This should be marked +1, Insightful. You only think you're being funny. But when a bug affects every one of your installed customers -- such as a security bug or a major feature change -- you had better be damned sure that you fix it completely and that the fix does not break behavior that third parties have come to expect.
Take this Active X thing. Do you realize how many essential web components, many of them from companies that are now out of business, would stop working if ActiveX were turned off altogether? Many, many websites would stop working, and you can bet the people running them would blame Microsoft. Poor security doesn't cost you anywhere NEAR as much as losing ISVs would. So you spend a lot of time planning, reviewing and executing the patch, and equal time testing it.
But bugs in trivial features? Shit nobody uses or really cares about? You can fix that really quickly, because if the fix is still broken, it won't make much of a difference. You don't need a tiger team or testers working late hours. You can put a single intern on it and get it "done" in an hour.
It's a matter of caution, not priority. When the potential fix affects the core of your business, you move slower fixing it. You release work arounds while you're planning and testing. And you slowly roll out the repairs.
Dude, I built my own computers since I first put an 80 column card in my Apple ][. I had a string of x86s starting with a 386-40 in 1989.
I hated it. Absolutely. All that time spent debugging hardware failures, rebuilding operating systems, calling RMA lines, dealing with shady "cheap" hardware dealers -- and I was still spending close to $600 a year to "keep up with the joneses." I didn't even buy ghetto hardware, I just used it so much and had so many add-on cards and tweaks that even when I built a "stable" machine, it rarely lasted six months. When my last machine, an Athlon Tbird that was in working condition on a Win2k install for a record 2 years, started getting these wierd 30 second hiccoughs with 0 CPU utilization every time I'd try to play a movie file I said, "nuts to this!" I was tired of having people ask "We're Quakin' tonight, is your computer working, das?", didn't have the time or energy to figure it out and didn't have the heart to pay some joker to reinstall my OS.
So I bought a PowerBook. I love it, though it too has given me a little grief (mostly due to running OSS that did not play nice with OSX and corrupted the shit out of my filesystem) at least I don't have to fix it. The guy at the Apple Store did it without losing my crap and I had a good time talking to him while he worked.
Incidentally, if two buttons is the only thing keeping you from a PB, just fucking get one and stop complaining. You do not miss the right click, especially not once you get used to your left hand being the "meta hand." You quickly realize having two mouse buttons does not improve your workflow as much as it impedes your ability to "guess" new functionality. In fact, when I use my Bluetooth scroll mouse, I rarely touch the right mouse button (the middle button, which i map to Expose All, I use all the time).
Why limit abuse? If people want to grow new limbs for cosmetic reasons, I say let 'em do it. It's their bodies, their money, and it can only mean cheaper rates for other, non-cosmetic procedures. And there are some procedures which would be partly cosmetic but could also be very healthful...growing replacement leg bones for people who have uneven legs, or replacement fingers for people who've lost them.
Heck, I'd like to see Alan Colmes able to someday finally grow a spine.
Which is why offshoring seems so good to many companies. If you're resigned to having shitty support, you may as well pay LESS for it.
Incidentally, I've never had a better time of support than with my Apple gear. They always are cordial and knowledgable on the phone, they BELIEVE you when you say it's busted, they arrange all the pickup and delivery with a 5 day turnaround...and remember that battery recall from last week? I got mine the next day. Orderered after 4 on thursday, battery was on the porch when I got home. Could not believe it.
Dis me for paying $300 over the cost of a comparably sized and priced Acer if you want. But it's been worth it already in headaches averted -- and I have two and a half more years of this stuff!
My question is, will we now see a number of apologies from everybody who posted to the last article with Big Brother complaints and privacy concerns?
Here's an example of the FBI doing its damn job and doing it well, shutting down a major example of a new type of crime. Maybe we should give the FBI a little fucking credit sometimes, man. I mean, sometimes it's more than Hoover spreading rumors of homosexuality and harassing Black Panthers. Sometimes, they stop ACTUAL crimes, too.
Easy. At the Simon and Garfunkel show, the city is recouping a good deal of money from corporate sponsors, vendor licenses and so on. An impromptu protest delivers no revenue -- and since it's lead by "50 of the world's leading anarchists" (god, I find that phrase so ridiculously funny), I think there's ageneral consensus that the protestors won't give a hoot about maintenance costs in government.
Actually, it seems he's pretty much an average liar. This site is the resume of a man who works for Microsoft named Corey Gouker, whose skills in rhetoric are identical to those of this one-entry blog.
I don't think headphones create too much social isolation. Before the walkman, a lot of people used to just stand stock still not looking at people because they didn't want to talk. Now, they don't have to worry about it and are much more at ease in public. Shit, the iPod's conquered my agoraphobia in malls completely. I dial up some Slayer and walk as fast as I fucking well want, not getting pissed off at people or wondering if they're looking at me funny. Call that isolation if you must -- I call it freedom.
Whoa dude. I'm all in for a little Microsoft bashing, but this thing's style and interface seem to be hella creative. In fact, all of my Microsoft branded HIDs are comfortable, durable and responsive with an understated look. I'm selling a pair of MS Gamepads on ebay right now that lasted me for 6 years and still run fantastic -- only reason I'm selling them is they were made before USB and therefore don't work with my Mac. These things were comfortable to play with for hours, had a great daisy-chain interface and worked with every program I ever tried them in. Anything initiated by MS' HID department is the equivalent of reference hardware, as far as I'm concerned. How's that not creative?
Wow. This guy is a dork. If he's the market for the PMC, Apple has nothing to worry about -- nothing these guys think is cool EVER becomes popular.
I mean, shit, remember the Archos? I had to listen to assholes tell me how great that ten pound, boat sized piece of shit was for three years. Then when I bought my svelte little 30 gig, I had to listen to them scoff about how it does nothing new and had a small screen and terrible battery life and no microphone or radio or ogg features.
Man, STFU. Nobody cares who made your webcam or what make and model your 7.1 speaker system is or how many MP3s you pirated from eJackass. Just tell us: was the thing convenient, did it have good response from the controls, was it easy to get your shit on and off it, was it comfortable to hold, did it feel durable, and is it worth $300 over the cost of a comparable iPod?
A lot of people have hate for the iPod because they want one but aren't willing to pay for one, ostensibly because it's "not worth it" and the high sticker implies that it is a status symbol. Same reason a lot of people hate Benzs, Cadillacs and BMWs.
These people consider the success of the iPod to be a real thumb on the nose. How can it succeed when it's so expensive? How can it succeed when so many devices do the same thing, only with more features? How can it succeed without OGG/FLAC/DIVX/Radio/Microphone/Wireless/Free Cookies?
The iPod is proof that an electronic device need not follow the commodity technology model to be successful. It's an alien concept for people who have for so long bought in to the idea that technology is a slim margin business. So, it enrages them. Because it's not popular for its tech aspect, but for its simplicity and HIPNESS. And hipness and simplicity are two things most technology pundits wouldn't understand.
Really? That's pretty pessimistic and short sighted...after all, that's what the Windows Update panel, your virus software tray control and your spybot summary are...control panels that tell you whether or not your machine has any problems they can detect.
Combining all of this on an easy-to-understand panel is what people NEED.
Of course, making it and making it useful are two separate things.
That grass did cost $18 mil. I'd rather see 250,000 people choking the sidewalks and subways of NYC, anyway. Problem here is that they all want to get together. That's stupid -- if you get all of your ideas in one place, it's much easier to ignore. Split up into 25,000 groups of ten and stand on the sidewalks all over NYC. This would be a protest to be proud of.
There are many differences between air congestion and ground congestion. You don't have to worry about accidents in the air closing off lanes or slowing down traffic. You don't have to worry about construction closing a lane. You don't have to worry about squeezing four lanes of traffic down to one lane to go over a 45 mph bridge. You don't have to get on the arterial with everybody else just to get on a different arterial. And finally, if things get too congested at 100 feet, rise to 150 feet and go over it.
Acutally, they've just released a special license for ultralite aircraft, powered parachutes and the like. If you can invent a flying car in the same class, one that can take off and land on standard roads, you'll have a great thing. Make it efficient (some of these ultralite devices get gas milage equivalent to a motorcycle) and you'll have a great thing for those of us who currently drive a dogleg interstate to get to work. Driving 80 mph "as the crow flies" would cause me to use less gas and get to work 5 minutes faster with less congestion of the single lane onramp to I-87. These are all great things.
I've heard the Creative $99 setup, and it's not bad, it's true.
But for $500, you can get a set of Energies that blows it away. Head and shoulders. And you wouldn't have to be an audiophile or listen to fruity jazz to hear it. First record I spun on my eXL:22s was Rocket to Russia by the Ramones, and I instantly heard instrumentation subtleties that my old Aiwa system didn't have the sensitivity or the range to reproduce. And the soundstage...you'll know when you hear a good one, because you don't hear music from two or 5 or 7 speakers, you just hear music from everywhere. You can't place where the speakers are. It's awesome.
It's also a sad fact that you CAN tell a 192 kbit mp3 when played through really accurate speakers. Listen to the percussion. MP3 compression is TERRIBLE at percussion, because it's no good at modeling repetetive attacks at low intensities or slowly oscillating sustains like a cymbal crash. AAC is a little better and OGG is GREAT at percussion. But if you're hearing music (playing music while paying attention to something else) as opposed to LISTENING to music (playing music with your full attention on the work), you will never notice these things. That's why I love the iPod...it's just accurate enough that I will never notice the compression while performing activities that I would need the iPod for (driving, working out, mowing the lawn, posting to/., etc).
Nobody NEEDS to spend $500 or $1000 or $6000 for a speaker system. But nobody needs to spend $99, either. You spend whatever you want to spend to get as much clarity as you can handle...the point of diminishing returns is wherever you set it. My point is, if you're gonna dump your money into sound and you want verity (as opposed to sonic coverage), you are almost always better off getting better speakers than you are getting more speakers. Now that I have these Event studio monitors, and I'm essentially hearing what rock musicians IN the studio when they're mixing, I feel that I'm set for a while. I tried using them with my old eXLs in the rear and the very good speakers on my WEGA acting as a center channel, but it sounded terrible compared to the simplicity of good stereo.
Incidentally, I've noticed a lot of people who buy X.1 speaker sets only know what to do with 3 out of the X+1 speakers. Sub on the floor, right and left center on the desk. But the rears, center channels, wide R&L...there's no room on the desk and most people don't like being caged with speakers behind them. These people aren't even using their X speakers to the fullest...for $99, they could have got a SWEET pair of stereo speakers with big bass and good shielding. Heck, for $75 you can get a pair of Sennheiser headphones that will blow away any speakers under $1000 (either the HD-280s high efficiency DJ phones or the HD-580 circumaurals, which are a goddamn dream)...they fit on a desk and the bass won't wake up your downstairs neighbours every time you put on some porno.
Re:SP2 - as secure as any linux distro...
on
XP2 Spotted In The Wild
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
And designing new programs from a marketing impetus instead of what people want.
Seriously, this Security Console is a good example. "What if somebody could tell if their machine was secure just by opening a control panel?" That's a very good idea -- but it will take at least a year to develop something like this that actually works well enough to be a part of windows. In the meantime, they shake and bake something so people know they're working on it.
This is the Microsoft equivalent of Sourceforge Development Status 1. It's a dog and pony panel that will undoubtedly be replaced by something good in the future -- but by that time, most of the industry will have lost all trust in it.
Such is the case with IIS 6. It's actually pretty good, according to a lot of web programmers I know, but I just don't trust it -- to the point that I'm considering not using C# for impending web projects despite having a massive C# codebase. MS would have to go VERY far to get that trust back, and make a security leap similar to the UI leap they made from 3.1 to 95 or the stability leap they made from 98 to 2000.
So why isn't any country in the world doing this? Maybe because ideal systems don't exist except in a vacuum? Maybe graft and taxation are inevitabilities and you should err for the system that WORKS best versus the one that SOUNDS best?
Naw, that's an insight based too steeply in logic and perception. What YOU want is idealistic dreaming.
So what about a government where everybody gets a pony? Ooh, I'll bet that'd be pretty sweet!
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, just right click on him and select "Hide."
It's not hard.
This should be marked +1, Insightful. You only think you're being funny. But when a bug affects every one of your installed customers -- such as a security bug or a major feature change -- you had better be damned sure that you fix it completely and that the fix does not break behavior that third parties have come to expect.
Take this Active X thing. Do you realize how many essential web components, many of them from companies that are now out of business, would stop working if ActiveX were turned off altogether? Many, many websites would stop working, and you can bet the people running them would blame Microsoft. Poor security doesn't cost you anywhere NEAR as much as losing ISVs would. So you spend a lot of time planning, reviewing and executing the patch, and equal time testing it.
But bugs in trivial features? Shit nobody uses or really cares about? You can fix that really quickly, because if the fix is still broken, it won't make much of a difference. You don't need a tiger team or testers working late hours. You can put a single intern on it and get it "done" in an hour.
It's a matter of caution, not priority. When the potential fix affects the core of your business, you move slower fixing it. You release work arounds while you're planning and testing. And you slowly roll out the repairs.
Dude, I built my own computers since I first put an 80 column card in my Apple ][. I had a string of x86s starting with a 386-40 in 1989.
I hated it. Absolutely. All that time spent debugging hardware failures, rebuilding operating systems, calling RMA lines, dealing with shady "cheap" hardware dealers -- and I was still spending close to $600 a year to "keep up with the joneses." I didn't even buy ghetto hardware, I just used it so much and had so many add-on cards and tweaks that even when I built a "stable" machine, it rarely lasted six months. When my last machine, an Athlon Tbird that was in working condition on a Win2k install for a record 2 years, started getting these wierd 30 second hiccoughs with 0 CPU utilization every time I'd try to play a movie file I said, "nuts to this!" I was tired of having people ask "We're Quakin' tonight, is your computer working, das?", didn't have the time or energy to figure it out and didn't have the heart to pay some joker to reinstall my OS.
So I bought a PowerBook. I love it, though it too has given me a little grief (mostly due to running OSS that did not play nice with OSX and corrupted the shit out of my filesystem) at least I don't have to fix it. The guy at the Apple Store did it without losing my crap and I had a good time talking to him while he worked.
Incidentally, if two buttons is the only thing keeping you from a PB, just fucking get one and stop complaining. You do not miss the right click, especially not once you get used to your left hand being the "meta hand." You quickly realize having two mouse buttons does not improve your workflow as much as it impedes your ability to "guess" new functionality. In fact, when I use my Bluetooth scroll mouse, I rarely touch the right mouse button (the middle button, which i map to Expose All, I use all the time).
Why limit abuse? If people want to grow new limbs for cosmetic reasons, I say let 'em do it. It's their bodies, their money, and it can only mean cheaper rates for other, non-cosmetic procedures. And there are some procedures which would be partly cosmetic but could also be very healthful...growing replacement leg bones for people who have uneven legs, or replacement fingers for people who've lost them.
Heck, I'd like to see Alan Colmes able to someday finally grow a spine.
Funny, I thought Reebok owned the patent on pumps that make you more of a man...
I like Jon Katz' Bit:
"My Name is Barrington."
"How do you spell that?"
"Oh it's B as in Barrington, A as in arrington, r as in rrington..."
Which is why offshoring seems so good to many companies. If you're resigned to having shitty support, you may as well pay LESS for it.
Incidentally, I've never had a better time of support than with my Apple gear. They always are cordial and knowledgable on the phone, they BELIEVE you when you say it's busted, they arrange all the pickup and delivery with a 5 day turnaround...and remember that battery recall from last week? I got mine the next day. Orderered after 4 on thursday, battery was on the porch when I got home. Could not believe it.
Dis me for paying $300 over the cost of a comparably sized and priced Acer if you want. But it's been worth it already in headaches averted -- and I have two and a half more years of this stuff!
My question is, will we now see a number of apologies from everybody who posted to the last article with Big Brother complaints and privacy concerns?
Here's an example of the FBI doing its damn job and doing it well, shutting down a major example of a new type of crime. Maybe we should give the FBI a little fucking credit sometimes, man. I mean, sometimes it's more than Hoover spreading rumors of homosexuality and harassing Black Panthers. Sometimes, they stop ACTUAL crimes, too.
Easy. At the Simon and Garfunkel show, the city is recouping a good deal of money from corporate sponsors, vendor licenses and so on. An impromptu protest delivers no revenue -- and since it's lead by "50 of the world's leading anarchists" (god, I find that phrase so ridiculously funny), I think there's ageneral consensus that the protestors won't give a hoot about maintenance costs in government.
In the hardware world, you don't say "warez." You say "made in Korea."
Actually, it seems he's pretty much an average liar. This site is the resume of a man who works for Microsoft named Corey Gouker, whose skills in rhetoric are identical to those of this one-entry blog.
Smells to me like fishy soup.
You may be on to something. Check this out. If this is as it seems, Corey's not a 20 year old student...he's been working with Microsoft for 8 years.
Fucking insidious.
I don't think headphones create too much social isolation. Before the walkman, a lot of people used to just stand stock still not looking at people because they didn't want to talk. Now, they don't have to worry about it and are much more at ease in public. Shit, the iPod's conquered my agoraphobia in malls completely. I dial up some Slayer and walk as fast as I fucking well want, not getting pissed off at people or wondering if they're looking at me funny. Call that isolation if you must -- I call it freedom.
Whoa dude. I'm all in for a little Microsoft bashing, but this thing's style and interface seem to be hella creative. In fact, all of my Microsoft branded HIDs are comfortable, durable and responsive with an understated look. I'm selling a pair of MS Gamepads on ebay right now that lasted me for 6 years and still run fantastic -- only reason I'm selling them is they were made before USB and therefore don't work with my Mac. These things were comfortable to play with for hours, had a great daisy-chain interface and worked with every program I ever tried them in. Anything initiated by MS' HID department is the equivalent of reference hardware, as far as I'm concerned. How's that not creative?
Wow. This guy is a dork. If he's the market for the PMC, Apple has nothing to worry about -- nothing these guys think is cool EVER becomes popular.
I mean, shit, remember the Archos? I had to listen to assholes tell me how great that ten pound, boat sized piece of shit was for three years. Then when I bought my svelte little 30 gig, I had to listen to them scoff about how it does nothing new and had a small screen and terrible battery life and no microphone or radio or ogg features.
Man, STFU. Nobody cares who made your webcam or what make and model your 7.1 speaker system is or how many MP3s you pirated from eJackass. Just tell us: was the thing convenient, did it have good response from the controls, was it easy to get your shit on and off it, was it comfortable to hold, did it feel durable, and is it worth $300 over the cost of a comparable iPod?
A lot of people have hate for the iPod because they want one but aren't willing to pay for one, ostensibly because it's "not worth it" and the high sticker implies that it is a status symbol. Same reason a lot of people hate Benzs, Cadillacs and BMWs.
These people consider the success of the iPod to be a real thumb on the nose. How can it succeed when it's so expensive? How can it succeed when so many devices do the same thing, only with more features? How can it succeed without OGG/FLAC/DIVX/Radio/Microphone/Wireless/Free Cookies?
The iPod is proof that an electronic device need not follow the commodity technology model to be successful. It's an alien concept for people who have for so long bought in to the idea that technology is a slim margin business. So, it enrages them. Because it's not popular for its tech aspect, but for its simplicity and HIPNESS. And hipness and simplicity are two things most technology pundits wouldn't understand.
I'm more interested in combining redheads with latex. I have a special applicator for it.
Really? That's pretty pessimistic and short sighted...after all, that's what the Windows Update panel, your virus software tray control and your spybot summary are...control panels that tell you whether or not your machine has any problems they can detect.
Combining all of this on an easy-to-understand panel is what people NEED.
Of course, making it and making it useful are two separate things.
That grass did cost $18 mil. I'd rather see 250,000 people choking the sidewalks and subways of NYC, anyway. Problem here is that they all want to get together. That's stupid -- if you get all of your ideas in one place, it's much easier to ignore. Split up into 25,000 groups of ten and stand on the sidewalks all over NYC. This would be a protest to be proud of.
There are many differences between air congestion and ground congestion. You don't have to worry about accidents in the air closing off lanes or slowing down traffic. You don't have to worry about construction closing a lane. You don't have to worry about squeezing four lanes of traffic down to one lane to go over a 45 mph bridge. You don't have to get on the arterial with everybody else just to get on a different arterial. And finally, if things get too congested at 100 feet, rise to 150 feet and go over it.
Except now the idiots are hovering above our rooftops, which aren't designed to absorb the collision of a Hummer O2.
I've got no problem with idiots dying -- I support the military -- but I have a problem with them causing damage to other peoples' property.
You better believe aircar insurance premiums will be high. And no, it won't be a tax.
Acutally, they've just released a special license for ultralite aircraft, powered parachutes and the like. If you can invent a flying car in the same class, one that can take off and land on standard roads, you'll have a great thing. Make it efficient (some of these ultralite devices get gas milage equivalent to a motorcycle) and you'll have a great thing for those of us who currently drive a dogleg interstate to get to work. Driving 80 mph "as the crow flies" would cause me to use less gas and get to work 5 minutes faster with less congestion of the single lane onramp to I-87. These are all great things.
I've heard the Creative $99 setup, and it's not bad, it's true.
/., etc).
But for $500, you can get a set of Energies that blows it away. Head and shoulders. And you wouldn't have to be an audiophile or listen to fruity jazz to hear it. First record I spun on my eXL:22s was Rocket to Russia by the Ramones, and I instantly heard instrumentation subtleties that my old Aiwa system didn't have the sensitivity or the range to reproduce. And the soundstage...you'll know when you hear a good one, because you don't hear music from two or 5 or 7 speakers, you just hear music from everywhere. You can't place where the speakers are. It's awesome.
It's also a sad fact that you CAN tell a 192 kbit mp3 when played through really accurate speakers. Listen to the percussion. MP3 compression is TERRIBLE at percussion, because it's no good at modeling repetetive attacks at low intensities or slowly oscillating sustains like a cymbal crash. AAC is a little better and OGG is GREAT at percussion. But if you're hearing music (playing music while paying attention to something else) as opposed to LISTENING to music (playing music with your full attention on the work), you will never notice these things. That's why I love the iPod...it's just accurate enough that I will never notice the compression while performing activities that I would need the iPod for (driving, working out, mowing the lawn, posting to
Nobody NEEDS to spend $500 or $1000 or $6000 for a speaker system. But nobody needs to spend $99, either. You spend whatever you want to spend to get as much clarity as you can handle...the point of diminishing returns is wherever you set it. My point is, if you're gonna dump your money into sound and you want verity (as opposed to sonic coverage), you are almost always better off getting better speakers than you are getting more speakers. Now that I have these Event studio monitors, and I'm essentially hearing what rock musicians IN the studio when they're mixing, I feel that I'm set for a while. I tried using them with my old eXLs in the rear and the very good speakers on my WEGA acting as a center channel, but it sounded terrible compared to the simplicity of good stereo.
Incidentally, I've noticed a lot of people who buy X.1 speaker sets only know what to do with 3 out of the X+1 speakers. Sub on the floor, right and left center on the desk. But the rears, center channels, wide R&L...there's no room on the desk and most people don't like being caged with speakers behind them. These people aren't even using their X speakers to the fullest...for $99, they could have got a SWEET pair of stereo speakers with big bass and good shielding. Heck, for $75 you can get a pair of Sennheiser headphones that will blow away any speakers under $1000 (either the HD-280s high efficiency DJ phones or the HD-580 circumaurals, which are a goddamn dream)...they fit on a desk and the bass won't wake up your downstairs neighbours every time you put on some porno.
And designing new programs from a marketing impetus instead of what people want.
Seriously, this Security Console is a good example. "What if somebody could tell if their machine was secure just by opening a control panel?" That's a very good idea -- but it will take at least a year to develop something like this that actually works well enough to be a part of windows. In the meantime, they shake and bake something so people know they're working on it.
This is the Microsoft equivalent of Sourceforge Development Status 1. It's a dog and pony panel that will undoubtedly be replaced by something good in the future -- but by that time, most of the industry will have lost all trust in it.
Such is the case with IIS 6. It's actually pretty good, according to a lot of web programmers I know, but I just don't trust it -- to the point that I'm considering not using C# for impending web projects despite having a massive C# codebase. MS would have to go VERY far to get that trust back, and make a security leap similar to the UI leap they made from 3.1 to 95 or the stability leap they made from 98 to 2000.
Wow, that sounds good.
So why isn't any country in the world doing this? Maybe because ideal systems don't exist except in a vacuum? Maybe graft and taxation are inevitabilities and you should err for the system that WORKS best versus the one that SOUNDS best?
Naw, that's an insight based too steeply in logic and perception. What YOU want is idealistic dreaming.
So what about a government where everybody gets a pony? Ooh, I'll bet that'd be pretty sweet!