share a first name, last name, and middle initial with a convicted felon. Debt collectors and private investigators can't tell from a phone listing that I'm not the same person.
At one point, my house would get several calls a week from debt collectors and private investigators. They would impersonate police officers, threaten legal action, etc...
It became really annoying. Finally, itcame down to this:
- I have a habit of answering the phone in a jovial manner, i.e., with phrases like, "Mort's morgue, you stab 'em, we slab 'em...." Generally speaking, I only get calls from close family, so everyone's in on the joke.
- But one time, I decided to answer "Dominoes Pizza, how may I help you..."
- And the reply was not whom I expected, but the voice of our least-favorite sheriff impersonator. Yes, it was the collection agency. But to my surprise, he played along:
- "Dominoes pizza, eh... I'd like a large pepperoni pizza.."
- Well, I continued to take his order, address, phone number and all. I thanked him and then hung up.
- Turns out, he was across the state in a major city. Still not a problem, though. I looked up the phone number for the local Dominoes, and relayed his order.
- Forty five minutes later, I got a call, "Very funny, wise guy..."
- To which I replied, "Dominoes pizza, may I take your order?"
That was the last time he called."Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do." We work to minimize the bugs in the software we ship, but they'll always be there.[emphasis mine]
And Microsoft thinks they're ready for the Enterprise Market....
I did RTFA. I'm trying hard not to flame, but this guy is a downright pathetic programmer. I've fixed more complicated bugs in the last week than this. And his defense - Word is complicated - just doesn't cut it:
There used to be a time when programmers were more professional.
Quite frankly, I hate to see this attitude in programmers. If you are charging for the code you write, you should at least have the professionalism to fully debug it before release. Your customers deserve better than to have your software ruin their business.
[Quido voice]
'Cause dat wood be really tragic, yuh know... I might get so depressed I jest disappear, if yuh know what I mean...
And den, yuh know da cops - they is gonna come aroun' an' investuhgate, yuh know. I mean, da cops findin' all dohs tapes wit ya tellin' me ta do all dat illegal stuff, an all...
It would be really tragic...
You've obviously never written a device driver... modern drivers issue a few "start" instructions, then sleep; eventually the device completes the I/O and issues an interrupt to inform the CPU it's done. The last computer I had that stalled on disk I/O was running MS-DOS - nine years ago.
So you're obviously not using x86 architecture anymore...
It doesn't matter whether you're running Linux, Win2k, XP, or whatever on x86 hardware. The problem is that the disk controller (whether through the IDE chip or via DMA chip) and CPU cannot access RAM simultaneously. What happens is that the disk driver issues the instruction, sleeps, and then the disk locks the CPU out of the memory bus when it transfers data from its internal buffer into RAM.
I've noticed that regardless of OS, an x86 system becomes less responsive when copying a large directory tree. Typically, this is what happens during a file copy operation:
This is admittedly better than stalling the CPU during any IO operation, but it still allows an IO intensive process to lock out the CPU.
Because the stall is caused to the DMA or IDE controller, assigning a lower priority to P1, or even the disk driver, will have only a negligible effect. Because P1 is constantly stalled waiting on disk IO, its real priority class, in terms of timeslice, is far below that of process p2. For example:
While dual cores on a chip might be nice, it won't produce any serious performance increases.
The underlying problem with Intel and AMD's processors is that they are at the mercy of the architecture:
The ironic thing is that even though AMD and Intel are out-clocking mainframe processors by factors of 2 and 3, mainframes still get more work done simply because they aren't choked by a slow and overcrowded system bus .
Back in my day, bullies didn't mess around with IM...
If the school bully didn't like you, he just showed up and pummelled your a**. Or worse, brought his buddies with baseball bats and tire irons after school. And if you fought back, well, you'd have to worry about getting stabbed or shot.
Now, you get called bad names on IM. And this is a problem? To those of us who grew up in a time when kids brought guns and knives to school, this seems like a godsend. Getting called bad names is a lot better than getting shot because you were looking at someone else's girlfriend...
So why not write my whole app in shell scripts, then?
I mean seriously, this is probably the worst example I've seen of Java's so-called "portability". Java's proponents rant about how "Java is so cool because it removes the #ifdefs of C and C++..." and then go on to further complicate the issue with CLASSPATH - which requires a different configuration for each architecture. So, I guess if you really hate the word "ifdef", Java must seem a godsend. But it doesn't qualify for the holy grail of "write once, run anywhere..." Basically, its a stripped-down, slower C++.
I do write in Java. But I realize that it isn't good for anything but internal development:
Sorry to rain on your parade, but Java isn't the be-all, end-all of languages. It's okay for a narrow range of applications, but not good at anything, unless you count teaching CS.
How many of them had the FBI break down their doors and seize their computers? Or was it more like "Mr Spammer, after you've called your attorney, we'd like you to come down to the station for a few hours..."
I mean, it's not like they're hackers....
Q:Why are the boulevards in Paris lined with trees?
A:So the Germans can march in the shade!
Because we all secretly wish we were still programming in COBOL.
Yup, nothing like having your Windows users install and configure Cygwin in order to use your Java app....
If your business model suffers from the possibility of a FBI raid, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate your business? Just a thought...
The problem is that almost every business has proprietary secrets that it can't afford to share with the general public. This usually means using encrypted communications - which may draw the suspicion of the FBI. Take for example:
Their student body is only about 20,000. And most of those live off-campus; NIU is called a suitcase school because it's close enough to Chicago that a substantial number of students go back to their homes in the city and suburbs every weekend.
And, incidentally, NIU is one of the few computer science schools in the country that still teaches operating systems and data structures courses in mainframe assembly language. Think coding a binary tree in C++ is hard? - try doing it in IBM mainframe assembler!
They are able to irrationally magnify their fear outside the actual scope of the threat - again with the help of mass media. Hence we got a million people marching on Washington to ban guns, when lightning strikes and airbags both killed more children that year than school shootings.
I think this pretty much sums up the "how" of tyranny. September 11 was a wake up call; suddenly, I felt more afraid of my own countrymen than of the terrorists. I realized, that just like Nazi Germany, the "fear of terror" would be used to justify and defend truly reprehensible, un-American practices.
What really rankles me is that I'm hearing people defend unjust practices with the fear of what might happen. Anything could happen. The Sun could blow up tomorrow and kill us all. But are we buying heat sheilds and fighting a "war on solar expansion"? No. Instead, we are committing offenses against human dignity in an effort to stop what might happen in the future.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Those whom have become slaves to fear are a far greater threat to freedom than Al Queada could ever be. 9/11 was merely a catalyst that allowed our government to commit atrocities on a scale far greater than the terrorists could have ever imagined. My country has been hurt by 9/11, but sadly, it was our own countrymen who did the greatest damage; they poured out the gasoline; Al Queada threw the match.
I too, was sadly disappointed by college. But after being in the workforce for a few years, I've realized that the challenges in the profession often are far greater than the textbook problems presented in college. I realized a few years ago that going back for a masters was pointless from an intellectual perspective - there's very little in a master's program that I don't already know. Unless I needed a masters for a promotion or career move, there's little point in spending the money.
Its amazing just how little these supposed journalists truly know.
Any technology is scalable...
Really? I happen to know of a case where someone was fired because they believed this religiously; they insisted that any performance issues the new system might produce could be handled with a server upgrade.
So they upgraded the server, and what do you know - response times fell. From 300 seconds to 90. The system still wasn't usable, and the manager was fired. Perhaps the most embarassing part was the fact that a back-of-the-napkin analysis would have revealed the flaws in the "Use disk space for memory" design.
Most IT projects fail...
Well, well. This is spin at its worst. Yes, only 34% of IT projects come in on time. Another 50% are "a day late and dollar short..." - that is, after the project schedule slips, they end up shipping a product with missing features. General hint for journalist: if you have to redefine words to prove your point, you're probably not telling the truth.
No, perhaps 70% of projects aren't unmitigated failures, but I'll bet that IT projects fare far worse than other industries:
Yup, IT is still at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to delivering on promises. Not good.
Collateral damage? Unavoidable -- any solution strong enough to work is going to cause collateral damage...
No, collateral damage is not unavoidable, nor is it necessary for a solution to SPAM.
The problem with SPAM isn't technical, but social; people like the simplicity of email more than they hate the nuisance of SPAM. There already exist several proposed, effective solutions to the SPAM problem; many of which could be implemented without *any* collateral damage, as they add on to existing systems. But, people don't care.
All interesting, however, they omitted a major flop in early versions of Windows XP where the 51st and 52nd states were labelled Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively...
I mean, how could you be so ignorant of US geography? It's your own country!
This idea that you can sit on patents until someone else is making millions on the same idea and then pounce on them is ridiculous...
Yes, it is. And the law agrees with you. Of course, IANAL, though...
The Doctrine of Laches states that a plaintiff who unreasonably delays action to the detriment of the defendant loses the ability to collect damages due to the delay.
In the case of intentional delay, the plaintiff would not be able to collect royalties for past infringement. If the defendant continued to infringe, the plaintiff could collect damages for that.
Thus, there are two mitigating factors in favor of the defendant:
There are over 740 tons of Sarin alone unaccounted for...
Okay, let's do some math here. How do you transport 740 tons of Sarin out of the country without being noticed? Remember, we can track individual trucks by satellite. So:
Sarin is a gas. But let's ignore that, and suppose that it's a liquid and can be easily transported in drums. A military truck could load perhaps 2 tons of barrels.
740 / 2 = 370 truck loads would have had to cross the Iraqi border in order for Saddam to have completely eliminated his Sarin stash before the war.
How is it that we picked up individual "chemical weapon lab" trucks on satellite, but missed the 370 trucks moving across the border? If they were spaced only 150 feet apart, the convoy would have stretched for more than ten miles! How did we miss that?
But Sarin is not a liquid. As a gas, its density is far lower than that of liquid, and to put 2 tons of gas in compressed cylinders on a military truck would be quite a feat. Even if the weight of the delivery vehicle (shell, bomb, etc...) was included in those 740 tons, it's still iffy. 740 tons of 100 lb artillery shells is 14,800 rounds. At 100 rounds/truck, you're still looking at 148 vehicles.
How did we miss that?
Or, maybe he really didn't have any "WMD".
Saddam Hussein may certainly have been very evil. But his "crime" was not his oppression of people, but rather that he tried too hard to be like the U.S. - a sovereign nation possessing weapons of strategic deterrence.
- The average Windows user can't/won't install Windows 98 over his existing XP installation.
- It won't be around for very much longer.
Other than that, I think it's probably the best of the Windows "home" editions. Granted, you'll always have the shoddy drivers issue, but as long as you don't use MS Office or IE, you can actually make a Win 98 box pretty secure.I'm still running RH 7.3, and I will for the forseeable future. Nice thing about open source is that I don't have to worry about copies becoming scarce when the vendor discontinues it.
If you noticed, I didn't start with the Windows user completely re-installing the OS. Here's a typical after-install security sequence for Windows:
And two months later, you'll repeat the process yet again. It seems you forgot to apply the latest patches while on vacation, and some internet worm has taken over your machine....
Is this really any worse than installing Linux, once?