Your right, smallpox is gone, now it's aids. Bird flu? Can you imagine a wide spread Ebola outbreak? Fast and ugly mass death. Then again with the AIDS infection rate in Africa that may become a lifeless continent in 50 years, very scary thought, but quite possible.
You left out the scientific fact that no cure for any viral disease has ever been found. Not a single one. There are preventative measures like vaccines, but no cures for anyone already infected. Face it they can't even cure the common cold, what makes everyone think a much more complicated virus cure will happen sooner. Gene manipulation has more promise than any chemical drug. If you stop the mutation you stop the disease whether it's AIDS or Cancer. A vaccine is possible but they can't get one to work on the different varieties, and it would do nothing for the millions already infected, they either fight it off or die. It would be nice if we spent as much on viral research as we do on the frivolous crap that our congresscritters dream up.
Most of us would stop complaining about taxes if we though 60% was being spent wisely.
What's left is much more virulent and harder to remove, therfore creating a worse security problem than ever. Sony was just the start. I'm a tech at a whitebox store and spend 80% of my time cleaning crapware from customer boxes. In the last 3 months there have been some real nasty new variations that are a cast iron bitch to clean. An IDE to USB hookup for the customers HDD is the best as many of these respawn if windows is running on the infected drive. Sometimes you have to manually hunt them down in C:, C:\windows, and C:\windows\system32, that is a long process, but if every fragment is not removed, you might get to start over.
If there was a way to fine the makers of this crap $100 per machine infected we would never hear of Aurora, 180 Solutions, Sony, and all the rest. They would be bankrupt in 6 months.
Unfortunately those views are held by around 80% of the people who read/. Most of them are under 30 and have never served in the military and therefore have no clue as to what intelligence can and can't do.
If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.
If I were an idiot and if I were a Congressman, but I repeat myself....Mark Twain
Wow an insightful and intelligent explanation here on/.
The fact is that the intelligence community has not recovered from the gutting it took in the mid to late seventies. Congress did the gutting because of the excesses of the operations directorate of the CIA in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. I have some first hand experience with them. When we got spook type missions in the late seventies my submarine (fast attack, sneaky, underhanded, and proud of it) would fall under direction of either the DIA (pros, and good) or the CIA (50/50 shot there, either a good solid realistic professional or one of the cowboys who thought everyone was John Wayne). Guess which missions were successful and which ones accounted for some gray hair by age 23.
The intelligence community needs a clear mission with the resources to carry it out. They also need proper oversight from Congress (with the restriction that any member of the intelligence comittees or their staff that leaks anything to the press has a 20 year reservation at Leavenworth). Blabbing about operations gets people killed, period.
I checked that first, otherwise I wouldn't have read it. I guess even a worm like Roland can come up with something useful every now and then.
If they can do this with more virus types they may finally figure out a cure for one. That would be a first for medical science, since they have never found a cure for a single virus yet. Prevention with vaccines is a good thing but having a cure to help those already infected would be better. Think AIDS, everyone that gets it will die unless their body fights it off. A vaccine will not help them a bit, a cure would save most of them.
If you ever run into one of those real jerk type doctors who think they are God, remind them that in spite of all the advances of medical science, the mortality rate on this planet is still 100%.
Built a gamer for a customer last March and the FX 55 had one of these. It was the best oem heatsink I have ever seen. With the motherboard controlling the fan it was quieter than my Athlon XP 3000, and hang on to your shorts fast.
But it has to be Bush's fault somehow! This is Slashdot after all.
The fact that the whole market took the biggest fall since 2003 and tech stocks led the way couldn't have anything to do with Google's problem, it has to be Bush. Standard/. FUD.
Yes it is, because it actually works as an AV program, something Norton hasn't done in a while. I am a tech in a white box store who spends 80% of his time removing crapware from boxes. I have had to remove more virus contamination from boxes with Norton than from all the rest put together, including unprotected ones in the last year. In the last 2 months I have removed Norton from over 30 machines because of the virii written last year that break it.
Yes McAfee has a huge overhead but at least it works. I still prefer F-prot @ $29/year for a paid Windows AV. 4 years and never an infection @ work and 3 years @ home. It also has a much smaller overhead than the other 2 and won't bog a machine down. I have seen Norton make a 64 crawl. I switched when I caught one at home the day after I updated Norton.
Jack Schmitt was also the only "true civillian" to walk on the moon so far. Everyone else was a serving or former military officer. Don't knock his ideas, he is a smart and good man. I met him in 1980.
Wow, I'm not alone. I'm still using my 28 year old Nikon F2. There has never been a better 35mm camera built for serious photography. Everything is manual, no auto anything, you actually have to know how to compose a picture and adjust for light. Of course that alows you to adjust the exposure for different effects, and more can be done in the darkroom. Thing that just an't be replicated with a digital.
Maybe they will use the money to improve the security of Symantec products? I have removed Norton from 3 customer computers this week due to several variants of the virii that specificly attack Norton. There code is as sloppy as M$.
As a tech in a white box store that takes care of several small businesses in a 45 mile radius, I have some experience in this. None of our customers would be capable of paying Dell or HP for a service contract, thats whay they came to us in the first place. All servers and work stations or terminals were built, installed and networked by us, we know and have records on everything. When something goes out we get anything from ASI in Atlanta overnight. Great reps and service, and the prices are competetive, hard to beat them.
Here is a solution that I started using 8 years ago:
With browser closed, go into the tree and delete cookies. Open browser, go to sites you don't mind having cookies from (this one and others you don't want to log into 10x times a day, I like most, am lazy). Close browser, go back to tree, save cookies as cookies2. After each use of the browser go to the tree and delete cookies, save cookies2 as cookies. Next time you open the browser you have the cookie file you want, for your use, not what all the site want you to have. If it bothers some company? TS!
I know that I'm paranoid, the question is am I paranoid enough?
The sentance you refer to compared M$ 3year cycle with crash problems to the Navy's 5 year cycle with more testing, which is when this happened. The Lockheed Martin software was in the test phase, not deployed operationaly.
This was done as a test of a cheap autopilot. It would never be used in anything but a test. The Captains career is over if his ship collides with anything. He wants an alert human helmsman.
UNIX Airways: Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are suposed to be building.
Mac Airlines: All the airline personnel look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.
Windows Air: The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding and a smooth take off. After about 10 minutes in the air the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows NT Air: Just like Windows Air, but costs more, and uses much bigger planes, and takes out all other planes in a 40 mile radius when it explodes.
Linux Air: Disgruntled employees of all other OS Airlines, (with UNIX geeks who finally figured out what kind of plane they were suposed to be building) decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download the ticket and print it yourself. When you board the plane you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench, and a copy of the Seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjusable seat is very comfotable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without problems, and the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell the customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to what with the seat?"
Re-read the article you linked to on the Navy. The Aegis software is from Lockheed Martin, not M$. The Navy is more than capable of screwing up and making itself look worse in a half-assed cover-up, but they don't use M$ products for system controls.
If you want a better comparison, go to the bank. Windows everywhere in the floor, except at the teller stations. Unix or RPG are there with all the servers on Unix or AIX. M$ is fine for typing letters, but never for actually handling accounts or real money.
The only way Windows will be fixed is to start with a clean sheet of paper, completely re-write the entire code base. There are errors in XP that were unfixed errors in 98. I've seen 2 errors in XP that were identical to ones in 3.1. That is a lack of attention to detail.
Slashdot Mirror
I certainly damn hope so!
Your right, smallpox is gone, now it's aids. Bird flu? Can you imagine a wide spread Ebola outbreak? Fast and ugly mass death. Then again with the AIDS infection rate in Africa that may become a lifeless continent in 50 years, very scary thought, but quite possible.
You left out the scientific fact that no cure for any viral disease has ever been found. Not a single one. There are preventative measures like vaccines, but no cures for anyone already infected. Face it they can't even cure the common cold, what makes everyone think a much more complicated virus cure will happen sooner. Gene manipulation has more promise than any chemical drug. If you stop the mutation you stop the disease whether it's AIDS or Cancer. A vaccine is possible but they can't get one to work on the different varieties, and it would do nothing for the millions already infected, they either fight it off or die. It would be nice if we spent as much on viral research as we do on the frivolous crap that our congresscritters dream up.
Most of us would stop complaining about taxes if we though 60% was being spent wisely.
What's left is much more virulent and harder to remove, therfore creating a worse security problem than ever. Sony was just the start. I'm a tech at a whitebox store and spend 80% of my time cleaning crapware from customer boxes. In the last 3 months there have been some real nasty new variations that are a cast iron bitch to clean. An IDE to USB hookup for the customers HDD is the best as many of these respawn if windows is running on the infected drive. Sometimes you have to manually hunt them down in C:, C:\windows, and C:\windows\system32, that is a long process, but if every fragment is not removed, you might get to start over.
If there was a way to fine the makers of this crap $100 per machine infected we would never hear of Aurora, 180 Solutions, Sony, and all the rest. They would be bankrupt in 6 months.
Unfortunately those views are held by around 80% of the people who read /. Most of them are under 30 and have never served in the military and therefore have no clue as to what intelligence can and can't do.
If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart.
If you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.
If I were an idiot and if I were a Congressman, but I repeat myself....Mark Twain
Wow an insightful and intelligent explanation here on /.
The fact is that the intelligence community has not recovered from the gutting it took in the mid to late seventies. Congress did the gutting because of the excesses of the operations directorate of the CIA in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. I have some first hand experience with them. When we got spook type missions in the late seventies my submarine (fast attack, sneaky, underhanded, and proud of it) would fall under direction of either the DIA (pros, and good) or the CIA (50/50 shot there, either a good solid realistic professional or one of the cowboys who thought everyone was John Wayne). Guess which missions were successful and which ones accounted for some gray hair by age 23.
The intelligence community needs a clear mission with the resources to carry it out. They also need proper oversight from Congress (with the restriction that any member of the intelligence comittees or their staff that leaks anything to the press has a 20 year reservation at Leavenworth). Blabbing about operations gets people killed, period.
I checked that first, otherwise I wouldn't have read it. I guess even a worm like Roland can come up with something useful every now and then.
If they can do this with more virus types they may finally figure out a cure for one. That would be a first for medical science, since they have never found a cure for a single virus yet. Prevention with vaccines is a good thing but having a cure to help those already infected would be better. Think AIDS, everyone that gets it will die unless their body fights it off. A vaccine will not help them a bit, a cure would save most of them.
If you ever run into one of those real jerk type doctors who think they are God, remind them that in spite of all the advances of medical science, the mortality rate on this planet is still 100%.
Built a gamer for a customer last March and the FX 55 had one of these. It was the best oem heatsink I have ever seen. With the motherboard controlling the fan it was quieter than my Athlon XP 3000, and hang on to your shorts fast.
But it has to be Bush's fault somehow! This is Slashdot after all.
/. FUD.
The fact that the whole market took the biggest fall since 2003 and tech stocks led the way couldn't have anything to do with Google's problem, it has to be Bush. Standard
Of course if SP3 breaks enough things maybe that will force people to buy "Vista"?
Just a possibility, or is that probability?
Yes it is, because it actually works as an AV program, something Norton hasn't done in a while. I am a tech in a white box store who spends 80% of his time removing crapware from boxes. I have had to remove more virus contamination from boxes with Norton than from all the rest put together, including unprotected ones in the last year. In the last 2 months I have removed Norton from over 30 machines because of the virii written last year that break it.
Yes McAfee has a huge overhead but at least it works. I still prefer F-prot @ $29/year for a paid Windows AV. 4 years and never an infection @ work and 3 years @ home. It also has a much smaller overhead than the other 2 and won't bog a machine down. I have seen Norton make a 64 crawl. I switched when I caught one at home the day after I updated Norton.
Jack Schmitt was also the only "true civillian" to walk on the moon so far. Everyone else was a serving or former military officer. Don't knock his ideas, he is a smart and good man. I met him in 1980.
Wow, I'm not alone. I'm still using my 28 year old Nikon F2. There has never been a better 35mm camera built for serious photography. Everything is manual, no auto anything, you actually have to know how to compose a picture and adjust for light. Of course that alows you to adjust the exposure for different effects, and more can be done in the darkroom. Thing that just an't be replicated with a digital.
Maybe they will use the money to improve the security of Symantec products? I have removed Norton from 3 customer computers this week due to several variants of the virii that specificly attack Norton. There code is as sloppy as M$.
As a tech in a white box store that takes care of several small businesses in a 45 mile radius, I have some experience in this. None of our customers would be capable of paying Dell or HP for a service contract, thats whay they came to us in the first place. All servers and work stations or terminals were built, installed and networked by us, we know and have records on everything. When something goes out we get anything from ASI in Atlanta overnight. Great reps and service, and the prices are competetive, hard to beat them.
Here is a solution that I started using 8 years ago:
With browser closed, go into the tree and delete cookies. Open browser, go to sites you don't mind having cookies from (this one and others you don't want to log into 10x times a day, I like most, am lazy). Close browser, go back to tree, save cookies as cookies2. After each use of the browser go to the tree and delete cookies, save cookies2 as cookies. Next time you open the browser you have the cookie file you want, for your use, not what all the site want you to have. If it bothers some company? TS!
I know that I'm paranoid, the question is am I paranoid enough?
That deleting all media files is not part of everyones cleanup after installing Windows?
The sentance you refer to compared M$ 3year cycle with crash problems to the Navy's 5 year cycle with more testing, which is when this happened. The Lockheed Martin software was in the test phase, not deployed operationaly.
This was done as a test of a cheap autopilot. It would never be used in anything but a test. The Captains career is over if his ship collides with anything. He wants an alert human helmsman.
USN Sub sailor 1976 - 1980
If operating systems ran airlines:
UNIX Airways: Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they
come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane
together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they
are suposed to be building.
Mac Airlines: All the airline personnel look and act exactly the same.
Every time you ask questions about details you are gently but firmly told
that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be
done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.
Windows Air: The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards,
easy baggage check and boarding and a smooth take off. After about 10
minutes in the air the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows NT Air: Just like Windows Air, but costs more, and uses much
bigger planes, and takes out all other planes in a 40 mile radius when it
explodes.
Linux Air: Disgruntled employees of all other OS Airlines, (with UNIX
geeks who finally figured out what kind of plane they were suposed to be
building) decide to start their own airline. They build the planes,
ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee
to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download the
ticket and print it yourself. When you board the plane you are given a
seat, four bolts, a wrench, and a copy of the Seat-HOWTO.html. Once
settled, the fully adjusable seat is very comfotable, the plane leaves
and arrives on time without problems, and the in-flight meal is
wonderful. You try to tell the customers of the other airlines about the
great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to what with the seat?"
with apologies to Doc Searls and Linux Journal.
Re-read the article you linked to on the Navy. The Aegis software is from Lockheed Martin, not M$. The Navy is more than capable of screwing up and making itself look worse in a half-assed cover-up, but they don't use M$ products for system controls.
If you want a better comparison, go to the bank. Windows everywhere in the floor, except at the teller stations. Unix or RPG are there with all the servers on Unix or AIX. M$ is fine for typing letters, but never for actually handling accounts or real money.
"Windows XP is a third generation product"
You say that like it's a good thing!
The only way Windows will be fixed is to start with a clean sheet of paper, completely re-write the entire code base. There are errors in XP that were unfixed errors in 98. I've seen 2 errors in XP that were identical to ones in 3.1. That is a lack of attention to detail.
Not by anyone intelligent. Anyone that uses a M$ product in a mission critical area is courting catastrophe.
If someone sent a copy of this to Micro$oft? Would any of them read or comprehend it? It could make a difference in the version after Vista.
I did my "Leap Ahead" three years ago when I switched to AMD!