This is why everytime a comparison is made of Linux and Windows is made, and Linux comes out ahead, the comparison is limited to Web Server functionality. Anything on the network requiring real, scalable access control becomes a nightmare that would scare the pants off corporate IT managers.
It's about time we took this problem seriously and recognized it is a HUGE PROBLEM TO LINUX ADOPTION!!!!
I'm an architect for a large corporation that is today trying to find a replacement for NFS. Our key goals are: - Integration with a Kerberos SSO strategy - Fast performance - Cross-platform compatibility with Windows - Robust Access Control mechanisms, RBAC would be nice but DACL is probably reality.
In my opinion, these are the primary goals that companies are looking for. Not a "journaling" file system, or built-in encryption. Sure those are nice, but let's get the basics first. Unfortunately, CIFS is still in quite a state of beta (even on the 2.6 Kernel) and there don't seem to be any real other alternatives.
Everyone here seems to have missed the point. The biggest application of Liberty Alliance and WS-Federation is to provide authentication for web services. Web services have no standard authentication mechanism. Don't you see how exposing authenticated web services would be huge for interconnecting businesses?
Well, if the crux of your argument is that these third-party developers are encouraged to act irresponsibly by Microsoft's ability to encode "ignorance" into Windows APIs, libraries, coding styles, frameworks... then why is Mono being developed based on a direct translation of the Microsoft.NET framework??
My point above is that the original poster's assertion that big, bad Microsoft "requires" users to run as Administrator is patently false. It is due to poor programming on the part of ISVs that developed commercial desktop products. That's a problem Linux would be lucky to have. Suddenly you're talking about the GUI and Kernel Components?
Well fine. I'll challenge you on the Kernel too. Ah yes, lets start with the "setuid bit". Now there's a fine security model.
Or let's talk about NIS and NFS. Are these representative of high security? Pulease. This system believes you are who you say you are just because you say so!
Or how about the User/Group/World permissioning structure? How flexible! Couple this with the 16/32 group limit of the Kernel and you've got a really scalable system for applying security to files.
I have to give you credit -- these mechanisms sure are "clean and simple". But here we are 20 years down the road, and security Access Control mechanisms are a shambles in Linux.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. Is your real name Michael Moore? That's the only person I know who can distort the facts with such a "holier than thou" attitude.
To wit -- Here's a little history lesson on why you're wrong. And when Linux starts to get the number and volume of enterprise-level applications that Windows has, these types of history lessons will prove useful. But don't just take the easy way out and say "Yeah Windows sucks" and not try to learn about the mistakes that might just be made again without some perspective.
So Microsoft best practices are to NOT have the user run as Administrator of the computer. But unfortunately, many companies don't follow this advice. See, unfortunatley, in the past many poorly-written **third party apps** required rights to certain areas of the file system or registry, and these are old programs that worked fine before such systems were locked down (for good security reasons) by Microsoft.
The reason for the lockdown was that as the number of third-party programs grew, they were scattering per-user program configuration information all over the hard disk, wherever they pleased. When users moved from one computer to another it was a nightmare because every software vendor had their own place to store files. Some stored it in/WINNT, some in/WINNT/SYSTEM32, some on the root. Microsoft had already provided a directory/WINNT/Profiles, but in their haste many vendors just wrote programs that threw their trash wherever they damn well pleased.
So Microsoft took action. They created the "Documents and Settings" folder for user profile information. This was introduced with Windows 2000. Moreover, they locked down the default security of the rest of the hard disk in order to prevent 3rd party apps in the future from sprinkling stuff all over the place -- and instead made "Documents and Settings" the only place where user profile information is to be stored. Finally, the created the Designed for Windows XP logo certification system as the carrot/stick that they use to get developers to stick to these (and other) standards.
What happened when they did this? Users came out of the woodwork! "Microsoft SUCKS!! Microsoft broke all my apps because they are a monopoly that wants to own the lucrative (insert program market here) market!", they said. Well, no. What actually happened is that Microsoft slapped the hand of ISVs that chose not to follow their documented (and dare I say it, well thought out but not hard-core enforced) standards.
Now fast forward to today. Some of those apps are still in use. But due to reasons unknown (frugality, probably) most companies aren't willing to go through the work of finding out what hard disk/registry settings each of 300+ applications need and developing a script to give users access to those areas. So they take the short route and give users full control of the Registry, or of the box. And that gives virii/trojan horses fertile ground to wreak havok. Yes, Microsoft is the root of all evil. As you can now see this whole situation was designed by the Devil Bill Gates himself to make your life miserable.
So applications run under the context of the user that runs them. If the application needs additional permissions, then it either needs to install itself as a service (which would require entering service account information upon installation) or somehow ask the user to provide necessary credentials.
As a sidebar, Microsoft has a feature (which can be enabled) whereby when a user initiates the installation of a software package, the installation program runs under the credentials of the system account. Like any security feature, it may be nice for some situations (as an admin you don't have to truck on over the user to log on every time they wanna install something) and bad for others (potential security hole). The choice is yours to make as an administrator. But it is a nice middle ground between allowing a user to run as administrator of his/her box all day long (due to risk of trojans, etc), and having to baby-sit them every time they want to install something new.
Don't you know the proper way for citizens to solve their problems today?
1. Incorporate yourself 2. Make a $1000 contribution to the Corporate Party (DNC or RNC, doesn't matter which) 3. Sue them for $10000, and get your pol friends to bring in the FBI 4. PROFIT!!!
Although your post was obviously tongue-in-cheek, it is not far from the truth. Apparently in Germany, they are petrified of the Church of Scientology. So much so that they demanded Microsoft provide them with instructions to remove "Disk Defragmenter"
, because it was developed by a company whose CEO was a scientologist.
Re:That example seemed deliberate
on
Linux Unwired
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· Score: 1
Microsoft sucks because they tried to make a wireless client that doesn't require you to be a DSP engineer in wireless chipset technology. It doesn't work *perfectly* (although there are easy solution that require you to [gasp!] uncheck checkboxes, instead of modify.conf files), so it sucks. And because you have the option to use a different wireless client instead of the Windows Wireless Zero Configuration service, they are leveraging their monopoly of the desktop to gain access into the highly lucrative wireless client software business.
If Microsoft had only simply done one of the following, they would have earned some Karma from the Slashdot community: 1. Not shipped a wireless client at all 2. Shipped a wireless client that required in-depth knowledge of the chipset your specific card is using, and required editing configuration files instead of clicking checkboxes 3. Made their Wireless client the only one that you could install on Linux
WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING AT THE LABOR DEPT.?
By JOHN CRUDELE
May 11, 2004 -- DON'T get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April.
I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.
They could be figments of statisticians' optimism.
Anyone who plodded through my column last Thursday knows I predicted that job growth in April would be better than the 160,000 to 170,000 jobs that the "pros" were anticipating.
But I also said, quite emphatically I hope, that the stronger growth would be an illusion - the result of the Labor Department's computers making happy predictions about seasonal job creation that could neither be verified nor justified.
I'll explain one aspect.
Back in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.
That estimate comes from the Labor Department's "birth/death model." You can look up these numbers on the Department's Web site.
As staggering as the assumption about new companies was in March, the Labor Department got even more brazen in April.
Last Friday, it was disclosed that these imaginary jobs had been increased by 117,000 to 270,000 for the latest month - because, I guess, the stat jockeys got a vision from the gods of spring.
Without those extra 117,000 make-believe jobs, the total growth for April would have been just 171,000 - sub-par for an economy that's supposed to be growing at more than 4 percent a year, but right on the pros' targets.
Take away all 270,000 make-believe jobs and, well, you have the sort of pessimism that the political pollsters are seeing.
If I was the suspicious type (and if I thought Washington was smart enough), I'd suspect a nasty motive behind the sudden surge in these mystery jobs. But for now, let's just acknowledge their existence.
Also keep in mind that the government doesn't distinguish between good companies being created and, say, a guy doing consulting work out of his basement because he can't find real work.
What does this new job announcement mean in the real world?
It means there will be more pressure on the financial markets, as we've seen for a while but especially since last Thursday.
It also means that the Federal Reserve now has the excuse it needs to raise interest rates in June (as I've said before would happen) and will probably start regretting that move by the end of the summer.
And President Bush will probably give in to temptation and start crowing about the economy, going against the mood, as captured by pollsters.
This will make him look as out of touch with reality as his father did.
I'm sorry to inform you that Outlook Express works and scales great, and is included with Windows XP.
Nice that you suddenly added the "spell checker" requirement. Of course if Microsoft included one, you would be screaming about how they are leveraging the desktop to monopolize the lucrative spell checker market. But since they didn't include one, it's why Windows sucks. Had you really researched the issue, instead of whipping it up as a straw man for how Microsoft sucks, you would know that small, free programs exist to add spell Check to Outlook Express.
You don't have to buy CALs or servers to run XP. Try comparing apples-to-apples. We're talking about the DESKTOP, you know, where Linux has hard a notoriously hard time penetrating?
Then why is it that IE users can use Kerberized authentication to web servers (using SPNEGO/Kerberos which is supported by Apache), while Mozilla users are still handing their usernames and passwords to servers? I've spent months trying to get the beta version of Mozilla to work with SPNEGO, and it don't work.
Because the "new, new economy" business model is to make it difficult for customers to use your product, and then sue the pants off anyone that tries to help them.
Accordingly, I expect Slashdot to receive a subpoena shortly to determine who the above poster is -- Because he has now violated the DMCA by "bypassing an encyption technology" !
Big corporations are what they are. They sell us cool stuff with one hand and tighten the screws on our freedoms with the other. We hate them every morning and love them every afternoon, and vice versa. This is part of living in the modern world: you take your yin with your yang and try to figure out how to do what's right the best you can. If you think it has to be all one way or the other, that's cool, share your opinions, but don't expect everyone else to think the same.
If you have a problem with the fact that not everyone here hates Microsoft, why are you here?
Look, freak, I didn't fire the first salvo in this "tit-for-tat" personal battle you seem to have with me. Actually, it's not just with me. It's with anyone who has anything positive to say about Microsoft.
And I don't have to "defend" myself to you for speaking freely (as in Speech *and* Beer) on Microsoft software.
Instead, I'll give you some free advice: Instead of acting like a Nazi, you ought to consider that people should be able to make their OWN CHOICE about what software they run. Accept the fact that angry bile and intimidation aren't enough to get someone to go Open Source. What *YOU* happen to think about *ANYTHING* doesn't mean a rat's crap to me, actually even less because you're so closed-minded and angry.
Failing that, the only other way I see for you to achieve happiness in your life is to recruit your own luftwaffe and lock up anyone who even considered a Microsoft product. Unfortunately, I doubt you've got the charisma or the guts.
At first, I took your personal attack on me seriously. Then I looked at your post history and realized that you, in fact, contain much more "vehemence, twisted logic and bile" than I.
This recent response to one of your posts pretty much says it all:
Re:Wish granted. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 2004.05.25 13:40 (#9250064)
Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical psycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a/. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history [slashdot.org]. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
For example, in this recent post [slashdot.org] twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
More? Just read though this [slashdot.org] post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own.
More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories [slashdot.org], more [slashdot.org] offtopic [slashdot.org] FUD [slashdot.org] and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants [slashdot.org], promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS [slashdot.org], apparently [slashdot.org] (that first one is a winner). I mean, really [slashdot.org]. You think [slashdot.org]?
This should be an editorial, not an "analysis". It's filled with non-factual personal experiences that have obviously given him a bias. I mean, why does this belong in an "analysis"??? (from the article):
My most memorable moment at Microsoft came during a technical review with Bill Gates. I will never forget the moment when I made an apparently obvious point to him. He responded, "What? Do you think I'm stupid?" Everyone was staring at me, and I felt it best not to answer. Like Gates, there were always people at Microsoft who were much smarter than me and more technically skilled. But he's created a corporate culture that sometimes struggles to see the forest for the trees--and I think this is what has led to some of the challenges that it faces today.
So I did a little digging on this guy and found out he really is stupid. And my guess is that he's bitter because he's just smart enough to realize how stupid he is.
According to the July 20, 1999
edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencier,
Jeff Reifman, a 29-year-old former program manager at MSNBC, left behind $700,000 in stock options in April to co-found GiftSpot.com, a 24-person Seattle company that delivers gift certificates over the Internet. If Reifman had stayed at Microsoft just two more months he would have been able to cash in on the stock.
Ahh... now we see why he is so angry about why his Gift Certificate store failed! It wasn't because PassPort didn't take off...
This kind of "article" is exactly why newspapers are going down the toilet today. There's no disclosure.
IE has had Kerberos-based authentication that works against Apache or IIS for years. This method prevents passwords from being transmitted over the network or to web servers. Mozilla is still trying (and failing) to implement negiotiateauth.
Meanwhile in Mozillaland, users are forced to authenticate using basic authentication -- which passes their password over the network in cleartext, practically. I know they are trying to integrate in 1.7 beta, but it doesn't work.
So tell me again how IE is less secure than the alternatives?
A number of people are reporting that the basic XWindows setup routine in Fedora Core 2 won't even start in the Microsoft Virutal PC application.
I also found the following interesting post on usenet:
From: "Colin Barnhorst" Sender: "Colin Barnhorst" Subject: Fedora Core 2 Final Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 10:39:02 -0700
Before you even ask, the installation and configuration problems you are experiencing with Fedora Core 2 are not VPC problems. There are lots and lots and lots of commentary on all kinds of device problems on the Red Hat network. I have been reviewing the 'daily distributions' of postings. The so called 'dailies' are coming hourly as the sheer volume is flushing out the postings. Having said that, there are a lot of good ideas and tips and you should look to that source for guidance rather than this one. You can subscribe to the mail lists at
So does Samba-3 support the "trade secret" PAC information that Microsoft inserted into their Kerberos tickets (to great consternation of the Kerberos community)?
Re:I used this before for network monitoring.
on
The Sound of Cells
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· Score: 3, Funny
Yeah, I manage my networks using sound the same way. If I make a change to a router, I pick up *immediately* when something is wrong. The sounds are usually way off in the cubicles and go something like this: "What the heck is going on!", "Are you clocking?".
Great summary line from the article: "Government is really not equipped to regulate in such a fast-moving industry as technology," Rosoff added. "That's why the most aggressive antitrust commentators originally pressed for the breakup of the company."
So whose fault is it that Government is "inequipped" to regulate high-tech? If I was inequipped to teach my son about how to walk, and he tried to do it himself, should I cut him off at the knees?
And is it moral to destroy a company simply because you can't move faster than the marketplace for its products? And if the marketplace moves so quickly to make monopolies, might it not move equally quickly to destroy them?
First of all, I think a documentary would be much more interesting if it focussed not on the effects of outsourcing, but on its causes. How much of outsourcing is due to greed, and how much is due to need? This kind of analysis would give a much better foundation upon which to analyze what the effects will be (Did outsourcing truly spark a "race to the bottom", or is it a "rising tide lifts all boats" process?)
Companies are still screaming about the lack of qualified talent in the USA. Is that truly lack of talent, or lack of talent willing to work at a ditch-digging wage? This problem is present in more than technology jobs -- but elementary school teaching jobs (where a huge supply of qualified talent is paid a pittance, and still visas are issued), construction jobs, accounting, etc.
I also think the effect of government policy and political campaign contribution system shouldn't be ignored. Only recently has our political campaign contribution system been overrun by corporate money. How has this affected the evaluation of policy questions, such as outsourcing?
Slashdot Mirror
This is why everytime a comparison is made of Linux and Windows is made, and Linux comes out ahead, the comparison is limited to Web Server functionality. Anything on the network requiring real, scalable access control becomes a nightmare that would scare the pants off corporate IT managers.
It's about time we took this problem seriously and recognized it is a HUGE PROBLEM TO LINUX ADOPTION!!!!
I'm an architect for a large corporation that is today trying to find a replacement for NFS. Our key goals are:
- Integration with a Kerberos SSO strategy
- Fast performance
- Cross-platform compatibility with Windows
- Robust Access Control mechanisms, RBAC would be nice but DACL is probably reality.
In my opinion, these are the primary goals that companies are looking for. Not a "journaling" file system, or built-in encryption. Sure those are nice, but let's get the basics first. Unfortunately, CIFS is still in quite a state of beta (even on the 2.6 Kernel) and there don't seem to be any real other alternatives.
Everyone here seems to have missed the point. The biggest application of Liberty Alliance and WS-Federation is to provide authentication for web services. Web services have no standard authentication mechanism. Don't you see how exposing authenticated web services would be huge for interconnecting businesses?
Well, if the crux of your argument is that these third-party developers are encouraged to act irresponsibly by Microsoft's ability to encode "ignorance" into Windows APIs, libraries, coding styles, frameworks... then why is Mono being developed based on a direct translation of the Microsoft .NET framework??
My point above is that the original poster's assertion that big, bad Microsoft "requires" users to run as Administrator is patently false. It is due to poor programming on the part of ISVs that developed commercial desktop products. That's a problem Linux would be lucky to have. Suddenly you're talking about the GUI and Kernel Components?
Well fine. I'll challenge you on the Kernel too. Ah yes, lets start with the "setuid bit". Now there's a fine security model.
Or let's talk about NIS and NFS. Are these representative of high security? Pulease. This system believes you are who you say you are just because you say so!
Or how about the User/Group/World permissioning structure? How flexible! Couple this with the 16/32 group limit of the Kernel and you've got a really scalable system for applying security to files.
I have to give you credit -- these mechanisms sure are "clean and simple". But here we are 20 years down the road, and security Access Control mechanisms are a shambles in Linux.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. Is your real name Michael Moore? That's the only person I know who can distort the facts with such a "holier than thou" attitude.
/WINNT, some in /WINNT/SYSTEM32, some on the root. Microsoft had already provided a directory /WINNT/Profiles, but in their haste many vendors just wrote programs that threw their trash wherever they damn well pleased.
To wit -- Here's a little history lesson on why you're wrong. And when Linux starts to get the number and volume of enterprise-level applications that Windows has, these types of history lessons will prove useful. But don't just take the easy way out and say "Yeah Windows sucks" and not try to learn about the mistakes that might just be made again without some perspective.
So Microsoft best practices are to NOT have the user run as Administrator of the computer. But unfortunately, many companies don't follow this advice. See, unfortunatley, in the past many poorly-written **third party apps** required rights to certain areas of the file system or registry, and these are old programs that worked fine before such systems were locked down (for good security reasons) by Microsoft.
The reason for the lockdown was that as the number of third-party programs grew, they were scattering per-user program configuration information all over the hard disk, wherever they pleased. When users moved from one computer to another it was a nightmare because every software vendor had their own place to store files. Some stored it in
So Microsoft took action. They created the "Documents and Settings" folder for user profile information. This was introduced with Windows 2000. Moreover, they locked down the default security of the rest of the hard disk in order to prevent 3rd party apps in the future from sprinkling stuff all over the place -- and instead made "Documents and Settings" the only place where user profile information is to be stored. Finally, the created the Designed for Windows XP logo certification system as the carrot/stick that they use to get developers to stick to these (and other) standards.
What happened when they did this? Users came out of the woodwork! "Microsoft SUCKS!! Microsoft broke all my apps because they are a monopoly that wants to own the lucrative (insert program market here) market!", they said. Well, no. What actually happened is that Microsoft slapped the hand of ISVs that chose not to follow their documented (and dare I say it, well thought out but not hard-core enforced) standards.
Now fast forward to today. Some of those apps are still in use. But due to reasons unknown (frugality, probably) most companies aren't willing to go through the work of finding out what hard disk/registry settings each of 300+ applications need and developing a script to give users access to those areas. So they take the short route and give users full control of the Registry, or of the box. And that gives virii/trojan horses fertile ground to wreak havok. Yes, Microsoft is the root of all evil. As you can now see this whole situation was designed by the Devil Bill Gates himself to make your life miserable.
So applications run under the context of the user that runs them. If the application needs additional permissions, then it either needs to install itself as a service (which would require entering service account information upon installation) or somehow ask the user to provide necessary credentials.
As a sidebar, Microsoft has a feature (which can be enabled) whereby when a user initiates the installation of a software package, the installation program runs under the credentials of the system account. Like any security feature, it may be nice for some situations (as an admin you don't have to truck on over the user to log on every time they wanna install something) and bad for others (potential security hole). The choice is yours to make as an administrator. But it is a nice middle ground between allowing a user to run as administrator of his/her box all day long (due to risk of trojans, etc), and having to baby-sit them every time they want to install something new.
Don't you know the proper way for citizens to solve their problems today?
1. Incorporate yourself
2. Make a $1000 contribution to the Corporate Party (DNC or RNC, doesn't matter which)
3. Sue them for $10000, and get your pol friends to bring in the FBI
4. PROFIT!!!
Although your post was obviously tongue-in-cheek, it is not far from the truth. Apparently in Germany, they are petrified of the Church of Scientology. So much so that they demanded Microsoft provide them with instructions to remove "Disk Defragmenter" , because it was developed by a company whose CEO was a scientologist.
Microsoft sucks because they tried to make a wireless client that doesn't require you to be a DSP engineer in wireless chipset technology. It doesn't work *perfectly* (although there are easy solution that require you to [gasp!] uncheck checkboxes, instead of modify .conf files), so it sucks. And because you have the option to use a different wireless client instead of the Windows Wireless Zero Configuration service, they are leveraging their monopoly of the desktop to gain access into the highly lucrative wireless client software business.
If Microsoft had only simply done one of the following, they would have earned some Karma from the Slashdot community:
1. Not shipped a wireless client at all
2. Shipped a wireless client that required in-depth knowledge of the chipset your specific card is using, and required editing configuration files instead of clicking checkboxes
3. Made their Wireless client the only one that you could install on Linux
But in their greed they did none of these things.
Any more questions?
Here's more fuel to your argument:
http://www.nypost.com/business/23936.htm
WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING AT THE LABOR DEPT.? By JOHN CRUDELE
May 11, 2004 -- DON'T get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April.
I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.
They could be figments of statisticians' optimism.
Anyone who plodded through my column last Thursday knows I predicted that job growth in April would be better than the 160,000 to 170,000 jobs that the "pros" were anticipating.
But I also said, quite emphatically I hope, that the stronger growth would be an illusion - the result of the Labor Department's computers making happy predictions about seasonal job creation that could neither be verified nor justified.
I'll explain one aspect.
Back in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.
That estimate comes from the Labor Department's "birth/death model." You can look up these numbers on the Department's Web site.
As staggering as the assumption about new companies was in March, the Labor Department got even more brazen in April.
Last Friday, it was disclosed that these imaginary jobs had been increased by 117,000 to 270,000 for the latest month - because, I guess, the stat jockeys got a vision from the gods of spring.
Without those extra 117,000 make-believe jobs, the total growth for April would have been just 171,000 - sub-par for an economy that's supposed to be growing at more than 4 percent a year, but right on the pros' targets.
Take away all 270,000 make-believe jobs and, well, you have the sort of pessimism that the political pollsters are seeing.
If I was the suspicious type (and if I thought Washington was smart enough), I'd suspect a nasty motive behind the sudden surge in these mystery jobs. But for now, let's just acknowledge their existence.
Also keep in mind that the government doesn't distinguish between good companies being created and, say, a guy doing consulting work out of his basement because he can't find real work.
What does this new job announcement mean in the real world?
It means there will be more pressure on the financial markets, as we've seen for a while but especially since last Thursday.
It also means that the Federal Reserve now has the excuse it needs to raise interest rates in June (as I've said before would happen) and will probably start regretting that move by the end of the summer.
And President Bush will probably give in to temptation and start crowing about the economy, going against the mood, as captured by pollsters.
This will make him look as out of touch with reality as his father did.
I'm sorry to inform you that Outlook Express works and scales great, and is included with Windows XP.
Nice that you suddenly added the "spell checker" requirement. Of course if Microsoft included one, you would be screaming about how they are leveraging the desktop to monopolize the lucrative spell checker market. But since they didn't include one, it's why Windows sucks. Had you really researched the issue, instead of whipping it up as a straw man for how Microsoft sucks, you would know that small, free programs exist to add spell Check to Outlook Express.
You don't have to buy CALs or servers to run XP. Try comparing apples-to-apples. We're talking about the DESKTOP, you know, where Linux has hard a notoriously hard time penetrating?
Then why is it that IE users can use Kerberized authentication to web servers (using SPNEGO/Kerberos which is supported by Apache), while Mozilla users are still handing their usernames and passwords to servers? I've spent months trying to get the beta version of Mozilla to work with SPNEGO, and it don't work.
Because the "new, new economy" business model is to make it difficult for customers to use your product, and then sue the pants off anyone that tries to help them.
Accordingly, I expect Slashdot to receive a subpoena shortly to determine who the above poster is -- Because he has now violated the DMCA by "bypassing an encyption technology" !
Yippee! A new revenue stream for Nantero !!!
Big corporations are what they are. They sell us cool stuff with one hand and tighten the screws on our freedoms with the other. We hate them every morning and love them every afternoon, and vice versa. This is part of living in the modern world: you take your yin with your yang and try to figure out how to do what's right the best you can. If you think it has to be all one way or the other, that's cool, share your opinions, but don't expect everyone else to think the same.
If you have a problem with the fact that not everyone here hates Microsoft, why are you here?
Look, freak, I didn't fire the first salvo in this "tit-for-tat" personal battle you seem to have with me. Actually, it's not just with me. It's with anyone who has anything positive to say about Microsoft.
And I don't have to "defend" myself to you for speaking freely (as in Speech *and* Beer) on Microsoft software.
Instead, I'll give you some free advice: Instead of acting like a Nazi, you ought to consider that people should be able to make their OWN CHOICE about what software they run. Accept the fact that angry bile and intimidation aren't enough to get someone to go Open Source. What *YOU* happen to think about *ANYTHING* doesn't mean a rat's crap to me, actually even less because you're so closed-minded and angry.
Failing that, the only other way I see for you to achieve happiness in your life is to recruit your own luftwaffe and lock up anyone who even considered a Microsoft product. Unfortunately, I doubt you've got the charisma or the guts.
This recent response to one of your posts pretty much says it all:
Re:Wish granted. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 2004.05.25 13:40
(#9250064) Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical psycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history [slashdot.org]. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
For example, in this recent post [slashdot.org] twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
More? Just read though this [slashdot.org] post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own.
More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories [slashdot.org], more [slashdot.org] offtopic [slashdot.org] FUD [slashdot.org] and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants [slashdot.org], promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS [slashdot.org], apparently [slashdot.org] (that first one is a winner). I mean, really [slashdot.org]. You think [slashdot.org]?
FUD [slashdot.org],
This should be an editorial, not an "analysis". It's filled with non-factual personal experiences that have obviously given him a bias. I mean, why does this belong in an "analysis"??? (from the article):
My most memorable moment at Microsoft came during a technical review with Bill Gates. I will never forget the moment when I made an apparently obvious point to him. He responded, "What? Do you think I'm stupid?" Everyone was staring at me, and I felt it best not to answer. Like Gates, there were always people at Microsoft who were much smarter than me and more technically skilled. But he's created a corporate culture that sometimes struggles to see the forest for the trees--and I think this is what has led to some of the challenges that it faces today.
So I did a little digging on this guy and found out he really is stupid. And my guess is that he's bitter because he's just smart enough to realize how stupid he is.
According to the July 20, 1999 edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencier,
Jeff Reifman, a 29-year-old former program manager at MSNBC, left behind $700,000 in stock options in April to co-found GiftSpot.com, a 24-person Seattle company that delivers gift certificates over the Internet. If Reifman had stayed at Microsoft just two more months he would have been able to cash in on the stock.
Ahh... now we see why he is so angry about why his Gift Certificate store failed! It wasn't because PassPort didn't take off...
This kind of "article" is exactly why newspapers are going down the toilet today. There's no disclosure.
IE has had Kerberos-based authentication that works against Apache or IIS for years. This method prevents passwords from being transmitted over the network or to web servers. Mozilla is still trying (and failing) to implement negiotiateauth.
Meanwhile in Mozillaland, users are forced to authenticate using basic authentication -- which passes their password over the network in cleartext, practically. I know they are trying to integrate in 1.7 beta, but it doesn't work.
So tell me again how IE is less secure than the alternatives?
A number of people are reporting that the basic XWindows setup routine in Fedora Core 2 won't even start in the Microsoft Virutal PC application.
I also found the following interesting post on usenet:
From: "Colin Barnhorst"
Sender: "Colin Barnhorst"
Subject: Fedora Core 2 Final
Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 10:39:02 -0700
Before you even ask, the installation and configuration
problems you are experiencing with Fedora Core 2 are not
VPC problems. There are lots and lots and lots of
commentary on all kinds of device problems on the Red Hat
network. I have been reviewing the 'daily distributions'
of postings. The so called 'dailies' are coming hourly
as the sheer volume is flushing out the postings. Having
said that, there are a lot of good ideas and tips and you
should look to that source for guidance rather than this
one. You can subscribe to the mail lists at
fedora-list-request@redhat.com
So does Samba-3 support the "trade secret" PAC information that Microsoft inserted into their Kerberos tickets (to great consternation of the Kerberos community)?
Yeah, I manage my networks using sound the same way. If I make a change to a router, I pick up *immediately* when something is wrong. The sounds are usually way off in the cubicles and go something like this: "What the heck is going on!", "Are you clocking?".
I knew those damn Microsoft advertisements would crash Slashdot sooner or later!
Great summary line from the article: "Government is really not equipped to regulate in such a fast-moving industry as technology," Rosoff added. "That's why the most aggressive antitrust commentators originally pressed for the breakup of the company."
So whose fault is it that Government is "inequipped" to regulate high-tech? If I was inequipped to teach my son about how to walk, and he tried to do it himself, should I cut him off at the knees?
And is it moral to destroy a company simply because you can't move faster than the marketplace for its products? And if the marketplace moves so quickly to make monopolies, might it not move equally quickly to destroy them?
If "Son of Jaz" is pitched as a backup media, why wouldn't you go with a blue laser dvd? Media costs will surely be lower.
First of all, I think a documentary would be much more interesting if it focussed not on the effects of outsourcing, but on its causes. How much of outsourcing is due to greed, and how much is due to need? This kind of analysis would give a much better foundation upon which to analyze what the effects will be (Did outsourcing truly spark a "race to the bottom", or is it a "rising tide lifts all boats" process?)
Companies are still screaming about the lack of qualified talent in the USA. Is that truly lack of talent, or lack of talent willing to work at a ditch-digging wage? This problem is present in more than technology jobs -- but elementary school teaching jobs (where a huge supply of qualified talent is paid a pittance, and still visas are issued), construction jobs, accounting, etc.
I also think the effect of government policy and political campaign contribution system shouldn't be ignored. Only recently has our political campaign contribution system been overrun by corporate money. How has this affected the evaluation of policy questions, such as outsourcing?