Yeah, but MY point was that a web browser is a web browser, and a word processor is a word processor; once you know how to use one of them, using other versions of the same tool isn't exactly rocket science. Most people use the same tools to work in an office; it's pretty boring, all the same old crap, really.
So there's nothing stopping you from using Linux at home and transferring the same skills to WIndows. As a matter of fact, if you can handle running Linux, and working with all of Linux's tools, I daresay there's almost NOTHING on a Windows box that won't be child's play for you.
There's no good, compelling reason to trap yourself in Windows outside the office. Besides, use Linux, and save hundreds of dollars.
Of course I agree with you that their prices are ridiculous. I personally think they should price according to the local market, which would expand their clientele significantly. But, hey, they're the greediest people on Earth, after all. I don't think they're capable of taking a reasonable position.:)
The point about custom applications was that when you're hired in a shop that uses them, THEY TRAIN YOU ON THEM. And having windows at home wouldn't let you learn them in advance anyway. So the argument that an individual needs to have Windows on his home computer so he can get a job is ridiculous.
You missed my point entirely, of course.
If you're saying "piracy is necessary because many companies in South America want to run Windows only, and can't afford it" then I have no sympathy for your position. If they can't afford it, it's worth porting their software to Java, which will let it run on Linux. Java is at least as easy to write code in as.Net, which is where the Windows world is going anyway.
Why are you mad that he said "if you can't afford it, don't buy it"? He didn't say you couldn't run ANY O/S... He just said don't buy the overpriced one.
Why shouldn't we discuss Linux? Is Linux a dirty word in your home? If so, why?
You say people need to know how to use Windows. So? What do you really think they'll be using? Most people use:
* A web browser * A word processor and spreadsheet * Some custom applications their company bought.
The web browser will work exactly the same on Linux.
You can get Open Office, which is very similar to Microsoft Office. The skills are almost entirely portable, unless you want to do VB scripting (unlikely).
Custom applications usually come with on the job training.
The only people who need to know Windows internals (thus need to actually work on a Windows machine at some point) are the people maintaining Windows servers. And they probably learned how to do that in some kind of technical school's lab.
My point is, Linux is a perfectly acceptable substitute and it's FREE. I know you're mad because you thought the GP sounded condescending, but I don't understand why you don't consider Linux an option.
First, if I write a book or a piece of software, I should enjoy that copyright for the duration of my natural life. I should also be able to let my wife inherit it and enjoy a profit from it for HER natural life. Similarly, my children should inherit something from my work, so they can have an advantage over the other kids and get a good head start on creating new work themselves. If my work is so good everyone wants a piece of it, then I've earned the right for my family to enjoy this protection.
The current copyright laws protect copyright through the duration of an author's life and 75 years past his death, by which point all his kids should be dead anyway. This is more than fair enough for any artist or author. It protects him, his wife, and all his children, ensuring them some income from his labor.
It's very simple.
Society benefits when people are given encouragement to produce interesting, worthwhile, original work. It benefits when, once such people are identified, they are taken care of, so they can raise their families without having to worry about working some bullshit dead-end job.
Richard Chesler: [Reading a piece of paper] The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club?
Narrator: [Voice-over] I'm half asleep again; I must've left the original in the copy machine.
Richard Chesler: The second rule of Fight Club - is this yours?
Narrator: Huh?
Richard Chesler: Pretend you're me, make a managerial decision: you find this, what would you do?
Narrator: [pauses] Well, I gotta tell you: I'd be very, very careful who you talk to about that, because the person who wrote that... is dangerous.
[Gets up from the chair]
Narrator: [Talking slowly] And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
Narrator: [Voice-over] Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
[Snatches the piece of paper from boss' hands]
Narrator: [Voice-over] And I used to be such a nice guy.
Narrator: Or maybe you shouldn't bring me every little piece of trash you happen to pick up.
[Phone rings]
Narrator: [Into phone] Compliance and Liability...?
Marla Singer: My tit's gonna rot off.
Narrator: [to boss] Would you excuse me? I need to take this.
* Microsoft distributes coupons. Joe, who has been watching this debate, acquires several of them.
* GPL V3 is released. Novell, after an update, is distributing GPL V3 versions of gcc, et al.
* Joe notices that the time is right and uses his coupons to acquire several copies of Novell's distribution. Microsoft provided those copies for Joe via their coupon. Is that not distribution? Microsoft would be one of the elements in the chain that put Novell Linux into Joe's hands. Eben Moglen seems to think so, and he's probably the pre-eminent expert on open-source related legal matters.
The wonderful irony in all this is that Microsoft's deal with Novell, intended by Microsoft to shore up their tenuous patent claims against Linux, would effectively de-fang and de-claw Microsoft's ENTIRE patent portfolio with respect to open source, all while making the GPL V3 the de-facto standard (who wouldn't want to get in on that level of protection for their projects?).
If Mr. Moglen succeeds in making this happen, he and Mr. Stallman are officially my Heroes. Say, what do you send your heroes in appreciation? A fruit basket seems kind of wishy-washy... A case of Jolt Cola? T-Shirts with "I saved Free Software and all I got was this crummy T-Shirt" on them? Boxing Gloves with "Ballmer's Face Here" written on the front?
...John was wearing a 500.00 suit (tasteful and practical but not flashy) and 100.00 dress shoes (ditto), simple navy blue tie and white dress shirt, he set his briefcase next to his chair, shook hands with his interviewer and introduced himself. After being invited to take a seat, he sat, relaxed, his arms carefully poised on the arm rests with his hands folded in his lap to convey the impression of openness (body language is everything to an H.R. drone).
(snip -- most of the conversation is very dull.)
H.R. Drone: So I see you worked at Acme until a month ago... I'm guessing you didn't quit, or you'd be working already. What happened there?
OPTION 1:
John: (Sighs, obviously relaxed) Well, there were some problems in a project I was working on. Things were going well on our side, but we had some issues with a vendor and we went over budget, then there was a delay, and the company decided to cut the project rather than continue trying to rescue it. Some of us were laid off in the process. The company was pretty nice to us, so I'm not complaining. We all parted on friendly terms. They said that if the project were to start back up, they'd invite me back, but I'd rather try something new. This opportunity looked pretty interesting, and I should be a good fit for it...
OPTION 2:
John: (smiles) Well, the company decided to streamline the IT department and merge some groups together, and in the process a few of the project teams got laid off. They were pretty nice about it, so there were no hard feelings. I'll miss the place; they're nice to work for. But this opportunity looks intersting, and my experience should be a good match for it...
OPTION 3:
John: (fidgets, fingers beard, glares at interviewer with his good eye) How long have you been spying on me? You work for THEM, don't you! Are you recording this? Where's the cameras??? Don't lie to me, you work for the Shop, don't you? You do, don't you? You'll never take me alive! Stay back! I have a ballpoint pen!!! Damn you, blackbird, show yourself! (backs into corner and points Bic pen at interviewer) STAY BACK!
Listen, I'm not picking on you here, and please don't take this comment as any sort of hostile taunt, ok?
If you're still running Windows 98, and it's connected to a network, TRUST ME, you've got malware running on it. You may not be able to see it, and you may not know about it, but you are almost certainly the proud owner of a 'bot. Maybe a whole community of them.
Just because it LOOKS "stable and pleasant" doesn't mean it IS. A well-written piece of malware is invisible to the owner of the machine. You wouldn't even know it was there. The fact that you don't think you have to do any work on your '98 box is a dead giveaway; you're probably wide open. And that poor woman probably has at least a keylogger and a spambot running on it. Keeping her machine on Windows 98 does her a great disservice and you should IMMEDIATELY replace it. If you're dead-set on using Windows, at LEAST get her XP Home Edition!
As far as your Vista box goes, well, it might be locked down enough to be ok. I don't know since nobody I know is even THINKING of using Vista. Our general opinion of it is that it's like a very pretty, tricked-out Hummer which has a small 4 cylinder motor in it and four thousand pounds of lead plates bolted to the chassis. Looks great, moves reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal slooooooooooooooooow.
I'm not FUDing, and I disagree strongly with your assessment. I offer the following three statements in support of my position:
1. I would not use Mac OS/X as a server; I believe it's much more suited to providing a workstation environment. In that capacity, I've used it for years without a single crash (mostly for Java programming, writing in OpenOffice, playing Alien Vs. Predator 2, web browsing, and email).
2. At home, I use Linux as a workstation (specifically, I run Slackware). No crashes. No down time. Just pleasant, efficient computing without any difficulties.
3. Even the STOCK MARKET is now running Linux. Obviously it's got the stones. Note that they did NOT pick Windows. As for your "linux lab going down" one catastrophe "fixed by the next version" does not a strong argument make. For all I know, you misconfigured the environment and caused the crash yourself! I haven't heard anyone else reporting such an event... Yeah, must have been you. Sorry, dude. Not buying it.
You're like the adults in the old Charlie Brown cartoons -- I'm sure you're saying something, but all I keep hearing is MWAH MWAH, MWAH MWAH MWAH MWAH. Boring!
You have fun fiddling around with your multiplicity of languages while I knuckle down and master my one. Each to his own, as I've said. But there's only so much a jack of all trades can keep in mind at any one time, regardless of what you "all languages great and small" types think. Mastery comes only with time and attention. Guys like you are willing to part with neither, and you get a predictable result.
You're like a cloud of water vapor, blown this way and that by the wind. I'm like the water in a river, flowing in my proper direction with great force. Your lack of focus is your primary weakness.
I find it amusing that you trotted out that weatherbeaten old false analogy about screwdrivers. Puh-lease. What nonsense. If anything, a modern language is more like a swiss army knife with tools for every purpose. Try a new analogy, something more apropos. Something RECENT.
And by the way, pot, I love the way you call this kettle black. A jab against "Personal attacks" in the same sentence with "people like you are all the same"? Looks like irony isn't just something your wife does to your shirts, eh?
Anyway, keep 'em coming. I enjoy a good tete a tete.
Up until now, I've used leatherbound journals, keeping 3 copies in a safe. If I forget a password, I dig it out and look it up. But lately I've been thinking that it would be nice if I could have a Java app on a CD that I could carry around with me, and have all my passwords securely stowed in one place.
Since I've currently got to master Java DB (the embedded database) for a work-related project, I've been thinking about rolling my own password database. You would only copy it to your PC when you were altering it, i.e. updating a password or adding a new account. At all other times the whole project directory would be burned to CD-R. Maybe copied and hidden in a few locations, just to be on the safe side (like a safe, or a safety deposit box).
Here are my "requirements"; I think this project's going to be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to getting busy with it during my upcoming vacation:
1. The system will use public key encryption, with the public key stored in the database and the private key generated from a passphrase you would memorize. You would have to enter that phrase each time you wanted to use the software, of course.
2. Passwords would always be encrypted until just before they were about to be displayed to you. They would only be in an unencrypted state in memory, never on disk (although I'm worried about swap... What to do? Or do you even have to worry about this?).
3. You could store all the random things you need to know about the site as metadata along with your password.
4. It would have a nice GUI for working with it and be designed primarily for Linux, but being written in Java, would run basically anywhere. Note that one nice part of the project is that I would have to cook up a scheme for finding a temp directory for JavaDB on any system I was going to run on, like Linux, Windows, and Mac O/S. That's interesting, I think.
5. When fishing out a password, you'll be able to copy and paste it into a site's login dialog. Once you're done, the password is cleared off the screen and out of memory. An interesting idea is to somehow let you cut and paste it without ever actually SEEING it if you're not alone in your cubicle. More fun stuff to fool around with.
Should be fun, right? A nice little hobby project...
Again, it's not about feeling smug, it's about not having to spend all your time futzing around with your Windows box trying to prevent it from getting stuffed up with spyware and viruses, rebuilding it after it DOES get stuffed up, and constantly trying to figure out what bizarre thing the next service pack is going to do to you.
By running Linux or OS/X, you can spend all your time actually doing something useful. Write a book, write some code, browse slashdot. Whatever.
I don't get emotional over operating systems. Except for one specific situation. It's a funny story, so what the hell, I'll tell it to you.
My mother used to use a Compaq with Windows installed. Despite her running Norton Internet Security, it would periodically get utterly FUBAR by viruses, trojans, crapware... I found myself reinstalling the whole damn box a few times a month. I couldn't go NEAR their house without having to spend a few hours fixing their computer.
Finally I got fed up and heckled her into buying an eMac with OS/X. That machine has been chugging along for YEARS without a single problem. It's so easy to use she's doing her own software updates now, and she's even learned how to set up email filters to distribute friends, family, colleagues, etc. Years, without a single virus, problem, anything. The only thing I've had to do for her recently is show her how to reload the toner in a laser printer; she wasn't used to 'em, she used to use inkjets.
Just thinking about it makes me weep with joy! My weekends are so much more fun now! Quieter, certainly.
So, yeah, I think I can afford to smirk with pleasure when Microsoft types have yet another crappy day. If they don't like it, let 'em switch! It isn't religion, it's KNOWING that your O/S is the better of the two. From empirical observation!
I understand the issue at hand perfectly. Microsoft uses the BITS protocol to manage Windows Update downloads and work around firewalls. A trojan that gets ahold of your windows system can use the BITS system to implement updates and installs of malware, thus making malware maintenance as convenient as Windows Update itself.
So, not only is your Windows box easy to hose because it's got so many critical vulnerabilities and Microsoft (not being open source) is the only source for patches and updates, but once you're hosed, your friendly neighborhood hacker can use WINDOWS UPDATE ITSELF to maintain his "software"!
Again, I say: if you were using Linux or OS/X you could enjoy all this with the same detached amusement that I do.
UUCP doesn't count as networked? And if they were serving terminals, what do you call that, exactly? Try to remember that the internet is NOT the world wide web. It is also email, ftp, uucp, gopher, telnet, usenet, and so on. And just because they didn't call it a server didn't mean it wasn't acting as one. Back then, since there were no clients (thus no distinction between client and server) they just considered it "the computer" and connected to it via teletype or ANSI terminal.
This isn't networked? The ARPANET wasn't a network?
>> Your toolbox should be much broader than one language.
A jack of all trades is the master of none.
>> It also doesn't address the legacy application issue.
So? Presumably if you have legacy apps, you have legacy employees who can maintain them (until they're rewritten and killed off).
>> Or the cost of hiring/retraining existing staff.
You have to hire/retrain staff no matter what you do. Even if you're a die-hard Microsoft fanboy, every few years Microsoft changes everything and everybody has to re-learn their job. Look at the Visual Basic 6 guys who had to retool for VB.Net. Don't be dense.
>> Also, I don't think doing *everything* in java is particularly smart.
So you think we should use VB.Net instead? That's Microsoft's "everything" language. I'll stick with Java and wish you good luck on your horrible journey. Better you than me, chum, but you might want to rethink that one a tad.
At least with Java the language doesn't change much over time. It gets new features, which is always a good thing. But the language itself has remained very consistent.
And it's a very good language. You can write almost anything with it.
Each to his own, I suppose.
>> you see every person at Microsoft as being some kind of carbon copy who's opinion is somehow always wrong and invalid
No, I see them as people who have accepted a bizarre herd mentality which leads naturally to poor software development practices. They tend to be arrogant and haughty, and make poor decisions about their products. When they have trouble competing fairly in the market, they gleefully turn to their bag of dirty tricks. They would rather "win" (and I use the term loosely because I don't think a pyrrhic victory IS a win) than be honest or respected, and in my view, this makes them unclean.
If this upsets you, tough noogies. If they clean up their act I may reconsider.
>> It's comments like this that make it nearly impossible to take you seriously.
That's ok, Mr. Microsoft Fanboy. You don't have to take me seriously. I don't keep my ego there. I voiced my opinion, more politely than many Microsoft fanboys do I might add, and you huff huffed all over the place. What's the difference? They won't exist in five years. Maybe ten.
>>...pointing out that the safety of linux is not a property of linux itself, >> but merely a byproduct of its relative popularity in the world.
The problem is that this argument is bogus. Linux, the BSDs, Solaris, and OS/X are more secure than Windows because they possess a unix-type architecture. Unix, which dates to 1973, has been studied and improved for over 34 years. Its longevity in the market is a testament to the soundness of its original design; the fact that most truly large organizations use a unix derivative instead of Windows for their most important data is a testament to its secure nature.
Unix was designed from the beginning to be a multiuser, networked, server operating system, by two men widely considered to be masters among computer scientists (just to give you an idea, they invented the C programming language specifically to use it to write Unix so it would be easy to port it across platforms -- they worked at Bell Labs, one of the pre-eminent research organizations of the period).
SO...
Unix-derived systems are more secure than Windows because they are the latest iterations of a long, prestigious legacy. They are more secure because they're the collective result of over 34 years of research, development, and design (even longer if you count the research into MULTICS that predated UNIX). they're more secure because they been attacked for far longer than Windows, and the ways in which they CAN be attacked are well understood (thus much easier to prevent).
Unix-derived systems are JUST BETTER, and they will always be better.
One interesting point I could make right now is that since Microsoft greedily insists on rewriting everything every five years, they will NEVER have decades with which to work all the bugs out of their code -- it will ALWAYS be immature code. Shame, really. But funny!
> 1. It is better to focus resources on high risk security bugs.
Agreed. But you should at least TRY to get the rest of them, too.
> 2. We get rated better (internally and externally) for fixing publically known problems.
You should not be chasing after ratings, but rather, perfection. You should WANT to make your software as good as it can be. You should TRY to make it perfect whether your work is acknowledged or not.
> 3. Hackers usually find additional bugs by examining patches to existing bugs, so a patch could expose more bugs than fixes are available for.
Them's the breaks. Patch anyway and when new bugs appear, patch them too.
> 4. If we disclose a bug and fix it, it just escalates the "arms race" with the hackers. Better to keep it hidden.
Bogus argument. You CAN'T keep it hidden. Real hackers are out fuzzing your code and finding the bugs without your help. If you don't patch, your code is not secure. If you don't want to match wits with hackers, you're in the wrong field and you should bow out gracefully.
> 5. Not all customers immediately patch. So by announcing a patch to previously unknown to the public bug, we actually exponentially increase the chances of that bug being exploited by hackers.
Also a bogus argument. If a client doesn't patch, he's a darwin award waiting to happen and it's his own fault. YOUR duty is to supply patches. Do your duty. Let the failure be someone else's; live up to your responsibility and give people the tools they need to secure their sites!
Basically, my stock response to people who claim points like these is "quit making excuses and do your job"! Seriously. Their argument sounds like a slacker explaining why he doesn't have to put the final polishes on a piece of software (while he plays foosball with the sysadmins and isn't even listening to you).
Slashdot Mirror
Hail Dobbs!
Yeah, but MY point was that a web browser is a web browser, and a word processor is a word processor; once you know how to use one of them, using other versions of the same tool isn't exactly rocket science. Most people use the same tools to work in an office; it's pretty boring, all the same old crap, really.
So there's nothing stopping you from using Linux at home and transferring the same skills to WIndows. As a matter of fact, if you can handle running Linux, and working with all of Linux's tools, I daresay there's almost NOTHING on a Windows box that won't be child's play for you.
There's no good, compelling reason to trap yourself in Windows outside the office. Besides, use Linux, and save hundreds of dollars.
Of course I agree with you that their prices are ridiculous. I personally think they should price according to the local market, which would expand their clientele significantly. But, hey, they're the greediest people on Earth, after all. I don't think they're capable of taking a reasonable position. :)
Now you're talking down to me. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
.Net, which is where the Windows world is going anyway.
The point about custom applications was that when you're hired in a shop that uses them, THEY TRAIN YOU ON THEM. And having windows at home wouldn't let you learn them in advance anyway. So the argument that an individual needs to have Windows on his home computer so he can get a job is ridiculous.
You missed my point entirely, of course.
If you're saying "piracy is necessary because many companies in South America want to run Windows only, and can't afford it" then I have no sympathy for your position. If they can't afford it, it's worth porting their software to Java, which will let it run on Linux. Java is at least as easy to write code in as
Why are you mad that he said "if you can't afford it, don't buy it"? He didn't say you couldn't run ANY O/S... He just said don't buy the overpriced one.
Why shouldn't we discuss Linux? Is Linux a dirty word in your home? If so, why?
You say people need to know how to use Windows. So? What do you really think they'll be using? Most people use:
* A web browser
* A word processor and spreadsheet
* Some custom applications their company bought.
The web browser will work exactly the same on Linux.
You can get Open Office, which is very similar to Microsoft Office. The skills are almost entirely portable, unless you want to do VB scripting (unlikely).
Custom applications usually come with on the job training.
The only people who need to know Windows internals (thus need to actually work on a Windows machine at some point) are the people maintaining Windows servers. And they probably learned how to do that in some kind of technical school's lab.
My point is, Linux is a perfectly acceptable substitute and it's FREE. I know you're mad because you thought the GP sounded condescending, but I don't understand why you don't consider Linux an option.
Seriously, I'm asking.
First, if I write a book or a piece of software, I should enjoy that copyright for the duration of my natural life. I should also be able to let my wife inherit it and enjoy a profit from it for HER natural life. Similarly, my children should inherit something from my work, so they can have an advantage over the other kids and get a good head start on creating new work themselves. If my work is so good everyone wants a piece of it, then I've earned the right for my family to enjoy this protection.
The current copyright laws protect copyright through the duration of an author's life and 75 years past his death, by which point all his kids should be dead anyway. This is more than fair enough for any artist or author. It protects him, his wife, and all his children, ensuring them some income from his labor.
It's very simple.
Society benefits when people are given encouragement to produce interesting, worthwhile, original work. It benefits when, once such people are identified, they are taken care of, so they can raise their families without having to worry about working some bullshit dead-end job.
Richard Chesler: [Reading a piece of paper] The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club?
Narrator: [Voice-over] I'm half asleep again; I must've left the original in the copy machine.
Richard Chesler: The second rule of Fight Club - is this yours?
Narrator: Huh?
Richard Chesler: Pretend you're me, make a managerial decision: you find this, what would you do?
Narrator: [pauses] Well, I gotta tell you: I'd be very, very careful who you talk to about that, because the person who wrote that... is dangerous.
[Gets up from the chair]
Narrator: [Talking slowly] And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
Narrator: [Voice-over] Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
[Snatches the piece of paper from boss' hands]
Narrator: [Voice-over] And I used to be such a nice guy.
Narrator: Or maybe you shouldn't bring me every little piece of trash you happen to pick up.
[Phone rings]
Narrator: [Into phone] Compliance and Liability...?
Marla Singer: My tit's gonna rot off.
Narrator: [to boss] Would you excuse me? I need to take this.
Yes, but...
:)
* Microsoft distributes coupons. Joe, who has been watching this debate, acquires several of them.
* GPL V3 is released. Novell, after an update, is distributing GPL V3 versions of gcc, et al.
* Joe notices that the time is right and uses his coupons to acquire several copies of Novell's distribution. Microsoft provided those copies for Joe via their coupon. Is that not distribution? Microsoft would be one of the elements in the chain that put Novell Linux into Joe's hands. Eben Moglen seems to think so, and he's probably the pre-eminent expert on open-source related legal matters.
The wonderful irony in all this is that Microsoft's deal with Novell, intended by Microsoft to shore up their tenuous patent claims against Linux, would effectively de-fang and de-claw Microsoft's ENTIRE patent portfolio with respect to open source, all while making the GPL V3 the de-facto standard (who wouldn't want to get in on that level of protection for their projects?).
If Mr. Moglen succeeds in making this happen, he and Mr. Stallman are officially my Heroes. Say, what do you send your heroes in appreciation? A fruit basket seems kind of wishy-washy... A case of Jolt Cola? T-Shirts with "I saved Free Software and all I got was this crummy T-Shirt" on them? Boxing Gloves with "Ballmer's Face Here" written on the front?
One ponders...
People are still using DTD's? I thought everybody switched to XML Schema a while back. God, I can't keep up with this constant flux!
I need some chinese food. Hmm...
Schezuan!
A-HMMMMM... He said.
Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaah. Good luck with that.
...John was wearing a 500.00 suit (tasteful and practical but not flashy) and 100.00 dress shoes (ditto), simple navy blue tie and white dress shirt, he set his briefcase next to his chair, shook hands with his interviewer and introduced himself. After being invited to take a seat, he sat, relaxed, his arms carefully poised on the arm rests with his hands folded in his lap to convey the impression of openness (body language is everything to an H.R. drone).
(snip -- most of the conversation is very dull.)
H.R. Drone: So I see you worked at Acme until a month ago... I'm guessing you didn't quit, or you'd be working already. What happened there?
OPTION 1:
John: (Sighs, obviously relaxed) Well, there were some problems in a project I was working on. Things were going well on our side, but we had some issues with a vendor and we went over budget, then there was a delay, and the company decided to cut the project rather than continue trying to rescue it. Some of us were laid off in the process. The company was pretty nice to us, so I'm not complaining. We all parted on friendly terms. They said that if the project were to start back up, they'd invite me back, but I'd rather try something new. This opportunity looked pretty interesting, and I should be a good fit for it...
OPTION 2:
John: (smiles) Well, the company decided to streamline the IT department and merge some groups together, and in the process a few of the project teams got laid off. They were pretty nice about it, so there were no hard feelings. I'll miss the place; they're nice to work for. But this opportunity looks intersting, and my experience should be a good match for it...
OPTION 3:
John: (fidgets, fingers beard, glares at interviewer with his good eye) How long have you been spying on me? You work for THEM, don't you! Are you recording this? Where's the cameras??? Don't lie to me, you work for the Shop, don't you? You do, don't you? You'll never take me alive! Stay back! I have a ballpoint pen!!! Damn you, blackbird, show yourself! (backs into corner and points Bic pen at interviewer) STAY BACK!
Listen, I'm not picking on you here, and please don't take this comment as any sort of hostile taunt, ok?
If you're still running Windows 98, and it's connected to a network, TRUST ME, you've got malware running on it. You may not be able to see it, and you may not know about it, but you are almost certainly the proud owner of a 'bot. Maybe a whole community of them.
Just because it LOOKS "stable and pleasant" doesn't mean it IS. A well-written piece of malware is invisible to the owner of the machine. You wouldn't even know it was there. The fact that you don't think you have to do any work on your '98 box is a dead giveaway; you're probably wide open. And that poor woman probably has at least a keylogger and a spambot running on it. Keeping her machine on Windows 98 does her a great disservice and you should IMMEDIATELY replace it. If you're dead-set on using Windows, at LEAST get her XP Home Edition!
As far as your Vista box goes, well, it might be locked down enough to be ok. I don't know since nobody I know is even THINKING of using Vista. Our general opinion of it is that it's like a very pretty, tricked-out Hummer which has a small 4 cylinder motor in it and four thousand pounds of lead plates bolted to the chassis. Looks great, moves reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal slooooooooooooooooow.
I'm not FUDing, and I disagree strongly with your assessment. I offer the following three statements in support of my position:
1. I would not use Mac OS/X as a server; I believe it's much more suited to providing a workstation environment. In that capacity, I've used it for years without a single crash (mostly for Java programming, writing in OpenOffice, playing Alien Vs. Predator 2, web browsing, and email).
2. At home, I use Linux as a workstation (specifically, I run Slackware). No crashes. No down time. Just pleasant, efficient computing without any difficulties.
3. Even the STOCK MARKET is now running Linux. Obviously it's got the stones. Note that they did NOT pick Windows. As for your "linux lab going down" one catastrophe "fixed by the next version" does not a strong argument make. For all I know, you misconfigured the environment and caused the crash yourself! I haven't heard anyone else reporting such an event... Yeah, must have been you. Sorry, dude. Not buying it.
Again, this isn't FUD, it's common sense.
You're like the adults in the old Charlie Brown cartoons -- I'm sure you're saying something, but all I keep hearing is MWAH MWAH, MWAH MWAH MWAH MWAH. Boring!
You have fun fiddling around with your multiplicity of languages while I knuckle down and master my one. Each to his own, as I've said. But there's only so much a jack of all trades can keep in mind at any one time, regardless of what you "all languages great and small" types think. Mastery comes only with time and attention. Guys like you are willing to part with neither, and you get a predictable result.
You're like a cloud of water vapor, blown this way and that by the wind. I'm like the water in a river, flowing in my proper direction with great force. Your lack of focus is your primary weakness.
I find it amusing that you trotted out that weatherbeaten old false analogy about screwdrivers. Puh-lease. What nonsense. If anything, a modern language is more like a swiss army knife with tools for every purpose. Try a new analogy, something more apropos. Something RECENT.
And by the way, pot, I love the way you call this kettle black. A jab against "Personal attacks" in the same sentence with "people like you are all the same"? Looks like irony isn't just something your wife does to your shirts, eh?
Anyway, keep 'em coming. I enjoy a good tete a tete.
Up until now, I've used leatherbound journals, keeping 3 copies in a safe. If I forget a password, I dig it out and look it up. But lately I've been thinking that it would be nice if I could have a Java app on a CD that I could carry around with me, and have all my passwords securely stowed in one place.
Since I've currently got to master Java DB (the embedded database) for a work-related project, I've been thinking about rolling my own password database. You would only copy it to your PC when you were altering it, i.e. updating a password or adding a new account. At all other times the whole project directory would be burned to CD-R. Maybe copied and hidden in a few locations, just to be on the safe side (like a safe, or a safety deposit box).
Here are my "requirements"; I think this project's going to be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to getting busy with it during my upcoming vacation:
1. The system will use public key encryption, with the public key stored in the database and the private key generated from a passphrase you would memorize. You would have to enter that phrase each time you wanted to use the software, of course.
2. Passwords would always be encrypted until just before they were about to be displayed to you. They would only be in an unencrypted state in memory, never on disk (although I'm worried about swap... What to do? Or do you even have to worry about this?).
3. You could store all the random things you need to know about the site as metadata along with your password.
4. It would have a nice GUI for working with it and be designed primarily for Linux, but being written in Java, would run basically anywhere. Note that one nice part of the project is that I would have to cook up a scheme for finding a temp directory for JavaDB on any system I was going to run on, like Linux, Windows, and Mac O/S. That's interesting, I think.
5. When fishing out a password, you'll be able to copy and paste it into a site's login dialog. Once you're done, the password is cleared off the screen and out of memory. An interesting idea is to somehow let you cut and paste it without ever actually SEEING it if you're not alone in your cubicle. More fun stuff to fool around with.
Should be fun, right? A nice little hobby project...
Again, it's not about feeling smug, it's about not having to spend all your time futzing around with your Windows box trying to prevent it from getting stuffed up with spyware and viruses, rebuilding it after it DOES get stuffed up, and constantly trying to figure out what bizarre thing the next service pack is going to do to you.
By running Linux or OS/X, you can spend all your time actually doing something useful. Write a book, write some code, browse slashdot. Whatever.
Windows eats up too much time to be useful.
Oh, pardon me ALL OVER THE PLACE (said in my best Robert Mitchum impersonation).
BITS is a piece of Windows Update (it's the system Microsoft built to let Windows Update get past your firewall).
Therefore...
using BITS is like using Windows Update. Or at least part of it. And it makes life easier for spyware authors.
Nyah, nyah! Pbbbbbbbbbt!
I don't get emotional over operating systems. Except for one specific situation. It's a funny story, so what the hell, I'll tell it to you.
My mother used to use a Compaq with Windows installed. Despite her running Norton Internet Security, it would periodically get utterly FUBAR by viruses, trojans, crapware... I found myself reinstalling the whole damn box a few times a month. I couldn't go NEAR their house without having to spend a few hours fixing their computer.
Finally I got fed up and heckled her into buying an eMac with OS/X. That machine has been chugging along for YEARS without a single problem. It's so easy to use she's doing her own software updates now, and she's even learned how to set up email filters to distribute friends, family, colleagues, etc. Years, without a single virus, problem, anything. The only thing I've had to do for her recently is show her how to reload the toner in a laser printer; she wasn't used to 'em, she used to use inkjets.
Just thinking about it makes me weep with joy! My weekends are so much more fun now! Quieter, certainly.
So, yeah, I think I can afford to smirk with pleasure when Microsoft types have yet another crappy day. If they don't like it, let 'em switch! It isn't religion, it's KNOWING that your O/S is the better of the two. From empirical observation!
UUUUUUUHHHHH, not so fast there, professor.
:)
I understand the issue at hand perfectly. Microsoft uses the BITS protocol to manage Windows Update downloads and work around firewalls. A trojan that gets ahold of your windows system can use the BITS system to implement updates and installs of malware, thus making malware maintenance as convenient as Windows Update itself.
So, not only is your Windows box easy to hose because it's got so many critical vulnerabilities and Microsoft (not being open source) is the only source for patches and updates, but once you're hosed, your friendly neighborhood hacker can use WINDOWS UPDATE ITSELF to maintain his "software"!
Again, I say: if you were using Linux or OS/X you could enjoy all this with the same detached amusement that I do.
As you were...
If you were all using Linux or OS/X, you could watch this catastrophe with detached amusement instead of butt-clenching fear.
Me, I'm relaxed and enjoying a soda.
UUCP doesn't count as networked? And if they were serving terminals, what do you call that, exactly? Try to remember that the internet is NOT the world wide web. It is also email, ftp, uucp, gopher, telnet, usenet, and so on. And just because they didn't call it a server didn't mean it wasn't acting as one. Back then, since there were no clients (thus no distinction between client and server) they just considered it "the computer" and connected to it via teletype or ANSI terminal.
This isn't networked? The ARPANET wasn't a network?
Whatever you're drinking, pour me one.
>> Your toolbox should be much broader than one language.
A jack of all trades is the master of none.
>> It also doesn't address the legacy application issue.
So? Presumably if you have legacy apps, you have legacy employees who can maintain them (until they're rewritten and killed off).
>> Or the cost of hiring/retraining existing staff.
You have to hire/retrain staff no matter what you do. Even if you're a die-hard Microsoft fanboy, every few years Microsoft changes everything and everybody has to re-learn their job. Look at the Visual Basic 6 guys who had to retool for VB.Net. Don't be dense.
>> Also, I don't think doing *everything* in java is particularly smart.
So you think we should use VB.Net instead? That's Microsoft's "everything" language. I'll stick with Java and wish you good luck on your horrible journey. Better you than me, chum, but you might want to rethink that one a tad.
At least with Java the language doesn't change much over time. It gets new features, which is always a good thing. But the language itself has remained very consistent.
And it's a very good language. You can write almost anything with it.
Each to his own, I suppose.
>> you see every person at Microsoft as being some kind of carbon copy who's opinion is somehow always wrong and invalid
No, I see them as people who have accepted a bizarre herd mentality which leads naturally to poor software development practices. They tend to be arrogant and haughty, and make poor decisions about their products. When they have trouble competing fairly in the market, they gleefully turn to their bag of dirty tricks. They would rather "win" (and I use the term loosely because I don't think a pyrrhic victory IS a win) than be honest or respected, and in my view, this makes them unclean.
If this upsets you, tough noogies. If they clean up their act I may reconsider.
>> It's comments like this that make it nearly impossible to take you seriously.
That's ok, Mr. Microsoft Fanboy. You don't have to take me seriously. I don't keep my ego there. I voiced my opinion, more politely than many Microsoft fanboys do I might add, and you huff huffed all over the place. What's the difference? They won't exist in five years. Maybe ten.
Linux will.
No biggie; but the claim you were describing has always bothered me, so I felt it couldn't hurt to debunk it yet again.
:)
You know, just "get it on paper"...
>> ...pointing out that the safety of linux is not a property of linux itself,
>> but merely a byproduct of its relative popularity in the world.
The problem is that this argument is bogus. Linux, the BSDs, Solaris, and OS/X are more secure than Windows because they possess a unix-type architecture. Unix, which dates to 1973, has been studied and improved for over 34 years. Its longevity in the market is a testament to the soundness of its original design; the fact that most truly large organizations use a unix derivative instead of Windows for their most important data is a testament to its secure nature.
Unix was designed from the beginning to be a multiuser, networked, server operating system, by two men widely considered to be masters among computer scientists (just to give you an idea, they invented the C programming language specifically to use it to write Unix so it would be easy to port it across platforms -- they worked at Bell Labs, one of the pre-eminent research organizations of the period).
SO...
Unix-derived systems are more secure than Windows because they are the latest iterations of a long, prestigious legacy. They are more secure because they're the collective result of over 34 years of research, development, and design (even longer if you count the research into MULTICS that predated UNIX). they're more secure because they been attacked for far longer than Windows, and the ways in which they CAN be attacked are well understood (thus much easier to prevent).
Unix-derived systems are JUST BETTER, and they will always be better.
One interesting point I could make right now is that since Microsoft greedily insists on rewriting everything every five years, they will NEVER have decades with which to work all the bugs out of their code -- it will ALWAYS be immature code. Shame, really. But funny!
Hmm...
> 1. It is better to focus resources on high risk security bugs.
Agreed. But you should at least TRY to get the rest of them, too.
> 2. We get rated better (internally and externally) for fixing publically known problems.
You should not be chasing after ratings, but rather, perfection. You should WANT to make your software as good as it can be. You should TRY to make it perfect whether your work is acknowledged or not.
> 3. Hackers usually find additional bugs by examining patches to existing bugs, so a patch could expose more bugs than fixes are available for.
Them's the breaks. Patch anyway and when new bugs appear, patch them too.
> 4. If we disclose a bug and fix it, it just escalates the "arms race" with the hackers. Better to keep it hidden.
Bogus argument. You CAN'T keep it hidden. Real hackers are out fuzzing your code and finding the bugs without your help. If you don't patch, your code is not secure. If you don't want to match wits with hackers, you're in the wrong field and you should bow out gracefully.
> 5. Not all customers immediately patch. So by announcing a patch to previously unknown to the public bug, we actually exponentially increase the chances of that bug being exploited by hackers.
Also a bogus argument. If a client doesn't patch, he's a darwin award waiting to happen and it's his own fault. YOUR duty is to supply patches. Do your duty. Let the failure be someone else's; live up to your responsibility and give people the tools they need to secure their sites!
Basically, my stock response to people who claim points like these is "quit making excuses and do your job"! Seriously. Their argument sounds like a slacker explaining why he doesn't have to put the final polishes on a piece of software (while he plays foosball with the sysadmins and isn't even listening to you).