Actually, it'd be interesting for them to bring it as a "John Doe" case. They bring suit on behalf of an unnamed party, who cannot be named because of that exact same national security clause that prohibits the production of the list - since clearly, naming the party would compromise the list integrity "in whole or in part".
It'd no doubt get tossed as being ridiculous, but, hey... they started it, it'd be nice to make them eat it.
...and issuing a license agreement to use it. I think I'll prohibit the truncation of any leading 00s, or casting, or anything else via license agreement. Screw unicode etc, I'll teach you the meaning of "multibyte".
And also 0x0...3A2D28. Then I'm gonna sue Despair.com, along with every AOL user on the planet. Especially since Despair is selling these circumvention devices. Skylarov got off easy.
And you know, it seems to me that Metallica CDs might be trafficking my number, stegged in some of their music files (no doubt in an illegal 8 or 16 bit format). I'm gonna have to take them down.
(end of joke) Back to reality, it makes me wonder... what if someone trademarked that AACS number? Heh.
... my ferrets have had internets for years! They love 'em! I even got them a router, that connects one of the 25' innernets to two of the 12' internets. The other three 25' innernets are simple PPP, however, and the routes are a tangled mess. I'm hoping to upgrade to a six port router in a few weeks, because as hard as the weasels try, the internets are DEFINITELY half duplex. They're not Cat5, either... he can stuff his head in, but that's all that'll fit without fragmentation.
The thing that sucks the most is when one of the internets get a hole chewed into it. The damned packets end up misrouted, on the floor, and you have to twist the innernet so that the hole is facing up to make it stop. Having a kitten who repeatedly cannonballs the array doesn't help much, either, because he uses the holes in the web to intercept the traffic.
I'm fascinated when I read headline stories about GW.
"2006 was the warmest year in 1000 years".
Either (1) They stopped looking after 1000 years, which is bad science in a billion-year cyclic environment, or (2) 1000 years ago, it was hotter.
We find other screwups, as well. A few months ago, there was a front page story about GW. The Big Scientist being quoted mentioned several things in it, but appears to have not considered what he was saying. For example, he mentions coldness, and how there was a "mini ice age" from about 1400AD to 1700AD. Eight paragraphs later, he says we've now got the hottest weather seen in 400 years.
Math 101: 2000 - 400 = 1600. The dead peak of that mini ice age. Either they knowingly compared the temperatures to exactly a *very short* period *they* say was a "cold spell", stopped looking, and were *astonished* to find a heat increase. Or, in the peak of that self-termed "mini ice age", it was hotter.
Huh?
Finally, noone seems to really pay attention to the impact of ocean currents on atmospheric heat... they all seem to think that atmosphere is the only factor. 700 calories per gram comes out of the ocean when it evaporates, and 700 calories per gram goes into the atmosphere when it condenses.
Hot equatorial water flows along the surface to the north pole, and evaporates along the way. Cold water at the pole is displaced by the warm current, sinks, and returns to the equator as an undercurrent.
As the hot water travels north - when it evaporates, that heat came from the equator. When it condenses, that heat is absorbed by the atmosphere - it effectively "carries" equatorial heat northward.
But, the polar ice caps melt. Ice caps are freshwater. Freshwater floats on salt water. Fresh water at the poles... pushes south, forcing the warm equatorial water under. With the warm water buried, it doesn't evaporate; the cold water is what's exposed. The evaporation rate goes down as a result. The fresh water layer will mix with the seawater, but it'll still be less dense... and be cold, and float. Atmospheric temperature gets fewer grams of evaporation, obviously. I don't recall the specific capacity of the impact, but a temperature drop of "20 degrees F" sticks in my head, as was demanded in the 60s by some guy who was studying beetles, as was dictated by the dominant types of beetles he found at various depths. (The beetle guy was a facinating story - the color of the dominant beetle's shell can often tell you the temperature of a given year, to within 2 degrees?!) He released his findings, back then, as was pretty much laughed out of a job.
His story stayed buried for 30 years, until some oceanographer chanced upon it while working... go figure... on currents at the equator. He'd also recently seen something about a polar core sample, taken above canada, that indicated severe temperature drops over short terms. He contacted the beetle guy, and the ice core guy, and compared their details. The dates of the ice-core guy and the beetle guy were pretty much the same for all of the extreme temperature shifts. He focused on the biggest shift they found, which was (as I recall) about 20 degrees F.
So, he dug deeper. He found out about some giant freshwater lake that existed at the pole some zillion years ago, and how it had supposedly melted its way into the ocean in a giant flood of freshwater. The date was the same as the temperature drop.
And he applied this lake idea to what he was studying, and it made sense - there's a big "heat conveyor" in the Atlantic. Freshwater floats on seawater. Freshwater at the pole would head south. Freshwater would displace the warm seawater underneath, and effectively push the northern end-point of the conveyor southward. Points that are north of the conveyor no longer get heat from it, to the tune of up to a 20 degree F drop... in literally a couple of years. It can likewise increase that much, just as fast.
So, if the beetle guy's study has any merit (and it do
However, the "ass" comment is not appropriate - you haven't considered, AT ALL, the vertical market that many enterprises are involved in. Mine is not the only head up an ass, per-se. You are using the exact same tactic that MS has done; promising vapor that does not, and will not, ever exist.
In our industry, there are exactly four vendors today. In the past, there has been as many as six. There are about 53 possible customers for these vendors in the US. If we also add Canada, the count increases to 56.
It's a cool $1.3 to get up and running, and the bulk (probably $800k) is software and labor. This assumes a vendor will have at least seven customers, so that their costs are reasonably distributed across their customer base. Less than that, historically, they do not stay in business, since the software costs become too high if it is redistributed across the existing customer base (which the vendor cannot do, anyway, for at least the term of the contracts that are involved).
The competing software platforms are complex. You'll not buy them at "CDW", and you will not find them on freshmeat. Ever.
Please, feel free to apply your argument to this obvious general case that you have flatly overlooked. 50-odd customers, cut amongst 4 vendors. The average vendor will need at least 5 clued developers, who's skills are FAR beyond "coding", and one dedicated support tech per customer. They'll also need a tech manager to coordinate the tech knowlege, since an issue impacting one tech may likewise impact another. Oh, you'll need a sales pig, also. They aren't cheap... especially when there's only 50 possible customers, each of which typically contract for 3 to 5 years at a time. Sales pigs can count on lots of sales to pay their mortgage, obviously.
I'd suggest that the challenge isn't that I keep buying MS products - the challenge is that VENDORS keep writing for them. Like I said... find me a vendor with a linux back-end, TODAY, that does what I need, and I'll get it. Or, OSX. I don't care what it is. You'll fail.
The application is pretty simple... you'll need a GIS engine. You'll need the ability for authenticated users to interactively edit a map in a browser (full layer and arbitrary polygon drawing support, not some "google maps" bullshit), with full version and reversion control. You'll need this back in 1999, by the way. You'll also need a method for a call-taker to take relevent data from a caller, and enter it. You'll need the ability to bounce that information off of a map, to tag features that the aformentioned "authenticated users" had created. You'll need to then compile a list of which "authenticated users" had a feature that was involved, and send them a copy of the data that was taken from the caller. You will NOT notify a user if they had no involvement. Again, you'll need this back in 1999. Technically, you'll need this in 1986. But, who's counting.
The data must be pushed to a given user via either fax, modem, email, xml, pager, or voice (human) dispatch, and the delivery must be guaranteed (in a very legal sense) with full supervision and auditing. For a given user, the method(s) used (may be plural) and people/systems contacted will vary by time of day, day of week, holidays, context of data, or a small pile of other factors, including error conditions on the far-end. Once received, a user will process this data, and eventually "feed" a disposition about it, back to us. You'll need the ability to receive these dispositions via IVR, web form, XML, telnet, or modem, and it'll need a measure of authentication (especially fun where IVR is concerned). These dispositions will need to be made available to the original caller via www on-demand, and also "pushed" to them via fax, email, or automated voice. Note that the "caller" is the general public. Again, you'll need this back in 1999. Or, 1987. Both dates should be trivial for you, obviously.
Depending on geography and time of year, you'll need to process about 3 to
Actually, I'd suggest that you missed the author's point, entirely. Perhaps it is due to you not being in the position to buy the various products at the time, I don't know.
Here's the perspective. It has zero to do with "15 years later, we have a feature". It has *everything* to do with, "15 years ago, when we needed a solution, Microsoft said they would provide it in a TIMELY fashion." As a result, purchase decisions were directly impacted.
We needed a mutlitasking OS to replace a DG Mini. Windows 1.0 was reputed to provide this functionality. We called them. "Multi tasking?" "Yes." "Multiple users?" "Absolutely." We bought it. They lied. We called them back. "The sales engineer was confused with the next version." End Quote.
The project was shelved. CDOS, released by a company named "Digital Research", became viable. The project was rehashed, but Windows 2.0 was out. It's DOS support had few caveats, compared to CDOS. We called Microsoft. "Multitasking?" "Yep!" "You said the other one was. It wasn't." "We've totally rewritten it. It works for real." "Multi user?"
We bought it. They lied. We called them back. "It doesn't work." "No? The NEXT one will, and it's due soon."
See the pattern yet? We eventually bought CDOS (and later, CCDOS, a value-add version).
We also bought Win30. Hazard a guess why? They lied, again. We also bought Win31. THAT one was initially stated to be preemptive, remember? And the sales pigs all claimed it was, when it was time to sign the check. Perhaps you've forgotten the RAGING DEBATES over that very issue, at the time... "Preemptive!" "No, it isn't!" "Yes, it is!" "No, it isn't!"
Our project was fairly simple - run a couple of DOS boxes, and redirect STDIO to a serial port so that two people could run a program. This specific detail was explained to "Microsoft", EACH TIME.
Every time... EVERY time... the MS tactic was to stall our purchase of a competing, fully viable product, via the gross misrepresentation of their own.
The MS philosophy is, and has been, that it is better to ship an "empty box" on-time than to ship a working product a day late. And they have done so, and I have the disks to prove it - Excel's initial "DMF" floppy distribution, who's lzexpand didn't comprehend DMF... they literally put the "standard" Win31 lzex onto disk 1. Funny, it's LZEx that needs to READ these FATless disks. It couldn't POSSIBLY work. But, the version they needed wasn't read yet, so... ship it!...To NT BO4.5, which contained such setup.ini script error gems such as "Syntax error line xxx: ***REMEMBER TO FINISH SQL INSTALL SCRIPT". I'm NOT joking. And, you don't know the half of the extent of this.
Clearly, two "top tier" products at the time, and the installations not even been tested. Not once. NOT ONCE. And, the devs KNEW the crap wasn't finished. The Mgt KNEW the crap wasn't finished. Both cases, which were a year apart... the "official" MS reason for issuing new disks to me?
"Media Defect". Again, I am NOT joking. Both cases, no matter how hard I argued, the call takers flat out REFUSED to admit the actual flaw. "No, the media is perfect. The setups are WRONG. Syntax errors... referencing a directory path that doesn't exist on the CD... trivial little things like that..."
Because, you know, the standalone install disk for Exchange had the base directory in the root. On BO4.5, the base setup was a subdirectory. And the scripts hadn't been adapted for it.
Trivial, little things. Right? Or, an omnipresent pattern, that just keeps on recurring.
The point of the article is exactly correct; promise vaporware as a solution NOW, to prevent or stall the purchase of an existing solution, NOW. That they *might* actually deliver the vapor in five years? Irrelevent; I am NOT going to buy a "viable" solution today, when "nervana" is coming next week. I will wait, so that I can assess. Or worse, if the "vapor" is claimed to now exist,
Am I the only one who read that as, "The kernel will be the holiest of holy kernels in history, spouting more holes per square inch than any preceding set of kernel holes in history."
I'm hoping that Litchfield won't have a good sized list by the weekend... but unless Oracle has seriously changed their definition of "fixing" (and I hope they have), he'll find a fair percentage of them still outstanding.
But like I said... hopefully they've changed their definition of "fix".
On 1/7/05, David Litchfield wrote: > Some of Oracle's "fixes" simply attempt to stop the example exploits I sent > them for reprodcution purposes. In other words the actual flaw was not > addressed and with a slight modification to the exploit it works again. This > shows a slapdash approach with no real consideration for fixing the actual > problem itself.
> As an example of this, Alert 68 attempts to fix some security holes in some > triggers; the flaws could allow a low privileged user to gain SYS privileges > - in other words gain full control of the database server. The example > exploit I sent to Oracle contained a space in it. Oracle's fix was to ignore > the user's request if the input had a space. What Oracle somehow failed to > see or grasp was that no space is needed in the exploit...
> Here is another class of thoughtless "fix" implemented by Oracle in Alert > 68. Some Oracle PL/SQL procedures take an arbitrary SQL statement as a > parameter which is then executed. This can present a security risk. Rather > than securing these procedures properly Oracle chose a security through > obscurity mechanism. To be able to send the SQL query and have it executed > one needs to know a passphrase. This passphrase is hardcoded in the > procedure and can be extracted with ease. So all an attacker needs to do now > is send the passphrase and their arbitrary SQL will still be executed...
> In other cases Oracle have simply dropped the old procedures and added new > ones - with the same vulnerable code!
>... In those > cases where a flaw was fixed properly, we find the same flaw a few lines > further down in the code. The DRILOAD package "fixed" in Alert 68 is an > example of this; and this is not an isolated case. This is systemic. Code > for objects in the SYS, MDSYS, CTXSYS and WKSYS schemas all have flaws > within close range of "fixed" problems. These should have been spotted and > fixed at the time.
Further down in the thread... 19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Various Cross-Site-Scripting Vulnerabilities in Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+ days) 19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Read parts of any XML-file on the application server via Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+days) 19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Read parts of any file on the application server via Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+days) 19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Overwrite any file on the application server via Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+ days) 19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Run any OS Command via uploaded Oracle Report from any directory (Not fixed after 700+ days) 19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Run any OS Command via uploaded Oracle Forms from any directory (Not fixed after 700+ days)
Depends, doesn't it? What if you're a cashier in a quickie-mart? A guy who shovels boxes into trucks at Fedex? An airline pilot, flying the plane?
Extreme examples (intended), but... clearly there are cases where the intar-tube has absolutely zero relevence, to the point of (possibly) being detrimental. Personal time during a break? That's a different story - and is more appropriate to the "coke machine" and "cable TV" examples. Off break & on duty? Not so clear-cut.
(And if you're curious, my solution to all of this is to use a couple retired "beater boxes", completely divorced and on their own cablemodem, located *in the call center itself* to provide access during breaks. This allows users to do whatever they wish - but it is socially policed. Oddly, the users are actually harder about who-uses-what-and-where-they-go-and-when-they-do-i t than I would be; if Sally is at a beater box and not on break, the rest of the agents know they are picking up her slack. And believe me, they'll voice their displeasure to her. Likewise if she takes a risk that bones the box - they don't have any inntarweb until I fix it a few days later. Again, she won't repeat that behavior. So, it works well, and they like it!)
Well, let me give a little firefighter's instinct on this -
> I'll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available. I'm just surprised anyone would think to post that for people.
> I have to say I'm with the government on this one. Why does anyone need to know exactly where all the 911 calls are coming from in real time?
You forget that this data is provided BY the government; the government is NOT saying they don't want this public, nor realtime; they are saying that they do not want a 3rd party to one-up their text-based webpage with a google map on a different site. Note well that the government response was NOT taking down the data; the response was to thwart the parsing of it.
So, you are not "with the government" on this one! (and, right or wrong isn't relevent; you simply do NOT agree with them.)
> I can understand why such data should be available, but why not give it a 24 hour delay? There are just SO many uses for this data for evil (where you can torch a house, when you can steal something with few cops nearby, where you can go to ambulance chase the most successfully, etc.)
Again, this isn't relevent to TFA, which discusses someone's use of the data; that the data is "realtime" has no bearing, and this "someone" is merely re-posting data that is publicly provided by the 911 center. The "use for evil" isn't even limited to a realtime feed, either. To ban any data on realtime emergency response means that there must also be a corresponding "news blackout" - after all, as an evil supervillan, I can wait for the fire dept to be stretched with 5 structure fires that drains the district (as you suggest)... or I can wait for a 5 alarm fire, a single large event that drains the district. Oddly, the 5 distinct fires won't make the news. But the big mega-fire will - with live coverage, helicopter-cams, the works, and the whole universe is going to know about it. And I can tell you... the 5 alarmer is a LOT more dangerous (from a complexity standpoint) than 5 distinct calls... if our supervillan wishes to "sneak under the radar", odds are much better during the chaos of the single, large, harder-to-manage event.
So, if this realtime data should be hidden... we likewise need a press blackout. No "live coverage" during fires, no reports of traffic accidents during our treks to work and home. Otherwise, we flatly contradict our reason for "no realtime data", I'm afraid.
A lot of people question why realtime data would be relevent in the first place... and I can tell from the tone of your post, your gut is crawling with the potential for abuse.
But, the data already readily available. It goes across the radio as a dispatch, and for $20 you can listen in. And as mentioned earlier, larger events are on the TV and radio. Of your examples (which are good)... putting this data on the internet enables *nothing*, any more than removing it from the internet *prevents* anything. You can't think of a single reason someone would need this data... I must ask, can you think of one action that removing this data is going to thwart? Just one? Don't feel bad if you can't... I can't, either.
For a 911 center, posting the data would be wonderful. It enables all of the value-adds with no labor on your part - radio station traffic reports, news agencies, even TomTom updates. You can facilitate all that crap, and even have some control over the wording of the information (which is huge, believe me). Or, you can force these same parties to scrape radio traffic for audio snippets, and then deal with the Absolute Joy of them paraphrasing 2nd-hand information that is completely without context. As a 911 center, you can choose one or the other. And, it doesn't seem to be a tough choice. Banning such data to "businesses" is downright silly... since all that does is create an artificial barrier to entry for the hobbiest / amateur-developer-who-wants-to-start-something. And believe me, the bulk of the GOOD fire-service software comes from such pe
And from TFA, this is still trivially possible. The data source is plainly available, just not easily parsed (which is a total non-issue for the short-term opportunist you describe).
Secondly, there's no need to wait for such placement; it'd be trivial to simply engineer that situation with a few 911 calls / events of your own.
Personally, I'd say they're offended that their "cool tool" got one-upped.
Hey... I'm not an elitist. An Idiot... often. But elitist... no:) He wanted to play the credibility game; I simply challenged it. Especially since he starts this entire thread by calling me "shithead". He claims he can assess "quality", probably by the brand name or Tarot cards... yet he's never heard of "soft-ice". "HP is always good!" Sure.
Ok, I think I'm starting to see the problem... namely, you must be responding to something else besides this thread.
> I figure you must be selling cheap hardware to stupid consumers to be so defensive about this.
You figure wrong; I sell nothing.
> So I guess you must be immune to lethal contaminations of agricultural products or your local environment? Uh, so... after the fact, someone uses your lab to confirm what they already suspect. Yep... that's life and death, for sure.
> ATI still sucks hind tit compared to Matrox. Just take a look at the size of the drivers
Uh, ATwho? When did I mention ATI? Yes, ATI has... "issues" (sometimes big ones), but they are HARDLY relevent to the "size of the drivers". Meanwhile, you continually claim to have proven a negative... "I've NEVER had issues with Matrox! They're perfect!"... and you are on a fool's errand, sir.
> You'll keep getting modded up because your argument indirectely states that its all windows fault
Are you HIGH? I implied that windows becomes relevent, when... exactly? Did I even mention Windows, at all? The ONLY thing I've said is that YOU cannot define "Quality Hardware", rofl! "Oh, that's a CHEAP CARD! Here, buy this $150 joystick adapter, it'll be BUG FREE because of the Quality! Price means QUALITY!" Wrong, wrong wrong, clueless, and wrong. Just how many VxDs have YOU written, boy? Do you even know what the f*** a driver IS? Do you even know the actual difference between Ring 0 and Ring 1? Or are you just a PCWorld reader.
Sorry Jack, but I am not your emotional tampon. Go attach your delusionary statements to someone else's words. While you're at it, show this post to your boss so (s)he can see what a moron you are. And while you're at it, state that you've never had a car accident while driving a Ford, and therefore Fords are immune to car accidents. Make sure you cuss him out if he dares to suggest you're wrong... because, dammit, you've never had a crash while driving a Ford. "All Fords are QUALITY, you asshole! And if people would stop buying CHEAP cars, there would BE NO MORE CAR ACCIDENTS! You assholes!"
I cannot phrase it any simpler than that. You should probably tell your doctor that your meds have stopped working again.
> just because a user has a good experience where another user doesn't
More like "a user states an anecdote as an ultimate, completely unqualified truth", and someone else calls him on the carpet.
> it's always the cry of "you must not be as experienced".
No, the cry of "you must not be experienced" is because only a newb would make such statements. Or an old fool who cannot learn, but I wanted to be kind.
> That's a fucking troll if I've ever seen one.
ROFL. "USE QUALITY HARDWARE!" Uh, "Define quality hardware?" "QUALITY HARDWARE IS THAT WHICH HAS NO DRIVER BUGS!" Uh, "And *specifically* which hardware would that be?" "TROLL! TROLL!"
> someone trying to convince themselves of their own experience
Uh, reality requires no convincing.
> Trust me, I'm experienced. Data aquitition from self built ADC cards on 286's about 15 years ago
Blah blah blah... an 8 bit ADC, probably not even a flash converter, and probably didn't use DMA. Try rolling my own 80 column card for an apple ][, from scratch with no guidance from an adult, when I was 12... and the ][ was "just out". It's good that you got into it so late in the game, though... it's great that you were figuring out PIC masks in 1991, trying to figure out what an IRET was for. When I was playing with 286s, they were "Current"... I wrote a TSR to make DOS3.2 into a (semi-reentrant, with obvious caveats esp. with share) preemptive tasker, complete with support for running code in EMM pages. By 1991, when you were trying to figure out how to latch data into an ISA slot... I was well, well beyond you. Sorry Jack, but in regards to credibility in hardware and software design... you are way outclassed here.
> HP, Varian benchtop mass spectrometers running on DOS, Win9x, NT and XP systems... NMR instuments on AIX, Win9x, NT and XP
Uh, isn't all that junk GPIB? Drivers?? rofl, I rolled some GPIB junk in assembler to help a physics lab in '88, it took me an hour, and the bulk of the time was figuring out how to make Fortran use it. It worked for every device they cared to chain onto it for over a decade, and probably still works today. "Quality Drivers"? And your examples are all GPIB? rofl... and all VERTICAL MARKET, to boot! THOSE are your examples?! Talk about not knowing your ass from a hole in your head...
> Bugs are critical to someone who's every last datum is examined by government regulatory agencies.
No, bugs cost money to such people; outages themselves are typically either irrelevent or inconvenient at most. If that's your biggest problem, then they are NOT "critical". Bugs are "critical" when a failure gets people killed. And guess what... if my productions pop, entire city blocks can actually blow up, along with everybody in them. So no, you do not understand "critical" by virtue of you answering to a bean-counter, nor do you truly understand the stress of avoiding "ANY errors". I'd wager you know little of the actual engineering of a reliable system, nor of risk management; only the following of someone else's directions, someone who'd classify an Exchange server as "mission critical". Anecdotle, at best.
> I have never ever had an issue with Matrox hardware and drivers
Funny, Matrox was going to be my example:) They had a serious issue with stencils... the alpha channels often rendered pink unless you specifically coded for the card. It was a big PITA... and they also had memory leaks in some of their resource handlers, and the occasional "nul pointer" dereference issues. Them, and Diamond had... well, you'll probably call Diamond "crap", despite them being the Big Dog in those days. Stealth 3D, baby! Not.
> Its all about quality hardware, quality hardware needs minimal drivers Yeah, if your experience is largely GPIB, then "quality hardware" needs NO drivers. Call me when you get a clue, you useless frickin college lab assistant.
> I have never seen buggy drivers for quality hardware
Not to be mean, but... that you've never seen it is not a proof toward your argument; it is mere proof that you are brand new to this industry, with very limited (and sheltered) experience in it... and probably very little ability to find bugs, to boot.
>> IMHO the best "improvements" that XP has over 2K was...
That was the most polite way of saying the best "improvements" to the "operating system"... were all irrelevent userland apps that had nothing to do with the acutal OS... that I've seen in a long time.:)
But, it's Microsoft; perhaps these userland apps ARE part of the OS. Notepad.exe... kernel32.exe... same things, each one can get an arbitrary user's context into Ring0.:)
> Whoops. I stopped paying much attention to your post after started with the ad hominem BS
Yeah, sort of like starting out a post with the word "strawman".
> So by your defeintion of upgrade, I take it there is the requirement...
No, not at all. By THE definition of upgrade, we would PREEMPT the lifecycle of existing products. The quantity is irrelevent... quite literally, I'd take a brand new XP box that was purchased and deployed last week, and wipe it for the sake of having Vista. Or in the general case, I'd need to toss the older machines prematurely, since MS's definition of "Vista Capable" means that none of the "cool features" will work. Hopefully that answers your question.
> Most businesses start getting new PC's with the new OS, and run a mix of OSs.
See above; they do NOT go out of their way to buy them prematurely. They retire old things according to lifecycle, and replace them with whatever's current. They do NOT retire prematurely for the sake of the new... the example you mention is the normal lifecycle churn, and is not "upgrading" since no preemption is involved.
Think about the toaster in your kitchen. The last time you upgraded it was... uh, you've never upgraded your toaster. If you're like most of us, your toaster is probably the same one you've had for a decade or more. If you did replace it, it was because it either died or became too much of a fire hazard. And that is a very big difference... contrast it with buying a new toaster *every* 6 months because the "new" ones make "better" toast. Kenmore comes out with a new toaster model next week... hey, this lets me make better toast than the one I bought last month, right? And next month, when SunBeam releases their new model, well... we gotta buy THAT one now, because it's *better* than the Kenmore! And, perhaps it's true - but I don't see people tossing their existing (functional) toasters every week for the latest and greatest; when they no longer trust the toaster (end of life), THEN they retire it. They do not "upgrade", however; they pick the most adequate for their needs from what's available. If the new one is a fully Digital, Color toaster with half a gig of RAM... great! But they didn't upgrade to it... since the legacy was not discarded for the features of the new one. Any new features, while nice, are incidental to the replacement... NOT the cause of the replacement.
Is my example a little extreme? Perhaps - but it should help you see the point. There is a very big difference between "retire" and "upgrade".
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Actually, it'd be interesting for them to bring it as a "John Doe" case. They bring suit on behalf of an unnamed party, who cannot be named because of that exact same national security clause that prohibits the production of the list - since clearly, naming the party would compromise the list integrity "in whole or in part".
It'd no doubt get tossed as being ridiculous, but, hey... they started it, it'd be nice to make them eat it.
> But security through obscurity doesn't work
That's the point. No obscurity... no place for Gubbamints to hide things.
...and issuing a license agreement to use it. I think I'll prohibit the truncation of any leading 00s, or casting, or anything else via license agreement. Screw unicode etc, I'll teach you the meaning of "multibyte".
And also 0x0...3A2D28. Then I'm gonna sue Despair.com, along with every AOL user on the planet. Especially since Despair is selling these circumvention devices. Skylarov got off easy.
And you know, it seems to me that Metallica CDs might be trafficking my number, stegged in some of their music files (no doubt in an illegal 8 or 16 bit format). I'm gonna have to take them down.
(end of joke)
Back to reality, it makes me wonder... what if someone trademarked that AACS number? Heh.
No! In fact they're using this time to work on a product that TRULY does NOT suck.
Unfortunately, I think it's a vacuum cleaner.
... my ferrets have had internets for years! They love 'em! I even got them a router, that connects one of the 25' innernets to two of the 12' internets. The other three 25' innernets are simple PPP, however, and the routes are a tangled mess. I'm hoping to upgrade to a six port router in a few weeks, because as hard as the weasels try, the internets are DEFINITELY half duplex. They're not Cat5, either... he can stuff his head in, but that's all that'll fit without fragmentation.
The thing that sucks the most is when one of the internets get a hole chewed into it. The damned packets end up misrouted, on the floor, and you have to twist the innernet so that the hole is facing up to make it stop. Having a kitten who repeatedly cannonballs the array doesn't help much, either, because he uses the holes in the web to intercept the traffic.
In Ferret Internets, PACKETS SNIFF YOU!
Agreed.
I'm fascinated when I read headline stories about GW.
"2006 was the warmest year in 1000 years".
Either (1) They stopped looking after 1000 years, which is bad science in a billion-year cyclic environment, or (2) 1000 years ago, it was hotter.
We find other screwups, as well. A few months ago, there was a front page story about GW. The Big Scientist being quoted mentioned several things in it, but appears to have not considered what he was saying. For example, he mentions coldness, and how there was a "mini ice age" from about 1400AD to 1700AD. Eight paragraphs later, he says we've now got the hottest weather seen in 400 years.
Math 101: 2000 - 400 = 1600. The dead peak of that mini ice age. Either they knowingly compared the temperatures to exactly a *very short* period *they* say was a "cold spell", stopped looking, and were *astonished* to find a heat increase. Or, in the peak of that self-termed "mini ice age", it was hotter.
Huh?
Finally, noone seems to really pay attention to the impact of ocean currents on atmospheric heat... they all seem to think that atmosphere is the only factor. 700 calories per gram comes out of the ocean when it evaporates, and 700 calories per gram goes into the atmosphere when it condenses.
Hot equatorial water flows along the surface to the north pole, and evaporates along the way. Cold water at the pole is displaced by the warm current, sinks, and returns to the equator as an undercurrent.
As the hot water travels north - when it evaporates, that heat came from the equator. When it condenses, that heat is absorbed by the atmosphere - it effectively "carries" equatorial heat northward.
But, the polar ice caps melt. Ice caps are freshwater. Freshwater floats on salt water. Fresh water at the poles... pushes south, forcing the warm equatorial water under. With the warm water buried, it doesn't evaporate; the cold water is what's exposed. The evaporation rate goes down as a result. The fresh water layer will mix with the seawater, but it'll still be less dense... and be cold, and float. Atmospheric temperature gets fewer grams of evaporation, obviously. I don't recall the specific capacity of the impact, but a temperature drop of "20 degrees F" sticks in my head, as was demanded in the 60s by some guy who was studying beetles, as was dictated by the dominant types of beetles he found at various depths. (The beetle guy was a facinating story - the color of the dominant beetle's shell can often tell you the temperature of a given year, to within 2 degrees?!) He released his findings, back then, as was pretty much laughed out of a job.
His story stayed buried for 30 years, until some oceanographer chanced upon it while working... go figure... on currents at the equator. He'd also recently seen something about a polar core sample, taken above canada, that indicated severe temperature drops over short terms. He contacted the beetle guy, and the ice core guy, and compared their details. The dates of the ice-core guy and the beetle guy were pretty much the same for all of the extreme temperature shifts. He focused on the biggest shift they found, which was (as I recall) about 20 degrees F.
So, he dug deeper. He found out about some giant freshwater lake that existed at the pole some zillion years ago, and how it had supposedly melted its way into the ocean in a giant flood of freshwater. The date was the same as the temperature drop.
And he applied this lake idea to what he was studying, and it made sense - there's a big "heat conveyor" in the Atlantic. Freshwater floats on seawater. Freshwater at the pole would head south. Freshwater would displace the warm seawater underneath, and effectively push the northern end-point of the conveyor southward. Points that are north of the conveyor no longer get heat from it, to the tune of up to a 20 degree F drop... in literally a couple of years. It can likewise increase that much, just as fast.
So, if the beetle guy's study has any merit (and it do
Ordinarily, I'd tend to agree.
However, the "ass" comment is not appropriate - you haven't considered, AT ALL, the vertical market that many enterprises are involved in. Mine is not the only head up an ass, per-se. You are using the exact same tactic that MS has done; promising vapor that does not, and will not, ever exist.
In our industry, there are exactly four vendors today. In the past, there has been as many as six.
There are about 53 possible customers for these vendors in the US. If we also add Canada, the count increases to 56.
It's a cool $1.3 to get up and running, and the bulk (probably $800k) is software and labor. This assumes a vendor will have at least seven customers, so that their costs are reasonably distributed across their customer base. Less than that, historically, they do not stay in business, since the software costs become too high if it is redistributed across the existing customer base (which the vendor cannot do, anyway, for at least the term of the contracts that are involved).
The competing software platforms are complex. You'll not buy them at "CDW", and you will not find them on freshmeat. Ever.
Please, feel free to apply your argument to this obvious general case that you have flatly overlooked. 50-odd customers, cut amongst 4 vendors. The average vendor will need at least 5 clued developers, who's skills are FAR beyond "coding", and one dedicated support tech per customer. They'll also need a tech manager to coordinate the tech knowlege, since an issue impacting one tech may likewise impact another. Oh, you'll need a sales pig, also. They aren't cheap... especially when there's only 50 possible customers, each of which typically contract for 3 to 5 years at a time. Sales pigs can count on lots of sales to pay their mortgage, obviously.
I'd suggest that the challenge isn't that I keep buying MS products - the challenge is that VENDORS keep writing for them. Like I said... find me a vendor with a linux back-end, TODAY, that does what I need, and I'll get it. Or, OSX. I don't care what it is. You'll fail.
The application is pretty simple... you'll need a GIS engine. You'll need the ability for authenticated users to interactively edit a map in a browser (full layer and arbitrary polygon drawing support, not some "google maps" bullshit), with full version and reversion control. You'll need this back in 1999, by the way. You'll also need a method for a call-taker to take relevent data from a caller, and enter it. You'll need the ability to bounce that information off of a map, to tag features that the aformentioned "authenticated users" had created. You'll need to then compile a list of which "authenticated users" had a feature that was involved, and send them a copy of the data that was taken from the caller. You will NOT notify a user if they had no involvement. Again, you'll need this back in 1999. Technically, you'll need this in 1986. But, who's counting.
The data must be pushed to a given user via either fax, modem, email, xml, pager, or voice (human) dispatch, and the delivery must be guaranteed (in a very legal sense) with full supervision and auditing. For a given user, the method(s) used (may be plural) and people/systems contacted will vary by time of day, day of week, holidays, context of data, or a small pile of other factors, including error conditions on the far-end. Once received, a user will process this data, and eventually "feed" a disposition about it, back to us. You'll need the ability to receive these dispositions via IVR, web form, XML, telnet, or modem, and it'll need a measure of authentication (especially fun where IVR is concerned). These dispositions will need to be made available to the original caller via www on-demand, and also "pushed" to them via fax, email, or automated voice. Note that the "caller" is the general public. Again, you'll need this back in 1999. Or, 1987. Both dates should be trivial for you, obviously.
Depending on geography and time of year, you'll need to process about 3 to
Actually, I'd suggest that you missed the author's point, entirely. Perhaps it is due to you not being in the position to buy the various products at the time, I don't know.
...To NT BO4.5, which contained such setup.ini script error gems such as "Syntax error line xxx: ***REMEMBER TO FINISH SQL INSTALL SCRIPT". I'm NOT joking. And, you don't know the half of the extent of this.
Here's the perspective. It has zero to do with "15 years later, we have a feature". It has *everything* to do with, "15 years ago, when we needed a solution, Microsoft said they would provide it in a TIMELY fashion." As a result, purchase decisions were directly impacted.
We needed a mutlitasking OS to replace a DG Mini. Windows 1.0 was reputed to provide this functionality.
We called them. "Multi tasking?" "Yes." "Multiple users?" "Absolutely."
We bought it.
They lied.
We called them back.
"The sales engineer was confused with the next version." End Quote.
The project was shelved.
CDOS, released by a company named "Digital Research", became viable.
The project was rehashed, but Windows 2.0 was out. It's DOS support had few caveats, compared to CDOS.
We called Microsoft.
"Multitasking?"
"Yep!"
"You said the other one was. It wasn't."
"We've totally rewritten it. It works for real."
"Multi user?"
We bought it.
They lied.
We called them back.
"It doesn't work."
"No? The NEXT one will, and it's due soon."
See the pattern yet?
We eventually bought CDOS (and later, CCDOS, a value-add version).
We also bought Win30. Hazard a guess why?
They lied, again.
We also bought Win31. THAT one was initially stated to be preemptive, remember? And the sales pigs all claimed it was, when it was time to sign the check. Perhaps you've forgotten the RAGING DEBATES over that very issue, at the time... "Preemptive!" "No, it isn't!" "Yes, it is!" "No, it isn't!"
Our project was fairly simple - run a couple of DOS boxes, and redirect STDIO to a serial port so that two people could run a program. This specific detail was explained to "Microsoft", EACH TIME.
Every time... EVERY time... the MS tactic was to stall our purchase of a competing, fully viable product, via the gross misrepresentation of their own.
The MS philosophy is, and has been, that it is better to ship an "empty box" on-time than to ship a working product a day late.
And they have done so, and I have the disks to prove it - Excel's initial "DMF" floppy distribution, who's lzexpand didn't comprehend DMF... they literally put the "standard" Win31 lzex onto disk 1. Funny, it's LZEx that needs to READ these FATless disks. It couldn't POSSIBLY work. But, the version they needed wasn't read yet, so... ship it!
Clearly, two "top tier" products at the time, and the installations not even been tested. Not once. NOT ONCE. And, the devs KNEW the crap wasn't finished. The Mgt KNEW the crap wasn't finished. Both cases, which were a year apart... the "official" MS reason for issuing new disks to me?
"Media Defect". Again, I am NOT joking. Both cases, no matter how hard I argued, the call takers flat out REFUSED to admit the actual flaw. "No, the media is perfect. The setups are WRONG. Syntax errors... referencing a directory path that doesn't exist on the CD... trivial little things like that..."
Because, you know, the standalone install disk for Exchange had the base directory in the root. On BO4.5, the base setup was a subdirectory. And the scripts hadn't been adapted for it.
Trivial, little things. Right? Or, an omnipresent pattern, that just keeps on recurring.
The point of the article is exactly correct; promise vaporware as a solution NOW, to prevent or stall the purchase of an existing solution, NOW. That they *might* actually deliver the vapor in five years? Irrelevent; I am NOT going to buy a "viable" solution today, when "nervana" is coming next week. I will wait, so that I can assess. Or worse, if the "vapor" is claimed to now exist,
> with the kernel as the holy of holies,
Am I the only one who read that as,
"The kernel will be the holiest of holy kernels in history, spouting more holes per square inch than any preceding set of kernel holes in history."
Something tells me he used a bad phrase.
Heh, welcome to DRM.
> Second it install anti-virus software that chews up computing resources with out doing anything useful.
If *that* were true, it would have installed NAV.
*cough*
I'm hoping that Litchfield won't have a good sized list by the weekend... but unless Oracle has seriously changed their definition of "fixing" (and I hope they have), he'll find a fair percentage of them still outstanding.
... In those
a q/browse_thread/thread/b0c60e7ad7b40a90/f18b63bdb4 4470d7?lnk=st&q=litchfield+oracle+bugtraq&rnum=17& hl=en#f18b63bdb44470d7
But like I said... hopefully they've changed their definition of "fix".
On 1/7/05, David Litchfield wrote:
> Some of Oracle's "fixes" simply attempt to stop the example exploits I sent
> them for reprodcution purposes. In other words the actual flaw was not
> addressed and with a slight modification to the exploit it works again. This
> shows a slapdash approach with no real consideration for fixing the actual
> problem itself.
> As an example of this, Alert 68 attempts to fix some security holes in some
> triggers; the flaws could allow a low privileged user to gain SYS privileges
> - in other words gain full control of the database server. The example
> exploit I sent to Oracle contained a space in it. Oracle's fix was to ignore
> the user's request if the input had a space. What Oracle somehow failed to
> see or grasp was that no space is needed in the exploit...
> Here is another class of thoughtless "fix" implemented by Oracle in Alert
> 68. Some Oracle PL/SQL procedures take an arbitrary SQL statement as a
> parameter which is then executed. This can present a security risk. Rather
> than securing these procedures properly Oracle chose a security through
> obscurity mechanism. To be able to send the SQL query and have it executed
> one needs to know a passphrase. This passphrase is hardcoded in the
> procedure and can be extracted with ease. So all an attacker needs to do now
> is send the passphrase and their arbitrary SQL will still be executed...
> In other cases Oracle have simply dropped the old procedures and added new
> ones - with the same vulnerable code!
>
> cases where a flaw was fixed properly, we find the same flaw a few lines
> further down in the code. The DRILOAD package "fixed" in Alert 68 is an
> example of this; and this is not an isolated case. This is systemic. Code
> for objects in the SYS, MDSYS, CTXSYS and WKSYS schemas all have flaws
> within close range of "fixed" problems. These should have been spotted and
> fixed at the time.
Original Litchfield rant (it's a jaw-dropper if you've never read it) -
http://groups.google.com/group/mailing.unix.bugtr
Further down in the thread...
19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Various Cross-Site-Scripting Vulnerabilities in Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+ days)
19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Read parts of any XML-file on the application server via Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+days)
19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Read parts of any file on the application server via Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+days)
19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Overwrite any file on the application server via Oracle Report (Not fixed after 700+ days)
19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Run any OS Command via uploaded Oracle Report from any directory (Not fixed after 700+ days)
19-jul-2005 - Advisory: Run any OS Command via uploaded Oracle Forms from any directory (Not fixed after 700+ days)
> I don't consider Slashdot a waste of time.
i t than I would be; if Sally is at a beater box and not on break, the rest of the agents know they are picking up her slack. And believe me, they'll voice their displeasure to her. Likewise if she takes a risk that bones the box - they don't have any inntarweb until I fix it a few days later. Again, she won't repeat that behavior. So, it works well, and they like it!)
Depends, doesn't it? What if you're a cashier in a quickie-mart? A guy who shovels boxes into trucks at Fedex? An airline pilot, flying the plane?
Extreme examples (intended), but... clearly there are cases where the intar-tube has absolutely zero relevence, to the point of (possibly) being detrimental. Personal time during a break? That's a different story - and is more appropriate to the "coke machine" and "cable TV" examples. Off break & on duty? Not so clear-cut.
(And if you're curious, my solution to all of this is to use a couple retired "beater boxes", completely divorced and on their own cablemodem, located *in the call center itself* to provide access during breaks. This allows users to do whatever they wish - but it is socially policed. Oddly, the users are actually harder about who-uses-what-and-where-they-go-and-when-they-do-
Well, let me give a little firefighter's instinct on this -
> I'll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available. I'm just surprised anyone would think to post that for people.
> I have to say I'm with the government on this one. Why does anyone need to know exactly where all the 911 calls are coming from in real time?
You forget that this data is provided BY the government; the government is NOT saying they don't want this public, nor realtime; they are saying that they do not want a 3rd party to one-up their text-based webpage with a google map on a different site. Note well that the government response was NOT taking down the data; the response was to thwart the parsing of it.
So, you are not "with the government" on this one! (and, right or wrong isn't relevent; you simply do NOT agree with them.)
> I can understand why such data should be available, but why not give it a 24 hour delay? There are just SO many uses for this data for evil (where you can torch a house, when you can steal something with few cops nearby, where you can go to ambulance chase the most successfully, etc.)
Again, this isn't relevent to TFA, which discusses someone's use of the data; that the data is "realtime" has no bearing, and this "someone" is merely re-posting data that is publicly provided by the 911 center. The "use for evil" isn't even limited to a realtime feed, either. To ban any data on realtime emergency response means that there must also be a corresponding "news blackout" - after all, as an evil supervillan, I can wait for the fire dept to be stretched with 5 structure fires that drains the district (as you suggest)... or I can wait for a 5 alarm fire, a single large event that drains the district. Oddly, the 5 distinct fires won't make the news. But the big mega-fire will - with live coverage, helicopter-cams, the works, and the whole universe is going to know about it. And I can tell you... the 5 alarmer is a LOT more dangerous (from a complexity standpoint) than 5 distinct calls... if our supervillan wishes to "sneak under the radar", odds are much better during the chaos of the single, large, harder-to-manage event.
So, if this realtime data should be hidden... we likewise need a press blackout. No "live coverage" during fires, no reports of traffic accidents during our treks to work and home. Otherwise, we flatly contradict our reason for "no realtime data", I'm afraid.
A lot of people question why realtime data would be relevent in the first place... and I can tell from the tone of your post, your gut is crawling with the potential for abuse.
But, the data already readily available. It goes across the radio as a dispatch, and for $20 you can listen in. And as mentioned earlier, larger events are on the TV and radio. Of your examples (which are good)... putting this data on the internet enables *nothing*, any more than removing it from the internet *prevents* anything. You can't think of a single reason someone would need this data... I must ask, can you think of one action that removing this data is going to thwart? Just one? Don't feel bad if you can't... I can't, either.
For a 911 center, posting the data would be wonderful. It enables all of the value-adds with no labor on your part - radio station traffic reports, news agencies, even TomTom updates. You can facilitate all that crap, and even have some control over the wording of the information (which is huge, believe me). Or, you can force these same parties to scrape radio traffic for audio snippets, and then deal with the Absolute Joy of them paraphrasing 2nd-hand information that is completely without context. As a 911 center, you can choose one or the other. And, it doesn't seem to be a tough choice. Banning such data to "businesses" is downright silly... since all that does is create an artificial barrier to entry for the hobbiest / amateur-developer-who-wants-to-start-something. And believe me, the bulk of the GOOD fire-service software comes from such pe
And from TFA, this is still trivially possible. The data source is plainly available, just not easily parsed (which is a total non-issue for the short-term opportunist you describe).
Secondly, there's no need to wait for such placement; it'd be trivial to simply engineer that situation with a few 911 calls / events of your own.
Personally, I'd say they're offended that their "cool tool" got one-upped.
3) Let's not forget that small little country (who IS nuclear capable) called, "China". :)
Hey... I'm not an elitist. An Idiot... often. But elitist... no :) He wanted to play the credibility game; I simply challenged it. Especially since he starts this entire thread by calling me "shithead". He claims he can assess "quality", probably by the brand name or Tarot cards... yet he's never heard of "soft-ice". "HP is always good!" Sure.
:)
Yeah, I know... stop baiting.
You have to admit, though... his "driver quality" examples being mostly GPIB was damned funny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPIB
Ok, I think I'm starting to see the problem... namely, you must be responding to something else besides this thread.
> I figure you must be selling cheap hardware to stupid consumers to be so defensive about this.
You figure wrong; I sell nothing.
> So I guess you must be immune to lethal contaminations of agricultural products or your local environment?
Uh, so... after the fact, someone uses your lab to confirm what they already suspect. Yep... that's life and death, for sure.
> ATI still sucks hind tit compared to Matrox. Just take a look at the size of the drivers
Uh, ATwho? When did I mention ATI? Yes, ATI has... "issues" (sometimes big ones), but they are HARDLY relevent to the "size of the drivers". Meanwhile, you continually claim to have proven a negative... "I've NEVER had issues with Matrox! They're perfect!"... and you are on a fool's errand, sir.
> You'll keep getting modded up because your argument indirectely states that its all windows fault
Are you HIGH? I implied that windows becomes relevent, when... exactly? Did I even mention Windows, at all? The ONLY thing I've said is that YOU cannot define "Quality Hardware", rofl! "Oh, that's a CHEAP CARD! Here, buy this $150 joystick adapter, it'll be BUG FREE because of the Quality! Price means QUALITY!" Wrong, wrong wrong, clueless, and wrong. Just how many VxDs have YOU written, boy? Do you even know what the f*** a driver IS? Do you even know the actual difference between Ring 0 and Ring 1? Or are you just a PCWorld reader.
Sorry Jack, but I am not your emotional tampon. Go attach your delusionary statements to someone else's words. While you're at it, show this post to your boss so (s)he can see what a moron you are. And while you're at it, state that you've never had a car accident while driving a Ford, and therefore Fords are immune to car accidents. Make sure you cuss him out if he dares to suggest you're wrong... because, dammit, you've never had a crash while driving a Ford. "All Fords are QUALITY, you asshole! And if people would stop buying CHEAP cars, there would BE NO MORE CAR ACCIDENTS! You assholes!"
I cannot phrase it any simpler than that. You should probably tell your doctor that your meds have stopped working again.
> just because a user has a good experience where another user doesn't
More like "a user states an anecdote as an ultimate, completely unqualified truth", and someone else calls him on the carpet.
> it's always the cry of "you must not be as experienced".
No, the cry of "you must not be experienced" is because only a newb would make such statements. Or an old fool who cannot learn, but I wanted to be kind.
> That's a fucking troll if I've ever seen one.
ROFL. "USE QUALITY HARDWARE!" Uh, "Define quality hardware?" "QUALITY HARDWARE IS THAT WHICH HAS NO DRIVER BUGS!" Uh, "And *specifically* which hardware would that be?" "TROLL! TROLL!"
Yep, big troll.
> someone trying to convince themselves of their own experience
:) They had a serious issue with stencils... the alpha channels often rendered pink unless you specifically coded for the card. It was a big PITA... and they also had memory leaks in some of their resource handlers, and the occasional "nul pointer" dereference issues. Them, and Diamond had... well, you'll probably call Diamond "crap", despite them being the Big Dog in those days. Stealth 3D, baby! Not.
Uh, reality requires no convincing.
> Trust me, I'm experienced. Data aquitition from self built ADC cards on 286's about 15 years ago
Blah blah blah... an 8 bit ADC, probably not even a flash converter, and probably didn't use DMA. Try rolling my own 80 column card for an apple ][, from scratch with no guidance from an adult, when I was 12... and the ][ was "just out". It's good that you got into it so late in the game, though... it's great that you were figuring out PIC masks in 1991, trying to figure out what an IRET was for. When I was playing with 286s, they were "Current"... I wrote a TSR to make DOS3.2 into a (semi-reentrant, with obvious caveats esp. with share) preemptive tasker, complete with support for running code in EMM pages. By 1991, when you were trying to figure out how to latch data into an ISA slot... I was well, well beyond you. Sorry Jack, but in regards to credibility in hardware and software design... you are way outclassed here.
> HP, Varian benchtop mass spectrometers running on DOS, Win9x, NT and XP systems... NMR instuments on AIX, Win9x, NT and XP
Uh, isn't all that junk GPIB? Drivers?? rofl, I rolled some GPIB junk in assembler to help a physics lab in '88, it took me an hour, and the bulk of the time was figuring out how to make Fortran use it. It worked for every device they cared to chain onto it for over a decade, and probably still works today. "Quality Drivers"? And your examples are all GPIB? rofl... and all VERTICAL MARKET, to boot! THOSE are your examples?! Talk about not knowing your ass from a hole in your head...
> Bugs are critical to someone who's every last datum is examined by government regulatory agencies.
No, bugs cost money to such people; outages themselves are typically either irrelevent or inconvenient at most. If that's your biggest problem, then they are NOT "critical". Bugs are "critical" when a failure gets people killed. And guess what... if my productions pop, entire city blocks can actually blow up, along with everybody in them. So no, you do not understand "critical" by virtue of you answering to a bean-counter, nor do you truly understand the stress of avoiding "ANY errors". I'd wager you know little of the actual engineering of a reliable system, nor of risk management; only the following of someone else's directions, someone who'd classify an Exchange server as "mission critical". Anecdotle, at best.
> I have never ever had an issue with Matrox hardware and drivers
Funny, Matrox was going to be my example
> Its all about quality hardware, quality hardware needs minimal drivers
Yeah, if your experience is largely GPIB, then "quality hardware" needs NO drivers. Call me when you get a clue, you useless frickin college lab assistant.
> I have never seen buggy drivers for quality hardware
Not to be mean, but... that you've never seen it is not a proof toward your argument; it is mere proof that you are brand new to this industry, with very limited (and sheltered) experience in it... and probably very little ability to find bugs, to boot.
>> IMHO the best "improvements" that XP has over 2K was...
:)
:)
That was the most polite way of saying the best "improvements" to the "operating system"... were all irrelevent userland apps that had nothing to do with the acutal OS... that I've seen in a long time.
But, it's Microsoft; perhaps these userland apps ARE part of the OS. Notepad.exe... kernel32.exe... same things, each one can get an arbitrary user's context into Ring0.
That, or the supernova in question was actually the result of a weapon detonation.
No worries, Falcon... it's just that ubun has never seen the movie "Roadhouse".
> Whoops. I stopped paying much attention to your post after started with the ad hominem BS
Yeah, sort of like starting out a post with the word "strawman".
> So by your defeintion of upgrade, I take it there is the requirement...
No, not at all. By THE definition of upgrade, we would PREEMPT the lifecycle of existing products. The quantity is irrelevent... quite literally, I'd take a brand new XP box that was purchased and deployed last week, and wipe it for the sake of having Vista. Or in the general case, I'd need to toss the older machines prematurely, since MS's definition of "Vista Capable" means that none of the "cool features" will work. Hopefully that answers your question.
> Most businesses start getting new PC's with the new OS, and run a mix of OSs.
See above; they do NOT go out of their way to buy them prematurely. They retire old things according to lifecycle, and replace them with whatever's current. They do NOT retire prematurely for the sake of the new... the example you mention is the normal lifecycle churn, and is not "upgrading" since no preemption is involved.
Think about the toaster in your kitchen. The last time you upgraded it was... uh, you've never upgraded your toaster. If you're like most of us, your toaster is probably the same one you've had for a decade or more. If you did replace it, it was because it either died or became too much of a fire hazard. And that is a very big difference... contrast it with buying a new toaster *every* 6 months because the "new" ones make "better" toast. Kenmore comes out with a new toaster model next week... hey, this lets me make better toast than the one I bought last month, right? And next month, when SunBeam releases their new model, well... we gotta buy THAT one now, because it's *better* than the Kenmore! And, perhaps it's true - but I don't see people tossing their existing (functional) toasters every week for the latest and greatest; when they no longer trust the toaster (end of life), THEN they retire it. They do not "upgrade", however; they pick the most adequate for their needs from what's available. If the new one is a fully Digital, Color toaster with half a gig of RAM... great! But they didn't upgrade to it... since the legacy was not discarded for the features of the new one. Any new features, while nice, are incidental to the replacement... NOT the cause of the replacement.
Is my example a little extreme? Perhaps - but it should help you see the point. There is a very big difference between "retire" and "upgrade".