It is time to stop capitalism and corporatism now.
If you want to stop capitalism (which is defined
as private ownership of the means of production),
as opposed to, say, curbing its excesses,
I'm curious as to what your preferred replacement
is. Especially as all the recent attempts have
been utter failures.
Maybe you can start by shipping your PC (your
means of producing/. posts) to the UN or
something.
Some babies require quite a bit of coxing (sp?) before they understand what going on with that thing being shoved in their faces.
And if the mother has trouble with the coaxing,
there are consultants who will help. Yes,
breastfeeding consultants. My co-worker's wife's
health plan explicitly provides coverage for
that.
I wonder how someone gets into that line of work...
This is same as today. Windows 95 came, all the features that were there were all available in Apple's OS.
Windows had one feature that was only lamely
copied by its competitors:
the "random downtime" feature. This has
helped me many times. One I remember was
being at a conference around 1998,
and the talk I most
wanted to hear was about to start. But I
had a bad case of the runs, and really had to go
right away! I ran out to the bathroom,
and came back 15 minutes later, disappointed I
had missed most of the talk. But the speaker
was still trying to reboot his Win95
laptop that had his slides!
Oh not that again. You don't think that the market penetration they have has anything to do with it?
Standard apologist claim. But they never explain
why Apache has three times the market share of
IIS, but IIS has the worse security record.
Also... you have no credibility to say "but I don't have to go after M$ to discredit them" as you do go after them with your oh so clever use of the dollar sign.
OP was talking about people writing viruses
to discredit MS. But hey, putting a dollar sign
in an online comment is just as bad, right?
And if you leave off the dollar sign, aren't
you then matching the common abbreviation of a
certain crippling disease? (Some on/. might find that
more appropriate, actually.)
Those network and systems administrators who are on the front lines of keeping their networks secure and safe from threats both internal and external don't count.
I know this has been hashed over a thousand times
on/. already, but there are two relevant replies
to this:
1. Microsoft apologists always try to blame the
sysadmins. But one of Microsoft's marketing
threads has always been along the lines of:
"Unix and Linux are complicated and you need to
pay a lot for experts who understand these
arcane systems. Windows is so easy, even a
trained monkey can administer it, which lowers
your TCO!" So they encourage managers to devalue
competent system administration, then turn
around and say, "if something goes wrong, it's
because your sysadmins aren't smart!"
2. How long was the patch available? Any Windows
sysadmin (especially a smart one) knows you
don't add patches to a large organization without
thorough testing, because they have a
history of breaking existing systems, especially
those with a lot of third-party apps and/or
custom configurations. (I'll give MS the benefit
of the doubt and assume it's due to lack of
adequate testing rather than deliberate.)
A lot of MS shops are still testing SP2.
All of a sudden, a worm makes mainstream news because it invaded CNN's network.
They've usually reported on worms in the past.
What's different in this case is that they
explicitly said it affects Microsoft systems.
In the past, they would usually (but not always)
say, "there's a new virus going around and
every computer in the world is vulnerable."
I would complain to them about not specifying
the OS, comparing it to reporting on a new
safety flaw in cars without naming the make
and model.
Group think can be avoided by having a rating system tied to the actual rating rather than in +-1 steps.
That would address the issue of volatility, but
not the fundamental problem of groupthink.
What's the difference whether a well-reasoned
article taking a minority position (on/.) gets
a bunch of (-1, Flamebait) mods and a small
number of (+1, Insightful) posts, or a bunch of
scores that average out to (Flamebait=-1)?
I think the most positive thing WP can do right now is to eliminate the time-honored custom of allowing anonymous edits, and institute some kind of moderation system (yes, a la Slashdot)
Which would cause them to degenerate into
groupthink (yes, a la Slashdot).
I've seen way too many cases in which
posts that say little more than "X sucks"
(where X is any of the usual things
hated by the majority here) get
+5 Insightful, while well-written posts defending
X and presenting cogent arguments get
modded down into oblivion. Meta-moderation
fails due to the same groupthink.
("Yes, nobody intelligent or moral could
really be defending X, so I agree
with the moderator that it's Flamebait.")
Slashdot is viewed as heavily biased in many
circles, and for good reason. If WP wants to
be taken seriously, they should avoid copying
Slashdot.
If a company was [sic] smart...... they wouldn't need this kind of thing.
Yeah, but then, if they were that smart,
they wouldn't need to read a magazine like
InfoWorld in the first place,
since they'd already know everything.
I did, and the article clearly states that steps
were taken to obfuscate the code that generated
the error message. The author, who says he
normally gives MS the benefit of the doubt
(mentioning "whining competitors"),
reaches the conclusion that the bug was put
there deliberately, and that there was no
legitimate reason (in terms of software
functionality) for it. He also points out that
at least one program (WIN.COM) would
terminate on getting that error.
The fact that they took it out of the final
version doesn't change the fact that they did it
in the first place -- releasing
a product with deliberate code
intended to mislead the consumer into believing
that a competitor's product was faulty.
Occasionally I get the brainwashed retard - "My cousin has a Dell with a Pentium 4, I want a Pentium 4" and can't convince them otherwise.
Presumably, he's seen his cousin's Dell and
it works fine, and his cousin likes it, so
perhaps he gives that data point more weight
than the word of some pushy salesman trying to
get him to go for a product he's never heard of.
That doesn't necessarily make him a
"brainwashed retard." Perhaps he's been
burned before by some store clerk telling him
"this one's actually better" just to get rid
of junk he can't move. I know I have.
Most people here would probably tell you not
to believe ads, and even "reviews" from
"neutral" sources aren't always trustworthy.
That leaves word-of-mouth as a major source
of information about products.
It was the 8086 that was designed in Israel.
The 8086 was a cheaper version of the 8088.
For instance, it used an 8-bit data bus rather
than a 16-bit bus (but internally it was the
same). It was chosen for the IBM PC, due to
these cost advantages.
Unix and mainframe programmers are more likely to
know multiple systems, out of necessity, and
consequently have a more general understanding of
the commonalities of all computer systems.
Windows-only programmers are more likely to
know The Microsoft Way, and only The Microsoft Way.
They're less likely to know standard terms, and
will only know Microsoft's replacement terms.
At least in my experience (and these are
tendencies with plenty of exceptions).
But almost all of the current and recent vulnerabilities have somehow been related to IE.
Which, Microsoft insists, is an integral and
inseparable part of the OS.
Microsoft can't say on the one hand that IE is
part of Windows, and then on the other hand
claim that
IE vulnerabilities don't count as Windows
vulnerabilities.
The amount of current that can go through
your body is determined by the external
voltage divided by your body's resistance
(impedance, actually). The wall power
should be thought of as a voltage source,
not a current source. Yes, there's
internal resistance (it's not an "ideal"
source), but that's insignificant next
to your body's resistance.
Does anyone
(especially the Intel haters)
remember when AMD's CEO Sanders
testified at the Microsoft antitrust trial --
in favor of Microsoft?
Even though Microsoft was accused of many of
the same things that AMD now charges
Intel with, such as bullying suppliers?
I guess it's OK to abuse a monopoly
position, but only if you add support for
someone's processor in your OS.
I wonder if that courtroom appearance will
come back to haunt AMD.
My guess is that it is done deliberately to force all users in a company to upgrade.
A colleague who once interned at MS told me a
few years ago that when he was there in the mid
90s, MS did something similar. They always change
file formats, and newer versions always have
options for exporting to older formats. But they
were supposed to mess up a small fraction of the
time. That way, if a company tried to tell everyone
to export to the format of the oldest version
used at the company, they'd eventually get tired
of all the hassles and just upgrade the old ones.
He didn't seem like someone with an ax to
grind against MS. Of course, maybe he was just
picking up some cynical joking by programmers
there and taking it seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to stop capitalism (which is defined as private ownership of the means of production), as opposed to, say, curbing its excesses, I'm curious as to what your preferred replacement is. Especially as all the recent attempts have been utter failures.
Maybe you can start by shipping your PC (your means of producing /. posts) to the UN or
something.
That it may be, but it still doesn't produce HTML. By default, it doesn't even produce legal ASCII.
Since when did Word and Frontpage start producing HTML? (Or even ASCII?)
And if the mother has trouble with the coaxing, there are consultants who will help. Yes, breastfeeding consultants. My co-worker's wife's health plan explicitly provides coverage for that.
I wonder how someone gets into that line of work...
Windows had one feature that was only lamely copied by its competitors: the "random downtime" feature. This has helped me many times. One I remember was being at a conference around 1998, and the talk I most wanted to hear was about to start. But I had a bad case of the runs, and really had to go right away! I ran out to the bathroom, and came back 15 minutes later, disappointed I had missed most of the talk. But the speaker was still trying to reboot his Win95 laptop that had his slides!
Wonder what they'll put on the cover.
Standard apologist claim. But they never explain why Apache has three times the market share of IIS, but IIS has the worse security record.
Also... you have no credibility to say "but I don't have to go after M$ to discredit them" as you do go after them with your oh so clever use of the dollar sign.
OP was talking about people writing viruses to discredit MS. But hey, putting a dollar sign in an online comment is just as bad, right?
And if you leave off the dollar sign, aren't you then matching the common abbreviation of a certain crippling disease? (Some on /. might find that
more appropriate, actually.)
I know this has been hashed over a thousand times on /. already, but there are two relevant replies
to this:
1. Microsoft apologists always try to blame the sysadmins. But one of Microsoft's marketing threads has always been along the lines of: "Unix and Linux are complicated and you need to pay a lot for experts who understand these arcane systems. Windows is so easy, even a trained monkey can administer it, which lowers your TCO!" So they encourage managers to devalue competent system administration, then turn around and say, "if something goes wrong, it's because your sysadmins aren't smart!"
2. How long was the patch available? Any Windows sysadmin (especially a smart one) knows you don't add patches to a large organization without thorough testing, because they have a history of breaking existing systems, especially those with a lot of third-party apps and/or custom configurations. (I'll give MS the benefit of the doubt and assume it's due to lack of adequate testing rather than deliberate.) A lot of MS shops are still testing SP2.
They've usually reported on worms in the past.
What's different in this case is that they explicitly said it affects Microsoft systems. In the past, they would usually (but not always) say, "there's a new virus going around and every computer in the world is vulnerable." I would complain to them about not specifying the OS, comparing it to reporting on a new safety flaw in cars without naming the make and model.
That would address the issue of volatility, but not the fundamental problem of groupthink. What's the difference whether a well-reasoned article taking a minority position (on /.) gets
a bunch of (-1, Flamebait) mods and a small
number of (+1, Insightful) posts, or a bunch of
scores that average out to (Flamebait=-1)?
Which would cause them to degenerate into groupthink (yes, a la Slashdot).
I've seen way too many cases in which posts that say little more than "X sucks" (where X is any of the usual things hated by the majority here) get +5 Insightful, while well-written posts defending X and presenting cogent arguments get modded down into oblivion. Meta-moderation fails due to the same groupthink. ("Yes, nobody intelligent or moral could really be defending X, so I agree with the moderator that it's Flamebait.")
Slashdot is viewed as heavily biased in many circles, and for good reason. If WP wants to be taken seriously, they should avoid copying Slashdot.
Yeah, but then, if they were that smart, they wouldn't need to read a magazine like InfoWorld in the first place, since they'd already know everything.
I did, and the article clearly states that steps were taken to obfuscate the code that generated the error message. The author, who says he normally gives MS the benefit of the doubt (mentioning "whining competitors"), reaches the conclusion that the bug was put there deliberately, and that there was no legitimate reason (in terms of software functionality) for it. He also points out that at least one program (WIN.COM) would terminate on getting that error. The fact that they took it out of the final version doesn't change the fact that they did it in the first place -- releasing a product with deliberate code intended to mislead the consumer into believing that a competitor's product was faulty.
Presumably, he's seen his cousin's Dell and it works fine, and his cousin likes it, so perhaps he gives that data point more weight than the word of some pushy salesman trying to get him to go for a product he's never heard of. That doesn't necessarily make him a "brainwashed retard." Perhaps he's been burned before by some store clerk telling him "this one's actually better" just to get rid of junk he can't move. I know I have.
Most people here would probably tell you not to believe ads, and even "reviews" from "neutral" sources aren't always trustworthy. That leaves word-of-mouth as a major source of information about products.
The 8088 had the 8 bit bus. 8088 is to 80886 as 386sx is to 386dx :).
Whoops -- you're right!
And I believe you meant to say "8088 is to 8086" -- but then, who actually checks their posts these days? :-)
It was the 8086 that was designed in Israel. The 8086 was a cheaper version of the 8088. For instance, it used an 8-bit data bus rather than a 16-bit bus (but internally it was the same). It was chosen for the IBM PC, due to these cost advantages.
At least that's what he said at a
speech I heard in 1982. He didn't
actually play them.
Wasn't giving software to someone for free supposed to be anti-American or something?
Unix and mainframe programmers are more likely to know multiple systems, out of necessity, and consequently have a more general understanding of the commonalities of all computer systems. Windows-only programmers are more likely to know The Microsoft Way, and only The Microsoft Way. They're less likely to know standard terms, and will only know Microsoft's replacement terms. At least in my experience (and these are tendencies with plenty of exceptions).
Which, Microsoft insists, is an integral and inseparable part of the OS.
Microsoft can't say on the one hand that IE is part of Windows, and then on the other hand claim that IE vulnerabilities don't count as Windows vulnerabilities.
You are violating the patent for "A method for responding to articles about stupid patents by making jokes about even more ridiculous patents."
The amount of current that can go through your body is determined by the external voltage divided by your body's resistance (impedance, actually). The wall power should be thought of as a voltage source, not a current source. Yes, there's internal resistance (it's not an "ideal" source), but that's insignificant next to your body's resistance.
Does anyone (especially the Intel haters) remember when AMD's CEO Sanders testified at the Microsoft antitrust trial -- in favor of Microsoft? Even though Microsoft was accused of many of the same things that AMD now charges Intel with, such as bullying suppliers? I guess it's OK to abuse a monopoly position, but only if you add support for someone's processor in your OS.
I wonder if that courtroom appearance will come back to haunt AMD.
A colleague who once interned at MS told me a few years ago that when he was there in the mid 90s, MS did something similar. They always change file formats, and newer versions always have options for exporting to older formats. But they were supposed to mess up a small fraction of the time. That way, if a company tried to tell everyone to export to the format of the oldest version used at the company, they'd eventually get tired of all the hassles and just upgrade the old ones.
He didn't seem like someone with an ax to grind against MS. Of course, maybe he was just picking up some cynical joking by programmers there and taking it seriously.