I think you mean "one of the inevitabilities of acquisition." The company that acquires you will always assume their own people can do your job better. I have never seen a company acquired that maintained more than 50% of its staff over the next year...and seen plenty reduced to a handful of lonely essentials in some barren satelite office.
A word of advice: if somebody wants to acquire you, don't listen to the lies. Get an employment agreement that's to your benefit along with the massive payout. Put the payout in the bank (or use it to reduce your existing house/car/student loans). And if you're making good money right now, and enjoying yourself, don't let yourself be acquired! It can ONLY spell eventual heartbreak.
1) The face is: a service is NOT "just a thread." A service runs completely autonomous of another program, and as such can keep running even if a calling program fails. Windows standard threads don't do this, OSX/BSD threads will. I am guessing Apple wanted this kind of functionality in iTunes, so they designed it that way because it was all they could do. They are services...they install in your services registry...that's why i call them services.
2) iTunes takes a lot more power than you seem to realize. For one thing, it has support for browsing and searching MASSIVE local file libararies and manages way more meta data than just "playing an mp3." It can be sluggish with my 85 gig library on a similar setup, because it maintains this database in memory and controls a number of processes as well (such as downloading from the music store, ripping a cd to AAC at 4x, updating dynamic playlists, managing uploads to the ipod, sharing the library on the network, etc etc).
3) Difficult? No. But come on, man. Microsoft wants all new development on the NT platform. Apple wants to develop something similar to their UN*X system so they don't have to design and maintain two drastically different programs. Sure, it's possible. But it's not profitable. So it would be stupid.
4) People who keep their computers forever should expect to keep their software forever as well. People who expect to be able to run the newest, most powerful programs should have reasonable recent machines. I don't try and tote my kayaks with my '73 Super Beetle. I do drive it to work.
Of course you got an answer like mine. On slashdot, we try to respond to stupid comments with insightful outlooks. If you wanted a dozen "yes apple sucks" posts, try somewhere else.
And who do we trust more to follow said method...somebody who follows it for their job, or random guy on the street?
That's what this whole "expertise" thing is about...trust in an untrustworthy world. Ph D are three little letters that don't guarantee brains, but should guarantee that the subject at least tried hard at being an idiot.
I shouldn't have to explain that. Used CD shops don't pay as much for their stock, so they can sell cheaper. If the RIAA got a cut, prices would go up. Duh.
To pay the artists, pay the manufacturer, pay the distributor, pay the producer, pay the sound technicians, pay the promotional costs that lead to radio play?
Your used CDs...they don't have to pay any of those costs...so naturally, they're far less money.
See, I don't have a problem with the IDEA of the record industry. The way it works nowadays, the artist is only performing a tiny sliver of the activity needed to get the music into my CD player. It just so happens that this sliver is the part that's most important to me, but there we are...that's where the door is open for somebody to invent a new distribution channel and bypass promotion, distribution, manufacture and just pay the techs, producers (never underestimate their power...a good producer is as important to a good CD as the band is), etc.
Unfortunately, with MP3.com and emusic both ass-out, the channel is being completely ignored. I hope Apple gets off their ass with the "exclusive content" idea and turns iTunes into that next killer app. Step one is to stop jerking off the RIAA, and make some damned MONEY off your service.
A Ph D says to me, "I have been certified to research, analyze, and come up with hypotheses." Sure, the hypothesis can still be wrong. Reasoning can still be biased and flawed. The research could be incomplete or rely on discredited work.
But it's less likely to be flawed than that of some marketer making guesses somewhere. It's far less likely to be incomplete than some random slashdot post. I trust a Ph D to at least THINK before making a judgment...I am not such an anti-intellectual anarchist snob that I can automatically assume that school is a tool of the system and all doctoral students are mindless sheep. But hey, maybe I just don't read enough Cat and Girl comics.
And for good reason. The core of iTunes is its ability to multitask, and it performs this by installing a number of services on your computer. One for CD burning, one for acessing the iTunes store, and a third for browsing local iTunes networks. When you start iTunes, you only start a GUI front end to these services.
Relying on services seems kind of retarded, when so many other Windows programs are able to perform similar tasks without needing to do so. I can only imagine they did so to allow the Windows version to mimick the BSD based Macintosh version, and thus cut down a bit on redundant development.
Since Win98's kernel does not support services, Apple would have to completely rewrite the program for an OS which is 6 years old and generally only used by computers that are too underpowered to run iTunes in the first place. Sounds like an egregious waste of resources to me, but hey, what do I know. I only do this for a living.
CDs DO sell for half price -- $8 or less -- at used CD shops, and online at amazon and half.com
People still look for them on Kazaa or Newsgroups or Bit Torrent.
I used to like that "If only CDs were cheaper" argument myself. But it's just not substantiated by the facts at hand. Cheap solutions exist. They are largely ignored for the free solutions.
His argument here is that forking is often a change in direction that means in order to support your product, you need to adapt to one of the two forks. Think of Apache 2.x...completely different from Apache 1.x, to the point that they aren't really compatible -- at least not where modules are concerned. You either had to hang on to Apache 1.x and pray for support or face the reality of the new, get new modules, which in turn means retesting all of your apps, rewriting all of your configs...not a "hard" task by any means, but that's time and energy that could be better spent doing something else.
Of course, Apache's also a good example of how market forces dicatate the fork that succeeds. Nobody wanted to move to Apache 2.0 at first, despite it having a better interface. So 1.x has undergone numerous revisions and security enhancements, it's still a strong product. Whereas new development has really blossomed for 2.x, as developers realized how much better performance and security were with the new model. The result? Two distince proudcts, two distinct platforms, with no strongarming of the market to move to the latest and greatest for fear of lack of support.
If Microsoft had this level of commitment, we'd still have customers on Windows 3.x because it was "good enough." They'd still be supporting DOS based OSs like 98 and ME. And XP would be continuously adding features and improving speed, trying to lull development to it.
All told, it's not as simple as Dr. Sauer's line. Forking does mean increased TCO. But it's as often a symptom of dedicated development as it is of personal bravado. Not that bravado is a reason NOT to fork...if a product is being lead by a short sighted asshole control freak, it's your duty as a citizen in the GPL community to bypass this bottleneck. If you've got the right idea, people will flock to you...otherwise, they've still got the original.
Whoa. Sun doesn't have to sell their idea to consumers. They just have to sell it to Wal-mart. Wal-mart will sell it to consumers. And I guarantee you that a company with the most advanced product tracking and distribution software in the world remembers sun.
Besides, I trust Sun's ability to brand a saleable computer more than Lindows, whose approach seems to be "Psst...don't tell them it isn't Windows! Maybe they won't return it!"
Those "negative connotations" didn't stop Apple from advertising Java support as one of the key components of their new OS three years ago. They don't stop people from buying the various cell phones which proudly announce "JAVA support," nor the companies making pocket games for them.
"Bad connotations" about Java don't stop the common man from whiling away the hours at Popcap.com, playing Bejewled, Bookworm, and other Java based games.
In fact, I think the only person who's still dwelling in the past on Java here is you. The rest of the world doesn't think too hard about their software archiceture...otherwise, why would they buy Windows XP?
Well, Java desktops make more sense now that Microsoft is trying to do basically the same thing with their.NET initiative. That is, when the world's largest desktop operating system developer starts treating the machine as a virtual machine, it certainly makes a player who's been doing it for years look more competent.
Sun's marketing will no doubt play off this. "Hey, remember when we said 'the network is the computer?' Remember when we wrote a system for running programs that had security built into the very core of the system? Now Microsoft's trying to do the self same things we've already done. We can deliver what Longhorn might, and we can give it to you today for less money with good support." Sounds good, no? Certainly better than either the Microsoft Line or the FUD against strictly Open Source software.
You're talking about end users...end users are VERY willing to pick up something that used to be kind of crappy if the interface has sufficiently improved. Remember how terrible IE was at first? Flash? Remember how crummy Windows Media Explorer was? Remember how hard Linux USED to be to install? People keep giving these apps another chance. People will no doubt give Java a second glance as well. And this could be EXACTLY what Linux needs to succeed on the desktop: a major player releasing a major OS with a team of talented minds enhancing GPL code.
That's cold, kid. Hey, scenario for you. I own a company. I make a product. It is a really really awesome product that everybody wants.
But I work in a non-descript brick building in a small town in upstate New York. How ever will people learn of our product?
Advertising -- and Public Relations.
Now, I want to tell you why you want to buy it. But it's kind of complicated. I only have a 15 second radio spot. Which of these messages do you suppose is more effective?
1) Widgets are designed to PDQ your YSZ using ASD technology licensed from ZX. They are sufficient for small to medium clients.
of
2) Widgets are freakin' awesome, man. I don't need to tell you. There's all this technology in there but you'll never know anything about it except that you have more time and more room to breath when you use it.
#2 is full of exaerations, vague descriptions and is incomplete. But if they entice you to take a closer look, BAM! Good enough.
You're all taking a VERY close look at SCO's arguments at the moment. Ordinarily that would be a marketting success, but since SCO only has old or stolen products, I'd say maybe they should be averting your gaze a little bit...
Email is just fine the way it is. What will decrease spam in the long run is the same thing that's decreasing the trading of illegal software, mp3s, and pornogrpahy online: making it illegal and very costly to continue. Decreasing spam to a trickle should be good enough; stopping it completely is a silly goal since the process will be no doubt logarithmic and those last few percentile points of decrease will take a LOT of effort.
Increasing the beaurocracy behind email -- which is what "securing" email will do -- is throwing a lot more money at the problem than legislature will require. Think about the cost of writing all new software for all platforms that send email, probably two or three open source servers and a handful of closed source ones, including some from MS. Think about having to write three generations of clients before the standard ceases to be extended. Think about upgrading every email server, every email client, every router and gateway with new software packages. Think about training users and admins and think about the agents who will have to sell new software and designers who will have to deal with new SPAM methods that DEFEAT all of these brilliant programs.
Then think about the resources to slap a pricetag on offending emails, censure countries that don't play nice (and blacklist them, reducing their effectiveness), and think about how most of THAT cost is PAID FOR by the big bills that the marketting companies are going to receive for turning a blind eye to the problem.
Easier and cheaper, though not easy and not cheap. Still, err on the side of simplicity eh?
Please. It's hard to argue that Linux is not a professional operating system. It's also hard to argue that there aren't tons of amateurs writing GPL software, on account of that's the whole idea of it.
I'm merely pointing out that Windows is most definitely professional. To the tune of more money than has ever passed through the coffers of any other company on the planet.
And Linux doesn't have that yet. Though it does have the unfounded jokes and overinflated sense of superiority that every grassroots project needs to take on the big guy.
Nope, not funny. The definition of Professional is "participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs." I've made several hundred thousand dollars writing and selling software that runs on Windows Professional. Wheras your average GPL programmer does it for free...
You know, I don't think this a conflict of interest at all. Ironport's a software company that specializes in email software. They sell a program with a legitimate use (delivering email to multiple recepients). They can not assure that their software won't be used for a less legitimate use (delivering email to multiple UNWILLING recepients). Nor would most of us want them to -- how many of you have rallied against the sort of restrictive licensing that defines how you can and how you can't use a piece of software? So, Ironport buys a faltering company that has a product which reduces the damage caused by abuse of their product.
This is not like releasing a disease, and then releasing a cure. It's like creating a drug, seeing that it's commonly abused, and then using your abilities to help curb this abuse. Drug companies do this all the time. Sure, they make a little money off of it. But it's not the grand conspiracy you're trying to make it out to be.
Think of it, man. Ford Motor Company makes Mustangs that go fast. They make Crown Vics that go faster. That way, when people make the Mustangs go WAY too fast, the cops have a way to catch them. Does this mean that Ford has a conflict of interest that prevents them from selling slower cars to the police...that they're purposefully pushing these fast cars to push sales of their cop cars?
Or does it mean that they're a company that's specialized in cars, and that they therefore try to make cars that fulfill the needs of specific people, including people who like to go fast and the guys tasked to catch them?
This is true with the cheaper phones. But more expensive devices (such as the Thera palmtop) WILL more to a different carrier, as long as they use the same type of signal (CDMA vs GSM, etc)...some even have (relatively) inexpensive modules that can be swapped in and out to move to a different network. Many of your so-called world phones have both...
Of course, the carrier lock in is WHY these phones are cheaper. That "free" phone probably costs closer to $100+, all costs told, but they recoup it so quickly with the margin on their service that it's actually more profitable to gimmick you into purchasing than it is to be honest with costs.
Is this the same Verizon that couldn't switch my landline number from my apartment to my new house five miles away?
Yeah, I believe they'd mess that up. I know two things about cellular phones in the United States:
1) The best carrier for customer service, technical support, and calling area is Verizon.
2) Verizon has really shitty customer service, technical support, and calling area.
Verizon, BTW, has not correctly billed me since March. Every month they've refused to bill my credit card and charged me $24 for the right. See, I changed my credit card number to one that actually worked...and their automated system has yet to realize it. Despite my having called every month since to have it fixed.
American cellular service will not get better until all the opportunist companies have been bankrupted by their own stupidity, and a company with the old school telecommunications mentality (that same one Time Warner seems to have adopted, btw) takes over. But there's still too much money to be had in shady deals and shiny phones for pragmatism to prevail.
Part of the reason for this is the COMPLEXITY of passwords. Think about it, man...if you had to remember the exact combination of every lock you opened, wouldn't you leave more doors open?
Key generators, like the RSA fob, are a step in the right direction.
My password is "fries". Five letters, in the dictionary, couldn't take more than five minutes to crack.
But I'm not worried about it. My desktop is like my front lawn. All the important shit is hidden, offline, or requires a lot more work than just a password.
Passwords are complex enough. They're too complex. What we need is MORE passwords, task specific ones. Need to delete a record? You need the record deletion password, which is different from the record insertion password. They're all stupid...but there are enough of them that comprimising one of them doesn't give you shit.
Re:Forced password changes
on
Real Security?
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· Score: 4, Informative
It shouldn't be amazing. Average people don't give a shit about security, nor should they. It shouldn't be a part of their jobs, or at least it shouldn't be something that interferes with them.
Does this suck? Sure seems to make your job as an admin harder. But the fact is, you can't rely on end users for security anyway. What happens when Joe in accounting finds out he's about to get downsized and takes it out on the network?
If you secured it right, nothing. He deletes some information, and you get it back in a matter of minutes from the awesome backups and transaction logs you maintain. You invalidate his login, and it's like he never existed. That's security: having a way to fix things when they go wrong, not assuming nothing will go wrong because you demand so much.
Security against hackers is no different. Make sure they can't sniff passwords, make sure nobody has too many rights when they come in to the system from the outside world. And when you have to allow them access to something, make sure they never can do more than a day's worth of damage.
We have a lot of customers who are complete idiots. We know there is no way they will maintain useful logins to our system -- most of them use one login (same password as the log in name) on all of the installed computers they have, because it's easier. So, our new products were designed around this. Nothing is ever deleted from the system using the client application. The client's login can only read information on a server, or mark it invisible. The "root" logins are only known by a handful of people, and are only accepted from the console. And just in case, the whole shebang is backed up daily to tape, and the transaction log cloned and packed hourly.
So we can have our customers call and tell us "My login is carl, password carl" and I no longer roll my eyes. Because "carl" doesn't do anything more than peering through the window of an armored car.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean "one of the inevitabilities of acquisition." The company that acquires you will always assume their own people can do your job better. I have never seen a company acquired that maintained more than 50% of its staff over the next year...and seen plenty reduced to a handful of lonely essentials in some barren satelite office.
A word of advice: if somebody wants to acquire you, don't listen to the lies. Get an employment agreement that's to your benefit along with the massive payout. Put the payout in the bank (or use it to reduce your existing house/car/student loans). And if you're making good money right now, and enjoying yourself, don't let yourself be acquired! It can ONLY spell eventual heartbreak.
1) The face is: a service is NOT "just a thread." A service runs completely autonomous of another program, and as such can keep running even if a calling program fails. Windows standard threads don't do this, OSX/BSD threads will. I am guessing Apple wanted this kind of functionality in iTunes, so they designed it that way because it was all they could do. They are services...they install in your services registry...that's why i call them services.
2) iTunes takes a lot more power than you seem to realize. For one thing, it has support for browsing and searching MASSIVE local file libararies and manages way more meta data than just "playing an mp3." It can be sluggish with my 85 gig library on a similar setup, because it maintains this database in memory and controls a number of processes as well (such as downloading from the music store, ripping a cd to AAC at 4x, updating dynamic playlists, managing uploads to the ipod, sharing the library on the network, etc etc).
3) Difficult? No. But come on, man. Microsoft wants all new development on the NT platform. Apple wants to develop something similar to their UN*X system so they don't have to design and maintain two drastically different programs. Sure, it's possible. But it's not profitable. So it would be stupid.
4) People who keep their computers forever should expect to keep their software forever as well. People who expect to be able to run the newest, most powerful programs should have reasonable recent machines. I don't try and tote my kayaks with my '73 Super Beetle. I do drive it to work.
Of course you got an answer like mine. On slashdot, we try to respond to stupid comments with insightful outlooks. If you wanted a dozen "yes apple sucks" posts, try somewhere else.
Hey, pays well enough to afford one of these awesome free slashdot accounts. Maybe someday you'll make it like I have!
And who do we trust more to follow said method...somebody who follows it for their job, or random guy on the street?
That's what this whole "expertise" thing is about...trust in an untrustworthy world. Ph D are three little letters that don't guarantee brains, but should guarantee that the subject at least tried hard at being an idiot.
I shouldn't have to explain that. Used CD shops don't pay as much for their stock, so they can sell cheaper. If the RIAA got a cut, prices would go up. Duh.
To pay the artists, pay the manufacturer, pay the distributor, pay the producer, pay the sound technicians, pay the promotional costs that lead to radio play?
Your used CDs...they don't have to pay any of those costs...so naturally, they're far less money.
See, I don't have a problem with the IDEA of the record industry. The way it works nowadays, the artist is only performing a tiny sliver of the activity needed to get the music into my CD player. It just so happens that this sliver is the part that's most important to me, but there we are...that's where the door is open for somebody to invent a new distribution channel and bypass promotion, distribution, manufacture and just pay the techs, producers (never underestimate their power...a good producer is as important to a good CD as the band is), etc.
Unfortunately, with MP3.com and emusic both ass-out, the channel is being completely ignored. I hope Apple gets off their ass with the "exclusive content" idea and turns iTunes into that next killer app. Step one is to stop jerking off the RIAA, and make some damned MONEY off your service.
A Ph D says to me, "I have been certified to research, analyze, and come up with hypotheses." Sure, the hypothesis can still be wrong. Reasoning can still be biased and flawed. The research could be incomplete or rely on discredited work.
But it's less likely to be flawed than that of some marketer making guesses somewhere. It's far less likely to be incomplete than some random slashdot post. I trust a Ph D to at least THINK before making a judgment...I am not such an anti-intellectual anarchist snob that I can automatically assume that school is a tool of the system and all doctoral students are mindless sheep. But hey, maybe I just don't read enough Cat and Girl comics.
And for good reason. The core of iTunes is its ability to multitask, and it performs this by installing a number of services on your computer. One for CD burning, one for acessing the iTunes store, and a third for browsing local iTunes networks. When you start iTunes, you only start a GUI front end to these services.
Relying on services seems kind of retarded, when so many other Windows programs are able to perform similar tasks without needing to do so. I can only imagine they did so to allow the Windows version to mimick the BSD based Macintosh version, and thus cut down a bit on redundant development.
Since Win98's kernel does not support services, Apple would have to completely rewrite the program for an OS which is 6 years old and generally only used by computers that are too underpowered to run iTunes in the first place. Sounds like an egregious waste of resources to me, but hey, what do I know. I only do this for a living.
CDs DO sell for half price -- $8 or less -- at used CD shops, and online at amazon and half.com
People still look for them on Kazaa or Newsgroups or Bit Torrent.
I used to like that "If only CDs were cheaper" argument myself. But it's just not substantiated by the facts at hand. Cheap solutions exist. They are largely ignored for the free solutions.
His argument here is that forking is often a change in direction that means in order to support your product, you need to adapt to one of the two forks. Think of Apache 2.x...completely different from Apache 1.x, to the point that they aren't really compatible -- at least not where modules are concerned. You either had to hang on to Apache 1.x and pray for support or face the reality of the new, get new modules, which in turn means retesting all of your apps, rewriting all of your configs...not a "hard" task by any means, but that's time and energy that could be better spent doing something else.
Of course, Apache's also a good example of how market forces dicatate the fork that succeeds. Nobody wanted to move to Apache 2.0 at first, despite it having a better interface. So 1.x has undergone numerous revisions and security enhancements, it's still a strong product. Whereas new development has really blossomed for 2.x, as developers realized how much better performance and security were with the new model. The result? Two distince proudcts, two distinct platforms, with no strongarming of the market to move to the latest and greatest for fear of lack of support.
If Microsoft had this level of commitment, we'd still have customers on Windows 3.x because it was "good enough." They'd still be supporting DOS based OSs like 98 and ME. And XP would be continuously adding features and improving speed, trying to lull development to it.
All told, it's not as simple as Dr. Sauer's line. Forking does mean increased TCO. But it's as often a symptom of dedicated development as it is of personal bravado. Not that bravado is a reason NOT to fork...if a product is being lead by a short sighted asshole control freak, it's your duty as a citizen in the GPL community to bypass this bottleneck. If you've got the right idea, people will flock to you...otherwise, they've still got the original.
Whoa. Sun doesn't have to sell their idea to consumers. They just have to sell it to Wal-mart. Wal-mart will sell it to consumers. And I guarantee you that a company with the most advanced product tracking and distribution software in the world remembers sun.
Besides, I trust Sun's ability to brand a saleable computer more than Lindows, whose approach seems to be "Psst...don't tell them it isn't Windows! Maybe they won't return it!"
Those "negative connotations" didn't stop Apple from advertising Java support as one of the key components of their new OS three years ago. They don't stop people from buying the various cell phones which proudly announce "JAVA support," nor the companies making pocket games for them.
"Bad connotations" about Java don't stop the common man from whiling away the hours at Popcap.com, playing Bejewled, Bookworm, and other Java based games.
In fact, I think the only person who's still dwelling in the past on Java here is you. The rest of the world doesn't think too hard about their software archiceture...otherwise, why would they buy Windows XP?
Is there a -2, Obviously Retarded?
Well, Java desktops make more sense now that Microsoft is trying to do basically the same thing with their .NET initiative. That is, when the world's largest desktop operating system developer starts treating the machine as a virtual machine, it certainly makes a player who's been doing it for years look more competent.
Sun's marketing will no doubt play off this. "Hey, remember when we said 'the network is the computer?' Remember when we wrote a system for running programs that had security built into the very core of the system? Now Microsoft's trying to do the self same things we've already done. We can deliver what Longhorn might, and we can give it to you today for less money with good support." Sounds good, no? Certainly better than either the Microsoft Line or the FUD against strictly Open Source software.
You're talking about end users...end users are VERY willing to pick up something that used to be kind of crappy if the interface has sufficiently improved. Remember how terrible IE was at first? Flash? Remember how crummy Windows Media Explorer was? Remember how hard Linux USED to be to install? People keep giving these apps another chance. People will no doubt give Java a second glance as well. And this could be EXACTLY what Linux needs to succeed on the desktop: a major player releasing a major OS with a team of talented minds enhancing GPL code.
That's cold, kid. Hey, scenario for you. I own a company. I make a product. It is a really really awesome product that everybody wants.
But I work in a non-descript brick building in a small town in upstate New York. How ever will people learn of our product?
Advertising -- and Public Relations.
Now, I want to tell you why you want to buy it. But it's kind of complicated. I only have a 15 second radio spot. Which of these messages do you suppose is more effective?
1) Widgets are designed to PDQ your YSZ using ASD technology licensed from ZX. They are sufficient for small to medium clients.
of
2) Widgets are freakin' awesome, man. I don't need to tell you. There's all this technology in there but you'll never know anything about it except that you have more time and more room to breath when you use it.
#2 is full of exaerations, vague descriptions and is incomplete. But if they entice you to take a closer look, BAM! Good enough.
You're all taking a VERY close look at SCO's arguments at the moment. Ordinarily that would be a marketting success, but since SCO only has old or stolen products, I'd say maybe they should be averting your gaze a little bit...
Email is just fine the way it is. What will decrease spam in the long run is the same thing that's decreasing the trading of illegal software, mp3s, and pornogrpahy online: making it illegal and very costly to continue. Decreasing spam to a trickle should be good enough; stopping it completely is a silly goal since the process will be no doubt logarithmic and those last few percentile points of decrease will take a LOT of effort.
Increasing the beaurocracy behind email -- which is what "securing" email will do -- is throwing a lot more money at the problem than legislature will require. Think about the cost of writing all new software for all platforms that send email, probably two or three open source servers and a handful of closed source ones, including some from MS. Think about having to write three generations of clients before the standard ceases to be extended. Think about upgrading every email server, every email client, every router and gateway with new software packages. Think about training users and admins and think about the agents who will have to sell new software and designers who will have to deal with new SPAM methods that DEFEAT all of these brilliant programs.
Then think about the resources to slap a pricetag on offending emails, censure countries that don't play nice (and blacklist them, reducing their effectiveness), and think about how most of THAT cost is PAID FOR by the big bills that the marketting companies are going to receive for turning a blind eye to the problem.
Easier and cheaper, though not easy and not cheap. Still, err on the side of simplicity eh?
Please. It's hard to argue that Linux is not a professional operating system. It's also hard to argue that there aren't tons of amateurs writing GPL software, on account of that's the whole idea of it.
I'm merely pointing out that Windows is most definitely professional. To the tune of more money than has ever passed through the coffers of any other company on the planet.
And Linux doesn't have that yet. Though it does have the unfounded jokes and overinflated sense of superiority that every grassroots project needs to take on the big guy.
Nope, not funny. The definition of Professional is "participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs." I've made several hundred thousand dollars writing and selling software that runs on Windows Professional. Wheras your average GPL programmer does it for free...
You know, I don't think this a conflict of interest at all. Ironport's a software company that specializes in email software. They sell a program with a legitimate use (delivering email to multiple recepients). They can not assure that their software won't be used for a less legitimate use (delivering email to multiple UNWILLING recepients). Nor would most of us want them to -- how many of you have rallied against the sort of restrictive licensing that defines how you can and how you can't use a piece of software? So, Ironport buys a faltering company that has a product which reduces the damage caused by abuse of their product.
This is not like releasing a disease, and then releasing a cure. It's like creating a drug, seeing that it's commonly abused, and then using your abilities to help curb this abuse. Drug companies do this all the time. Sure, they make a little money off of it. But it's not the grand conspiracy you're trying to make it out to be.
Think of it, man. Ford Motor Company makes Mustangs that go fast. They make Crown Vics that go faster. That way, when people make the Mustangs go WAY too fast, the cops have a way to catch them. Does this mean that Ford has a conflict of interest that prevents them from selling slower cars to the police...that they're purposefully pushing these fast cars to push sales of their cop cars?
Or does it mean that they're a company that's specialized in cars, and that they therefore try to make cars that fulfill the needs of specific people, including people who like to go fast and the guys tasked to catch them?
US Cellular gets no service at all in my area, so why do I even care? Might as well be one of those awesome Japanese carriers I hear so much about.
This is true with the cheaper phones. But more expensive devices (such as the Thera palmtop) WILL more to a different carrier, as long as they use the same type of signal (CDMA vs GSM, etc)...some even have (relatively) inexpensive modules that can be swapped in and out to move to a different network. Many of your so-called world phones have both...
Of course, the carrier lock in is WHY these phones are cheaper. That "free" phone probably costs closer to $100+, all costs told, but they recoup it so quickly with the margin on their service that it's actually more profitable to gimmick you into purchasing than it is to be honest with costs.
Is this the same Verizon that couldn't switch my landline number from my apartment to my new house five miles away?
Yeah, I believe they'd mess that up. I know two things about cellular phones in the United States:
1) The best carrier for customer service, technical support, and calling area is Verizon.
2) Verizon has really shitty customer service, technical support, and calling area.
Verizon, BTW, has not correctly billed me since March. Every month they've refused to bill my credit card and charged me $24 for the right. See, I changed my credit card number to one that actually worked...and their automated system has yet to realize it. Despite my having called every month since to have it fixed.
American cellular service will not get better until all the opportunist companies have been bankrupted by their own stupidity, and a company with the old school telecommunications mentality (that same one Time Warner seems to have adopted, btw) takes over. But there's still too much money to be had in shady deals and shiny phones for pragmatism to prevail.
Part of the reason for this is the COMPLEXITY of passwords. Think about it, man...if you had to remember the exact combination of every lock you opened, wouldn't you leave more doors open?
Key generators, like the RSA fob, are a step in the right direction.
Uh, you couldn't have misread my post more.
My password is "fries". Five letters, in the dictionary, couldn't take more than five minutes to crack.
But I'm not worried about it. My desktop is like my front lawn. All the important shit is hidden, offline, or requires a lot more work than just a password.
Passwords are complex enough. They're too complex. What we need is MORE passwords, task specific ones. Need to delete a record? You need the record deletion password, which is different from the record insertion password. They're all stupid...but there are enough of them that comprimising one of them doesn't give you shit.
It shouldn't be amazing. Average people don't give a shit about security, nor should they. It shouldn't be a part of their jobs, or at least it shouldn't be something that interferes with them.
Does this suck? Sure seems to make your job as an admin harder. But the fact is, you can't rely on end users for security anyway. What happens when Joe in accounting finds out he's about to get downsized and takes it out on the network?
If you secured it right, nothing. He deletes some information, and you get it back in a matter of minutes from the awesome backups and transaction logs you maintain. You invalidate his login, and it's like he never existed. That's security: having a way to fix things when they go wrong, not assuming nothing will go wrong because you demand so much.
Security against hackers is no different. Make sure they can't sniff passwords, make sure nobody has too many rights when they come in to the system from the outside world. And when you have to allow them access to something, make sure they never can do more than a day's worth of damage.
We have a lot of customers who are complete idiots. We know there is no way they will maintain useful logins to our system -- most of them use one login (same password as the log in name) on all of the installed computers they have, because it's easier. So, our new products were designed around this. Nothing is ever deleted from the system using the client application. The client's login can only read information on a server, or mark it invisible. The "root" logins are only known by a handful of people, and are only accepted from the console. And just in case, the whole shebang is backed up daily to tape, and the transaction log cloned and packed hourly.
So we can have our customers call and tell us "My login is carl, password carl" and I no longer roll my eyes. Because "carl" doesn't do anything more than peering through the window of an armored car.