For some reason I don't think market share is related to this.
I think it plays some role. Afterall, who in their right mind would write an OS/2 Warp virus today? Of course, you might argue that many hackers/crackers are not in their right mind, and I wouldn't claim you're wrong.
OTOH, there are other factors to consider. One is 'degree of difficulty'. This is part of the explanation for the number of IIS viruses being greater than the number of Apache viruses, even though Apache has a significantly larger market share. Another is people trying to make a reputation for themselves, in which case OS X in a more attractive target to the black hats, because if you can create the first OS X virus, you get the fame/respect that a lot of those folks look for. And I'm talking a legit, actual, in-the-wild virus that is not some proof of concept "if we assume a spherical cow" kind of thing.
Have you ever met a mac user that you could imagine doing this? Most of the ones I met think that sitting them in front of windows is pretty close to asking them to do differential calculus in their head while juggling.
*ahem*... [Taps microphone]... As an OS X user, mathematician, and first-team all-conference defensive lineman in the South Toronto Encouragement of Very Educational Juggling Over Baboons Society (STEVEJOBS), I find this comment most offensive and stereotypical. How long must we OS X using methematically inclined jugglers suffer under the yoke of such media bias that is better used for mocking white male conservatives? Rest assured that I would sue you if you had a job. As it is, I am suing slashdot, their parent company, PC Magazines, the author of the linked-in article, the oil companies (on general principle), and the British and Irish Goldfish Fanciers Association of Gurnsey (BIGFAG).
In addition, I demand the government to stop the war or I'll keep singing. (Don't laugh, it worked for Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and my singing is nearly that bad.)
If Dvorak gets his own icon, what should it be? Maybe an Edsel wrecking into the Titanic while a scene from Disney's "Atlantis" is merged into the ocean water.
Ever notice how Macheads never comb their hair? It must be like buying a Volkswagen.
As a Mac owner and a Volkswagen owner, I'd slap you with my comb if I had a comb. Actually, I am also a deer hunter, so I'll just use my Browning over-under instead.
Uum, adoption (and sales) of Vista will absolutely CRAWL.
Or, more accurately, the adoption/sales rate of Vista will be similar to the adoption/sales rate of XP. Few people upgrade to a new version of the Microsoft OS on the same hardware (unlike users of OS X, Linux, and BSD); they get the new OS when they buy new hardware, by and large. This is particularly true of businesses. Some have converted to XP. Some are in the process of doing it, sometimes by just using XP on the new equipment. Some haven't started, and some haven't even started to plan for it.
So Vista adoption will be slow, like XP adoption, because there is no real reason to not wait, with rare exceptions.
I thought I'd heard about a machine tool company doing something like this for an adaptive machining center back in the early-mid 90s. For some reason, I think that Lamb and Cummins (the diesel engine people) worked on this together, but I probably have the companies wrong. Does anyone else recall that, or was it just an experimental thing that never made it to market?
Besides which, you can't take a camera phone in? Luxury! I can't take *any* mobile phone into our secure room; thankfully, I rarely need to be in there....
You're lucky. My employer only allows personal cell phones that are steam-powered.
This message brought to you by Salesforce.com This article reads like a press release from Salesforce.com, the biggest player in the "software as a service" marketspace.
It shouldn't be surprising. Mencken talked about this phenomenon going on when he was an editor for the old Baltimore Herald... in 1901!
I could never get external firewire drives to work under OSX. Tried several of them.
Odd, I've used several Firewire drives on Apple machines going back to OS 9 with no problem. Linux eventually got stable, and Windows is a roll of the dice. Your experience is even odder considering that Apple invented Firewire. Out of curiosity, though, with which filesystem were the drives formatted?
You make it sound like the votes actually count in the current situation. You must be new.
Au contraire. I know exactly what it's like to be a repressed minority with no voice in the electoral process because either my vote will be uncounted or the powers that be will manipulate things. Worse, you know the world will neve know the repression you face because it goes unreported. Yes, friends, I was a Republican who lived in Chicago.
Not that I like Bill or his business tactics, but to be fair to him, isn't it true that the B&MG Foundation has donated a few billion dollars to worthy causes? Not to mention Bill's public and well known intention to give away as much money as possible before his death? I mean, sure, the guy is a shark in business.. but he's not exactly Darth Vader, y'know..
Yeah yeah yeah. Charities are largely a scam -- they have been for at least a century, read Mencken's accounts of dealing with them in his role as an editor and editorial writer -- that have three purposes:
1) Tax dodge for the (b|m)illionaire donor.
2) To whitewash the name of the donor or make them remembered. (Who here remembers who Mr. Johns and Mr. Hopkins were?)
3) Provide a cushy job for the charity beggars who promise 1) and 2) to the donors.
Once a charity exists, its primary job is to acquire more funds. To do this, they need to point to some sort of success, so they do some fiddling little thing that they point to, perferably one with minimal success so they can cry "lack of funding/compassion!" However, if the problem goes away, the charities' need to exist goes away, too, and along with them the tax dodges, whitewashing, and cushy jobs. Charities aren't about solving problems. In fact, they more or less admit this because most of what they do is, in their own words, to "raise awareness". Not actually do something or solve something, but let people know there is a problem that might or might not be a real problem in the first place. In short, their job is to act like a professional two-year-old who isn't getting attention.
The funny thing is, about ten years ago, Consumer Reports exposed this when they analyzed charities as a "best value" like any other consumer good. And if you think about it, this makes a certain amount of sense. If charities are ostensibly selling solutions, how well do they do it? Well, CR exposed them. It was rare for a charity to use more than 5% of its fundraising for what it allegedly existed to do. The head honchos at these "non-profits" were living damn well, too, and CR laid it all out. Naturally, the charities responded by suing CR. Because CR lied? No, because they thought that CR would make it much harder to raise money. In other words, they weren't concerned that they were falsely accused of being professional phonies, they were concerned that they wouldn't be able to keep raising money to support their cushy jobs.
So as far as I'm concerned, hearing that someone gives to charities tells me little about their character, except that they might be easily duped, phonies, or in need of good publicity.
You said it. Fundamentalist capitalists are even more annoying than fundamentalist Christians.
But never as annoying as fundamentalist socialists. At least I can tell the fundamentalist capitalists/Christians to bugger off; the socialists can beat me to death with a loaded IRS.
In 1990, over 5 million people worldwide, practically all of them children, were dying of diarrhea. But did you see Bono appear at the Grammy Awards with a brown ribbon on his lapel?
It's usually considered to be a conflict of interest. That's fine for you to do it, but generally journalist (in as much as this guy is a journalist at all, he mostly writes trash for Forbes) are supposed to refrain from it. Not required by law I don't think, just an ethical/professional thing.
What is this 'ethical/professional' thing you say journalists should have? Do our biggest advertisers demand it?
Sincerely,
Dan Rather, Steve Hall, Jayson Blair, and all the business journalists that Enron hired.
Slashdot Mirror
For the first 450 miles, anyone named Andretti. Then Tom Carnegie utters those four most famous words in auto racing: "Andretti is slowing down".
(Sorry, but it is May.)
I think it plays some role. Afterall, who in their right mind would write an OS/2 Warp virus today? Of course, you might argue that many hackers/crackers are not in their right mind, and I wouldn't claim you're wrong.
OTOH, there are other factors to consider. One is 'degree of difficulty'. This is part of the explanation for the number of IIS viruses being greater than the number of Apache viruses, even though Apache has a significantly larger market share. Another is people trying to make a reputation for themselves, in which case OS X in a more attractive target to the black hats, because if you can create the first OS X virus, you get the fame/respect that a lot of those folks look for. And I'm talking a legit, actual, in-the-wild virus that is not some proof of concept "if we assume a spherical cow" kind of thing.
*ahem* ... [Taps microphone] ... As an OS X user, mathematician, and first-team all-conference defensive lineman in the South Toronto Encouragement of Very Educational Juggling Over Baboons Society (STEVEJOBS), I find this comment most offensive and stereotypical. How long must we OS X using methematically inclined jugglers suffer under the yoke of such media bias that is better used for mocking white male conservatives? Rest assured that I would sue you if you had a job. As it is, I am suing slashdot, their parent company, PC Magazines, the author of the linked-in article, the oil companies (on general principle), and the British and Irish Goldfish Fanciers Association of Gurnsey (BIGFAG).
In addition, I demand the government to stop the war or I'll keep singing. (Don't laugh, it worked for Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and my singing is nearly that bad.)
Sincerely,
Lt. Col. Paul Theotherone (Mrs.)
A mod point! A mod point! My kingdom for a mod point!
General Motors did it decades before. That's why they had all the product lines like Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, ...
I sure don't.
Sincerely,
Larry the Cable Guy
As a Mac owner and a Volkswagen owner, I'd slap you with my comb if I had a comb. Actually, I am also a deer hunter, so I'll just use my Browning over-under instead.
Or, more accurately, the adoption/sales rate of Vista will be similar to the adoption/sales rate of XP. Few people upgrade to a new version of the Microsoft OS on the same hardware (unlike users of OS X, Linux, and BSD); they get the new OS when they buy new hardware, by and large. This is particularly true of businesses. Some have converted to XP. Some are in the process of doing it, sometimes by just using XP on the new equipment. Some haven't started, and some haven't even started to plan for it.
So Vista adoption will be slow, like XP adoption, because there is no real reason to not wait, with rare exceptions.
You're lucky. My employer only allows personal cell phones that are steam-powered.
You've never been to Michigan in the winter, I take it.
Odd, I've used several Firewire drives on Apple machines going back to OS 9 with no problem. Linux eventually got stable, and Windows is a roll of the dice. Your experience is even odder considering that Apple invented Firewire. Out of curiosity, though, with which filesystem were the drives formatted?
1) Tax dodge for the (b|m)illionaire donor.
2) To whitewash the name of the donor or make them remembered. (Who here remembers who Mr. Johns and Mr. Hopkins were?)
3) Provide a cushy job for the charity beggars who promise 1) and 2) to the donors.
Once a charity exists, its primary job is to acquire more funds. To do this, they need to point to some sort of success, so they do some fiddling little thing that they point to, perferably one with minimal success so they can cry "lack of funding/compassion!" However, if the problem goes away, the charities' need to exist goes away, too, and along with them the tax dodges, whitewashing, and cushy jobs. Charities aren't about solving problems. In fact, they more or less admit this because most of what they do is, in their own words, to "raise awareness". Not actually do something or solve something, but let people know there is a problem that might or might not be a real problem in the first place. In short, their job is to act like a professional two-year-old who isn't getting attention.
The funny thing is, about ten years ago, Consumer Reports exposed this when they analyzed charities as a "best value" like any other consumer good. And if you think about it, this makes a certain amount of sense. If charities are ostensibly selling solutions, how well do they do it? Well, CR exposed them. It was rare for a charity to use more than 5% of its fundraising for what it allegedly existed to do. The head honchos at these "non-profits" were living damn well, too, and CR laid it all out. Naturally, the charities responded by suing CR. Because CR lied? No, because they thought that CR would make it much harder to raise money. In other words, they weren't concerned that they were falsely accused of being professional phonies, they were concerned that they wouldn't be able to keep raising money to support their cushy jobs.
So as far as I'm concerned, hearing that someone gives to charities tells me little about their character, except that they might be easily duped, phonies, or in need of good publicity.
Sincerely,
Joseph Stalin
BTW, is it really bashing when it's based on empirical evidence? I haven't heard what Hillary Clinton says I'm supposed to think about that yet.
"Windows Vista - because if you can't trust convicted monopolists with the ethics of a Chicago ward-heeler, who can you trust?"
Sincerely,
Dan Rather, Steve Hall, Jayson Blair, and all the business journalists that Enron hired.