And why the hell would there be $2.3 million in service costs to destroy $170,500 worth of equipment?
From the original article:
The total cost to the taxpayer of this incident was $2.7 million: $823,000 went to the security contractor for its investigation and advice, $1,061,000 for the acquisition of temporary infrastructure (requisitioned from the Census Bureau), $4,300 to destroy $170,500 in IT equipment, and $688,000 paid to contractors to assist in development a long-term response. Full recovery took close to a year.
So it "only" cost them $4,300 to destroy the equipment, but over $1 million to continue working after the damage. And they wasted an additional $1.5 million paying various "contractors" who apparently didn't know what they were doing.
tl;dr: if a visible hierarchy isn't allowed, an invisible one will form and bite you in the ass.
Wikipedia is a perfect example of this. Officially, there isn't supposed to be any hierarchy of editors. Administrators are supposed to be "janitors", just doing non-controversial maintenance work, and aren't supposed to have more rights than regular editors on articles. In practice, of course, it doesn't work that way, and there is a very clear hierarchy which usually remains unspoken. What you can get away with on Wikipedia depends a *lot* on whether you're an administrator, how long you've been on the site, whether you are an old friend of Jimbo's, and whether you kiss the right butt on IRC.
How is Wine compatibility on newer versions of MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, and Lightroom these days? It's been a couple months since I checked, but last time I looked it was pretty lackluster.
The original idea of WebTV was that it would be a simple web browsing appliance for people who didn't need all the power of a full-fledged computer, and didn't want to learn all the intricacies of Windows. The thing is, we now have other devices that do this even better: tablets and smartphones. And the non-technical crowd has transitioned to these devices en masse. We hear a lot about the so-called "post-PC era", but it isn't because experienced users have stopped using standard PCs. (They haven't, and won't – tablets and smartphones are much too limited to take the place of a real workstation.) Rather, it's because people who never used all the power of a PC in the first place decided to switch to devices that were easier to use, and didn't require antivirus software or weekly security patching. An iPad makes a lousy workstation, but for non-technical users, it's a better web-browsing/email/Facebook device than a Windows PC. And WebTV with its ancient hardware and firmware couldn't keep up.
You denied that unions favored increasing the minimum wage. I pointed out that you were wrong. Incidentally, a quick Google search shows 2,140 documents containing the phrase "minimum wage" on aflcio.org – that hardly speaks to an issue of peripheral concern.
Unions take public positions in favor of a higher minimum wage, and support elected officials who want to increase it. What else, exactly, do you propose they should be doing?
The problem with unions is they view a worker as a clone of every other worker.
Well, obviously no one told the Major League Baseball Player's Association, or the Screen Actor's Guild.
Unions do not necessarily mean strict seniority pay or rigid and inflexible job descriptions. Many workers in manufacturing industries choose to push for these kind of terms in their contracts, because productivity from worker to worker isn't that different, and because having someone do a task they're not familiar with in an industrial setting can be very dangerous. But this isn't how things work in MLB or Hollywood; they certainly don't pay baseball stars or actors on strict seniority, and they don't have to get into a fight every time they want to shift someone from shortstop to third base or whatever.
Remember, union leaders are elected by the workers, and are supposed to represent what the workers want. Since IT workers generally don't like rigid job descriptions or inflexible pay scales, IT unions would not advocate for such things. Instead, as in the MLBPA and SAG, they would probably focus on setting minimum standards, to prevent people with less individual negotiating leverage from being exploited.
Someday, users will use software to create the software they want.
I'll believe that when I see it. People have been saying the same thing for over 20 years, that some kind of automated code generation or "expert system" would make programmers obsolete. Still hasn't happened.
Of course things will change once we have full-fledged sentient AI, but that changes everything – virtually all human workers become obsolete, and capitalism no longer functions.
Sure, me too. My question is, what have they done for us lately? Answer, fuck-all. Let's see them, for example, push to increase the minimum wage, so that people can even afford their union goods and services. What, they don't want to do that, because they don't have to worry about the minimum wage?
Actually, unions have been among the strongest advocates of raising the minimum wage. Here, for example, is the AFL-CIO's position on this subject.
Unions are about collective bargaining. There's nothing that forces the unions to bargain for rigid job descriptions or strict seniority pay. Since most IT workers don't want these things, why would they elect union leaders who favor them, or agree to a contract that included them?
Now, they've priced the American worker out of the global labor market.
Don't be naive. Just about anything that can be feasibly offshored to low-cost jurisdictions already has been. Those jobs that are still in the U.S. are here for a reason, and marginal changes in the costs of labor won't affect that. And many jobs in modern America are service jobs, which can't be offshored. You can't have your plumbing fixed by a guy from India.
People like to blame the unions for the decline of the U.S. Big Three auto companies, but in Germany and Japan, not only do the manufacturing companies have unions, but they are considerably stronger than they ever were here. (German unions even have seats on corporate boards.) Yet these high-wage, high-skill nations haven't been "priced out of the global labor market". They just don't build cheap crap with low margins.
That's good to know. I'd double-check the traffic on the firewall, though, just to make sure it's not going ahead and sending your search terms to MS anyway...
I think you nailed it. "Welp, we expected a huge backlash for running ads on our paid service that Sony gives away for free... but somehow we got away with it! Let's do the bait and switch with our desktop market and see how well it works there"
Apparently they didn't consider that what the gaming demographic is willing to put up with, serious businesses might not be. Gamers don't have to worry about HIPAA, PCI, SOX, or other privacy/security requirements.
There's got to be some group policy setting to disable this 'smart search' and its corresponding ads, and have the search tool conduct local searches only. (Group policy editing is available only in Pro, but you can generally get the same results on the Home version by manually setting a corresponding registry key.) Even this management team at Microsoft couldn't be dumb enough to not realize that businesses need an opt-out. Could they?
Cutting out underperforming middle management and flattening the hierarchy is not a new idea in business. It can work well, but it relies on the person at the top being competent, hardworking, and flexible. Suffice to say that the events of the past few years indicate Ballmer might not be up to the job.
Zynga won't be bought by Microsoft – why would they bother? Instead, Mattrick will make their suite of games Metro-only. Microsoft gets all the advantages of a buyout, without having to pay any cash. Zynga will lose money and market share, but MS doesn't care, and Mattrick will no doubt have a golden parachute and probably some juicy kickbacks on top of that.
This is what happens when you hire an ex-Microsoft executive. Their loyalty stays with the old company, and you will soon be little more than a colony of MS. Why anyone would trust these guys, after seeing what Stephen Elop did to Nokia, is beyond me.
Err, you are kind of supporting the argument that the PS3 launch was the worst console launch ever.
His point, I think, is that the Xbone launch was even worse because MS had the opportunity to learn from Sony's previous mistakes, and instead went on to make the very same mistakes. Sony's strategy was risky, but conceivably could have paid off. MS had every reason why they should have known better, but they went ahead anyway.
Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered with the OS or the language platform anymore. Not enough long term profit in it. They want to be a sort of Cloud/HP/Apple. They want to be a smartphone/tablet and internet based business services vendor and that's it. There's apparently just not enough profit in the OS or supporting application developers.
It's clear that this is what Ballmer is thinking (he's recently on record as saying that he wants MS to become a "device and services company"), but it really doesn't make any damn sense.
When it comes to cloud services and portable devices, MS is actually pretty late to the game, with nothing particularly special to offer. And their brand name is actually a negative – even people who like MS products often don't like their business practices, and many people only use MS because they more or less have to.
I use Windows at home because it's what I am used to (I've been using it since Win95), and because some of the software I want to run is only available for Windows. My workplace uses Windows, Office, and a variety of other MS technologies in part because it's an industry standard, but also largely because of legacy lock-in: much of the third-party software we use is Windows-only, we have to work with existing Office documents all the time, and all our existing processes and procedures are based around Windows/Office.
The desktop (and associated IT functions related to the desktop) is the one area where Microsoft has a real competitive advantage that will be very hard for anyone else to erode. Yet they seem blithely willing to ignore it, throw it away, in favor of moving to new lines of business where existing competition is fierce and they don't bring anything new to the table. It doesn't make any damn sense, and if the stockholders cared about the long-term viability of the company, they'd pitch Ballmer (and his chair) out the window right now.
I'm not sure what's going on with MS these days. They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.
The cynic in me thinks that Microsoft knows its desktop monopoly is becoming steadily less lucrative, so they want to squeeze out every last penny while they can. We all know that for years, many users got Technet subscriptions and ignored the "for testing only" proviso, instead using them as cheap installs for self, friends, and family. When Microsoft cared about desktop market share, this didn't bother them much, since they'd rather people use their software (even at low cost) instead of going to a competitor. Now, however, they have delusions of being a "device and service company" and want to cut the desktop loose. It's absurd, of course (the desktop is the only area that MS has any kind of real advantage over its competitors) but it is what Steve Ballmer thinks.
The point is that the OS engine fully supports theming. The only reason why a DLL needs to be hacked is that, by default, only digitally signed themes can be used. And only Microsoft has the signing key. This is a purely artificial restriction.
There is a very good reason for that. They want to retain a universal look for Windows. Very important for branding.
If this is a concern, they could specify that OEMs are not allowed to change the default theme. Reserve that capability for end-users, and put it behind a registry key or something.
But they've had theming capabilities in Windows ever since XP and don't seem to have made any attempt to use them. It would be disappointing but understandable if they tried to limit theme releases to "partners", or require them to go through some sort of app store or equivalent. But they haven't done anything like that. Instead the capability is simply left latent for no apparent reason.
Slashdot Mirror
And why the hell would there be $2.3 million in service costs to destroy $170,500 worth of equipment?
From the original article:
So it "only" cost them $4,300 to destroy the equipment, but over $1 million to continue working after the damage. And they wasted an additional $1.5 million paying various "contractors" who apparently didn't know what they were doing.
tl;dr: if a visible hierarchy isn't allowed, an invisible one will form and bite you in the ass.
Wikipedia is a perfect example of this. Officially, there isn't supposed to be any hierarchy of editors. Administrators are supposed to be "janitors", just doing non-controversial maintenance work, and aren't supposed to have more rights than regular editors on articles. In practice, of course, it doesn't work that way, and there is a very clear hierarchy which usually remains unspoken. What you can get away with on Wikipedia depends a *lot* on whether you're an administrator, how long you've been on the site, whether you are an old friend of Jimbo's, and whether you kiss the right butt on IRC.
How is Wine compatibility on newer versions of MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, and Lightroom these days? It's been a couple months since I checked, but last time I looked it was pretty lackluster.
Doesn't Microsoft patch these kind of security holes every Patch Tuesday? How is this one special?
The original idea of WebTV was that it would be a simple web browsing appliance for people who didn't need all the power of a full-fledged computer, and didn't want to learn all the intricacies of Windows. The thing is, we now have other devices that do this even better: tablets and smartphones. And the non-technical crowd has transitioned to these devices en masse. We hear a lot about the so-called "post-PC era", but it isn't because experienced users have stopped using standard PCs. (They haven't, and won't – tablets and smartphones are much too limited to take the place of a real workstation.) Rather, it's because people who never used all the power of a PC in the first place decided to switch to devices that were easier to use, and didn't require antivirus software or weekly security patching. An iPad makes a lousy workstation, but for non-technical users, it's a better web-browsing/email/Facebook device than a Windows PC. And WebTV with its ancient hardware and firmware couldn't keep up.
Microsoft still thinks like a monopoly, even in those fields where they don't actually possess one. In the long run, this will be their downfall.
You denied that unions favored increasing the minimum wage. I pointed out that you were wrong. Incidentally, a quick Google search shows 2,140 documents containing the phrase "minimum wage" on aflcio.org – that hardly speaks to an issue of peripheral concern.
Unions take public positions in favor of a higher minimum wage, and support elected officials who want to increase it. What else, exactly, do you propose they should be doing?
The problem with unions is they view a worker as a clone of every other worker.
Well, obviously no one told the Major League Baseball Player's Association, or the Screen Actor's Guild.
Unions do not necessarily mean strict seniority pay or rigid and inflexible job descriptions. Many workers in manufacturing industries choose to push for these kind of terms in their contracts, because productivity from worker to worker isn't that different, and because having someone do a task they're not familiar with in an industrial setting can be very dangerous. But this isn't how things work in MLB or Hollywood; they certainly don't pay baseball stars or actors on strict seniority, and they don't have to get into a fight every time they want to shift someone from shortstop to third base or whatever.
Remember, union leaders are elected by the workers, and are supposed to represent what the workers want. Since IT workers generally don't like rigid job descriptions or inflexible pay scales, IT unions would not advocate for such things. Instead, as in the MLBPA and SAG, they would probably focus on setting minimum standards, to prevent people with less individual negotiating leverage from being exploited.
Someday, users will use software to create the software they want.
I'll believe that when I see it. People have been saying the same thing for over 20 years, that some kind of automated code generation or "expert system" would make programmers obsolete. Still hasn't happened.
Of course things will change once we have full-fledged sentient AI, but that changes everything – virtually all human workers become obsolete, and capitalism no longer functions.
Sure, me too. My question is, what have they done for us lately? Answer, fuck-all. Let's see them, for example, push to increase the minimum wage, so that people can even afford their union goods and services. What, they don't want to do that, because they don't have to worry about the minimum wage?
Actually, unions have been among the strongest advocates of raising the minimum wage. Here, for example, is the AFL-CIO's position on this subject.
Unions are about collective bargaining. There's nothing that forces the unions to bargain for rigid job descriptions or strict seniority pay. Since most IT workers don't want these things, why would they elect union leaders who favor them, or agree to a contract that included them?
Now, they've priced the American worker out of the global labor market.
Don't be naive. Just about anything that can be feasibly offshored to low-cost jurisdictions already has been. Those jobs that are still in the U.S. are here for a reason, and marginal changes in the costs of labor won't affect that. And many jobs in modern America are service jobs, which can't be offshored. You can't have your plumbing fixed by a guy from India.
People like to blame the unions for the decline of the U.S. Big Three auto companies, but in Germany and Japan, not only do the manufacturing companies have unions, but they are considerably stronger than they ever were here. (German unions even have seats on corporate boards.) Yet these high-wage, high-skill nations haven't been "priced out of the global labor market". They just don't build cheap crap with low margins.
That's good to know. I'd double-check the traffic on the firewall, though, just to make sure it's not going ahead and sending your search terms to MS anyway...
I think you nailed it. "Welp, we expected a huge backlash for running ads on our paid service that Sony gives away for free... but somehow we got away with it! Let's do the bait and switch with our desktop market and see how well it works there"
Apparently they didn't consider that what the gaming demographic is willing to put up with, serious businesses might not be. Gamers don't have to worry about HIPAA, PCI, SOX, or other privacy/security requirements.
There's got to be some group policy setting to disable this 'smart search' and its corresponding ads, and have the search tool conduct local searches only. (Group policy editing is available only in Pro, but you can generally get the same results on the Home version by manually setting a corresponding registry key.) Even this management team at Microsoft couldn't be dumb enough to not realize that businesses need an opt-out. Could they?
Metro was designed from the ground up as an ad delivery mechanism.
Should be a big win all around! Then again, though, they've mostly gotten away with it on XBL, so it could be just that bad out there.
Just because dumbass gamer kids are willing to put up with it doesn't mean that business users will be.
Cutting out underperforming middle management and flattening the hierarchy is not a new idea in business. It can work well, but it relies on the person at the top being competent, hardworking, and flexible. Suffice to say that the events of the past few years indicate Ballmer might not be up to the job.
Zynga won't be bought by Microsoft – why would they bother? Instead, Mattrick will make their suite of games Metro-only. Microsoft gets all the advantages of a buyout, without having to pay any cash. Zynga will lose money and market share, but MS doesn't care, and Mattrick will no doubt have a golden parachute and probably some juicy kickbacks on top of that.
This is what happens when you hire an ex-Microsoft executive. Their loyalty stays with the old company, and you will soon be little more than a colony of MS. Why anyone would trust these guys, after seeing what Stephen Elop did to Nokia, is beyond me.
Err, you are kind of supporting the argument that the PS3 launch was the worst console launch ever.
His point, I think, is that the Xbone launch was even worse because MS had the opportunity to learn from Sony's previous mistakes, and instead went on to make the very same mistakes. Sony's strategy was risky, but conceivably could have paid off. MS had every reason why they should have known better, but they went ahead anyway.
Look out for flying chairs!
Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered with the OS or the language platform anymore. Not enough long term profit in it. They want to be a sort of Cloud/HP/Apple. They want to be a smartphone/tablet and internet based business services vendor and that's it. There's apparently just not enough profit in the OS or supporting application developers.
It's clear that this is what Ballmer is thinking (he's recently on record as saying that he wants MS to become a "device and services company"), but it really doesn't make any damn sense.
When it comes to cloud services and portable devices, MS is actually pretty late to the game, with nothing particularly special to offer. And their brand name is actually a negative – even people who like MS products often don't like their business practices, and many people only use MS because they more or less have to.
I use Windows at home because it's what I am used to (I've been using it since Win95), and because some of the software I want to run is only available for Windows. My workplace uses Windows, Office, and a variety of other MS technologies in part because it's an industry standard, but also largely because of legacy lock-in: much of the third-party software we use is Windows-only, we have to work with existing Office documents all the time, and all our existing processes and procedures are based around Windows/Office.
The desktop (and associated IT functions related to the desktop) is the one area where Microsoft has a real competitive advantage that will be very hard for anyone else to erode. Yet they seem blithely willing to ignore it, throw it away, in favor of moving to new lines of business where existing competition is fierce and they don't bring anything new to the table. It doesn't make any damn sense, and if the stockholders cared about the long-term viability of the company, they'd pitch Ballmer (and his chair) out the window right now.
I'm not sure what's going on with MS these days. They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.
The cynic in me thinks that Microsoft knows its desktop monopoly is becoming steadily less lucrative, so they want to squeeze out every last penny while they can. We all know that for years, many users got Technet subscriptions and ignored the "for testing only" proviso, instead using them as cheap installs for self, friends, and family. When Microsoft cared about desktop market share, this didn't bother them much, since they'd rather people use their software (even at low cost) instead of going to a competitor. Now, however, they have delusions of being a "device and service company" and want to cut the desktop loose. It's absurd, of course (the desktop is the only area that MS has any kind of real advantage over its competitors) but it is what Steve Ballmer thinks.
The point is that the OS engine fully supports theming. The only reason why a DLL needs to be hacked is that, by default, only digitally signed themes can be used. And only Microsoft has the signing key. This is a purely artificial restriction.
There is a very good reason for that. They want to retain a universal look for Windows. Very important for branding.
If this is a concern, they could specify that OEMs are not allowed to change the default theme. Reserve that capability for end-users, and put it behind a registry key or something.
But they've had theming capabilities in Windows ever since XP and don't seem to have made any attempt to use them. It would be disappointing but understandable if they tried to limit theme releases to "partners", or require them to go through some sort of app store or equivalent. But they haven't done anything like that. Instead the capability is simply left latent for no apparent reason.