This is what annoys me. CONCEDING DOES NOT MAKE BUSH THE WINNER. He can concede and the election can still go the other way. It doesn't remove him from the race. Nothing's changed except they're announcing their predictions.
I really have to wonder why it took so long for Adobe to jump on the Linux bandwagon.
Because the Linux bandwagon currently only exists for servers. That's where the big spotlight is in the market. Adobe has some very minor server software for PDFs, but everthing else is the desktop. And the Linux desktop isn't taking the market by storm like the Linux server.
I can't find the source of the reported breaches. How did they determine which breaches to investigate? Were they only breaches reported to them? I can state for a fact that many companies do not report breach attempts to anyone. So this investigation probably isn't of a very accurate sample pool.
Here's a very good article from Wired about the debate between evolution and intelligent design. It was the cover story for Oct. One big question: is intelligent design Christian creationism repackaged as weak science?
Professor William Caelli, head of the school of software engineering and data communications at the Queensland University of Technology... told last week's Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers conference that he was "horrified" at the thought that intelligence-related systems might be developed on unprotected off-the-shelf platforms.
"Under no conditions should anyone in their sane mind run intelligence analytical systems on a Microsoft platform," he says.... "I'm talking about the problem of putting highly security-relevant systems on a totally insecure base," Caelli says.
He believes there is no commercial motivation for the information technology industry to develop truly secure systems. "The problem is, essentially, the (information technology) industry itself abrogated its responsibility relating to security some 20 years ago. Today's servers and client systems are less secure than (the) mainframes I used in the 1970s."
Who said we were 'world police'? We're trying to destroy terrorism. That happens to be in the interest of all non-terrorist nations, but it we're not doing it as a police action.
One of the most important powers of a government is the ability to declare war. It's critical in a representative democracy that no one person have that power. Congress is given the duty of deciding to declare war, which hasn't happened since WWII. They've given the President "temporary" police action powers. Everything after WWII has been a police action. Don't let the rhetoric fool you.
But even if we were acting as "world police", as the policers we certainly wouldn't owe the policed an explanation.
So if you were picked up off the street and taken to a jail by a self-described higher authority you wouldn't ask why? If you were jailed for no obvious reason and you don't think you're owed an explination? If you live in the US, Canada or Europe I think you should move to China or Cuba. You'll be much happier there.
We can quibble about WMD or an Al Qaida link, but Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism. They aren't any more.
The U.S. government assumes they've been a sponsor of terrorism recently, but there's no solid proof. We do know for certain, however, that Iran, Jordan, and other nations sponsor terrorism directly. Why then, were they not invaded instead? Especially when we've sponsored a war against Iran. Speaking of which, the US let Saddan gas his own people and Iranians during a war the US mostly paid for. The US is therefore a state sponsor of terrorism. Should we toss the consititution and become a police state domestically?
Oh, and the vacuum that lets so many terrorist groups now grow in Iraq is certainly much better than the assumed state-sponsorship of terrorism that preceeded it. As if so many less people are going to die now that Saddam's out. How in the world you think we're safer now is really beyond me.
Even if the worst FUD claims of the anti electronic voting crowd are true electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting.
Wrong. In most states there are multiple eyes on every ballot from the moment they're taken out of the box until they're counted and sealed. An all-electronic vote is not usually reviewed by multiple people. That's why in test runs thousands of fake extra votes are able to be counted. If every electronic vote was scrutinized the same as paper then they'd be roughly equally vulnerable, but they're not and probably never will be.
People want pretty colors and instantaneous stats.
When they watch TV, not necessarily when they vote. People don't care if they vote by pulling a 20 year old lever. They only care that it's quick, easy, and counts.
The masses aren't screaming for computer graphics on the windshield to aid in driving or a drive-by-wire joystick. People experiment with it, but the flashy stuff isn't what people call for in practical situations.
And making it colorful won't get more people to vote. People aren't running to the polls to check out the computers.
"The most secure version of Windows today is Windows XP with SP2. We recommend that customers upgrade to XP and SP2 as quickly as possible."
Customers usually say, "Yeah, that makes sense." But the only reason they need to say XP with SP2 is the most secure Windows is because they made prior versions even more insecure. "We recommend you buy our latest product because our older versions are less safe. Even though the older versions are in heavier use they won't be getting as much support from us." This is a classic method of using fear to get people to buy their software instead of properly supporting current users.
Hang on a sec. I'm a huge supporter of the GPL, even trying to get it used at the financial firm who employs me. And I never use the word dangerous when referring to it.
However, just as you mention, non-Microsoft code in Microsoft software comes from contracts. The lack of fear of such outside code is from Microsoft lawyers who promise management that any potential problems are avoided by legally binding contracts. When Microsoft employees read contracted code and insert it with their own they are not bound to provide the source code to customers who get binaries (unless there's a license with the customer stating otherwise, but I'm speaking generally). Going open source with the public legally binds them to distribute source with binaries, so including open source code "accidentally" in closed projects forces them into a situation they don't want, while contracted code can remain closed.
It's not that open source licenses are dangerous. Microsoft needs to be just as careful with open source code, but in a different way, than with closed source contracted code. There's no more fear with using one than the other. In both cases Microsoft is, and will be, extremely careful. I've known people who contracted code for Microsoft and they will all tell you that the corporation treats every contract extremely delicately.
Since all of Microsoft's profit comes from licensing closed source software, I guarantee they will be EXTREMELY careful of who works on open source software within the company. If one of their developers contributes to a GPL'd project and then gets moved to a closed source internal project they need to be absolutely certain he doesn't "contaminate" the closed project with any open code. They also need to watch that no one working on a closed project looks over at the open code for ideas. If GPL code gets discovered within any of their closed software, that software can no longer remain closed until the "offending" code is removed. So if Microsoft actually does play seriously with open source, they will be extremely careful of licensing (hence the CPL and not GPL) and code cross-contamination. While they may still end up with some open source software their development won't be very flexible or too open.
so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source".
Open source means the source is open. We can all see it. This means we would be able to see the code which creates the.doc file from start to finish. This also means we would be able to write our own library to read and write.doc files completely with our own code on any platform because we can see exactly how the original works.
The.doc format is not fully accessible and reusable from my own code. I can not legally redistribute any Office COM objects I choose (read the EULA). I also can not execute those COM objects on any platform. If it were open source I could port it myself, even if I'm not allowed to redistribute. So this is not "just as if it were open source." In fact it's not even close no matter which interpretation of the phrase you go by. Don't try to convince people otherwise because those who don't know any better will believe you and confuse the very definition of open source.
I agree 110%. One of the more interesting aspects of this discussion is Bill Gates claimed that if programmers weren't paid for what they write then no software would ever be written (remember the open letter to hobbyists in the 70's?). He's never changed his opinion (publicly). But now his company has such a negative image that many programmers, such as you and me, wouldn't want to write software for them even if we were paid. He's put himself and his company in such a negative light that it'll take decades to get away from it - just like IBM.
While he won't give you a paper copy of his books for free (limited commons), Eric S. Raymond, another open source advocate, publishes his paper books online for free - as in beer and speech. Some (all?) are under a Creative Commons license.
Unfortunately I use Windows at work. I use WinPT and Putty frequently. They're great apps, although they're a bit unpolished. I know little of networking and security and have no problems using them. But I'm a developer. I think an average user would have a problem using either. They're both for people who know what GnuPG and OpenSSH are and how to use them. They don't hide the details, which is a good thing in general, but hard for beginners. I think an average user might get by with WinPT since it adds a toolbar button to Outlook. Luckily Putty is for secure terminal sessions and FTP so it's unlikely an average user would need to bother with it.
Software is all about support, not the product, today anyways.
Not for Microsoft. Last I checked 100% of their profit comes from licensing Windows and Office. Every other method of making money brings in revenue but returns no profit for them. With about an 80% profit margin why would they switch to a support model? It makes sense to us because we see industry trends from a different angle. But from their point of view product (license) sales = profit.
"A throbbing headache is not a good thing, but it can be a sign of a good thing-- for example, that you're recovering consciousness after being hit on the head."
The headache, after regaining consciousness, could be from the brain swelling. Clear fluid coming out of your ears is never a good thing. Maybe someone should knock Graham in the head so he can learn that headaches are rarely a good thing.
That's an interesting point. If "white worms" become popular there's a good chance commercial software vendors will become even lazier about making secure software from the start. If they calculate that a certain percent of their vulnerabilities are statistically likely to be fixed by worm writers then to save money they'll cut their development time relating to security by that same percent. Basically, if they know others will fix it they know they can save money by not preventing or fixing it themselves. It sets up a really bad scenario where commercial software will be of lower quality.
I think open source software will not be as affected by these white worms. One reason is that a hacker will get more public credit for submitting fixes to the project in his own name than having to remain hidden and writing a worm to do the same thing. Plus unix systems tend to be much more secure than Windows when it comes to networking, so worms exploiting holes to spread themselves are far less likely. And then there's the heterogeneous environment that Linux fosters, making it harder to spread worms.
Simple: they're no longer a high growth company. If they planned on having huge market growth (enterprise and government, especially) then they wouldn't be playing the value game. Linux is partly undercutting their profits and slowing their market growth, and they see no change in the near future. I'd say that fits right into the/. view.
This is not a major change. Doubling the yearly dividend still puts almost no dent in their cash reserves. Check how many billions they make each year and work it out.
The one-time $3 dividend serves a few purposes. It keeps investors complacent again. They became complacent when dividends were first announced. But now that the markets are up and their stock is stagnant investors are looking for better returns. This "proves" more value in their stock. To really distribute most of the cash reserves as they're supposed to (speak with Ralph Nader) they would need to pay out more than that every year, but notice they won't commit to that. They pay a one time "large" amount, then buy back a large amount of stock, so those periodic $.08 are now much smaller payouts (because there's less outstanding stock) and the stock that's left public is worth more. It's also a display that they are a value stock, no longer a growth stock. It's also a HUGE payout to the major shareholders: Bill Gates and friends. So don't be surprised if someone leaves right after the payout. This may be a friendly gesture to an insider.
The buyback is something they do very often, but not usually too big. They almost need to do it now because their stock and revenue growth are stagnant. The buyback plus one time dividend will pump up the stock price for at least a little while. When their P/E ratio falls into a position between value and growth stocks their share price will go up further for a long time.
It's possible, although highly speculative, that Microsoft will not call Longhorn "Windows" after they make the final decision to not natively support the Win32 API. If they don't support the Windows API, it's no longer Windows, in one sense. Developers will be forced to use.NET if they wish to target Longhorn. (Win32 might be supported by an emulation layer, but it won't be completely native if they go this route).
However, none of this has been completely decided yet, so Longhorn is still Windows. I wouldn't be surprised if that were to change as we approach its release.
You'll recall that after the Bush admin took over the settlement between the govmt and M$ was pretty much turned into a slap on the wrist.
More specifically, the Bush administration removed the lawyers most experienced with monopolies at the DoJ from the case before the official settlements were signed. Junior lawyers were assigned to work the trial. Right about that time Lawrence Lessig was removed as independant council from the case by the judge without any explanation. It didn't get enough press, but there's no doubt that the Bush administration had a huge impact on the end of the trial and settlement.
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This is what annoys me. CONCEDING DOES NOT MAKE BUSH THE WINNER. He can concede and the election can still go the other way. It doesn't remove him from the race. Nothing's changed except they're announcing their predictions.
I really have to wonder why it took so long for Adobe to jump on the Linux bandwagon.
Because the Linux bandwagon currently only exists for servers. That's where the big spotlight is in the market. Adobe has some very minor server software for PDFs, but everthing else is the desktop. And the Linux desktop isn't taking the market by storm like the Linux server.
I can't find the source of the reported breaches. How did they determine which breaches to investigate? Were they only breaches reported to them? I can state for a fact that many companies do not report breach attempts to anyone. So this investigation probably isn't of a very accurate sample pool.
Here's a very good article from Wired about the debate between evolution and intelligent design. It was the cover story for Oct. One big question: is intelligent design Christian creationism repackaged as weak science?
Reported by The Age (emphasis added):
Professor William Caelli, head of the school of software engineering and data communications at the Queensland University of Technology... told last week's Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers conference that he was "horrified" at the thought that intelligence-related systems might be developed on unprotected off-the-shelf platforms.
"Under no conditions should anyone in their sane mind run intelligence analytical systems on a Microsoft platform," he says.... "I'm talking about the problem of putting highly security-relevant systems on a totally insecure base," Caelli says.
He believes there is no commercial motivation for the information technology industry to develop truly secure systems. "The problem is, essentially, the (information technology) industry itself abrogated its responsibility relating to security some 20 years ago. Today's servers and client systems are less secure than (the) mainframes I used in the 1970s."
Who said we were 'world police'? We're trying to destroy terrorism. That happens to be in the interest of all non-terrorist nations, but it we're not doing it as a police action.
One of the most important powers of a government is the ability to declare war. It's critical in a representative democracy that no one person have that power. Congress is given the duty of deciding to declare war, which hasn't happened since WWII. They've given the President "temporary" police action powers. Everything after WWII has been a police action. Don't let the rhetoric fool you.
But even if we were acting as "world police", as the policers we certainly wouldn't owe the policed an explanation.
So if you were picked up off the street and taken to a jail by a self-described higher authority you wouldn't ask why? If you were jailed for no obvious reason and you don't think you're owed an explination? If you live in the US, Canada or Europe I think you should move to China or Cuba. You'll be much happier there.
We can quibble about WMD or an Al Qaida link, but Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism. They aren't any more.
The U.S. government assumes they've been a sponsor of terrorism recently, but there's no solid proof. We do know for certain, however, that Iran, Jordan, and other nations sponsor terrorism directly. Why then, were they not invaded instead? Especially when we've sponsored a war against Iran. Speaking of which, the US let Saddan gas his own people and Iranians during a war the US mostly paid for. The US is therefore a state sponsor of terrorism. Should we toss the consititution and become a police state domestically?
Oh, and the vacuum that lets so many terrorist groups now grow in Iraq is certainly much better than the assumed state-sponsorship of terrorism that preceeded it. As if so many less people are going to die now that Saddam's out. How in the world you think we're safer now is really beyond me.
Even if the worst FUD claims of the anti electronic voting crowd are true electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting.
Wrong. In most states there are multiple eyes on every ballot from the moment they're taken out of the box until they're counted and sealed. An all-electronic vote is not usually reviewed by multiple people. That's why in test runs thousands of fake extra votes are able to be counted. If every electronic vote was scrutinized the same as paper then they'd be roughly equally vulnerable, but they're not and probably never will be.
People want pretty colors and instantaneous stats.
When they watch TV, not necessarily when they vote. People don't care if they vote by pulling a 20 year old lever. They only care that it's quick, easy, and counts.
The masses aren't screaming for computer graphics on the windshield to aid in driving or a drive-by-wire joystick. People experiment with it, but the flashy stuff isn't what people call for in practical situations.
And making it colorful won't get more people to vote. People aren't running to the polls to check out the computers.
...but even good programmers aren't miracle workers.
"Damn it Bill, I'm a programmer, not a miracle worker!"
Sorry, couldn't resist.
"The most secure version of Windows today is Windows XP with SP2. We recommend that customers upgrade to XP and SP2 as quickly as possible."
Customers usually say, "Yeah, that makes sense." But the only reason they need to say XP with SP2 is the most secure Windows is because they made prior versions even more insecure. "We recommend you buy our latest product because our older versions are less safe. Even though the older versions are in heavier use they won't be getting as much support from us." This is a classic method of using fear to get people to buy their software instead of properly supporting current users.
Hang on a sec. I'm a huge supporter of the GPL, even trying to get it used at the financial firm who employs me. And I never use the word dangerous when referring to it.
However, just as you mention, non-Microsoft code in Microsoft software comes from contracts. The lack of fear of such outside code is from Microsoft lawyers who promise management that any potential problems are avoided by legally binding contracts. When Microsoft employees read contracted code and insert it with their own they are not bound to provide the source code to customers who get binaries (unless there's a license with the customer stating otherwise, but I'm speaking generally). Going open source with the public legally binds them to distribute source with binaries, so including open source code "accidentally" in closed projects forces them into a situation they don't want, while contracted code can remain closed.
It's not that open source licenses are dangerous. Microsoft needs to be just as careful with open source code, but in a different way, than with closed source contracted code. There's no more fear with using one than the other. In both cases Microsoft is, and will be, extremely careful. I've known people who contracted code for Microsoft and they will all tell you that the corporation treats every contract extremely delicately.
Since all of Microsoft's profit comes from licensing closed source software, I guarantee they will be EXTREMELY careful of who works on open source software within the company. If one of their developers contributes to a GPL'd project and then gets moved to a closed source internal project they need to be absolutely certain he doesn't "contaminate" the closed project with any open code. They also need to watch that no one working on a closed project looks over at the open code for ideas. If GPL code gets discovered within any of their closed software, that software can no longer remain closed until the "offending" code is removed. So if Microsoft actually does play seriously with open source, they will be extremely careful of licensing (hence the CPL and not GPL) and code cross-contamination. While they may still end up with some open source software their development won't be very flexible or too open.
so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source".
.doc file from start to finish. This also means we would be able to write our own library to read and write .doc files completely with our own code on any platform because we can see exactly how the original works.
.doc format is not fully accessible and reusable from my own code. I can not legally redistribute any Office COM objects I choose (read the EULA). I also can not execute those COM objects on any platform. If it were open source I could port it myself, even if I'm not allowed to redistribute. So this is not "just as if it were open source." In fact it's not even close no matter which interpretation of the phrase you go by. Don't try to convince people otherwise because those who don't know any better will believe you and confuse the very definition of open source.
Open source means the source is open. We can all see it. This means we would be able to see the code which creates the
The
I agree 110%. One of the more interesting aspects of this discussion is Bill Gates claimed that if programmers weren't paid for what they write then no software would ever be written (remember the open letter to hobbyists in the 70's?). He's never changed his opinion (publicly). But now his company has such a negative image that many programmers, such as you and me, wouldn't want to write software for them even if we were paid. He's put himself and his company in such a negative light that it'll take decades to get away from it - just like IBM.
This seems more like customer service than "open sourcing."
To me this seems more like free programmers for Microsoft than customer service or open sourcing.
In other words, Microsoft can gain a lot. Their customers can gain a little.
While he won't give you a paper copy of his books for free (limited commons), Eric S. Raymond, another open source advocate, publishes his paper books online for free - as in beer and speech. Some (all?) are under a Creative Commons license.
Unfortunately I use Windows at work. I use WinPT and Putty frequently. They're great apps, although they're a bit unpolished. I know little of networking and security and have no problems using them. But I'm a developer. I think an average user would have a problem using either. They're both for people who know what GnuPG and OpenSSH are and how to use them. They don't hide the details, which is a good thing in general, but hard for beginners. I think an average user might get by with WinPT since it adds a toolbar button to Outlook. Luckily Putty is for secure terminal sessions and FTP so it's unlikely an average user would need to bother with it.
Software is all about support, not the product, today anyways.
Not for Microsoft. Last I checked 100% of their profit comes from licensing Windows and Office. Every other method of making money brings in revenue but returns no profit for them. With about an 80% profit margin why would they switch to a support model? It makes sense to us because we see industry trends from a different angle. But from their point of view product (license) sales = profit.
"A throbbing headache is not a good thing, but it can be a sign of a good thing-- for example, that you're recovering consciousness after being hit on the head."
The headache, after regaining consciousness, could be from the brain swelling. Clear fluid coming out of your ears is never a good thing. Maybe someone should knock Graham in the head so he can learn that headaches are rarely a good thing.
That's an interesting point. If "white worms" become popular there's a good chance commercial software vendors will become even lazier about making secure software from the start. If they calculate that a certain percent of their vulnerabilities are statistically likely to be fixed by worm writers then to save money they'll cut their development time relating to security by that same percent. Basically, if they know others will fix it they know they can save money by not preventing or fixing it themselves. It sets up a really bad scenario where commercial software will be of lower quality.
I think open source software will not be as affected by these white worms. One reason is that a hacker will get more public credit for submitting fixes to the project in his own name than having to remain hidden and writing a worm to do the same thing. Plus unix systems tend to be much more secure than Windows when it comes to networking, so worms exploiting holes to spread themselves are far less likely. And then there's the heterogeneous environment that Linux fosters, making it harder to spread worms.
Simple: they're no longer a high growth company. If they planned on having huge market growth (enterprise and government, especially) then they wouldn't be playing the value game. Linux is partly undercutting their profits and slowing their market growth, and they see no change in the near future. I'd say that fits right into the /. view.
This is not a major change. Doubling the yearly dividend still puts almost no dent in their cash reserves. Check how many billions they make each year and work it out.
The one-time $3 dividend serves a few purposes. It keeps investors complacent again. They became complacent when dividends were first announced. But now that the markets are up and their stock is stagnant investors are looking for better returns. This "proves" more value in their stock. To really distribute most of the cash reserves as they're supposed to (speak with Ralph Nader) they would need to pay out more than that every year, but notice they won't commit to that. They pay a one time "large" amount, then buy back a large amount of stock, so those periodic $.08 are now much smaller payouts (because there's less outstanding stock) and the stock that's left public is worth more. It's also a display that they are a value stock, no longer a growth stock. It's also a HUGE payout to the major shareholders: Bill Gates and friends. So don't be surprised if someone leaves right after the payout. This may be a friendly gesture to an insider.
The buyback is something they do very often, but not usually too big. They almost need to do it now because their stock and revenue growth are stagnant. The buyback plus one time dividend will pump up the stock price for at least a little while. When their P/E ratio falls into a position between value and growth stocks their share price will go up further for a long time.
Business as usual.
It's possible, although highly speculative, that Microsoft will not call Longhorn "Windows" after they make the final decision to not natively support the Win32 API. If they don't support the Windows API, it's no longer Windows, in one sense. Developers will be forced to use .NET if they wish to target Longhorn. (Win32 might be supported by an emulation layer, but it won't be completely native if they go this route).
However, none of this has been completely decided yet, so Longhorn is still Windows. I wouldn't be surprised if that were to change as we approach its release.
You'll recall that after the Bush admin took over the settlement between the govmt and M$ was pretty much turned into a slap on the wrist.
More specifically, the Bush administration removed the lawyers most experienced with monopolies at the DoJ from the case before the official settlements were signed. Junior lawyers were assigned to work the trial. Right about that time Lawrence Lessig was removed as independant council from the case by the judge without any explanation. It didn't get enough press, but there's no doubt that the Bush administration had a huge impact on the end of the trial and settlement.