Can't help myself here. Using ridiculous reverse logic of a TV intelligence interrogator.
So you are admitting that you are aware of Chinese back doors that are not currently known about by legitimate parties? Tell me what you know of these back doors. And tell me how we can use them.
And that just teaches the kid that there are no consequences. Dumb kids need to be punished. They need to be seen paying for the crime themselves. Their peers need to see that Jimmy in their class went to jail for a year because he was acting like a twit and caused some serious harm.
I also feel that the US would over penalize the kid.
If it's something like a bomb threat of a hostage taking with weapons you don't really have much choice. It's clear the area ASAP.
People don't call in a SWAT saying. "I''m having bad day and I'm slowly filling my house with water till I drown." giving the Police ample time to make decisions.
911 is not only accessible via standard phone lines and cell/mobile phones. Location tech only has 3 basic methods of locating you. Generally only the first is ever used. Most often however the 911 operator asks, "Where are you right now?" 1. Land line billing / install address. 2. Mobile phone GPS location. First the police must have authority to activate GPS remotely. Second the phone needs to have GPS. Not all phones do.
2.1 Kind of a third method. Cell tower location that the caller used. This takes a hideous amount of time to determine despite laws that say telcos must provide the capability. So generally not used. And this is horribly inaccurate. 3. Geo location of IP address of user. Horribly inaccurate and police forces around the world are very slow to use this tech. Also for example if you have a 3/4G phone your IP address is usually geolocated at the telco company headquarters. This is not generally used for 911 type locations.
Remember the operator only has a few seconds to establish your location during an incident call. They tend to only fall back on location tools when the caller is unable to provide the address them selves. So if the caller says they are at a location then generally that is the accepted location for the incident.
In many jurisdictions around North America and the world for that matter you can place an emergency call via any number of means. You can text, email, tweet skype, use a web form, etc. Note that most of the new forms of emergency notifications come over the internet. Since it is painfully simple these days to make it appear as if you are coming from basically any spot on the globe with internet communications a person can spoof their location with ease.
Note all of this does not mean they can't find the location of the caller. After the incident a wealth of information can be investigated and fairly precise locations can be determined. So don't take what I have said as a open ticket to SWAT. This case proves it's only a matter of time before you get nabbed.
You forgot that from the total number of monkeys you must subtract those monkeys involved in: HR Project Management Engineering Catering Procurement
Once we do this it's clear that the actual number of Monkey's involved far exceeds those quoted. The Chinese are clearly fudging the numbers to make the project appear to be viable.
SSL is the standard. OpenSSL is an implementation LibreSSL is an implementation
The standard isn't forked.
In this instance the standard mostly applies to the protocol. The on system interfaces will most likely mutate rather quickly. Most specifically at the user interaction level. The library interfaces will most likely remain steady.
This isn't a bad thing.
SSL and it's related crypto cousins is all about trust, but paradoxically Crypto people don't trust crypto people so there is very little trust out there. So really powerful things like personal / corporate certificate authorities just don't exist in practice. Imagine the power of a CA for personal certs. It would change authentication forever. Good bye 300 passwords. But since no two people can build two independent systems that truly trust each other there really is no hope for personal certificate authorities. Maybe this reboot of an SSL implementation can move us one step closer. Or even an inch/2.2cm.
This will be abused the instant it hits code. The temptation is too great. This will sink the adoption of http 2.0 and 1.1 will live for a far greater time.
With all of the news around man in the middle attacks I just can't believe this will be a feature.
This needs to be amended. I can see trusted chains, Where you would trust a chain from end to end, but just the proxy? With each node in the chain being able to cache.
If you are full time employee. - The employer pays for time and materials. No matter what the cause of the bug was the employer absorbs the costs of it's own mistakes.
If you are a contract employee on a Time and Materials contract. - This is virtual the same as full time. The customer in this case pays for everything including bug repair.
If you on a contract to deliver a service or product. - Well now the Contract owner is responsible for paying for all errors that fit with in the bounds of error as outlined in the contract.
There are a few variations on the above. Usually there are caps on all contracts to prevent excess expenditures. Things like T&M that can only reach X amount ever.
Sandboxes are good for consuming applications. The firewall is not a consumer. It's a part of the command and control chain. It's a the heart of the system. Sandboxing the kernel is self defeating. As it's the kernel and everything spawns from it. So you can't really protect your child processes if your kernel is compromised.
Embedding a language at such a low level is very tricky. It has to be blinding fast and user very very little resources. python, perl, ruby are all great languages. but ill suited for the task of network management tasks. The RAM overheads are huge. This is why we are seeing a relatively constant evolution, change of embedded languages at these low levels. This is a game of resource management on the host system.
Just imagine if this host was a web server. With thousands of socket requests per second. How would Python manage to keep up with that. Without crushing the system under load even before the traffic was passed off to a process like Ngynx to handle. Python would be a performance nightmare at this level.
Another way to look at this is. What if you hammered the system with a DOS style attack. If each request had to go through a python execution stack you are basically making the system far more vulnerable to DOS than it ever was before.
Now lets look at topics around these highly extensible languages. Here you have a system that in part is supposed to improve security. But by adding in a language like python you are adding in a very extensible lnaguage at a very low level. A kernel level to be precise. So higher than root. The security implications are enormous. You are basically exposing the kernel to a far higher risk. This would be a hackers dream come true.
So there are reason for these language syntax choices. They must be managed very carefully.
I completely agree. Solaris "was" a great OS. With some very notable monster issues. Oracle has effectively killed Solaris. I simple can't use it anymore. The licensing costs of it and the software that runs on it are more than my total IT budget. Despite it's fantastic attributes I can no longer afford to put this in my Datacenter. With on demand virtualisation I can not afford to have to worry about things like. "Am I going to violate my license conditions if I spin up X more?"
I had an Oracle sale rep try to sell my that ridiculous Oracle stack in a box Exadata/logic. I was almost crying in laughter by the end of the sales presentation. 2/3 of the way through I stood up and wrote on the white board "Tell me how this isn't vendor lock in?". I called time at the 1 hour mark. I ended the meeting with the simple statement. Everything you have shown me is all about "vendor lock in" every word out of your mouths just re-enforced this concept. I had one question for you the entire meeting and you simple could not in any way respond to it.
So I priced everything I might need on Amazon. Using free and commercial AMI's with the odd vendor SW package tossed in. My first year spend was 1/25th of the Exadata discounted opening price. Nothing on the EC2 list had anything to do with Solaris. This is how you kill something. Make it financially ridiculous.
Issues with Solaris. That should have been addressed in the Oracle years. - Package manager was brain dead. apt, yum are far better. ( Sorry Solaris 11 was too late. Too much legacy out there. ) - Patching made no sense. You have no idea what packages are patched with a patch. Patches were just binary disk vomit that spewed crud all over the system. Impossible in the real world to build any sort of verification around them. ( Sorry Solaris 11 was too late. Too much legacy out there. ) - Zones: Are a nightmare of security and privilege. I don't care what any says a zone is just a change root jail. Which means you will only every be as up-to-date as the host system. And it means you must be compatible and tested against the host system. Which is really no different than not having zones. Zones are a horrible horrible mess. - No dependable only repository of packages that is robust or up to date. Far to much package hunting still required to locate software for solaris. Most packages are months to years behind there linux counterparts. - Java performs better on x64 than Solaris/SPARC. This has boggled me for years. Only recent sparc architectures let java and other highly threaded applications stacks really perform well. Why do I even have to know about processor binding for processes?
I've been in IT for 25 years. I'm a consultant that is often retained by some of the largest organisations around the planet. I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. My speciality is performance Engineering of distributed systems. And I don't live with my parents.
I can confidentially say I do know what I am talking about in this regard.:)
Here is the current estimate of installed and running XP systems. In excess of 500,000,000. You have stated that you believe there are hundreds of thousands of systems that as you say can not be upgraded. Lets out that at an even 500,000 systems. That is 0.1% of the install base pessimistically can't be upgraded. Now world wide the estimated number of PC operating is, 1,630,000,000. So that 500,000 is now actually 0.03% of the world wide PC install base can not be upgraded.
This is considered an edge case in my profession. And extreme edge case. One of the principles in making large distributed systems ( The internet being the biggest ) faster, more efficient, more robust, less error prone is to remove far flung edge cases. As the cost of maintaining edge cases is ridiculously huge. It's because you are not just maintaining the edge case in isolation. You are also maintaining all of the potential interaction points associated with the edge case. The cost being almost invisible on a per node basis becomes and astoundingly large cost when you take into account the whole system. These costs are worn by everyone involved, not just Microsoft. Even those with up to date systems still pay extra to fund the maintenance of ageing architectures.
And you are correct, newer does not mean better all the time. However if you restrict your vision to just the function of the device you care about. It is easy to say newer is not necessarily better. The problem is you took a far too narrow look at the problem space. You need to accept the fact that the function you care about in the device is not the only function it is capable of doing. In the Case of windows XP the number of "other" potential functions is very large. If you include in the list of functions, malware, virus's & trogans that are designed not only to disrupt that system but to spread and further disrupt others you realise that if you replace the device with all it possible functions with a more robust device you will see that the sum total of the negative functions drops. Which in turn reduces overall impact on adjacent systems. So now we clearly see that the impact of the 0.03% of systems is vastly greater than it's diminutive count. In some cases 0.03% of cases it is possible that the cared about function when upgraded is either dimensioned or non-functional. But the net impact is still positive.
I have done analysis after analysis and I have very very rarely found a system that can not be migrated. The cost is no that much usually. Dramatically less that what is thought to be the cost. It's just that people are just too afraid to try. For what every reason. Almost always they are afraid of failure.
You know what would be sensible. How about placing all the code of your un-upgradable application in the public domain as well as the OS. I'm very much in favour of that. Linux being a huge success in this regard.
What you have to start really worrying about is the physical age of the system you so dearly depend on. If it's pushing 5 years plus I would start to worry. If it's 10 years I would start to panic. Once system components start to burn out you are really faced with a stop the presses kind of challenge. Because that's exactly what's going to happen, business stops. In most of these cases backups and proper documentation of the critical system are also missing. Now you are really screwed.
If you are in a business that is purchasing customer software or highly specialised software for a purpose you have to be including in the contract that the source of the software is to be handed over in the case w
If you express the reason in this forum you might actually get some assistance between the flames to solve your issues.
There really is no good reason what so every not to upgrade.
You actually admit you stopped updating an OS so it stays in the same state. The only way this is going to happen is not to network it. Even then Entropy in the OS will eat away at it's stability. I really can't think of any good reason why not to upgrade. The only reason that holds any sort of water is cost. But guess what you you saved just $10 a month for the last 3 years you could buy a whole new computer with Win7 or 8 on it. If you are a pensioner you can get even more discounts. Which is still a few years after MS announced it's killing off XP.
Your computers are just breeding ground for virus's. Please unplug them from the net.
The cost of supporting windows XP is actually climbing. As the architecture ages it gets harder and harder to duct tape over the issues without a whole sale re-architecture or evolution. Which by the way is exactly what VISTA, Win7 and Win 8 are. All of which have better architectural foundations making support cheaper.
WinXP can be thought of as 3 generations older. It's done it's service. The vast majority of the net would be safer and benefit greatly if XP was removed from the net. There would be a considerable drop in Virus/Malware related traffic.
"What if something doesn't work after?" Thus less than some small minority of the populous is inconvenienced.
How about What if the world is exposed to increasingly harmful malware infections that threaten financial, systems control, hospitals etc.
Guess what. This is exactly the same ridiculous argument that occurred in the 1970's when seat belts were made mandatory around most of the world. "You can't make seat belts mandatory the pensioners can't afford to install them" And yada yada and such. Seat belts are now mandatory in most regions of the world. Where ever this law went in we saw a dramatic reduction in injuries and fatalities.
Windows XP is the seat-belt less world of desktop computing.
I really do not feel any remorse for siding with a policy that will bring far more good than it will bad. Seriously it's not like there wasn't enough warning. Those of you out there caught with software that won't operate on something newer are just plain lazy, cheap and quite frankly stupid. You have been warned about this for years. YEARS.
Frankly I think MS should be working on Ending VISTA as well very soon. Also putting a kill switch out there for older browsers.
Operating systems are the consumables of the desktop computer. They have use by dates. Printer ink has a use by date. Food has a use by date. Even bloody gasoline has a use by date. This is the mind set we need to be in.
Apple has some how made it cool to buy the upgrades. ( I haven't quite figured our how they did that. ) Despite my hatred for all things Apple you have to respect that they get people to upgrade.
I'm a UNIX person and I have to agree. What horrible fad was happening when gnome3 and Unity came out. Some sort of cult mental infection leading normally very intelligent people down a garden path. To a garden filled with snakes, spiders and die flowers.
Someone sees an iphone and all of a sudden it has to be the UI of the desktop? Gnome 3, Unity, Win 8 all caught the bug.
That one two punch of Unity and Gnome 3 set back the Linux UI at least 2 years I reckon.
OK X has to go. I can understand that. But X isn't the window manager. Yes UI designs have to start adapting for other input metaphors.
But to completely disregard 2 decades of UI design in one non-negotiable release, was just plain idiotic. Note all of them did this by the way. It's like all the design people at once fell into a cauldron of apple sauce.
No real attempt was really made at all to construct a bridging metaphor between windowed, mouse-keyboard fullscreen, touch UI design. Just screw we are now touch only.
Thankfully there is now the early taste of sanity building in UID design again. We see both camps take baby steps toward each. A more sensible evolutionary path is taking form. At the same time as fundamental graphical engines are being rebuilt from scratch to be natively friendly with alternative input metaphors.
This just makes the whole thing worse. Extending XP will simply result in more infections for longer.
Absolutely the death of support for XP will result in a spike on infections. This is with out a doubt. However it is a spike. Basically XP machines will become so un-usable the spike will end. With the machines death.
What MS should do is offer an amnesty and allow people to download and install a scaled back version of Win 7 or 8 for no charge. With the option of buying a 1 year subscription every year for it for next to nothing.
That way MS looks better and with luck security gets better. Also MS might actually retain some market share as a result. Otherwise it's all going to poorly maintained linux distros. ( Yes linux can be up to date. But lets face it most people never run updates of their own free will. Linux package managers in all the distros still require consent in order to proceed. Which people don't like or understand. )
XP needs to die. OR infections will keep spreading.
One letter in a post and you go off like a Roman candle. You must be Mr. Fun bags at home. The girls must be dying to crawl all over your overly critical ass.
Cheers mate enjoy that piss you call a beer.
And why are you trying to defend a Wanker button? Ah of course you don't have a girlfriend.:)
( If you are going to toss out the smack be ready to take it. )
Because it is the boss' job to come up with a solution to this kind of problem.
Sure the boss can come up with a solution. But as a boss I would love suggestions / proposals / ideas what every to help solve problems. I definitely would not want to be working in an IT shop when all the ideas come from one guy. That's a company destined for failure.
And what makes this a boss problem?
If you worked for me as a manager of people, YOU should worry about YOUR job because as a manager (boss) it is your job to solve that kind of problem. By saying it is your employee's job to come up with a solution to a management problem, you are saying you are lazy and expendable. I should fire YOU and promote HIM.
It's everyone's job to come up with solutions to problems. Because someone else might come up with a solution to a problem by no means the others are lazy.
Guess what if one of my staff consistently comes up with good solutions he or she is a very good candidate for a promotion. And I have no issue what so every that people be promoted above me. I am definitely not arrogant enough to think that someone working for me will never become my boss. Which by the way has happened a few times.
And here is the rub. Most of us who work in IT it is our job to make out own job obsolete. That's what we do, we automate our own jobs away.
And, your suggestion is to tell them how they can outsource most of his job thus making him redundant.
You don't make people redundant you make the role redundant. If the individual is able and willing to take on a new role it is generally a promotion or raise. If the person can not fulfil a new role then generally they are given handsome payouts. Which I have now received 3 of over the years. It's basically a big fat almost tax free pile of money. Bills get paid debts are cleared and your standard of living improves.
So what I said was. Get rid of those services that you should most definitely not be managing in house. Thus freeing up resources. Which are people. Which can be used to solve real business problems not just make sure people stay within their ridiculous Exchange mail box quotas.
So I'm would definitely and have said we are making your role redundant. You got some options. A take the money and run or B. take on this more challenging role with a raise. Both are great outcomes for individuals.
It's attitudes like the one you express that I filter out of the organisation as quickly as I can. "It's not my problem, it's so and so's" People who express this attitude are people I know are not helping the company make money. Which means they are dead weight. Typically the method for handling them is straight forward. It's to performance manage them. Generally this process is easy. As this personality type basically makes the whole situation implode in weeks of informing them they are under performance management review. Which by the way generally leads to no payout.
It is rare that someone actually gets fired. You really have to be a walking disaster to be fired. Theft and or interpersonal issues involving threats or actions must be involved to justify be fired. Just being incompetent is not enough.
If he doesn't have the power to decide he can certainly tell the bosses. The goal is more resources. The author is looking for methods of telling the boss they need more help.
Well how about something novel. How about giving the boss the problem and a solution. Not just a problem statement.
I need more people -- Problem Here is how I can free up some people -- Solution.
The people that come to me with only step one should worry about their jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't help myself here. Using ridiculous reverse logic of a TV intelligence interrogator.
So you are admitting that you are aware of Chinese back doors that are not currently known about by legitimate parties?
Tell me what you know of these back doors.
And tell me how we can use them.
How do you think the NSA found the Chinese back doors?
Kinda of a duh moment don't you think?
And that just teaches the kid that there are no consequences. Dumb kids need to be punished. They need to be seen paying for the crime themselves. Their peers need to see that Jimmy in their class went to jail for a year because he was acting like a twit and caused some serious harm.
I also feel that the US would over penalize the kid.
If it's something like a bomb threat of a hostage taking with weapons you don't really have much choice. It's clear the area ASAP.
People don't call in a SWAT saying. "I''m having bad day and I'm slowly filling my house with water till I drown." giving the Police ample time to make decisions.
911 is not only accessible via standard phone lines and cell/mobile phones. Location tech only has 3 basic methods of locating you. Generally only the first is ever used. Most often however the 911 operator asks, "Where are you right now?"
1. Land line billing / install address.
2. Mobile phone GPS location. First the police must have authority to activate GPS remotely. Second the phone needs to have GPS. Not all phones do.
2.1 Kind of a third method. Cell tower location that the caller used. This takes a hideous amount of time to determine despite laws that say telcos must provide the capability. So generally not used. And this is horribly inaccurate.
3. Geo location of IP address of user. Horribly inaccurate and police forces around the world are very slow to use this tech. Also for example if you have a 3/4G phone your IP address is usually geolocated at the telco company headquarters. This is not generally used for 911 type locations.
Remember the operator only has a few seconds to establish your location during an incident call. They tend to only fall back on location tools when the caller is unable to provide the address them selves. So if the caller says they are at a location then generally that is the accepted location for the incident.
In many jurisdictions around North America and the world for that matter you can place an emergency call via any number of means. You can text, email, tweet skype, use a web form, etc. Note that most of the new forms of emergency notifications come over the internet. Since it is painfully simple these days to make it appear as if you are coming from basically any spot on the globe with internet communications a person can spoof their location with ease.
Note all of this does not mean they can't find the location of the caller. After the incident a wealth of information can be investigated and fairly precise locations can be determined. So don't take what I have said as a open ticket to SWAT. This case proves it's only a matter of time before you get nabbed.
You forgot that from the total number of monkeys you must subtract those monkeys involved in:
HR
Project Management
Engineering
Catering
Procurement
Once we do this it's clear that the actual number of Monkey's involved far exceeds those quoted. The Chinese are clearly fudging the numbers to make the project appear to be viable.
SSL is the standard.
OpenSSL is an implementation
LibreSSL is an implementation
The standard isn't forked.
In this instance the standard mostly applies to the protocol. The on system interfaces will most likely mutate rather quickly. Most specifically at the user interaction level. The library interfaces will most likely remain steady.
This isn't a bad thing.
SSL and it's related crypto cousins is all about trust, but paradoxically Crypto people don't trust crypto people so there is very little trust out there. So really powerful things like personal / corporate certificate authorities just don't exist in practice. Imagine the power of a CA for personal certs. It would change authentication forever. Good bye 300 passwords. But since no two people can build two independent systems that truly trust each other there really is no hope for personal certificate authorities. Maybe this reboot of an SSL implementation can move us one step closer. Or even an inch/2.2cm.
This is laughably a bad idea.
This will be abused the instant it hits code. The temptation is too great. This will sink the adoption of http 2.0 and 1.1 will live for a far greater time.
With all of the news around man in the middle attacks I just can't believe this will be a feature.
This needs to be amended. I can see trusted chains, Where you would trust a chain from end to end, but just the proxy? With each node in the chain being able to cache.
There are a few types of basic contract.
If you are full time employee.
- The employer pays for time and materials. No matter what the cause of the bug was the employer absorbs the costs of it's own mistakes.
If you are a contract employee on a Time and Materials contract.
- This is virtual the same as full time. The customer in this case pays for everything including bug repair.
If you on a contract to deliver a service or product.
- Well now the Contract owner is responsible for paying for all errors that fit with in the bounds of error as outlined in the contract.
There are a few variations on the above. Usually there are caps on all contracts to prevent excess expenditures. Things like T&M that can only reach X amount ever.
A firewall in a sandbox?
Do you see the issue here?
Sandboxes are good for consuming applications. The firewall is not a consumer. It's a part of the command and control chain. It's a the heart of the system. Sandboxing the kernel is self defeating. As it's the kernel and everything spawns from it. So you can't really protect your child processes if your kernel is compromised.
Good one. That's funny.
I'm with you on that one. I have to re-teach myself iptables each time I have to setup a configuration.
The problem is overheads and security.
Embedding a language at such a low level is very tricky. It has to be blinding fast and user very very little resources. python, perl, ruby are all great languages. but ill suited for the task of network management tasks. The RAM overheads are huge. This is why we are seeing a relatively constant evolution, change of embedded languages at these low levels. This is a game of resource management on the host system.
Just imagine if this host was a web server. With thousands of socket requests per second. How would Python manage to keep up with that. Without crushing the system under load even before the traffic was passed off to a process like Ngynx to handle. Python would be a performance nightmare at this level.
Another way to look at this is. What if you hammered the system with a DOS style attack. If each request had to go through a python execution stack you are basically making the system far more vulnerable to DOS than it ever was before.
Now lets look at topics around these highly extensible languages. Here you have a system that in part is supposed to improve security. But by adding in a language like python you are adding in a very extensible lnaguage at a very low level. A kernel level to be precise. So higher than root. The security implications are enormous. You are basically exposing the kernel to a far higher risk. This would be a hackers dream come true.
So there are reason for these language syntax choices. They must be managed very carefully.
I really can't understand this Rider!
I just can't understand what there is to be gained from the Incandescent bulb lobby?
Republicans are very very odd. What can be gained from this?
I completely agree. Solaris "was" a great OS. With some very notable monster issues. Oracle has effectively killed Solaris. I simple can't use it anymore. The licensing costs of it and the software that runs on it are more than my total IT budget. Despite it's fantastic attributes I can no longer afford to put this in my Datacenter. With on demand virtualisation I can not afford to have to worry about things like. "Am I going to violate my license conditions if I spin up X more?"
I had an Oracle sale rep try to sell my that ridiculous Oracle stack in a box Exadata/logic. I was almost crying in laughter by the end of the sales presentation. 2/3 of the way through I stood up and wrote on the white board "Tell me how this isn't vendor lock in?". I called time at the 1 hour mark. I ended the meeting with the simple statement. Everything you have shown me is all about "vendor lock in" every word out of your mouths just re-enforced this concept. I had one question for you the entire meeting and you simple could not in any way respond to it.
So I priced everything I might need on Amazon. Using free and commercial AMI's with the odd vendor SW package tossed in. My first year spend was 1/25th of the Exadata discounted opening price. Nothing on the EC2 list had anything to do with Solaris. This is how you kill something. Make it financially ridiculous.
Issues with Solaris. That should have been addressed in the Oracle years.
- Package manager was brain dead. apt, yum are far better. ( Sorry Solaris 11 was too late. Too much legacy out there. )
- Patching made no sense. You have no idea what packages are patched with a patch. Patches were just binary disk vomit that spewed crud all over the system. Impossible in the real world to build any sort of verification around them. ( Sorry Solaris 11 was too late. Too much legacy out there. )
- Zones: Are a nightmare of security and privilege. I don't care what any says a zone is just a change root jail. Which means you will only every be as up-to-date as the host system. And it means you must be compatible and tested against the host system. Which is really no different than not having zones. Zones are a horrible horrible mess.
- No dependable only repository of packages that is robust or up to date. Far to much package hunting still required to locate software for solaris. Most packages are months to years behind there linux counterparts.
- Java performs better on x64 than Solaris/SPARC. This has boggled me for years. Only recent sparc architectures let java and other highly threaded applications stacks really perform well. Why do I even have to know about processor binding for processes?
I've been in IT for 25 years. I'm a consultant that is often retained by some of the largest organisations around the planet. I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. My speciality is performance Engineering of distributed systems. And I don't live with my parents.
I can confidentially say I do know what I am talking about in this regard. :)
Here is the current estimate of installed and running XP systems. In excess of 500,000,000. You have stated that you believe there are hundreds of thousands of systems that as you say can not be upgraded. Lets out that at an even 500,000 systems. That is 0.1% of the install base pessimistically can't be upgraded. Now world wide the estimated number of PC operating is, 1,630,000,000. So that 500,000 is now actually 0.03% of the world wide PC install base can not be upgraded.
This is considered an edge case in my profession. And extreme edge case. One of the principles in making large distributed systems ( The internet being the biggest ) faster, more efficient, more robust, less error prone is to remove far flung edge cases. As the cost of maintaining edge cases is ridiculously huge. It's because you are not just maintaining the edge case in isolation. You are also maintaining all of the potential interaction points associated with the edge case. The cost being almost invisible on a per node basis becomes and astoundingly large cost when you take into account the whole system. These costs are worn by everyone involved, not just Microsoft. Even those with up to date systems still pay extra to fund the maintenance of ageing architectures.
And you are correct, newer does not mean better all the time. However if you restrict your vision to just the function of the device you care about. It is easy to say newer is not necessarily better. The problem is you took a far too narrow look at the problem space. You need to accept the fact that the function you care about in the device is not the only function it is capable of doing. In the Case of windows XP the number of "other" potential functions is very large. If you include in the list of functions, malware, virus's & trogans that are designed not only to disrupt that system but to spread and further disrupt others you realise that if you replace the device with all it possible functions with a more robust device you will see that the sum total of the negative functions drops. Which in turn reduces overall impact on adjacent systems. So now we clearly see that the impact of the 0.03% of systems is vastly greater than it's diminutive count. In some cases 0.03% of cases it is possible that the cared about function when upgraded is either dimensioned or non-functional. But the net impact is still positive.
I have done analysis after analysis and I have very very rarely found a system that can not be migrated. The cost is no that much usually. Dramatically less that what is thought to be the cost. It's just that people are just too afraid to try. For what every reason. Almost always they are afraid of failure.
You know what would be sensible. How about placing all the code of your un-upgradable application in the public domain as well as the OS. I'm very much in favour of that. Linux being a huge success in this regard.
What you have to start really worrying about is the physical age of the system you so dearly depend on. If it's pushing 5 years plus I would start to worry. If it's 10 years I would start to panic. Once system components start to burn out you are really faced with a stop the presses kind of challenge. Because that's exactly what's going to happen, business stops. In most of these cases backups and proper documentation of the critical system are also missing. Now you are really screwed.
If you are in a business that is purchasing customer software or highly specialised software for a purpose you have to be including in the contract that the source of the software is to be handed over in the case w
If you express the reason in this forum you might actually get some assistance between the flames to solve your issues.
There really is no good reason what so every not to upgrade.
You actually admit you stopped updating an OS so it stays in the same state. The only way this is going to happen is not to network it. Even then Entropy in the OS will eat away at it's stability. I really can't think of any good reason why not to upgrade. The only reason that holds any sort of water is cost. But guess what you you saved just $10 a month for the last 3 years you could buy a whole new computer with Win7 or 8 on it. If you are a pensioner you can get even more discounts. Which is still a few years after MS announced it's killing off XP.
Your computers are just breeding ground for virus's. Please unplug them from the net.
The cost of supporting windows XP is actually climbing. As the architecture ages it gets harder and harder to duct tape over the issues without a whole sale re-architecture or evolution. Which by the way is exactly what VISTA, Win7 and Win 8 are. All of which have better architectural foundations making support cheaper.
WinXP can be thought of as 3 generations older. It's done it's service. The vast majority of the net would be safer and benefit greatly if XP was removed from the net. There would be a considerable drop in Virus/Malware related traffic.
The number of bits for the processor has nothing to do with security. Never did.
XP architecture has major security issues. And it's purely irrelevant that's it's both a 32 and 64 bit OS.
But 128 bit does solve a few other architectural issues :)
This argument keeps coming up.
"What if something doesn't work after?" Thus less than some small minority of the populous is inconvenienced.
How about What if the world is exposed to increasingly harmful malware infections that threaten financial, systems control, hospitals etc.
Guess what. This is exactly the same ridiculous argument that occurred in the 1970's when seat belts were made mandatory around most of the world. "You can't make seat belts mandatory the pensioners can't afford to install them" And yada yada and such. Seat belts are now mandatory in most regions of the world. Where ever this law went in we saw a dramatic reduction in injuries and fatalities.
Windows XP is the seat-belt less world of desktop computing.
I really do not feel any remorse for siding with a policy that will bring far more good than it will bad. Seriously it's not like there wasn't enough warning. Those of you out there caught with software that won't operate on something newer are just plain lazy, cheap and quite frankly stupid. You have been warned about this for years. YEARS.
Frankly I think MS should be working on Ending VISTA as well very soon. Also putting a kill switch out there for older browsers.
Operating systems are the consumables of the desktop computer. They have use by dates. Printer ink has a use by date. Food has a use by date. Even bloody gasoline has a use by date. This is the mind set we need to be in.
Apple has some how made it cool to buy the upgrades. ( I haven't quite figured our how they did that. ) Despite my hatred for all things Apple you have to respect that they get people to upgrade.
I'm a UNIX person and I have to agree. What horrible fad was happening when gnome3 and Unity came out. Some sort of cult mental infection leading normally very intelligent people down a garden path. To a garden filled with snakes, spiders and die flowers.
Someone sees an iphone and all of a sudden it has to be the UI of the desktop? Gnome 3, Unity, Win 8 all caught the bug.
That one two punch of Unity and Gnome 3 set back the Linux UI at least 2 years I reckon.
OK X has to go. I can understand that. But X isn't the window manager.
Yes UI designs have to start adapting for other input metaphors.
But to completely disregard 2 decades of UI design in one non-negotiable release, was just plain idiotic. Note all of them did this by the way. It's like all the design people at once fell into a cauldron of apple sauce.
No real attempt was really made at all to construct a bridging metaphor between windowed, mouse-keyboard fullscreen, touch UI design. Just screw we are now touch only.
Thankfully there is now the early taste of sanity building in UID design again. We see both camps take baby steps toward each. A more sensible evolutionary path is taking form. At the same time as fundamental graphical engines are being rebuilt from scratch to be natively friendly with alternative input metaphors.
Absolutely not.
This just makes the whole thing worse. Extending XP will simply result in more infections for longer.
Absolutely the death of support for XP will result in a spike on infections. This is with out a doubt. However it is a spike. Basically XP machines will become so un-usable the spike will end. With the machines death.
What MS should do is offer an amnesty and allow people to download and install a scaled back version of Win 7 or 8 for no charge. With the option of buying a 1 year subscription every year for it for next to nothing.
That way MS looks better and with luck security gets better. Also MS might actually retain some market share as a result. Otherwise it's all going to poorly maintained linux distros. ( Yes linux can be up to date. But lets face it most people never run updates of their own free will. Linux package managers in all the distros still require consent in order to proceed. Which people don't like or understand. )
XP needs to die. OR infections will keep spreading.
So got some pent up issues mate?
One letter in a post and you go off like a Roman candle. You must be Mr. Fun bags at home. The girls must be dying to crawl all over your overly critical ass.
Cheers mate enjoy that piss you call a beer.
And why are you trying to defend a Wanker button? Ah of course you don't have a girlfriend. :)
( If you are going to toss out the smack be ready to take it. )
There is nothing cool about a factory button that shows off for you.
What "skill" and motor head credibility does a big black button give you?
The button should just cause a speaker to blare out "WANKER!" it would have the same effect.
Because it is the boss' job to come up with a solution to this kind of problem.
Sure the boss can come up with a solution. But as a boss I would love suggestions / proposals / ideas what every to help solve problems. I definitely would not want to be working in an IT shop when all the ideas come from one guy. That's a company destined for failure.
And what makes this a boss problem?
If you worked for me as a manager of people, YOU should worry about YOUR job because as a manager (boss) it is your job to solve that kind of problem. By saying it is your employee's job to come up with a solution to a management problem, you are saying you are lazy and expendable. I should fire YOU and promote HIM.
It's everyone's job to come up with solutions to problems. Because someone else might come up with a solution to a problem by no means the others are lazy.
Guess what if one of my staff consistently comes up with good solutions he or she is a very good candidate for a promotion. And I have no issue what so every that people be promoted above me. I am definitely not arrogant enough to think that someone working for me will never become my boss. Which by the way has happened a few times.
And here is the rub. Most of us who work in IT it is our job to make out own job obsolete. That's what we do, we automate our own jobs away.
And, your suggestion is to tell them how they can outsource most of his job thus making him redundant.
You don't make people redundant you make the role redundant. If the individual is able and willing to take on a new role it is generally a promotion or raise. If the person can not fulfil a new role then generally they are given handsome payouts. Which I have now received 3 of over the years. It's basically a big fat almost tax free pile of money. Bills get paid debts are cleared and your standard of living improves.
So what I said was. Get rid of those services that you should most definitely not be managing in house. Thus freeing up resources. Which are people. Which can be used to solve real business problems not just make sure people stay within their ridiculous Exchange mail box quotas.
So I'm would definitely and have said we are making your role redundant. You got some options. A take the money and run or B. take on this more challenging role with a raise. Both are great outcomes for individuals.
It's attitudes like the one you express that I filter out of the organisation as quickly as I can. "It's not my problem, it's so and so's" People who express this attitude are people I know are not helping the company make money. Which means they are dead weight. Typically the method for handling them is straight forward. It's to performance manage them. Generally this process is easy. As this personality type basically makes the whole situation implode in weeks of informing them they are under performance management review. Which by the way generally leads to no payout.
It is rare that someone actually gets fired. You really have to be a walking disaster to be fired. Theft and or interpersonal issues involving threats or actions must be involved to justify be fired. Just being incompetent is not enough.
If he doesn't have the power to decide he can certainly tell the bosses. The goal is more resources. The author is looking for methods of telling the boss they need more help.
Well how about something novel. How about giving the boss the problem and a solution. Not just a problem statement.
I need more people -- Problem
Here is how I can free up some people -- Solution.
The people that come to me with only step one should worry about their jobs.