As the father of a Type I diabetic and the son of a Type II diabetic, I have a suggestion. Why not cure diabetes, save thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Here is what was spent on diabetes care in the U.S. in 2002:
Direct medical costs: $92 billion
Indirect costs: $40 billion (disability, work loss, premature mortality)
There are numerous possible cures: Stem cells, INGAP peptide, etc. With 5-billion dollars and the right amount of political will you could cure it.
In 2000, there were 69,301 American deaths directly caused by diabetes, but the NIH states that diabetes contributed to a total of 213,062 deaths in that year. And it happened again in 2001 and 2002, and it will happen again this year.
How many people do YOU know with Type I or Type II diabetes? Cure this damned disease and then see what can be done with an extra $132 billion in the U.S. economy. Use a few billion to get to Mars? Why not!
Sigh... try looking at this bit of HISTORY from a historical perspective. Consider the other names on the list. Some of them were relatively minor players in the grand scheme. Do you seriously believe the people who had a major hand in creating OS's which drive hundreds of millions of PCs should be ignored because you don't believe they "contributed"? It's history. It's evolution. It took MS a long time to create a usable, reliable (though not yet secure) desktop OS which has been deployed on millions of desktops with countless hardware combinations. Linux is inching toward the desktop. but it's not there yet. In the meantime, let's not re-write history.
Actually, given the size and number of their APIs, I think MS has done a pretty good job of maintaining compatibility -- at least until DOT.NET came along. There is a bit of a leap there;-) The MS Newsgroups are a huge reservoir for support. The most grief I ever had with Windows was a database app written in the early days of ADO. It was buggy as hell, but there were work-arounds for almost everything. Every subsequent release of the MDAC since 2.1 has provided increased stability, functionality and performance. And my old apps continue to work just fine. Maybe I was just lucky?
Yes. Service Packs rule. They need to be tested first, at least for critical server apps, but overall, the long march of Windows Service Packs has been an improvement. I've worked on quite a few hybrid Linix/Windows apps. Usually client server. Guess which platform the client runs on? Deploying Windows apps with PostgreSQL connectivity via ODBC is a breeze. Much easier than deploying Oracle client apps. There are _many_ ways of doing most things in Windows land. It all depends on the experience level of the programmer and IMAGINATION. I would say imagination is a huge part of coding, one that is often overlooked.
Is this what it's all about: "creating the appearance of legitimacy" and flipping "a solar middle finger at Microsoft"? How about just plain old competition with some added leverage to push Microsoft toward open file formats. Get a grip and loosen up the tinfoil hat, dude!
An apology on Slashdot is a rare and noble thing. All the same, your point is valid: how are a gajillion ordinary comsumer users supposed to keep their systems up-to-date and reliable. I'm not convinced today's Linux package update/distribution tools would do the job any better than Windows -- on a global scale. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.
Did he have Automatic Updates enabled? Did he allow the updates to install or did he ignore them as I've seen so many people do?
Consider: If (and it's a big IF) most of the world were running various distributions of Linux, and users were faced with a remote exploit, Red Hat, Debian, SUSE, et al would have to quickly develop, test and distribute patches. Would the uptake of these patches be better than Windows Update? I doubt it. Note that even the FSF was not able to patch in time to avoid an exploit -- and it took them over 4 months to discover they had been compromised: http://ftp.gnu.org/MISSING-FILES.README
Um... where in the article does it say 3rd party code brings down the WHOLE O/S? In my experience the robustness of Windows has improved dramatically with every version (nevermind ME:-) I see individual applications crashing -- about 2 or 3 times a month. In fact, I typically go weeks and months between reboots (generally only when applying patches). There are plenty of things not to like about Windows, but the bad days of blue screens is a fading memory. Of course there are exceptions for odd hardware configurations and out-of-date drivers, but I've seen the same or worse problems with Linux support for oddball hardware.
BTW -- you may have noticed that sometimes when an app "hangs", and displays a "not responding" message in Task Manager, it is actually still running just fine (though chewing up a ton of CPU). Depending on the problem I may wait it out until the process finishes or simply kill it. One of my gripes with MS is that sometimes I have to use a third-party tool (sysinternals.com) tool to kill runaway processes -- Task Manager is not always able to kill it. Not perfect, but it works.
I think all of this applies to Windows server configurations also. I run IIS/ASP servers with dozens of users and applications. When configured so each account runs in its own memory space, with CPU utilization limits, NOBODY is able to bring down the whole web server with bad code -- just their own site.
The fact is, most of us are so bigoted about our O/S of choice, we are unwilling to learn enough about the "enemy" to use it properly.
You are right. First there was ADSI (which has been available for WinNT and beyond for about 5 years or so) and now WMI. You can programmatically manage accounts, web configuration, kill or restart services and processes, monitor disk usage and just about anything else you can think of.
These tools have allowed us to use our centralized unix-based account management system to manage accounts on our Windows servers. In fact, they play quite nicely together.
Ok... so he throws out the idea that we can't trust closed source statistical software and yet defends non-standard (basically closed) approaches to statistical analysis. Where's the transparency there?
"On the other hand, Patrick does not anticipate that XML will make a big difference to the human rights community. This is because very few traits of their data are standardized, while the strength of XML lies in its facilitating the exchange of standardized data. Most of the time, the individual statistician imposes his or her own structure on the data gathered, and another statistician who starts another project will structure the data differently. "
A working pancreas would be nice -- or even cloning Islet cells for transplant into Type I diabetics. Let's do it soon. We are already injecting transplanted human Islet cells, but that requires a lifelong cocktail of immunosuppressants to prevent rejection.
I've been running IIS -- and unix-based web servers for about 5 years. Our IIS boxes have NEVER been hacked. We had disabled.htr and other mappings long before Code Red emerged -- as MS had advised. The fact is, 90% of all of the Windows vulnerabilites have been fixable with permissions and registry modifications. Keeping patches up to date is a pain, but not impossible.
Without a doubt, MS has a lot to learn about security, but tools such as URLScan and the like have made it much easier to lock down an IIS server.
It's also worth remembering, that as an application server, IIS has the ability to do a LOT out of the box (COM, ASP, ISAPI (and outdated vulnerable technologies using HTR). In any case, can not compare IIS with Apache -- you must compare it with Apache + Tomcat + Turbine, etc.
I agree. We tested the Netscape/Mozilla vulnerability and it work on Linux systems also. I submitted the link to Slashdot and the story was REJECTED.
If this had been an MS vulnerability with a working exploit, it would have been posted here in a second --and would have generated 800 MS-bashing comments.
Slashdot has been good entertainment over the years, but I pity anyone who PAYS for a site that is so slanted it can't see beyond it's navel.
Hey! What about Reginald Aubrey Fessenden. He actually demonstrated voice transmission before Marconi did the trans-atlantic Morse code test.
Of course, they all built on the work of people like Tesla. Fessenden knew the physics better than Marconi, but Marconi knew how to sell it. Sound familiar?
Well, just wanted to point out that if it had been an IIS system that had been hacked, most of this thread would consist of the usual MS bashing and OSS chest beating.
In this case, according to Netcraft, it looks like the hacked servers were probably running Apache and Netscape Enterprise.
Shhhhhh! Don't tell anyone! But remember, the next time something similar happens on a Windows platform, moust of you WILL HAPPILY drag Microsoft's name through the mud.
Auto-generated hyperlinks to places, people and products may not be a bad idea if it is done in a fair way. If MS provides a database of links that appears to have a specific agenda, they'll be trashed by the media. I expect they know this. I expect they'll try to provide a balanced set of links. And I expect they'll make a few mistakes anyhow.
From what I've read, the Smart Tag feature has to be turned on by users -- it is not enabled by default.
Unfortunately, most online internet coverage is ridiculously biased -- and is often owned by tech competitors (VA Linux owns Slashdot for example). Like many other MS stories, this one has been simplistically reported -- as if the browser will actually MODIFY web pages sitting on a server.
The question I have is this: will "Smart Tags" be cached on a user's system, or will they reach out and lookup URLs on an MS server. If it is the latter, I think most people will turn off the feature to speed up browsing, if nothing else.
Anyhow, perhaps the best way to deal with the IE "problem" is to contribute to the Mozilla project.;-)
Expect more advancements in this area over the next 10 years. Self healing DESKTOPS would be next. Who knows, maybe printers and photocopiers are just a few years way (though that IS hard to believe).
Vendors must continually differentiate themselves from the competition. If commodity pricing makes it impossible to profit from hardware and OSS makes it difficult to profit from software, then they have to look at features such as "self-healing" hardware to sell their wares.
Good techs will always be needed, but maybe they won't need so many of them in the future -- like telephone operators, machinists...
I had a quick look at Ektron before. When I saw that it only ran on Windows boxes, it has less advantage over the built-in editing features of IE.
Another product, NetWord looks promising, though I did not find any pricing on their site. You can download earlier versions, but not the latest. Don't know if it runs on non-Windows platforms though: NetWord
I've used non-WYSIWYG Java and JS to help users add mark-up to pages. People who are used to modern editors don't much care for hand-coding HTML though do they;-)
Without a good free cross-platform inline editor, IE will continue to dominate a large class of intranet applications I think.
Look! See Tux waddle across the screen spewing wonderful help bubbles...
But seriously, is there a "standard" Linux contect help system in the works? Preferably based on XML or HTML? Or will newbies be expected to use man pages forever.
Like so many politically correct (ie Linux-based) hi-tech schemes, this one seeks to provide a one-size fits all appliance that can't be easily hacked.
Microsoft takes proprietary technologies and extends/improves them to suck people in.
These guys are taking "open" technologies and closing them up in little boxes that can't be easily extended or improved.
We've tried giving away hardware/software in exchange for ads -- that doesn't work.
We've tried giving away software in exchange for service -- VA Linux and the like don't seem to be fairing well with that model.
What else is left but subscription-based services and cheesy closed "linux" appliances?
Oh well, guess I'm just OVERWHELMED by U.S.-style democracy this week.
Napster has no obvious business plan as far one can tell from their website:
No banner adds
No fees for use
No nuthin
At one point I thought the plan might be to sell detailed marketing information on the listening habits of 20-million users by region/age/gender, etc.
Now, I'm guessing they foresaw this legal action long ago and fully expect to lose it. Thowing up their hands, they tell 20-million users "sorry guys, we really tried. But since you already have the software installed, how about signing up for our new pay per download service."
Could be sweeter for them if they can still use the existing user-hosted (read free) distribution system. And don't forget about that marketing info!
Do I really believe this? Naw! I'm just goofin around -- but assuming by some miracle that Napster comes out a winner, what IS their business plan?
Slashdot Mirror
As the father of a Type I diabetic and the son of a Type II diabetic, I have a suggestion. Why not cure diabetes, save thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Here is what was spent on diabetes care in the U.S. in 2002:
There are numerous possible cures: Stem cells, INGAP peptide, etc. With 5-billion dollars and the right amount of political will you could cure it.
In 2000, there were 69,301 American deaths directly caused by diabetes, but the NIH states that diabetes contributed to a total of 213,062 deaths in that year. And it happened again in 2001 and 2002, and it will happen again this year.
How many people do YOU know with Type I or Type II diabetes? Cure this damned disease and then see what can be done with an extra $132 billion in the U.S. economy. Use a few billion to get to Mars? Why not!
Check out National Diabetes Statistics to see where these stats come from.
Sigh... try looking at this bit of HISTORY from a historical perspective. Consider the other names on the list. Some of them were relatively minor players in the grand scheme. Do you seriously believe the people who had a major hand in creating OS's which drive hundreds of millions of PCs should be ignored because you don't believe they "contributed"? It's history. It's evolution. It took MS a long time to create a usable, reliable (though not yet secure) desktop OS which has been deployed on millions of desktops with countless hardware combinations. Linux is inching toward the desktop. but it's not there yet. In the meantime, let's not re-write history.
Actually, given the size and number of their APIs, I think MS has done a pretty good job of maintaining compatibility -- at least until DOT.NET came along. There is a bit of a leap there ;-) The MS Newsgroups are a huge reservoir for support. The most grief I ever had with Windows was a database app written in the early days of ADO. It was buggy as hell, but there were work-arounds for almost everything. Every subsequent release of the MDAC since 2.1 has provided increased stability, functionality and performance. And my old apps continue to work just fine. Maybe I was just lucky?
Yes. Service Packs rule. They need to be tested first, at least for critical server apps, but overall, the long march of Windows Service Packs has been an improvement. I've worked on quite a few hybrid Linix/Windows apps. Usually client server. Guess which platform the client runs on? Deploying Windows apps with PostgreSQL connectivity via ODBC is a breeze. Much easier than deploying Oracle client apps. There are _many_ ways of doing most things in Windows land. It all depends on the experience level of the programmer and IMAGINATION. I would say imagination is a huge part of coding, one that is often overlooked.
Is this what it's all about: "creating the appearance of legitimacy" and flipping "a solar middle finger at Microsoft"? How about just plain old competition with some added leverage to push Microsoft toward open file formats. Get a grip and loosen up the tinfoil hat, dude!
They hope to Palm One off on every one that can find.
>> Holy cow, an apology on /. Mod me down.
An apology on Slashdot is a rare and noble thing. All the same, your point is valid: how are a gajillion ordinary comsumer users supposed to keep their systems up-to-date and reliable. I'm not convinced today's Linux package update/distribution tools would do the job any better than Windows -- on a global scale. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.
Cheers.
Sigh... a completely different issue.
;-)
Did he have Automatic Updates enabled? Did he allow the updates to install or did he ignore them as I've seen so many people do?
Consider: If (and it's a big IF) most of the world were running various distributions of Linux, and users were faced with a remote exploit, Red Hat, Debian, SUSE, et al would have to quickly develop, test and distribute patches. Would the uptake of these patches be better than Windows Update? I doubt it. Note that even the FSF was not able to patch in time to avoid an exploit -- and it took them over 4 months to discover they had been compromised: http://ftp.gnu.org/MISSING-FILES.README
Is that clear enough for YOU
Um... where in the article does it say 3rd party code brings down the WHOLE O/S? In my experience the robustness of Windows has improved dramatically with every version (nevermind ME :-) I see individual applications crashing -- about 2 or 3 times a month. In fact, I typically go weeks and months between reboots (generally only when applying patches). There are plenty of things not to like about Windows, but the bad days of blue screens is a fading memory. Of course there are exceptions for odd hardware configurations and out-of-date drivers, but I've seen the same or worse problems with Linux support for oddball hardware.
BTW -- you may have noticed that sometimes when an app "hangs", and displays a "not responding" message in Task Manager, it is actually still running just fine (though chewing up a ton of CPU). Depending on the problem I may wait it out until the process finishes or simply kill it. One of my gripes with MS is that sometimes I have to use a third-party tool (sysinternals.com) tool to kill runaway processes -- Task Manager is not always able to kill it. Not perfect, but it works.
I think all of this applies to Windows server configurations also. I run IIS/ASP servers with dozens of users and applications. When configured so each account runs in its own memory space, with CPU utilization limits, NOBODY is able to bring down the whole web server with bad code -- just their own site.
The fact is, most of us are so bigoted about our O/S of choice, we are unwilling to learn enough about the "enemy" to use it properly.
You are right. First there was ADSI (which has been available for WinNT and beyond for about 5 years or so) and now WMI. You can programmatically manage accounts, web configuration, kill or restart services and processes, monitor disk usage and just about anything else you can think of.
These tools have allowed us to use our centralized unix-based account management system to manage accounts on our Windows servers. In fact, they play quite nicely together.
Ok... so he throws out the idea that we can't trust closed source statistical software and yet defends non-standard (basically closed) approaches to statistical analysis. Where's the transparency there?
"On the other hand, Patrick does not anticipate that XML will make a big difference to the human rights community. This is because very few traits of their data are standardized, while the strength of XML lies in its facilitating the exchange of standardized data. Most of the time, the individual statistician imposes his or her own structure on the data gathered, and another statistician who starts another project will structure the data differently. "
A working pancreas would be nice -- or even cloning Islet cells for transplant into Type I diabetics. Let's do it soon. We are already injecting transplanted human Islet cells, but that requires a lifelong cocktail of immunosuppressants to prevent rejection.
I've been running IIS -- and unix-based web servers for about 5 years. Our IIS boxes have NEVER been hacked. We had disabled .htr and other mappings long before Code Red emerged -- as MS had advised. The fact is, 90% of all of the Windows vulnerabilites have been fixable with permissions and registry modifications. Keeping patches up to date is a pain, but not impossible.
Without a doubt, MS has a lot to learn about security, but tools such as URLScan and the like have made it much easier to lock down an IIS server.
It's also worth remembering, that as an application server, IIS has the ability to do a LOT out of the box (COM, ASP, ISAPI (and outdated vulnerable technologies using HTR). In any case, can not compare IIS with Apache -- you must compare it with Apache + Tomcat + Turbine, etc.
A sea change for /.? A little objectivity, perhaps? Ha! Slashdot's corporate masters will never permit it.
I agree. We tested the Netscape/Mozilla vulnerability and it work on Linux systems also. I submitted the link to Slashdot and the story was REJECTED.
;-)
If this had been an MS vulnerability with a working exploit, it would have been posted here in a second --and would have generated 800 MS-bashing comments.
Slashdot has been good entertainment over the years, but I pity anyone who PAYS for a site that is so slanted it can't see beyond it's navel.
(Guess how this post will be mod'd
Of course, they all built on the work of people like Tesla. Fessenden knew the physics better than Marconi, but Marconi knew how to sell it. Sound familiar?
Well, just wanted to point out that if it had been an IIS system that had been hacked, most of this thread would consist of the usual MS bashing and OSS chest beating.
In this case, according to Netcraft, it looks like the hacked servers were probably running Apache and Netscape Enterprise.
Shhhhhh! Don't tell anyone! But remember, the next time something similar happens on a Windows platform, moust of you WILL HAPPILY drag Microsoft's name through the mud.
Auto-generated hyperlinks to places, people and products may not be a bad idea if it is done in a fair way. If MS provides a database of links that appears to have a specific agenda, they'll be trashed by the media. I expect they know this. I expect they'll try to provide a balanced set of links. And I expect they'll make a few mistakes anyhow.
;-)
From what I've read, the Smart Tag feature has to be turned on by users -- it is not enabled by default.
Unfortunately, most online internet coverage is ridiculously biased -- and is often owned by tech competitors (VA Linux owns Slashdot for example). Like many other MS stories, this one has been simplistically reported -- as if the browser will actually MODIFY web pages sitting on a server.
The question I have is this: will "Smart Tags" be cached on a user's system, or will they reach out and lookup URLs on an MS server. If it is the latter, I think most people will turn off the feature to speed up browsing, if nothing else.
Anyhow, perhaps the best way to deal with the IE "problem" is to contribute to the Mozilla project.
You can schedule it to compare available Hotfixes with what is already installed on an IIS box. Not exceedingly impressive, but better than nothing.
Expect more advancements in this area over the next 10 years. Self healing DESKTOPS would be next. Who knows, maybe printers and photocopiers are just a few years way (though that IS hard to believe).
Vendors must continually differentiate themselves from the competition. If commodity pricing makes it impossible to profit from hardware and OSS makes it difficult to profit from software, then they have to look at features such as "self-healing" hardware to sell their wares.
Good techs will always be needed, but maybe they won't need so many of them in the future -- like telephone operators, machinists...
I had a quick look at Ektron before. When I saw that it only ran on Windows boxes, it has less advantage over the built-in editing features of IE.
Another product, NetWord looks promising, though I did not find any pricing on their site. You can download earlier versions, but not the latest. Don't know if it runs on non-Windows platforms though: NetWord
I've used non-WYSIWYG Java and JS to help users add mark-up to pages. People who are used to modern editors don't much care for hand-coding HTML though do they ;-)
Without a good free cross-platform inline editor, IE will continue to dominate a large class of intranet applications I think.
RodLook! See Tux waddle across the screen spewing wonderful help bubbles...
But seriously, is there a "standard" Linux contect help system in the works? Preferably based on XML or HTML? Or will newbies be expected to use man pages forever.
Like so many politically correct (ie Linux-based) hi-tech schemes, this one seeks to provide a one-size fits all appliance that can't be easily hacked.
Microsoft takes proprietary technologies and extends/improves them to suck people in.
These guys are taking "open" technologies and closing them up in little boxes that can't be easily extended or improved.
We've tried giving away hardware/software in exchange for ads -- that doesn't work.
We've tried giving away software in exchange for service -- VA Linux and the like don't seem to be fairing well with that model.
What else is left but subscription-based services and cheesy closed "linux" appliances?
Oh well, guess I'm just OVERWHELMED by U.S.-style democracy this week.
"no mouse balls to fish out and clean. Besides all that, there's no distinguishable mouse button." (http://www.apple.com/mouse/)
Leave it Apple to license "1-Click Buying" just when they've perfected the zero-button mouse!
Kinda explains the latest financial statements, eh?
Rod
Napster has no obvious business plan as far one can tell from their website:
No banner adds
No fees for use
No nuthin
At one point I thought the plan might be to sell detailed marketing information on the listening habits of 20-million users by region/age/gender, etc.
Now, I'm guessing they foresaw this legal action long ago and fully expect to lose it. Thowing up their hands, they tell 20-million users "sorry guys, we really tried. But since you already have the software installed, how about signing up for our new pay per download service."
Could be sweeter for them if they can still use the existing user-hosted (read free) distribution system. And don't forget about that marketing info!
Do I really believe this? Naw! I'm just goofin around -- but assuming by some miracle that Napster comes out a winner, what IS their business plan?