Remember, in the end MS is out there to make money. Ruling the world is just a means to that end.
Then why is Bill giving away so much to charities? Just for PR? Maybe.
I think it's more likely that the Microsoft coporate personality is more like a control freak than just greedy. Money is the way they maintain control, not the other way around. Remember, money is power.
"Oh, it shouldn't take more than two weeks to get the code ready for public use, so that should give us plenty of time to get the 2000 new machines we'll need ordered, delivered, and installed"
Sure, and while you're at it why don't you tell us about your Ferrarri and the supermodel you're banging. Bastard.
The mathematician stands a better chance of proving the hypothesis, but the NSA supercomputer stands a better chance of refuting the hyposthesis.
If a computer disproves it by finding a prime that happens to map wrong on the zeta theorem, mathemeticians will still want to know why this one didn't work, when all the others have.
BTW You have also determined a relative probability -- "better chance" -- of something that may be undefined. If the theorem is in fact true, then a computer's chance of disproving it is exactly equal to a mathemetician's chances: zero.
He wrote a function called the "zeta function." Any number, when fed into this equation, will yield a result somewhere on a plane. For some reason, primes always plot along one of the axes. No one can figure out why.
I give it until the end of the week before we start seeing opinion pieces, some disguised as "independant think-tank studies," suggesting how to fix this. And I'll just bet the best-funded pieces are all going to suggest formal (ie: commercial) structures, not some silly little "standards" that just anyone can follow.
And now what do I see?
It's tough to plug holes in a ship's hull once it is at sea, or to reattach an airplane's wing in flight.
... Now Microsoft Corp. is saying "Let's start over."
...
"It has the potential to put users in more control over their information if it's done right," said Ari Swartz, associate director of the D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology.
...
I tend to agree with Winkler and with Robert Douglas, chief executive of American Privacy Consultants, who thinks Bill Gates is taking dead aim at one of the biggest roadblocks along the way to the much-hyped world of ubiquitous computing.
"A lot of it comes down to the fact that consumer just don't feel secure using the Internet for their critical transactions," Douglas said. "Gates has realized that unless trust can be built into these systems, the ultimate abilities of the Internet are never going to be realized."
I give it until the end of the week before we start seeing opinion pieces, some disguised as "independant think-tank studies," suggesting how to fix this. And I'll just bet the best-funded pieces are all going to suggest formal (ie: commercial) structures, not some silly little "standards" that just anyone can follow.
Imagine, you can still play Halo even when your favorite show is on because its being recorded for you to watch after you've blown some shit up.
Holy crap, I wish I could do that today. I mean, if I could go out and buy some kind of product that would let me record what's coming in over the cable while I'm using the TV to play games. Something that I could connect inline before the cable goes in to the TV. Something like maybe a freakin' VCR.
France's solution to unemployment is to make it so you can't work more than 35 hours a week.
That actually makes sense.
Fifty years ago, half the population of the U.S. was employed in agriculture. Today, it's less than 2%, and they grow more food than the country can eat. And many of them are paid not to farm. If you suddenly put nearly half the working population out of work, then add in all the women entering the work force who didn't used to be there...
I think we're starting to approach the kinds of problems that have until now only been considered in speculative sci-fi. When we only need about 10% of the population to work to provide for everyone, what will the other 90% do for a living? And how do we pick which 10% it's going to be?
If, indeed, Code Red cost $8.75billion (and I'd like to see the analysis that arrived at that figure), that cost was incurred in the process of using Outlook. Presumably, the consumer derived some benefit from using Outlook, at least in their judgement they did.
Users have already paid that. However much they paid for the software, that is the extent of what the seller is entitled to. If a court finds that the manufacturer is liable for defects, they don't get to deduct how "valuable" the product was to the user from the damage caused.
Some software companies are responding to these criticisms by revamping their procedures; Microsoft, stung by charges that its products are buggy,
is publicly leading the way.
But I thought they were asking us where we wanted to go today.
Add on another feature; plug the relay into your phone line, and when you're at home or near it, your cell phone becomes a cordless phone
I had a cell phone that came with a small base station that I plugged into my regular phone line. If someone called me on the cell number and I was within range of the base station, it would still ring the cell phone but connect via the base and I'd have no airtime charges. If I made a call from the cell, same thing.
The cell service was through the same company I had my regular phone service with. The thing I never thought of at the time is that I was never clear on what happens if I'm already on one of the lines and someone tries to call from/to the other line.
This morning I heard the host of the morning show talking about the McAfee story. My first thought was, "Damn, did something happen overnight? This didn't look like a big enough deal last night to make the regular news." Then he went into a pitch for a local computer consulting company, explaining how they could help keep you up to date with virus protection.
Magazines and TV have to clearly label advertisements as such. Are there no such laws for radio?
A Microsoft spokesman
who refused to be identified said Tuesday...
And just why should we trust anything this guy says? Their official spokesman won't even stand by what he's saying. And what is he saying, anyway?
Refusing to confirm the security flaw, the Microsoft spokesman said the company "feel(s) strongly that speculating on the issue while the investigation is in progress would be irresponsible and counterproductive to our goal of protecting our customers' information."
And the spokesman added, "Responsible security researchers work with the vendor of a suspected vulnerability issue to ensure that countermeasures are developed before the issue is made public and customers are needlessly put at risk."
So again, as far as Microsoft is concerned, it's the fault of the people who publicized it. It's prudent to assume these guys are not the only ones who know about the problem. Which means my information is already at risk.
So if there are people out there who can compromise my system, why shouldn't I be able to find out about it and take preventive measures? Why should I have to wait until Microsoft -- who haven't even admitted to the vulnerability yet, two weeks after being told about it -- get around to fixing it?
I skimmed the manual for a piece of internal software my company had created and found a note that basicly read, if you've gotten to this point fax in this form and we will send you a copy of Myst.
I read a while ago (no, I can't find a reference) that a bank sent out an update to the terms of service for their credit cards. Buried somewhere in the middle was a line telling you that all you had to do was call a number and they would credit your account $5. They wanted to see how many people actually read the change.
IIRC the response rate was under 1%. I try to tell myself[1] that they weren't doing this as a prelude to screwing their customers even harder.
[1] What I say when I don't want to think about something I have no control over that I am absolutely convinced is true.
And while Italian and French users were very happy with printer documentation that included pictures of naked women with slim, strategically placed tinted bars showing how colors were reproduced, Esposito doubts that particular manual will be used anywhere else.
Hell if they released that manual around here I suspect it would get "used" pretty extensively.
[Bradley] Kuhn [Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation] stated that the FSF has long been concerned with the distribution companies' approach to free software. "Every one of these GNU/Linux companies have been including non-free software with their releases of GNU/Linux," he said, "It's a wrong-headed approach to mix free and non-free software."
Citing SuSE's own YaST application as an example, Kuhn said that the inclusion of software such as this completely negated the value of distribution. He feels the market is bearing the FSF out, too. "Users don't want this non-free software in their distros."
The official line from the FSF is that the "correct" way to make money off of free software is by charging for the services surrounding it. That used to include charging someone to install and configure systems. Isn't that what YaST does?
It's starting to seem like all the "services" that can be profitably charged for can eventually be automated. Once these services become programs, suddenly it's no longer OK to charge for them.
If the FSF got its wish and non-free software could never be shipped or used alongside Free software, the companies charging for services would have no incentive to automate these services. One of the selling points of Free software is that it doesn't require as much service. Barring non-free software from working with Free software provides a disincentive to automation.
Fundamentally, you change nothing. You add a tiny layer of obscurity, but that's it.
Would your "ideal" system include passwords for users to log in remotely? Probably. If you have a password, the security is based on the assumption that only you know it. Once it is publicized -- no longer "obscure" -- it is no longer effective. As long as the obscurity you're relying on is sufficiently difficult to guess, it's effective.
This is not to say that security through obscurity by itself is effective, but it is frequently an essential component.
Slashdot Mirror
We'll turn into Microsoft if we're not careful
Wow. Anti-RIAA and anti-Microsoft in eight words. The girl can write.
Instead, the industry has focused on lawsuits against for-profit piracy outfits
I expect this from MSNBC, but this is a WSJ article.
Remember, in the end MS is out there to make money. Ruling the world is just a means to that end.
Then why is Bill giving away so much to charities? Just for PR? Maybe.
I think it's more likely that the Microsoft coporate personality is more like a control freak than just greedy. Money is the way they maintain control, not the other way around. Remember, money is power.
Sure, and while you're at it why don't you tell us about your Ferrarri and the supermodel you're banging. Bastard.
The mathematician stands a better chance of proving the hypothesis, but the NSA supercomputer stands a better chance of refuting the hyposthesis.
If a computer disproves it by finding a prime that happens to map wrong on the zeta theorem, mathemeticians will still want to know why this one didn't work, when all the others have.
BTW You have also determined a relative probability -- "better chance" -- of something that may be undefined. If the theorem is in fact true, then a computer's chance of disproving it is exactly equal to a mathemetician's chances: zero.
He wrote a function called the "zeta function." Any number, when fed into this equation, will yield a result somewhere on a plane. For some reason, primes always plot along one of the axes. No one can figure out why.
It was just two days ago I said:
And now what do I see?
Damn, I hate being right about this stuff.
I wonder if this will get passed before this.
I give it until the end of the week before we start seeing opinion pieces, some disguised as "independant think-tank studies," suggesting how to fix this. And I'll just bet the best-funded pieces are all going to suggest formal (ie: commercial) structures, not some silly little "standards" that just anyone can follow.
Imagine, you can still play Halo even when your favorite show is on because its being recorded for you to watch after you've blown some shit up.
Holy crap, I wish I could do that today. I mean, if I could go out and buy some kind of product that would let me record what's coming in over the cable while I'm using the TV to play games. Something that I could connect inline before the cable goes in to the TV. Something like maybe a freakin' VCR.
Most Bad Laws regarding technology that we have now are actually the sons of Very Bad Laws.
And most Very Bad Laws are the sons of multiple Bad Laws that weren't objected to strongly enough the first time.
Is he a CS major or MS major? (Martketing Science)
I'll leave it up to you to decide what the "BS" stands for.
France's solution to unemployment is to make it so you can't work more than 35 hours a week.
...
That actually makes sense.
Fifty years ago, half the population of the U.S. was employed in agriculture. Today, it's less than 2%, and they grow more food than the country can eat. And many of them are paid not to farm. If you suddenly put nearly half the working population out of work, then add in all the women entering the work force who didn't used to be there
I think we're starting to approach the kinds of problems that have until now only been considered in speculative sci-fi. When we only need about 10% of the population to work to provide for everyone, what will the other 90% do for a living? And how do we pick which 10% it's going to be?
* Ring your competitor continuously from 2am-7am before an important negotiation.
* Transmit directly to opposing cousel's head an ongoing stream of distracting nonsense during your testimony.
* Intercept a security trader's inbound buy/sell instructions and anticipate all his moves.
If, indeed, Code Red cost $8.75billion (and I'd like to see the analysis that arrived at that figure), that cost was incurred in the process of using Outlook. Presumably, the consumer derived some benefit from using Outlook, at least in their judgement they did.
Users have already paid that. However much they paid for the software, that is the extent of what the seller is entitled to. If a court finds that the manufacturer is liable for defects, they don't get to deduct how "valuable" the product was to the user from the damage caused.
Here they are.
5. ?
6. Profit
But I thought they were asking us where we wanted to go today.
Add on another feature; plug the relay into your phone line, and when you're at home or near it, your cell phone becomes a cordless phone
I had a cell phone that came with a small base station that I plugged into my regular phone line. If someone called me on the cell number and I was within range of the base station, it would still ring the cell phone but connect via the base and I'd have no airtime charges. If I made a call from the cell, same thing.
The cell service was through the same company I had my regular phone service with. The thing I never thought of at the time is that I was never clear on what happens if I'm already on one of the lines and someone tries to call from/to the other line.
See here for details.
This morning I heard the host of the morning show talking about the McAfee story. My first thought was, "Damn, did something happen overnight? This didn't look like a big enough deal last night to make the regular news." Then he went into a pitch for a local computer consulting company, explaining how they could help keep you up to date with virus protection.
Magazines and TV have to clearly label advertisements as such. Are there no such laws for radio?
And just why should we trust anything this guy says? Their official spokesman won't even stand by what he's saying. And what is he saying, anyway?
So again, as far as Microsoft is concerned, it's the fault of the people who publicized it. It's prudent to assume these guys are not the only ones who know about the problem. Which means my information is already at risk.
So if there are people out there who can compromise my system, why shouldn't I be able to find out about it and take preventive measures? Why should I have to wait until Microsoft -- who haven't even admitted to the vulnerability yet, two weeks after being told about it -- get around to fixing it?
I skimmed the manual for a piece of internal software my company had created and found a note that basicly read, if you've gotten to this point fax in this form and we will send you a copy of Myst.
I read a while ago (no, I can't find a reference) that a bank sent out an update to the terms of service for their credit cards. Buried somewhere in the middle was a line telling you that all you had to do was call a number and they would credit your account $5. They wanted to see how many people actually read the change.
IIRC the response rate was under 1%. I try to tell myself[1] that they weren't doing this as a prelude to screwing their customers even harder.
[1] What I say when I don't want to think about something I have no control over that I am absolutely convinced is true.
The official line from the FSF is that the "correct" way to make money off of free software is by charging for the services surrounding it. That used to include charging someone to install and configure systems. Isn't that what YaST does?
It's starting to seem like all the "services" that can be profitably charged for can eventually be automated. Once these services become programs, suddenly it's no longer OK to charge for them.
If the FSF got its wish and non-free software could never be shipped or used alongside Free software, the companies charging for services would have no incentive to automate these services. One of the selling points of Free software is that it doesn't require as much service. Barring non-free software from working with Free software provides a disincentive to automation.
Fundamentally, you change nothing. You add a tiny layer of obscurity, but that's it.
Would your "ideal" system include passwords for users to log in remotely? Probably. If you have a password, the security is based on the assumption that only you know it. Once it is publicized -- no longer "obscure" -- it is no longer effective. As long as the obscurity you're relying on is sufficiently difficult to guess, it's effective.
This is not to say that security through obscurity by itself is effective, but it is frequently an essential component.