"Even if I grant you his illegal and/or underhanded, ruthless business practices, at worst he is a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the well off, giving to the poor off (and keeping a healthy chunk for himself - although he has pledged to eventually give away close to everything he's earned)."
He takes from the rich And gives to the needy He keeps a little bit But I'm not greedy!
-or-
They robbed the rich And gave to the poor except what they kept for expenses!
Let me crush your world image right now. ANYONE can promise to do ANYTHING thing...... sometime in the unspecified future.
If you want to talk about how wonderful Bill Gates is, please just TRY to restrict yourself to ACTUAL activities.
And that "close to everything he's earned".... well, that all depends upon what YOUR definitions of "close" and "everything" and "earned" are and what HIS definitions are.
"If I were in the software business, I would hate Microsoft for what they are and what they symbolize."
Translation: If you were trying to support yourself and your family by doing honest work...
"If I were some starving person in Ethiopia, I would be saying, "fucking finally, someone is willing to put their money where their mouth is.""
Translation: If you were the object of his generosity....
So, it all comes down to whether you are the victim or the benefactor.
Let's try looking at this in a more enlightened mode, eh?
Look at the whole process. He breaks laws and amasses a HUGE personal fortune. But then he gives away a portion of that fortune. A small portion. A portion he will not even notice.
Now, to me, that doesn't seem like a person or behaviour that is "good".
I don't recall Robin Hood living in a castle with servants and such, all paid for by his "steal from the rich and give the table scraps to the poor".
Not, as you seem to assume, how much they have GIVEN.
AND your $65 million figure is spread over YEARS that haven't even passed yet.
Here's an example: 12.3.2003 TCI Foundation $8,500,000 over 5 years to implement a large scale effective HIV preventive intervention among the truckers and associated sex workers of India
So, LAST MONTH they promised to give $8.5 million OVER THE NEXT 5 YEARS.
Which works out to about $1.7 million per year.
"Look, you don't have to like Bill G's company or the software they make, but until you've figured out how to earn a few billion and donate it to charity, you should not try to insult the generosity of those who have."
So, if I break the laws of this country and ILLEGALLY make lots of money, then it's all okay if I give back a TINY PERCENTAGE of to charity?
Like I said, anyone with $50,000 giving $5 every week at Church is doing THE EXACT SAME PERCENTAGE as someone with $1 Billion giving $100,000.
I wouldn't miss $10 a week and Bill certainly isn't missing that money.
It's easy to be "generous" when you won't even notice the "loss". So you admire Bill for doing something that is easy?
When you have BILLIONS of dollars, it is easy to give a hundred thousand dollars to something.
1,000,000,000 = 1 Billion.
100,000 = 100 thousand.
Now, if you have $50,000 then you could give $50 and still be giving the same PERCENTAGE.
In other words, if you go to church every Sunday and put $5 in the collection plate, you've given $60. Which would be MORE than someone with ONE billion dollars giving away one hundred thousand dollars.
They like to be refered to as "leaders", but they're really just politicians.
Real leaders, usually, do not make good politicians. Real leaders don't spend time building concensus and spinning the decision and working with focus groups to sharpen the message.
You're correct about the leader having final responsibility for the behaviour of his/her people. But, when was the last time we saw anything like THAT in politics here?
SCO should still have to show IBM what, exactly, IBM illegally included in Linux.
Then, the legal agreements regarding that material can be judged. It might be that SCO doesn't even have a case against IBM, even if SCO did have the patents.
SCO should get a hold on the IBM case only after SCO has shown what was "stolen" and the contracts have been found to support SCO's case and the "stolen" material is part of the Novell case.
But I'd go a bit further. Hire the good writers to come up with a story that can be broken down into 5 years worth of scripts. A real story. One that fits with the existing mythology.
Then, each writer could handle different scripts. Each episode would be part of the same story, but they would be told in a different fashion. You could even have one writer handling a sub-story for 5 or 6 episodes in a row.
Do the original, "5 year mission" of the FIRST star ship to leave our solar system. Things break, people get on each other's nerves, people DIE, the crew sees things that no other human has ever seen. The characters grow and develop.
If they did that right, they could even get two movies out in that time frame.
Good writers (not all science fiction) collaborating on a multi-year series and a couple films.
It will never happen, but I think it would be a great idea.
"When the company blocks.exe files because of policy, and the scanner allows them through by simple renaming, I can hardly call that a 100% effective strategy."
The fact is that it has stopped 100% of the email viruses. For years.
"Don't tell me that doesn't happen. I have been running a scanner that detects those attempts for the past 5 years, and I have seen several cases of such detections."
I have not had a single email virus get through these defenses since they were set up years ago.
"Your scanner only stops the virus attacks because the attacks have not yet been clever enough."
Well, I'm sure that can be said about any defensive measure.
This situation is NOT that simple. Viruses spread very fast on Windows because a number of factors happen to coincide.
#1. Email program runs executables just by clicking on them.
#2. User has full access to install any crap on that machine.
#3. Vendor did not offer "patch" to fix the above problems.
#4. "Patching" is not done, for whatever reason.
Just as there are more Apache installs than IIS, but Apache is exploited less than IIS, this is NOT about marketshare.
If the user wouldn't click on the attachments (or if the email client wouldn't allow the user to launch the attachments), the virus threat would be reduced.
If the user had to supply a root password to run the app, the virus threat would be reduced.
If the vendor would offer patches to deal with problems, and the users would just patch their machines...
If Linux had 90%+ of the desktop, the situation MIGHT be the same. But not necessarily. Outlook is the reason so many viruses spread before. All that Linux has to do is be a bit more intelligent about handling executables as attachments.
But that isn't Linux. That is the email app.
And it should be easy to change to a less virus-prone email app on Linux.
If anyone wants to send anyone inside the company an executable, said person is instructed to rename it to.bin prior to sending.
The.bin file makes it through the scanner and the recipient can save it to his/her local drive, rename it to.exe or.com or.bat or whatever and then run it.
Anyone who cannot follow these simple directions does not receive executable files.
No email viruses have been able to traverse these simple precautions.
There will always be a certain percentage of the population that
#1. Really just accidentally clicked on the executable
#2. Clicked on it on purpose because it was from someone they knew or had a nice subject or whatever.
The only real option ('cause dumb people will be with us forever) is to configure the technology to make it harder to run apps from email. Either run them in a sandbox or require the user supply the root password to install the new application (this is why I believe Linux would be safer).
99% of the people could follow the correct precautions and we would still see massive virus transmissions. It's one of the problems with a software mono-culture. And I don't see Windows users even getting to that 99% mark.
I've seen that happen. In fact, I've read some of the management crap that says to do exactly that.
When you come into a new job, you must be "an agent for change".
You must solve the problems they're having.
If they aren't having any real problems, you must "find" a "problem" to "solve". Which usually means putting some new people in. These people will be more loyal to you because you brought them in. The old people, well, they may not be so loyal. Use the word "legacy" a lot. Claim that the existing systems are not suitable for some reason.
"However, given the real-time requirements of transmitting information over a telephone network, it can be difficult to program a wide-range of options for individuals to personalize preferences such as when, where and with whom to share location information. One solution is to hard-code a network database with an "on-off" switch that activates or deactivates a service, for instance, during a window of time with set hours such as peak and off-peak."
So, dial 9-1-1 and your phone should broadcast its location.
Otherwise, just make it an option for the numbers you have stored on your phone and a simple check box for the rest (I want to receive tons of phone spam Y/N).
#1. If I dial 9-1-1, my location is broadcast.
#2. If I turn off the broadcast function, my location is not broadcast (unless #1).
#3. For every phone number I have stored, I have the option to broadcast (or not) my location to that number, provided I have broadcast turned on (#2).
#4. For everyone else, I can choose to receive massive amounts of phone spam (unless #2). Why anyone would choose this option is beyond me.
Any problems with that? It seems simple to me. And it should be easily implemented in software. Of course, it will NOT provide the captive audience for phone spam that seems to be the focus of that article. But so what?
IT loses money (unless you sell IT). The rest of the company (except for HR and Accounting) make money for the company and you spend it.
It is very important to socialize with the people above you and help them understand how much you're actually saving the company by the things you're doing.
Remember, there are other people who will be happy to smooze the higher ups if it means they can replace you. Out-sourcing is an example of this. And those people will have no problem telling big lies about how much money they will save the company.
It's a sad fact of the business world, but social contacts count as much as technical skills in most companies.
Keep your resume updated and do at least one interview every quarter. Even if there is nothing wrong with the company you're at. You need to know what you are worth and what the market is like.
It helped with my last job. The job was great. My boss was great. But then we hired a new VP of IT and he started adding his own people from the last company he was at.
Now, you had PREVIOUSLY stated, and let me quote you...
"...I just hadn't heard the whole story on DR DOS, and figured it'd be nice to know."
Now you claim....
"The DR-DOS thing, which I didn't know about (though I've heard of similar issues), is hardly important enough to be known by "anyone in the industry"."
So, you knew about it, but you didn't know about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Right.
...... sometime in the unspecified future.
"Even if I grant you his illegal and/or underhanded, ruthless business practices, at worst he is a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the well off, giving to the poor off (and keeping a healthy chunk for himself - although he has pledged to eventually give away close to everything he's earned)."
He takes from the rich
And gives to the needy
He keeps a little bit
But I'm not greedy!
-or-
They robbed the rich
And gave to the poor
except what they kept for expenses!
Let me crush your world image right now. ANYONE can promise to do ANYTHING thing
If you want to talk about how wonderful Bill Gates is, please just TRY to restrict yourself to ACTUAL activities.
And that "close to everything he's earned".... well, that all depends upon what YOUR definitions of "close" and "everything" and "earned" are and what HIS definitions are.
"If I were in the software business, I would hate Microsoft for what they are and what they symbolize."
Translation: If you were trying to support yourself and your family by doing honest work...
"If I were some starving person in Ethiopia, I would be saying, "fucking finally, someone is willing to put their money where their mouth is.""
Translation: If you were the object of his generosity....
So, it all comes down to whether you are the victim or the benefactor.
Let's try looking at this in a more enlightened mode, eh?
Look at the whole process. He breaks laws and amasses a HUGE personal fortune. But then he gives away a portion of that fortune. A small portion. A portion he will not even notice.
Now, to me, that doesn't seem like a person or behaviour that is "good".
I don't recall Robin Hood living in a castle with servants and such, all paid for by his "steal from the rich and give the table scraps to the poor".
Not, as you seem to assume, how much they have GIVEN.
AND your $65 million figure is spread over YEARS that haven't even passed yet.
Here's an example:
12.3.2003
TCI Foundation
$8,500,000 over 5 years to implement a large scale effective HIV preventive intervention among the truckers and associated sex workers of India
So, LAST MONTH they promised to give $8.5 million OVER THE NEXT 5 YEARS.
Which works out to about $1.7 million per year.
"Look, you don't have to like Bill G's company or the software they make, but until you've figured out how to earn a few billion and donate it to charity, you should not try to insult the generosity of those who have."
So, if I break the laws of this country and ILLEGALLY make lots of money, then it's all okay if I give back a TINY PERCENTAGE of to charity?
Like I said, anyone with $50,000 giving $5 every week at Church is doing THE EXACT SAME PERCENTAGE as someone with $1 Billion giving $100,000.
I wouldn't miss $10 a week and Bill certainly isn't missing that money.
It's easy to be "generous" when you won't even notice the "loss". So you admire Bill for doing something that is easy?
So, if bad people were knighted before, that makes it okay today.
No.
"Bill Gates has led one of the planets most profitable companies for over a decade. He deserves a Knighthood."
So, Knighthood means "gathers a lot of money"? I wasn't aware of that usage.
"So yes. Gates deserves his Knighthood."
Say it once, say it twice, third times the charm.
Just becuase you keep repeating it does not make it true.
"Antitrust aside, MS is not built on crime and in modern times that is about the only thing that would make him not be Knighted."
But that anti-trust is WHY Microsoft made so much money. And it is ILLEGAL in the US and Europe. So while it may not be "crime" it is illegal.
And just because bad people were knighted in the past is NOT justification for doing so now.
But does that offset the fact that he got that money by violating US law?
Would the Queen knight me if I stole money from banks, but gave 20% of it to orphans?
Well, they're getting more than they WOULD have gotten, otherwise. So I'm a good guy. Right?
When you have BILLIONS of dollars, it is easy to give a hundred thousand dollars to something.
1,000,000,000 = 1 Billion.
100,000 = 100 thousand.
Now, if you have $50,000 then you could give $50 and still be giving the same PERCENTAGE.
In other words, if you go to church every Sunday and put $5 in the collection plate, you've given $60. Which would be MORE than someone with ONE billion dollars giving away one hundred thousand dollars.
http://www.fi.edu/qa98/attic12/attic12.html
So, if the guy invents 3 things but works with others to invent 3,000 things, then he isn't an inventor?
"Edison wasn't really an inventor,..."
Sorry, but yes he was.
"...he was an entrepreneur that made those inventions work in the marketplace...."
You mean I can't be a network technician AND a damn good chess player?
Edison DID invent things, all on his own AND he also marketed inventions that were no 100% his own.
The one fact does NOT cancel out the other.
"...just like Bill Gates did with the PCs."
Sorry, there were PC's before Bill Gates got involved with IBM.
Sorry, there were PC's being marketed before Bill Gates got involved with IBM.
Sorry, there was a PC market before Bill Gates got involved with IBM.
In fact, IBM was late to the party.
Duh!
If they discussed their strategy in the open, the Republicans would be able to tailor THEIR strategy to counter the Democrats' strategy.
They like to be refered to as "leaders", but they're really just politicians.
Real leaders, usually, do not make good politicians. Real leaders don't spend time building concensus and spinning the decision and working with focus groups to sharpen the message.
You're correct about the leader having final responsibility for the behaviour of his/her people. But, when was the last time we saw anything like THAT in politics here?
With the Diebold stuff, it was OPENLY posted with references to HOW it was obtained.
This case is different because no one is willing to stand up and say "I took those files".
Instead, you have Novack "protecting" his "sources" who leaked this information and the FBI digging to find who did what.
There are LOTS of "boot camps" out there that will guarantee you'll be certified, for a price.
Check google for
"boot camp" MCSE 2000
and you'll probably find one in your area.
Not "any schmuck" will be able to get certified
-but-
"any schmuck" with the cash will be able to get certified.
SCO should still have to show IBM what, exactly, IBM illegally included in Linux.
Then, the legal agreements regarding that material can be judged. It might be that SCO doesn't even have a case against IBM, even if SCO did have the patents.
SCO should get a hold on the IBM case only after SCO has shown what was "stolen" and the contracts have been found to support SCO's case and the "stolen" material is part of the Novell case.
IANAL so feel free to ignore me.
It could be very good. The more advanced ships with the more advanced weapons and shields would be the ones taken over by the machines.
In order to combat the faster, computer controlled ships, people start getting cybernetic enhancements so they can combat the pure machines.
Humanity becomes like the Borg to defeat the pure machine intelligences. Will humanity become the new Borg?
Getting the scripts from good writers.
But I'd go a bit further. Hire the good writers to come up with a story that can be broken down into 5 years worth of scripts. A real story. One that fits with the existing mythology.
Then, each writer could handle different scripts. Each episode would be part of the same story, but they would be told in a different fashion. You could even have one writer handling a sub-story for 5 or 6 episodes in a row.
Do the original, "5 year mission" of the FIRST star ship to leave our solar system. Things break, people get on each other's nerves, people DIE, the crew sees things that no other human has ever seen. The characters grow and develop.
If they did that right, they could even get two movies out in that time frame.
Good writers (not all science fiction) collaborating on a multi-year series and a couple films.
It will never happen, but I think it would be a great idea.
It just doesn't get any easier than this.
You have a well established fan base.
You have a well established mythology.
You have YEARS of professional and fan writing.
You have tons of technical material (ships, planets, etc).
You even had the Klingon language.
All of the hard work was already done for them. All of it. And they still blew it. This should have been the EASIEST series to work on.
"When the company blocks .exe files because of policy, and the scanner allows them through by simple renaming, I can hardly call that a 100% effective strategy."
The fact is that it has stopped 100% of the email viruses. For years.
"Don't tell me that doesn't happen. I have been running a scanner that detects those attempts for the past 5 years, and I have seen several cases of such detections."
I have not had a single email virus get through these defenses since they were set up years ago.
"Your scanner only stops the virus attacks because the attacks have not yet been clever enough."
Well, I'm sure that can be said about any defensive measure.
A 100% success rate means that the concept is flawed.
The scanner is a useless piece of crap because every single virus attack is stopped at the scanner.
This situation is NOT that simple. Viruses spread very fast on Windows because a number of factors happen to coincide.
#1. Email program runs executables just by clicking on them.
#2. User has full access to install any crap on that machine.
#3. Vendor did not offer "patch" to fix the above problems.
#4. "Patching" is not done, for whatever reason.
Just as there are more Apache installs than IIS, but Apache is exploited less than IIS, this is NOT about marketshare.
If the user wouldn't click on the attachments (or if the email client wouldn't allow the user to launch the attachments), the virus threat would be reduced.
If the user had to supply a root password to run the app, the virus threat would be reduced.
If the vendor would offer patches to deal with problems, and the users would just patch their machines...
If Linux had 90%+ of the desktop, the situation MIGHT be the same. But not necessarily. Outlook is the reason so many viruses spread before. All that Linux has to do is be a bit more intelligent about handling executables as attachments.
But that isn't Linux. That is the email app.
And it should be easy to change to a less virus-prone email app on Linux.
If anyone wants to send anyone inside the company an executable, said person is instructed to rename it to .bin prior to sending.
.bin file makes it through the scanner and the recipient can save it to his/her local drive, rename it to .exe or .com or .bat or whatever and then run it.
The
Anyone who cannot follow these simple directions does not receive executable files.
No email viruses have been able to traverse these simple precautions.
There will always be a certain percentage of the population that
#1. Really just accidentally clicked on the executable
#2. Clicked on it on purpose because it was from someone they knew or had a nice subject or whatever.
The only real option ('cause dumb people will be with us forever) is to configure the technology to make it harder to run apps from email. Either run them in a sandbox or require the user supply the root password to install the new application (this is why I believe Linux would be safer).
99% of the people could follow the correct precautions and we would still see massive virus transmissions. It's one of the problems with a software mono-culture. And I don't see Windows users even getting to that 99% mark.
I've seen that happen. In fact, I've read some of the management crap that says to do exactly that.
When you come into a new job, you must be "an agent for change".
You must solve the problems they're having.
If they aren't having any real problems, you must "find" a "problem" to "solve". Which usually means putting some new people in. These people will be more loyal to you because you brought them in. The old people, well, they may not be so loyal. Use the word "legacy" a lot. Claim that the existing systems are not suitable for some reason.
From the article.
"However, given the real-time requirements of transmitting information over a telephone network, it can be difficult to program a wide-range of options for individuals to personalize preferences such as when, where and with whom to share location information. One solution is to hard-code a network database with an "on-off" switch that activates or deactivates a service, for instance, during a window of time with set hours such as peak and off-peak."
So, dial 9-1-1 and your phone should broadcast its location.
Otherwise, just make it an option for the numbers you have stored on your phone and a simple check box for the rest (I want to receive tons of phone spam Y/N).
#1. If I dial 9-1-1, my location is broadcast.
#2. If I turn off the broadcast function, my location is not broadcast (unless #1).
#3. For every phone number I have stored, I have the option to broadcast (or not) my location to that number, provided I have broadcast turned on (#2).
#4. For everyone else, I can choose to receive massive amounts of phone spam (unless #2). Why anyone would choose this option is beyond me.
Any problems with that? It seems simple to me. And it should be easily implemented in software. Of course, it will NOT provide the captive audience for phone spam that seems to be the focus of that article. But so what?
IT loses money (unless you sell IT). The rest of the company (except for HR and Accounting) make money for the company and you spend it.
It is very important to socialize with the people above you and help them understand how much you're actually saving the company by the things you're doing.
Remember, there are other people who will be happy to smooze the higher ups if it means they can replace you. Out-sourcing is an example of this. And those people will have no problem telling big lies about how much money they will save the company.
It's a sad fact of the business world, but social contacts count as much as technical skills in most companies.
Do the drinks and dinner scene.
Keep your resume updated and do at least one interview every quarter. Even if there is nothing wrong with the company you're at. You need to know what you are worth and what the market is like.
It helped with my last job. The job was great. My boss was great. But then we hired a new VP of IT and he started adding his own people from the last company he was at.
Now, you had PREVIOUSLY stated, and let me quote you...
"...I just hadn't heard the whole story on DR DOS, and figured it'd be nice to know."
Now you claim....
"The DR-DOS thing, which I didn't know about (though I've heard of similar issues), is hardly important enough to be known by "anyone in the industry"."
So, you knew about it, but you didn't know about it.
Try to keep your story straight.
Imagine, someone searching through all these threads to find posts from me just so s/he can post about me.
I've never had a stalker before.
I will love him and cuddle him and name him George.