There's a big difference. Sendmail and Bind do not run on millions of workstations owned and administered by the general public.
As far as "keeping up with security patches" goes... you've obviously never worked in an environment with 70,000 pcs spread across about 1900 sites.
A large number of machines run mission critical apps that need an extensive testing cycle between service packs and hotfixes that affect critical subsystems like DCOM. That testing cycle typically takes 4-5 wweks.
I've seen alot of different IT shops, and none were as vigilant about proactive pc & server managment.
Maybe Microsoft should have considered taking measures to prevent this kind of problem when they began shipping millions of copies of XP home.
There are many people out there who aren't computer geeks and do not know about or particularly care about Windows XP patches... many use their computers once a week or less.
It's inexcusable that a buffer overrun that first appeared in Windows NT 3.51 survived over the thousands of build, review and testing cycles that have occured since 1992.
This bug has been in Windows for over a decade and has probaly been exploited by hackers for years.
This isn't about Linux or Mac advocacy. It's about the shoddy quality of Microsoft product and the massive costs that Microsoft customers have absorbed. My employer (who keeps up with security patches) was only halfway through the desktop update cycle. We had 30,000 desktops infected and literally spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars in overtime alone to remediate it.
By the parent poster's logic, if my dictionary was stolen and I forgot the meaning of "extortion" or "alienation", I would go to a library and write the meanings down on an piece of paper.
If you can't find a job and want to go back to college to buy yourself a few years, go for it. Study something you are interested in. Don't tune your entire life to get a specific job that you may hate... do you really want to be a technical writer for the next 30 years?
Most times, the best technical people in the long run are people with interests outside of taking some magic combination of classes that will lead to a good degree. There is nothing in this world more clueless and obnoxious than a 24 year old with a technical degree and an MBA who thinks that he shits gold bricks.
Study history or botany or whatever and leverage your technical or engineering background to produce something of value.
Say you wrote a book and published it. Without copyright, a larger more influential publisher could publish your work without attribution and profit from it.
If you find that just, you are just plain insane.
Re:It is probably no coincidence, then...
on
P2P Spam?
·
· Score: 1
Nobody has died, but billions of dollars have been wasted combatting this shit.
Tell that to the Chinese and North Koreans who are happily exporting ballistic missiles to the highest bidder.
Nazi, American & Soviet scientists developed ICBMs in about 15 years with no computers and no precedent. What makes you think that all those Arab and Pakistani graduates of American & European engineering schools can't do the same?
Missiles and rockets aren't some magic item for white people only. And since the West is merrily outsourcing engineering programs to Asia, their weapons technology is likely to prosper.
There are plenty of good reasons for taxing equipment like this. Companies like GE take advantage of loopholes like leasing and take excessive depreciation charges to eliminate tax payments.
A large portion (25%) of a lease can be attributed to "soft costs"... so a company like GE can lease $1,000,000 of capital equipment like office furniture (leased via GE Capital) and then "lease" $250,000 worth of pens, pencils, paper, etc.
Depreciation is a bigger scam. A company can declare the "life" of a $60,000 switch and depreciate it down to $500 in three to four years... The equipment is usually still installed, and generating value, yet the company has effectively removed $59,500 of earnings for tax purposes.
The ideal solution would be an electronic system that printed a paper receipt with a hash or index number allowing you to verify that the vote was cast.
Local election districts will never go with that though -- too hard to defraud easily.
The best politically realistic voting method is paper ballot. If you can't read, use a pen, etc... tough.
Try doing that in a nightmare legacy NT4 domain clusterfuck. 300 domains in thousands of sites with everything from NT 3.51 to XP and bandwidth from 56k to OC-192.
With that many machines, you'll get better pricing. The organization that I work for (which is huge, but has about 200 linux boxes) pays approximately $200/box.
For us, it was worth it because we are guaranteed a supply of patches & support for a minimum of five years. Red Hat public releases churn every 18 months or so, which is too much work to maintain.
The biggest single problem is the NIMBY syndrome which makes it impossible to build additional high-tension lines or power plants in the metro NYC area.
Niagra Mohawk is stuck between a rock and a hard place... increasing demands continue to stress tramsmission systems that exceeded their capacity a decade ago. The political and legal climate in New York is such that it is possible for "interest groups" as small as 4-5 people to halt power plant construction for years.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a big difference. Sendmail and Bind do not run on millions of workstations owned and administered by the general public.
As far as "keeping up with security patches" goes... you've obviously never worked in an environment with 70,000 pcs spread across about 1900 sites.
A large number of machines run mission critical apps that need an extensive testing cycle between service packs and hotfixes that affect critical subsystems like DCOM. That testing cycle typically takes 4-5 wweks.
I've seen alot of different IT shops, and none were as vigilant about proactive pc & server managment.
Please do the world a favor and shut the fuck up.
Maybe Microsoft should have considered taking measures to prevent this kind of problem when they began shipping millions of copies of XP home.
There are many people out there who aren't computer geeks and do not know about or particularly care about Windows XP patches... many use their computers once a week or less.
It's inexcusable that a buffer overrun that first appeared in Windows NT 3.51 survived over the thousands of build, review and testing cycles that have occured since 1992.
This bug has been in Windows for over a decade and has probaly been exploited by hackers for years.
This isn't about Linux or Mac advocacy. It's about the shoddy quality of Microsoft product and the massive costs that Microsoft customers have absorbed. My employer (who keeps up with security patches) was only halfway through the desktop update cycle. We had 30,000 desktops infected and literally spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars in overtime alone to remediate it.
By the parent poster's logic, if my dictionary was stolen and I forgot the meaning of "extortion" or "alienation", I would go to a library and write the meanings down on an piece of paper.
$600,000 is peanuts and most of the sales were planned sales.
If you have the money for an ATM network equipment you should be using something other than a linux box as a firewall.
Most people regularly send email attachments larger than the Gecko engine.
If you have space problems on a modern hard disk, it's time to upgrade or delete some pron.
If you can't find a job and want to go back to college to buy yourself a few years, go for it. Study something you are interested in. Don't tune your entire life to get a specific job that you may hate... do you really want to be a technical writer for the next 30 years?
Most times, the best technical people in the long run are people with interests outside of taking some magic combination of classes that will lead to a good degree. There is nothing in this world more clueless and obnoxious than a 24 year old with a technical degree and an MBA who thinks that he shits gold bricks.
Study history or botany or whatever and leverage your technical or engineering background to produce something of value.
You only live life once, enjoy it.
It seems that 1/4 or more of Slashdot "stories" are advertisements, not content.
I take it you've never published anything.
Why publish anything if some scumbag is going to steal your work and profit from it?
Writing is a profession and the notion that you "own" what you produce is a fundamental truth.
You are missing the obvious...
Say you wrote a book and published it. Without copyright, a larger more influential publisher could publish your work without attribution and profit from it.
If you find that just, you are just plain insane.
Nobody has died, but billions of dollars have been wasted combatting this shit.
Keys are also security by obscurity.
The only secure system is an open system that allows the public to find out what is going on. The open source bazaar will take care of the rest.
Tell that to the Chinese and North Koreans who are happily exporting ballistic missiles to the highest bidder.
Nazi, American & Soviet scientists developed ICBMs in about 15 years with no computers and no precedent. What makes you think that all those Arab and Pakistani graduates of American & European engineering schools can't do the same?
Missiles and rockets aren't some magic item for white people only. And since the West is merrily outsourcing engineering programs to Asia, their weapons technology is likely to prosper.
There are plenty of good reasons for taxing equipment like this. Companies like GE take advantage of loopholes like leasing and take excessive depreciation charges to eliminate tax payments.
A large portion (25%) of a lease can be attributed to "soft costs"... so a company like GE can lease $1,000,000 of capital equipment like office furniture (leased via GE Capital) and then "lease" $250,000 worth of pens, pencils, paper, etc.
Depreciation is a bigger scam. A company can declare the "life" of a $60,000 switch and depreciate it down to $500 in three to four years... The equipment is usually still installed, and generating value, yet the company has effectively removed $59,500 of earnings for tax purposes.
It's not 1999 anymore!
The dot-bombs are all out of business!
I guess you haven't worked with HIPAA-sensitive data or other data that must be kept confidential.
ACLs are also far easier to manage and require less effort to modify.
Windows 2000 & Windows XP pro licenses do not give you the right to run 95/98/Me.
The ideal solution would be an electronic system that printed a paper receipt with a hash or index number allowing you to verify that the vote was cast.
Local election districts will never go with that though -- too hard to defraud easily.
The best politically realistic voting method is paper ballot. If you can't read, use a pen, etc... tough.
Haha!
Try doing that in a nightmare legacy NT4 domain clusterfuck. 300 domains in thousands of sites with everything from NT 3.51 to XP and bandwidth from 56k to OC-192.
STFU
Try patchin 75,000 workstations and servers in a month with 100 IT staffers who have jobs to do besides patching MS shit.
You are a fucking idiot. Period.
Risking lives so you can download tarballs of power plant control software and make it "rock solid" is beyond retarded -- its insane.
Once the power and water is knocked out, the black helicopters arrive and take us all to the alien mothership hovering on the dark side of the moon.
It seems to be a copy of the changelogs of projects, which is what Slashdot, Freshmeat and README files are for.
A newsletter should have content beyone release notes...
With that many machines, you'll get better pricing. The organization that I work for (which is huge, but has about 200 linux boxes) pays approximately $200/box.
For us, it was worth it because we are guaranteed a supply of patches & support for a minimum of five years. Red Hat public releases churn every 18 months or so, which is too much work to maintain.
The biggest single problem is the NIMBY syndrome which makes it impossible to build additional high-tension lines or power plants in the metro NYC area.
Niagra Mohawk is stuck between a rock and a hard place... increasing demands continue to stress tramsmission systems that exceeded their capacity a decade ago. The political and legal climate in New York is such that it is possible for "interest groups" as small as 4-5 people to halt power plant construction for years.