Older distros (esp RH based) have tended to have less than stellar OOB security. Debian and slack have historically done a better job. However, it also depends on which version of Win we're talking about. 9x/ME would qualify as a script-kiddie wet dream, while NT/2k are far better. Someone mentioned that OOB NT/2k doesn't have anything running. While that's all well and good, if you actually want the box to be online, some things will have to run eventually so the comment is irrelevant. IIS is astronomically more insecure than any linux/unix based alternative that it is not even funny.
As far as POS systems, I spent many years in retail management and I can say that most of them suck, regardless of platform. Security is generally an afterthought if anything. This is improving, but you need look no further than the current 2600 to see how easy it is to break into a Win based POS system.
I have no prob w/Fox giving money to the artists, or for cracking down on tabs that they actively sell. As Frank Zappa noted, it costs a lot of money to get those damn little dots put on the right lines in the right place. More power to them for all that, but why crack down on tabs that they DON'T sell and don't plan to?
FRII is struggling, they'll likely be bought up in the next year or so. Last I checked Rhythms hadn't gone on life support yet (I used to work there, and I always figured they'd be the last non-telco provider to go under. Northpoint dying before Covad came as a bit of a shock, though). Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and a few smaller ones offer connectivity.
I've had the same problems, but they simply won't go away. I can't connect period if I use Qworsts DNS boxes. I use the company that provides colo for my works servers instead.
I currently get access through Qworst, but will terminate it immediately if I'm transfered over to MSN "service". I'd rather be on dial-up than on MSN.
They are asking for BILLIONS of dollars and say "oh, it's not about the money". Bull. Anytime someone starts saying "it's not about the money" it is definitely ONLY about the money.
Wow, so microsoft is all-benevolent and only cares about the needs of end users, I've been so wrong all this time. These responses are the kind of thing I'd expect out of a junior PR flack, and that's probably who actually wrote them.
The original post is either flame-bait or an April Fools joke. However, I feel the need to respond to this incredibly naive post.
Saying that the ethics of a given company is equal to the sum of the ethics of the employees combined is truly ludicrous. I've worked for many companies of many sizes, and I do not for one second believe that my personal morals had any effect on the morals of the company (a fine example, I worked for a major wall street firm who shall remain nameless (internal tagline: We make money the old fashioned way, we steal it from our customers) and these people threw parties when AT&T announced 10,000 layoffs). A company is not a community, it is in the best case a benevolent dictatorship and far more often a tyrannical dictatorship. A company has one and ONLY one reason to exist: profit. I'm not saying I like that, or that companies are not capable of having more than just a profit motive, but lets be honest, most MBA's are the scum of the earth.
Microsoft is driven exclusively by the profit motive, please don't try to ascribe a higher purpose that doesn't exist to their actions.
For further evidence, check the stories all over the web the past week about their aggressive (and contradictory) licensing enforcement.
Yes, show some respect for a company that made no effort to actually offer anything useful. It was a great platform for surfing the web and looking at pictures/videos. I never understood why anyone would bother with yet another proprietary closed source operating system when there are so many open choices that have LOTS OF APPS available. BeOS chose to suffer the same problem as apple: a severe lack of applications. This was not because MSFT pressured people into not developing Be apps (I'm quite sure they never heard of BeOS). This was because when people tried to become development partners with them they were ignored or told to piss off.
I've no sympathies for them.
My office got nailed when Jato cratered (we were luckier than some. We got several days notice, I know people who got zero notice). Took a month and a half to get hooked in with a different provider (moved to T1 instead, thank you ViaWest!) because EVERYONE in downtown Denver was out of capacity at the CO's, including the telco.
What do you think the challenges are in convincing the public that it's safe to store all of their personal and financial information online (note that this is a challenge for all companies that are trying to convince consumers that it's safe, but given the high profile security holes in MSFT products in the past few years I suspect there are more hurdles to overcome) and how do you think MSFT will be able to address them?
Obviously the cost is radically lower in CA than US. I can get 1M at my home, but not for less than $120/month. At my old place I could get up to 7M if I wanted, but there was no way I could afford it AND rent!
I had something like this happen to the company I now work for. A publicly held consulting company took on a project they knew they had no chance of finishing (they saw it as a chance for their people to learn new technologies at the expense of the client, but claimed their people were already experts in said technologies. They also wanted to get into the web space, which they had zero knowledge of). After several million dollars and series of increasingly impressive massive failures to do ANYTHING correctly, they admitted that they'd put a bunch of inexperienced people on the job, and that the really talented people (who had gotten them the contract) had quit months ago. They acknowledged that they figured my company would be out of business before due date so they wouldn't have to actually deliver anything. They also admitted to billing some $1.5 million in work that was never done. And they didn't think any of this was a big deal. This is why I will never work for a consulting company again, I have NEVER worked with a consultant who was even vaguely competent or honest.
I tend to sympathize with the postal workers. I know many, and they all hate junk mail as much as we do (remember, we may get 4-5 pieces a day, but they each deliver many thousand times that).
You should be as loyal to the company as they are to you. I've worked for companies that treat employees like crap, and I've had zero loyalty to them (and got out quick, too). I've worked for companies that treated employees really well, and I've stayed with them through rough times.
You *really* need to get out more if you're building conspiracy theories around me!
No, I am not a regular poster. I've submitted many things, but this is the first time I've gotten posted (I suspect because I'm usually slower than most...). The reason I have several IDs (and note that the other two have not logged in in over a year) is because I've left several jobs and forgotten to back up my mail including things like slashdot passwords. I'm lazy, so I just create a new userid.
A single story with a "misleading" header (it was not misleading, it was a quote that the article was responding to) doesn't exactly qualify as a history.
Not that Slashdot did not use the text that I submitted (which was a fairly banal statement to the effect that the DOJ had reported the results of their investigation). I didn't choose a strange category (I used the default one, which was news, I have no idea why Slashdot changed it to music, maybe they meant to change it to It's Funny).
As far as the many comments since then that "the DOJ is biased" etc, of course they are. The point of reporting this was twofold.
1 - they issued an official position (which will prove awfully embarrassing if the Supremes eventually find they were wrong).
2 - it is a legitimate news story, whether or not the report was biased. MSNBC failed to report even the simple fact that it had been issued.
What's wrong with using free, stable, open source software? I have yet to run across ANYTHING on Linux that is less stable than MS Office on Win98. Ease of use? KOffice is far easier to use than MS Office, and has a much shallower learning curve. I'm moving my wife over to Linux this weekend (at her request) because her computer is constantly crashing/needing the OS reinstalled/etc whereas my computer hasn't been down once since I built it 6 months ago except when I added a second hard drive. Explain to me how Microsoft is a better solution in terms of ROI and TCO.
I'm running 7.0/2.4.0-0.26/xFree86-4.01 on my laptop (my primary box) with no troubles. Even the PCMCIA card (which Win98 and 2k Pro both refused to recognize no matter what) works just fine. There may be a ton of bugs in it, but I haven't found any yet.
'Course, I'm just a new media/web application developer so maybe I don't push it hard enough;)
Slashdot Mirror
As far as POS systems, I spent many years in retail management and I can say that most of them suck, regardless of platform. Security is generally an afterthought if anything. This is improving, but you need look no further than the current 2600 to see how easy it is to break into a Win based POS system.
I've been toying with the idea of mass updating all my CDs to gracenote with all incorrect information, any thoughts on this strategy?
I have no prob w/Fox giving money to the artists, or for cracking down on tabs that they actively sell. As Frank Zappa noted, it costs a lot of money to get those damn little dots put on the right lines in the right place. More power to them for all that, but why crack down on tabs that they DON'T sell and don't plan to?
FRII is struggling, they'll likely be bought up in the next year or so. Last I checked Rhythms hadn't gone on life support yet (I used to work there, and I always figured they'd be the last non-telco provider to go under. Northpoint dying before Covad came as a bit of a shock, though). Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and a few smaller ones offer connectivity.
Sorry, someone had to say it.
I've had the same problems, but they simply won't go away. I can't connect period if I use Qworsts DNS boxes. I use the company that provides colo for my works servers instead.
I currently get access through Qworst, but will terminate it immediately if I'm transfered over to MSN "service". I'd rather be on dial-up than on MSN.
They are asking for BILLIONS of dollars and say "oh, it's not about the money". Bull. Anytime someone starts saying "it's not about the money" it is definitely ONLY about the money.
What do you think of derivative distros, not only ones like Mandrake but also more targeted ones like KRUD?
Wow, so microsoft is all-benevolent and only cares about the needs of end users, I've been so wrong all this time. These responses are the kind of thing I'd expect out of a junior PR flack, and that's probably who actually wrote them.
The original post is either flame-bait or an April Fools joke. However, I feel the need to respond to this incredibly naive post. Saying that the ethics of a given company is equal to the sum of the ethics of the employees combined is truly ludicrous. I've worked for many companies of many sizes, and I do not for one second believe that my personal morals had any effect on the morals of the company (a fine example, I worked for a major wall street firm who shall remain nameless (internal tagline: We make money the old fashioned way, we steal it from our customers) and these people threw parties when AT&T announced 10,000 layoffs). A company is not a community, it is in the best case a benevolent dictatorship and far more often a tyrannical dictatorship. A company has one and ONLY one reason to exist: profit. I'm not saying I like that, or that companies are not capable of having more than just a profit motive, but lets be honest, most MBA's are the scum of the earth. Microsoft is driven exclusively by the profit motive, please don't try to ascribe a higher purpose that doesn't exist to their actions. For further evidence, check the stories all over the web the past week about their aggressive (and contradictory) licensing enforcement.
Yes, show some respect for a company that made no effort to actually offer anything useful. It was a great platform for surfing the web and looking at pictures/videos. I never understood why anyone would bother with yet another proprietary closed source operating system when there are so many open choices that have LOTS OF APPS available. BeOS chose to suffer the same problem as apple: a severe lack of applications. This was not because MSFT pressured people into not developing Be apps (I'm quite sure they never heard of BeOS). This was because when people tried to become development partners with them they were ignored or told to piss off. I've no sympathies for them.
My office got nailed when Jato cratered (we were luckier than some. We got several days notice, I know people who got zero notice). Took a month and a half to get hooked in with a different provider (moved to T1 instead, thank you ViaWest!) because EVERYONE in downtown Denver was out of capacity at the CO's, including the telco.
What do you think the challenges are in convincing the public that it's safe to store all of their personal and financial information online (note that this is a challenge for all companies that are trying to convince consumers that it's safe, but given the high profile security holes in MSFT products in the past few years I suspect there are more hurdles to overcome) and how do you think MSFT will be able to address them?
Obviously the cost is radically lower in CA than US. I can get 1M at my home, but not for less than $120/month. At my old place I could get up to 7M if I wanted, but there was no way I could afford it AND rent!
I had something like this happen to the company I now work for. A publicly held consulting company took on a project they knew they had no chance of finishing (they saw it as a chance for their people to learn new technologies at the expense of the client, but claimed their people were already experts in said technologies. They also wanted to get into the web space, which they had zero knowledge of). After several million dollars and series of increasingly impressive massive failures to do ANYTHING correctly, they admitted that they'd put a bunch of inexperienced people on the job, and that the really talented people (who had gotten them the contract) had quit months ago. They acknowledged that they figured my company would be out of business before due date so they wouldn't have to actually deliver anything. They also admitted to billing some $1.5 million in work that was never done. And they didn't think any of this was a big deal. This is why I will never work for a consulting company again, I have NEVER worked with a consultant who was even vaguely competent or honest.
I tend to sympathize with the postal workers. I know many, and they all hate junk mail as much as we do (remember, we may get 4-5 pieces a day, but they each deliver many thousand times that).
You should be as loyal to the company as they are to you. I've worked for companies that treat employees like crap, and I've had zero loyalty to them (and got out quick, too). I've worked for companies that treated employees really well, and I've stayed with them through rough times.
You *really* need to get out more if you're building conspiracy theories around me! No, I am not a regular poster. I've submitted many things, but this is the first time I've gotten posted (I suspect because I'm usually slower than most...). The reason I have several IDs (and note that the other two have not logged in in over a year) is because I've left several jobs and forgotten to back up my mail including things like slashdot passwords. I'm lazy, so I just create a new userid. A single story with a "misleading" header (it was not misleading, it was a quote that the article was responding to) doesn't exactly qualify as a history. Not that Slashdot did not use the text that I submitted (which was a fairly banal statement to the effect that the DOJ had reported the results of their investigation). I didn't choose a strange category (I used the default one, which was news, I have no idea why Slashdot changed it to music, maybe they meant to change it to It's Funny). As far as the many comments since then that "the DOJ is biased" etc, of course they are. The point of reporting this was twofold. 1 - they issued an official position (which will prove awfully embarrassing if the Supremes eventually find they were wrong). 2 - it is a legitimate news story, whether or not the report was biased. MSNBC failed to report even the simple fact that it had been issued.
What's wrong with using free, stable, open source software? I have yet to run across ANYTHING on Linux that is less stable than MS Office on Win98. Ease of use? KOffice is far easier to use than MS Office, and has a much shallower learning curve. I'm moving my wife over to Linux this weekend (at her request) because her computer is constantly crashing/needing the OS reinstalled/etc whereas my computer hasn't been down once since I built it 6 months ago except when I added a second hard drive. Explain to me how Microsoft is a better solution in terms of ROI and TCO.
I'm running 7.0/2.4.0-0.26/xFree86-4.01 on my laptop (my primary box) with no troubles. Even the PCMCIA card (which Win98 and 2k Pro both refused to recognize no matter what) works just fine. There may be a ton of bugs in it, but I haven't found any yet. 'Course, I'm just a new media/web application developer so maybe I don't push it hard enough ;)