It's Microsoft's fault that the drivers need to be rewritten for almost every OS they make. With their microkernel design they could have made a consistent API that wouldn't have to change with every version of Windows, making drivers compatible across versions. Instead they force vendors to write new drivers every time they release a new OS (I hear that may not be true for XP, don't know).
Given enough info is it worth the community's time to simply re-write those files SCO is putting to question? Rather than wait out the storm and let the image tarnish further, maybe the code in question should just be rewritten now. It would certainly be worth IBM's time to keep the same APIs and re-write the underlying code so there can be no question from anyone that it's not "stolen." IBM could then cut the argument short and say, "It's not yours, but even if it was it's rewritten now."
Even worse, when the detector says they're stressed, they're going to be asked even more stressful questions. They're going to have some very angry customers after putting them through an interrogation.
lonely - certainly, since they get less face-to-face contact depressed - maybe, especially if they're feeling lonely negative - Windows desktops will do that to you, they've done it to me;) anti-social - it helps us be lazy and stay within our small team brilliant - makes them brilliant? I doubt that. You're either brilliant or you're not. Modes of communication can't change that.
I'm not claiming there are no alternatives. On the contrary I only use alternatives. But if a vendor sells a computer with Windows, that computer will have IE and WMP installed. Any buyer new to computers will not know alternatives exist, largely because hardware vendors are not able to differentiate. If a person went up to a fresh computer and the computer asked "Which browser would you like? Here are some screenshots and list of features." then the user would know they had options. It doesn't matter if better options exist. It matters that keeping new users ignorant in order to retain customers is immoral.
So bitch all you want and complain about your "lack of options". Clearly you have no idea what an "installation program" is and that you can download them, install them, and make them your default viewer/player.
Clearly you have no idea what fair competition is and that being a monopoly changes the rules. Even if you could completely remove IE and WMP, the fact that other corporations whose only business is to create alternatives are ignored by consumers due to free bundling is illegal for a monopoly. If you have a product A which is a monopoly you are not permitted to give away product B with A in order to undercut competitors for product B. If not for monopoly laws your only choice for phone companies would be AT&T even if competitors existed. Just because competitors exist doesn't mean they're given a fair chance by the market.
And just because you know about a few alternatives (you only believe in commercial media players for some reason) doesn't mean everyone else does or should. Apparently you believe your wealth of knowledge raises you to a higher power than your average consumer and you therefore have a right to attempt insult. Well you can keep your attitude and let Microsoft keep bending you over. I'm ok with that.
It's not just a problem of what's installed. It's also a problem of what can't be removed. IE can not be uninstalled from Windows. (Before anyone points to ways to uninstall or hide the desktop icon try removing the core DLLs. It'll either block it because they're in memory or crash your OS.) At least up to Win2K the media player can not be completely uninstalled either.
A linux distro may come with only one browser or media player, but no one commercial distro has been labeled a desktop monopoly. Being a monopoly changes the rules.
Our insistence of making believe that everything is OK and should remain exactly the same is pointless and stupid.
Then how can you complain about someone wanting to overthrow the government because they want change? It's the government that works to keep everything exactly the same. Their endless creation of laws and unfair taxing keeps the status quo. They were racial profiling before 9/11, they were removing civil liberties before 9/11, they were committing acts of war without popular support before 9/11. The world hasn't changed. 9/11 has just changed the perspective of many people.
You don't seem to understand that the problem is the hate, not the spread of information. If a person wants to make a bomb, they'll find out how, with or without the internet. Removing civil liberties in the US would have had absolutely no effect on the occurrances of 9/11. Without e-mail or web sites they could have used just phones. They all had valid papers. If you let fear make all of your decisions you'll end up in a tight police state. When that happens you'll change your view and advocate destruction of the government. People are complaining now because they're not as short-sighted as you are and see where things like this lead.
The game's over with admin rights to every workstation. With this scenerio, once you're admin on one computer of the network, it's quick to get every other password on the network, such as domain admins. On Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X, if you're admin and have the hash entries you can't use them to crack into other computers on the same network because of the random bits added to each hash.
LanMan is still supported on Win2000 and maybe WinXP for backwards campatability (I assume to network with older system like Win98).
Just because it's called NThas doesn't mean it died with NT. LanMan was used until early releases of NT. The Win2000 bootup screen says "Built with NT technology". Whatever that means it implies lots of shared code. Since NThas was introduced with NT its unlikely they just drop it, especially since it was an improvement and they didn't care to fix this one major weakness anyway.
No. Read the article. This has nothing to do with patching or the crack of the day or stupid admins. This has everything to do with the design of the OS. Microsoft's hash technique for passwords uses no random information, unlike Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X. That means cracking into one computer on the network basically makes cracking every other Windows computer on the same network easy. There's nothing a smart admin can do about it except recommend not running the OS.
If you're going to comment on one part of the article, why not finish reading it? Once you're on one computer of a network, you can easily crack every other password on the network. Each takes an average of 5 seconds. What it's proven is that once on one computer it's easy to move onto the next. Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X use a 12-bit salt, making the hash unique on each computer. So once inside one, it's not as easy to get into the rest on the network.
It's easy to troll anonymously, and even easier when you formulate opinions after reading a quarter of the article.
In the article, MS says it hardly matters to them financially. We all know it's just playing further on customer fears (maybe). But I can't believe/. won't post the much more significant news story on CNet: Cracking Windows passwords in seconds. The weakness published in a research paper proving cracking Windows is far far easier than Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X is far more interesting to/. readers than this legal stuff.
Yeah, this is a great way to keep your customers happy. If I signed up for a service and then got sued for no good reason I'd drop that service in a heartbeat. That's especially true for something like satellite TV, where most customers probably have the choice to switch back to regular cable.
Innovation is impossible to quantify. Using the number of copyright registrations as the measure of innovation is ignoring much, mostly innovation in the public domain. There's nothing wrong with puting together these statistics for analysis, but jumping to any conclusion about quantity of innovation is impossible. It's simply impossible to factually state whether innovation increased or decreased during any period of time. It's purely judgemental.
Security can only be as good as the most insecure point, which doesn't make me feel to good about Microsoft winning this contract.
The most insecure point is the user, not the computer, even running Windows. I hate Microsoft as much as anyone, but as people like Kevin Mitnick will tell you it's the people who are the most insecure point. Even with the government's security above that of most corporations the most breaches are likely to occur from someone's assistant giving away a password over the phone or something along those lines. Of course this contract means those workstations may continue to suffer the usual bugs, slowdowns, and viruses, but genuine security cracks are most likely to come from the users.
What makes it news is it's part of a contract consolidation by the US government which is helping cut costs. The six year contract will get Microsoft much less money than they're used to from the government. For the dollar value spread over the length of the contract it's not much money for Microsoft. Continuing under these terms is actually a loss for them compared to the past, except for the fact it keeps linux off those desktops for the next 6 years.
Since no one RTFA (but me:) here's 2 really good quotes:
"It's not good to charge people for using something which is like a social infrastructure. It also inhibits the development of the computer industry. The very basic infrastructure should be free," he said.
Should? I don't know. But it certainly would be a great help to the advancement of the software industry.
Asked about the operating system inside his own computer, Sakamura smiles broadly. "TRON, of course. I don't use Windows."
My guess is the goal is not to run most current games. If it was to run current games no one would sign up for the $10/month excess fee for updates and network play. They'd mostly stick with their PCs and new customers would see no advantage over a regular PC. So if you're making a new console with new games, there's nothing but a disadvantage in choosing Windows. Well I suppose they see some advantage, but I sure don't.
My first project I tried to do something I thought should be simple. Without using frames I just wanted to dynamically change the controls within a page. Basically we were creating a "wizard." Well after a week of trying to get a single page to work with or without doing everything in code I couldn't get it to work. We gave 3 others a chance at it, two of them full time and true Microserfs. They'd already worked on another ASP.NET project, read books, and took classes. It took them 3 weeks to trying to get.NET to do what they wanted before they barely got it working. All of the work was in getting the platform to do what they wanted, not in solving the business problem. They finally agreed it was not as flexible as they originally thought. Since then I've tried other things and come to the same conclusion.
I had actually read that post and its comments a while back, too. I think it's a matter of perspective. Everything that can be done in ASP.NET (separation of code from layout, i.e. templates, and componentisation) can be done in PHP. The biggest difference is that ASP.NET forces the developer to work with these features, if I want to do something simple. PHP lets me use a template engine (to create something like aspx files), but I'm not forced to do it. I just personally don't like a platform that forces me to work too much in a certain limited way. I'd rather have a simpler platform that's flexible enough to expand when needed, which is how I see PHP.
With this particular discussion it's just a matter of how each person looks at things, rather than any technical merits.
Other than Cold Fusion I've also worked with all of these. The largest learning curve definitely goes to ASP.NET. My overall preference is easily PHP. One factor is many things can be done with far less code in PHP than ASP.NET. The only advantage ASP.NET has over anything else is the tool, VS.NET. It's not the technology that's saving development time. It's the tool helping to write the code and debug that's the real time saver. So from a business point of view it may be the right choice since the tool's good enough to make up for some overly complex platform requirements. But if you get good at manually typing PHP it's far and away superior based on my experiences and from others I've read.
I just started learning Python a few weeks ago, with my background being C++, Java, and Visual Basic. As a side note I have to point out that Python is an absolutely fantastic option for someone wanting to switch from VB to something more modern, useful, and platform independant.
These are the benefits of Python (mostly over C++) I personally like: - It's a very forgiving language; i.e. you don't need to be overly concerned about string lengths or list bounds, no pointers and simple garbage collection - List notations built into the syntax are extremely handy for referring to portions of the list and making changes; far less code needed for working with lists - The OO parts are sufficient without being complex; everything is public; multiple inheritance - Modules are compiled as needed and compiled version is used when available, so it's pretty quick - Lots of runtime information easily available
Wired has also had some great articles. My favorite has been the plan for the space elevator. Thick as a piece of paper and a few feed wide, create a ribbon made of nanotubes miles long. Attach one end to a platform in the middle of an ocean. Attach the other end to a station in geo-cync orbit. Have a simple platform crawl up the ribbon into space.
Plus it would make one hell of a great Freefall ride at Great Adventure.
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It's Microsoft's fault that the drivers need to be rewritten for almost every OS they make. With their microkernel design they could have made a consistent API that wouldn't have to change with every version of Windows, making drivers compatible across versions. Instead they force vendors to write new drivers every time they release a new OS (I hear that may not be true for XP, don't know).
XP users are an extremely small percentage of their user base, so for the moment OS crash info is almost never sent.
Given enough info is it worth the community's time to simply re-write those files SCO is putting to question? Rather than wait out the storm and let the image tarnish further, maybe the code in question should just be rewritten now. It would certainly be worth IBM's time to keep the same APIs and re-write the underlying code so there can be no question from anyone that it's not "stolen." IBM could then cut the argument short and say, "It's not yours, but even if it was it's rewritten now."
Even worse, when the detector says they're stressed, they're going to be asked even more stressful questions. They're going to have some very angry customers after putting them through an interrogation.
lonely - certainly, since they get less face-to-face contact ;)
depressed - maybe, especially if they're feeling lonely
negative - Windows desktops will do that to you, they've done it to me
anti-social - it helps us be lazy and stay within our small team
brilliant - makes them brilliant? I doubt that. You're either brilliant or you're not. Modes of communication can't change that.
I'm not claiming there are no alternatives. On the contrary I only use alternatives. But if a vendor sells a computer with Windows, that computer will have IE and WMP installed. Any buyer new to computers will not know alternatives exist, largely because hardware vendors are not able to differentiate. If a person went up to a fresh computer and the computer asked "Which browser would you like? Here are some screenshots and list of features." then the user would know they had options. It doesn't matter if better options exist. It matters that keeping new users ignorant in order to retain customers is immoral.
So bitch all you want and complain about your "lack of options". Clearly you have no idea what an "installation program" is and that you can download them, install them, and make them your default viewer/player.
Clearly you have no idea what fair competition is and that being a monopoly changes the rules. Even if you could completely remove IE and WMP, the fact that other corporations whose only business is to create alternatives are ignored by consumers due to free bundling is illegal for a monopoly. If you have a product A which is a monopoly you are not permitted to give away product B with A in order to undercut competitors for product B. If not for monopoly laws your only choice for phone companies would be AT&T even if competitors existed. Just because competitors exist doesn't mean they're given a fair chance by the market.
And just because you know about a few alternatives (you only believe in commercial media players for some reason) doesn't mean everyone else does or should. Apparently you believe your wealth of knowledge raises you to a higher power than your average consumer and you therefore have a right to attempt insult. Well you can keep your attitude and let Microsoft keep bending you over. I'm ok with that.
It's not just a problem of what's installed. It's also a problem of what can't be removed. IE can not be uninstalled from Windows. (Before anyone points to ways to uninstall or hide the desktop icon try removing the core DLLs. It'll either block it because they're in memory or crash your OS.) At least up to Win2K the media player can not be completely uninstalled either.
A linux distro may come with only one browser or media player, but no one commercial distro has been labeled a desktop monopoly. Being a monopoly changes the rules.
Our insistence of making believe that everything is OK and should remain exactly the same is pointless and stupid.
Then how can you complain about someone wanting to overthrow the government because they want change? It's the government that works to keep everything exactly the same. Their endless creation of laws and unfair taxing keeps the status quo. They were racial profiling before 9/11, they were removing civil liberties before 9/11, they were committing acts of war without popular support before 9/11. The world hasn't changed. 9/11 has just changed the perspective of many people.
You don't seem to understand that the problem is the hate, not the spread of information. If a person wants to make a bomb, they'll find out how, with or without the internet. Removing civil liberties in the US would have had absolutely no effect on the occurrances of 9/11. Without e-mail or web sites they could have used just phones. They all had valid papers. If you let fear make all of your decisions you'll end up in a tight police state. When that happens you'll change your view and advocate destruction of the government. People are complaining now because they're not as short-sighted as you are and see where things like this lead.
The game's over with admin rights to every workstation. With this scenerio, once you're admin on one computer of the network, it's quick to get every other password on the network, such as domain admins. On Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X, if you're admin and have the hash entries you can't use them to crack into other computers on the same network because of the random bits added to each hash.
LanMan is still supported on Win2000 and maybe WinXP for backwards campatability (I assume to network with older system like Win98).
Just because it's called NThas doesn't mean it died with NT. LanMan was used until early releases of NT. The Win2000 bootup screen says "Built with NT technology". Whatever that means it implies lots of shared code. Since NThas was introduced with NT its unlikely they just drop it, especially since it was an improvement and they didn't care to fix this one major weakness anyway.
No. Read the article. This has nothing to do with patching or the crack of the day or stupid admins. This has everything to do with the design of the OS. Microsoft's hash technique for passwords uses no random information, unlike Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X. That means cracking into one computer on the network basically makes cracking every other Windows computer on the same network easy. There's nothing a smart admin can do about it except recommend not running the OS.
If you're going to comment on one part of the article, why not finish reading it? Once you're on one computer of a network, you can easily crack every other password on the network. Each takes an average of 5 seconds. What it's proven is that once on one computer it's easy to move onto the next. Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X use a 12-bit salt, making the hash unique on each computer. So once inside one, it's not as easy to get into the rest on the network.
It's easy to troll anonymously, and even easier when you formulate opinions after reading a quarter of the article.
In the article, MS says it hardly matters to them financially. We all know it's just playing further on customer fears (maybe). But I can't believe /. won't post the much more significant news story on CNet: Cracking Windows passwords in seconds. The weakness published in a research paper proving cracking Windows is far far easier than Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X is far more interesting to /. readers than this legal stuff.
Yeah, this is a great way to keep your customers happy. If I signed up for a service and then got sued for no good reason I'd drop that service in a heartbeat. That's especially true for something like satellite TV, where most customers probably have the choice to switch back to regular cable.
Innovation is impossible to quantify. Using the number of copyright registrations as the measure of innovation is ignoring much, mostly innovation in the public domain. There's nothing wrong with puting together these statistics for analysis, but jumping to any conclusion about quantity of innovation is impossible. It's simply impossible to factually state whether innovation increased or decreased during any period of time. It's purely judgemental.
Security can only be as good as the most insecure point, which doesn't make me feel to good about Microsoft winning this contract.
The most insecure point is the user, not the computer, even running Windows. I hate Microsoft as much as anyone, but as people like Kevin Mitnick will tell you it's the people who are the most insecure point. Even with the government's security above that of most corporations the most breaches are likely to occur from someone's assistant giving away a password over the phone or something along those lines. Of course this contract means those workstations may continue to suffer the usual bugs, slowdowns, and viruses, but genuine security cracks are most likely to come from the users.
What makes it news is it's part of a contract consolidation by the US government which is helping cut costs. The six year contract will get Microsoft much less money than they're used to from the government. For the dollar value spread over the length of the contract it's not much money for Microsoft. Continuing under these terms is actually a loss for them compared to the past, except for the fact it keeps linux off those desktops for the next 6 years.
Since no one RTFA (but me :) here's 2 really good quotes:
"It's not good to charge people for using something which is like a social infrastructure. It also inhibits the development of the computer industry. The very basic infrastructure should be free," he said.
Should? I don't know. But it certainly would be a great help to the advancement of the software industry.
Asked about the operating system inside his own computer, Sakamura smiles broadly. "TRON, of course. I don't use Windows."
That's obligatory, but still amusing.
My guess is the goal is not to run most current games. If it was to run current games no one would sign up for the $10/month excess fee for updates and network play. They'd mostly stick with their PCs and new customers would see no advantage over a regular PC. So if you're making a new console with new games, there's nothing but a disadvantage in choosing Windows. Well I suppose they see some advantage, but I sure don't.
My first project I tried to do something I thought should be simple. Without using frames I just wanted to dynamically change the controls within a page. Basically we were creating a "wizard." Well after a week of trying to get a single page to work with or without doing everything in code I couldn't get it to work. We gave 3 others a chance at it, two of them full time and true Microserfs. They'd already worked on another ASP.NET project, read books, and took classes. It took them 3 weeks to trying to get .NET to do what they wanted before they barely got it working. All of the work was in getting the platform to do what they wanted, not in solving the business problem. They finally agreed it was not as flexible as they originally thought. Since then I've tried other things and come to the same conclusion.
I had actually read that post and its comments a while back, too. I think it's a matter of perspective. Everything that can be done in ASP.NET (separation of code from layout, i.e. templates, and componentisation) can be done in PHP. The biggest difference is that ASP.NET forces the developer to work with these features, if I want to do something simple. PHP lets me use a template engine (to create something like aspx files), but I'm not forced to do it. I just personally don't like a platform that forces me to work too much in a certain limited way. I'd rather have a simpler platform that's flexible enough to expand when needed, which is how I see PHP.
With this particular discussion it's just a matter of how each person looks at things, rather than any technical merits.
Other than Cold Fusion I've also worked with all of these. The largest learning curve definitely goes to ASP.NET. My overall preference is easily PHP. One factor is many things can be done with far less code in PHP than ASP.NET. The only advantage ASP.NET has over anything else is the tool, VS.NET. It's not the technology that's saving development time. It's the tool helping to write the code and debug that's the real time saver. So from a business point of view it may be the right choice since the tool's good enough to make up for some overly complex platform requirements. But if you get good at manually typing PHP it's far and away superior based on my experiences and from others I've read.
I just started learning Python a few weeks ago, with my background being C++, Java, and Visual Basic. As a side note I have to point out that Python is an absolutely fantastic option for someone wanting to switch from VB to something more modern, useful, and platform independant.
These are the benefits of Python (mostly over C++) I personally like:
- It's a very forgiving language; i.e. you don't need to be overly concerned about string lengths or list bounds, no pointers and simple garbage collection
- List notations built into the syntax are extremely handy for referring to portions of the list and making changes; far less code needed for working with lists
- The OO parts are sufficient without being complex; everything is public; multiple inheritance
- Modules are compiled as needed and compiled version is used when available, so it's pretty quick
- Lots of runtime information easily available
Wired has also had some great articles. My favorite has been the plan for the space elevator. Thick as a piece of paper and a few feed wide, create a ribbon made of nanotubes miles long. Attach one end to a platform in the middle of an ocean. Attach the other end to a station in geo-cync orbit. Have a simple platform crawl up the ribbon into space.
Plus it would make one hell of a great Freefall ride at Great Adventure.