Try visiting the site, view the news & reviews, and check out the test-flight videos.
It amazes me when nay-sayers never even bother to check the info provided; It flies, has done so on several occasions, but due to Insurance and FAA regulations it can't be flown *right now* by a pilot and it must be a tethered flight.
Now, the FAA has already created an "assited lift" vehicle classification and has been working with Moller for a few years on the M400 and his other designs. Boeing also looked into this matter and came away with a fairly favorable report.
Go ahead now and line-up behind the next person who would have laughed at Wilbur & Orville Wright!
I've been watching Moller's work for a few years now. If you're skeptical about it, then try visiting the site, read the news & reviews and see actual video of test flights.
http://www.moller.com
I bet you would have been with the nay-sayers when Wilbur & Orville Wright first few at Kitty Hawk.
I just love it when the self-absorbed *NIX Admins beat their sunken chests, thinking they're some kind of "cyber-TARZAN", saving the Janes of the Digital Forest by saying that they "know better" because they firmly believe that they are the "washed and annointed" of the Digital World.
I was using BSD, RSX-11M and VaxVMS before you were the glint in your Father's eye - each OS currently availabel has it's strong points and it's weak points, and *NIX is no exception to this fact.
It's also so refreshing to see *NIX Admins who, in the final analysis, can't prove their point and then resort to personal, Ad Hominem attacks against those who disagree with them - especially when the *NIX admin feels the need to look tough by using an expletive as the closing word.
If you actually *do* use your terminal window as stated, then you're.01% of the Mac OS-suX users that does so, while the other 99.99% of the other Mac OS-suX users just buy the thing because they've bought-in to the inane "switch" ads - I mean, if you're going to buy a computer based upon a "touchy-feely" TV Ad featuring a teen that has obviously used too much Alegy medication, or because some Umbrella-magnate from New York wants it to "rain every day", then you deserve a Mac. If you want to get some real *business* work done, get a PC with Windows XP or Windows 2k. If you want to *try* to get some real *business* work done and waste 80% of your time trying to get your PC to work with the hardware you have, run Linux on your PC.
Don't agree? That's your perogative - however, disagreeing doesn't necessarrily make one "right".
This logic is akin to having someone claim that they invented the Ford Model T Car/Automobile/Horseless Carriage because they lent Henry Ford the pen that he used to sign patent documents.
At best, Mr. Gore did exactly what Farber said - he helped those who were helping the development process along, and nothing more. The telling-clue would be to ask Mr. Gore what a syn-flood is or what causes packet fragmentation; I'd bet that he'd look at you and try to stammer his way out of the question.
Steel Battalion looks awesome - but DANG, who thought-up that joystick/throttle/control panel setup!??! That's a little overboard, IMHO - but I'm sure that some people will go for that level of realism.
Splinter Cell
Hitman 2
Madden NFL 2002
Madden NFL 2003 (along with most of the EA Sports franchise)
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 (for that fact, most of the entire Activision franchise)
Now, the Xbox has been out for how long now? Just barely a year, and they have quite an impressive stable of games:
Give Microsoft and the Xbox the ammount of time it took Sony to gather their collection of PS2 games (I won't even acknowledge the PSOne catalog, since the Xbox is *significantly* superior to the original PS/PSOne), and you'll see them being on-par with where the PS2 Catalog is now.
Game Development houses have repeatedly stated that developing products on the Xbox is also *significantly* easier than for PS/2 products.
It just goes to show you that people will take any opportunity to poke the most sucessfull Software company in history in the eye, even if it is just for spite!
Also, I think the "editors" of/. should be lynched for turning an honest response from Microsoft into a "we-don't-play-that-no-mo" response. Microsost NEVER said that they weren't going to work within that working-group or not. CowboyNeal et. al. are just a bunch of freakin' gits who love to "sucker-punch" anyone they can.
I think/. should change their background color to "yellow" - because this STINKS of "Yellow Journalism"
ScottKin - looking for CowboyNeal so I can PUMMEL him into consciousness.
I make absolutely no direct correlation in my post between software security issues and "adding functionality" - but it *is* an interesting point. Microsoft has this wonderful thing called "Windows Update", where they notify you in the "Notification" area (aka systray) when new updates are available. They also have Service packs for Windows 2000 that are fixes and patches - a good number of them being security fixes. So, to say that Microsoft is *not* resolving these issues is a "straw man" at best and disingenous at worst.
I'd like to see your source of the comment concerning loss of backwards compatability - backwards compatability has been an integral part of Microsoft's software development mantra ever since Microsoft signed the contract with IBM to provide MS-DOS 1.0.
Reply to Rant 1: If you were Microsoft, how do you expect to protect your software from unexpected misuse of features? Does GM protect people who are drunk from using their cars as lethal weapons? If Microsoft were to cover every single possible security exploit imaginable, you would lose-out on some very handy features like Windows Update. Get angry at the hackers, crackers and cript-monkeys that exploit these features instead of at the manufacturer of the software, and support *very* strong anti-hacking/cracking laws. This echoes the recent court case in Florida where a student murdered a teacher and was not convicted of the crime - the distributer of the handgun, however, was sued for over US$1,000,000.00 because they sold the gun. "Software doesn't hack/crack systems - people do!"
Evidently, you haven't been paying attention to the news that Microsoft *is* doing exactly what you suggested - Secure Computing under the Paladium project. Unfortunatley, for the Open Source & Software/Music Piracy Advocates, it also includes DRM software.
Looks like you *can't* have that cake you were talking about.
An interesting analogy on the "roads to rails" theme. Didn't that happen when people stopped using the horse-and-carriage and moved to cars? Muddy "streets" were un-usable, so they had to put hard pavement down in big cities. It's called "adaptation"
I'm sure that if Linus absolutely froze the Linux kernel when 0.0.1 was released, we would have a whole bunch of people saying "Linus WHO?" Software development is an on-going, ever-evolving process. WindowsXP has many superior advances than Win9x. WinME was a mis-step by Microsoft, and everyone accepts that, so why dredge it up? How many botched versions of the Linux kernel have their been? How many revisions has the kernel gone through? Would your average Windows user had put-up with the number of kernel revs Linux has gone through in respect to Windows 9x/ME/XP?
I think it would do most of the people who are narrow-focused in how Open Source is developed to try to gain some perspective on how companies like Microsoft do their products, the levels of code-checks, testing, code reviews, more testing, more code reviews, etc. goes on with a Microsoft Product. There is no such thing as a bug-free program and there never has been one since someone did the first if-then-else loop.
90% of all software problems with Windows can be directly related to 4 core tendencies:
1) User installed crappy shareware/freeware program that screwed around with system settings and installed their own DLLs to do very non-standard things.
2) User still demands on using software written "3 previous *major* versions of Windows" ago and refuses to upgrade their applications.
3) User has hardware that is either incompatible with Windows and refuses to update said hardware and tries to wedge drivers from older versions of Windows to get his out-of-spec hardware to work.
4) User is just so much of a flaming dork that he has gone in and MANUALLY removed DLLs or other system files because that's how they thought they could save some more disk space on their 320MB Hard Drive they first used with Windows 3.0.
With those 4 tendencies, no wonder that "Windows" has received the perceived reputation of being, shall we say, "problematic", when it wasn't a problem with Windows itself, but the screwed-up environment that the user placed Windows into?
If a change in Windows causes another software companies program to be broken, then the *other* software company had better provide updates to their software. Remember: it's not "Windows for PhotoShop".
Another analogy: I'm absolutely hooked on the "MechWarrior" franchise that Microsoft has rescued from Activision - so much that I spent $85.00 on a Saitek X-36 Joystick and matching Throttle quadrant to always have "HOTAS" (Hands-On-Throttle-And-Stick) control. It worked very well on Win98. I upgraded to WinXP to find that my joystick/gameport Stick and Throttle were not fully supported by WinXP. So, I fortunately found a refurbished X-36 USB port Stick and Throttle that actually worked better and only cost me $50. I recognized the need to upgrade to a superior OS, and upgraded what I considered to be a major part of my system. Every other program that I've used since Win9x has worked, without exception.
When Microsoft begins working on a new OS or a major update to the current OS, exhaustive Software Testing is performed on the OS on HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of PCs, and using THOUSANDS of Applications and other 3rd-party software packages. Microsoft's internal Software Library has multiple copies of every software package in existence, even dating back to Windows 3.0 and even before that. Apple, Sun, and most major OS companies have the same pieces in place, all to ensure that their OS is 99.999% compatible. Ask your average Apple user how many applications they were FORCED to upgrade when Apple released OS 9? Most OS 9 apps were NOT backward-compatible with MacOS 8 - the same thing with the upgrade Windows 9x to XP, but not as widespread as the *massive* changes from MacOS 8 to OS 9. Thankfully, you are able to run most OS 9 apps on OS X - imagine what the hue-and-cry would have been if Apple hadn't done their job and checked for some backward compatibility with OS 9.
If you take a look at the "security bugs" that have been causing trouble for Windows and how they got there, you can sum most of it up into 2 distinct areas:
1) Buffer Overflow and Underrun
2) Services for Windows Update and LAN environments.
Most programmers can grasp the problems of Buffer management and what buffer overflow and underrun can cause. These conditions, however, were "unexpected deltas" in how users would be *normally* using their systems and software; they didn't expect for mentally unstable sociopaths who would actually craft URLs to cause arbitrary instructions or code to be run on a Windows machine running IE - it wasn't a tendency that they had counted on, so it naturally and logically wasn't included in any type of quantitative Software Testing procedures, and wasn't even considered a bugable event. The "hackers and crackers" have changed the game significantly. Interestingly enough, it's been recently shown that UNIX, the bastion of "tough as iron" computing, is also vulnerable to buffer overflow and underrun "tricks".
The only way you're going to get a totally bug-free system is to have it run on only ONE companies hardware, with ONLY the software provided by or approved by THAT company, with NO ROOM for any changes or the ability to install other programs. That's why most IBM Mainframes like the System/370 worked so well and created the IBM mythos of "BIG IRON = RELIABILITY" - there was not enough lattitude in it's hardware or software design for any kind of reliability factor to creep in. Yes, things broke, but it was more mechanical than software: tape drive jams, punched card jams, printer jams, function-switch failures.
In Short: no one is perfect. It's an imperfect world, and to expect Microsoft or any other software company AND/OR Open Source initiatives to make "perfect" or even "bug-free" software is nothing short of a pipe dream - there are too many other "wild" variables to take into account.
Microsoft gained the right to use SMB when IBM and Microsoft were working together on OS/2, just before they split-up the project and IBM went on to develop OS/2 and Microsoft focused more effort on WindowsNT. Microsoft had the rights to develop SMB as they saw fit, and Samba was developed at a significantly later time so UNIX boxen could talk properly to SMB-based networks.
It's amusing how the *NIX world likes to put the cart before the Ox in saying that Microsoft must keep SMB a certain way. It would do the Samba people right for Microsoft to change it in some small manner, just enough to cause minor headaches with the developers of Samba and to show the UNIX world that their "castle" is not as big as they thought it was.
...has just been knocked-down in reliability by SOMEONE FROM WITHIN THEIR OWN GROUP?!?!
I'm sorry, but I'm sitting here and having a (small) chuckle at the people who constantly attacked Microsoft for not being "secure" - people who now have (probably) been compromized (again) by someone (hopefully not) within the Open Source community, or at least someone who gained sufficient access to the source code to insert their code. From what I've read so far, this seems to have been a fairly trivial thing for the "infiltrator" to accomplish.
First, there were the trojanized versions of OpenSSH, BitchX, dsniff and a few other tools. Now, we have trojanized versions of some fairly non-trivial tools. What's next? Who knows? No one does.
The really funny thing is that because of it's own charter and design, the Open Source community has created their own FUD about their own products. Let's all hope that they take the initiative to prevent such things from happening again. Remember: "Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me...fool me five times and someone please kick me in the head!"
The really excellent thing about this happening is that the Open Source community got together, spread the info about the trojan/exploit rapidly and did an excellent job of damage control. The people that found the trojan (http://www.hlug.org) should be commended for their dedication to checking source code - something that should have happend (IMHO) quite a way up the development chain. Unfortunately, it appears that due to the very nature of Open Source development (i.e. the ability of pretty much ANYONE to contribute source-code to the development tree and even have it included in the latest CVS) that this will not be the last "event" concerning compromised source-code - unless the Open Source development community seriously re-work their development cycle and include exhaustive souce-code review before ANY source-code is released for "public" consumption.
Oh, and the part where Pepsi trips and "bloodies his pug"
Also, there's Goodgulf Greyteeth who "left something on the bunsen..."
Or, how about the elf who was picking his nose and had his finger iserted up to his 5th digit (well, count the number of digits on your hand...can you say "elbow"?)!!
All very good, sophomoric humor!!
I never laughed as hard as I did when I read that book.
An interesting comment that seems to be parroted by many in this thread.
sidenote: I began my "career" in Data Processing as a Computer Operator on CDC 6600 and 7600 Supercomputers (the CDC 6600 was the world's first, true "Supercomputer) at Lawrence Berkeley Lab back in the late '70s/early 80's, so I *do* know a little about "Supercomputers". Originally, the only kind of "Supercomputer" was one where there was only one "system image", where a main CPU would parcel-out portions of executable code to PPU's (Peripheral Processing Units) that were either generic in their operational parameters or specialized (Population Matrix Manipulators, Multipliers, Vector Processing). Consequently, there was only a single-image processing model because the additional processors were only given the instructions necessarry for them to perform the duties for which they were made. This is in sharp contrast to current "Clusering" or "Grid" systems, where multiple system images are run on multiple, network-connected PC-based systems or, with the case of "Blade" systems, PC-on-a-card solutions.
MOSIX (http://www.mosix.org) implementations cause the lines between classic SiS solutions and Clusters/Grids to blur even more, due to the way that it handles node-to-node communications and control of the running processes. Yes, it is still a distributed-node processing scheme, but compiled code nearly runs as if it were running on an SiS solution.
While it's true that "Clusters" or "Grids" are significantly different in design and implementation than single-image Supercomputers, the necessity for SiS solutions is becoming less and less clear. The University of Kentucky showed this as far back as 1999 with KLAT2 (http://aggregate.org/KLAT2), as it's LinPACK results placed it on-par with supercomputers rated ~200th at the Top500 List - at only US$41,000.00...and that was back in 1999. Today, there are many "Clusters" and "Grids" that can directly compete (performace-wise) with SGI, IBM & Cray SiS solutions. In fact, a few groundbreaking bits of Clustering magic have come directly from one of the largest single users of SiS systems - Sandia Labs (http://www.sandia.gov)
Not unless you're getting hard dollars from some charitable source for support of your project. What the Open Source community does is, quite simply, "volunteerism" - which is a very noble cause in and of itself.
If more people were involved in some sort of "volunteer" activities (whether it be Open Source coding, The Red Cross/Red Crescent, or community shelters) there would be a whole bunch of people who would be less miserable in this world.
It's just too sad that some "Open Source Advocates" are so lacking in interpersonal skills and tact, and are filled with mis-guided venom and anger towards Microsoft and Bill Gates; their vitriol, if allowed to run un-checked will be the death-knell for Open Source as a viable option.
"Why not? If he calls charitable work by open source developers "communist" and "cancer" why should he be immune from the same kind of criticism? Besides he is the richest man in the world what the f__k does he care what anybody on slashdot says about him?"
It's the brand of bovine fertilizer pushed by "Malcontent" that continues to errode any sense of reasonablility of the Linux/Open Source Community. They belittle someone because he happens to be the richest man in the world and that he got their by selling something that's been in the market longer than the product they're making, regardless if he GIVES HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF HIS MONEY AWAY. How much has Linus or RMS given away to charities in comparison to what Bill & Melinda Gates donate to charity?
Anyone who even TRIES to connect the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS that they give-away to charity to some obscene connection to Microsoft sales needs to be either taken out and LYNCHED or HAVE THEIR HEAD EXAMINED!
Count the number of SPECTATOR DEATHS at Soccer matches.vs SPECTATOR DEATHS at NFL Football games. Then we'll see which country needs their collective HEADS EXAMINED!
I thing the ratio of deaths and violence at "Soccer" matches.vs "Football" games is staggeringly out-of-balance towards the "Soccer" side of the scale.
Election Time - where leftists want everything to be free, except their own time and work!
Just wait until you graduate - I'm saying that because you sound just like one of those "speshul" college-kids, all full of leftist "let's share!" enthusiasm. "Real Life" will smack you upside your sharply-honed head (i.e. "pointy") when it comes time to pay for food, a place to live, clothing that doesn't say "LOOK!!! I'M A FREAK!!!" to your new employer.
DS1/T1 (1.544mbits/sec) is the Telecom trunking standard in the US, the rest of the world uses E1(2.048mbits/sec)
Our "Football" games don't have rabid, drunk-as-a-skunk hooligans rioting (and in one case, the rioting led to a fire which destroyed a good portion of one Stadium and resulted in some SPECTATOR deaths), and your "Football" doesn't have the Super Bowl and the obligatory "I'm Going to DisneyLand" comment from the championship game's MVP.
Baseball is exiting. Cricket....OH, PUH-LEEEEEZ!!!! Who cares about a game that can last DAYS!?!??!?
If we want to use "Aluminum" and "Color" and "favorite" over "Aluminium" and "Colour" and "favourite", that's our choice.
Maybe we don't use "Queen's English" because the only Queens we have anything to do about are on Castro Street in San Francisco.
Slashdot Mirror
Geez - I don't think i've seen a bigger bunch of FLAMING IDIOTS than the "Armchair Aeronautical Engineers" posting on this thread!
"Assisted Lift" does not need a low CD number to be a flying vehicle - look at most Helicopters; their CD is horrendous, but yet they fly.
As to the Rotapower engines - I'd suggest you re-check your figures...that is, if you actually *did* any calculations.
The M400 *has* flown, albeit in a tethered flight due to Insurance and FAA restrictions.
So...your point is...????
ScottKin
Try visiting the site, view the news & reviews, and check out the test-flight videos.
It amazes me when nay-sayers never even bother to check the info provided; It flies, has done so on several occasions, but due to Insurance and FAA regulations it can't be flown *right now* by a pilot and it must be a tethered flight.
Now, the FAA has already created an "assited lift" vehicle classification and has been working with Moller for a few years on the M400 and his other designs. Boeing also looked into this matter and came away with a fairly favorable report.
Go ahead now and line-up behind the next person who would have laughed at Wilbur & Orville Wright!
ScottKin
I've been watching Moller's work for a few years now. If you're skeptical about it, then try visiting the site, read the news & reviews and see actual video of test flights.
http://www.moller.com
I bet you would have been with the nay-sayers when Wilbur & Orville Wright first few at Kitty Hawk.
ScottKin
I just love it when the self-absorbed *NIX Admins beat their sunken chests, thinking they're some kind of "cyber-TARZAN", saving the Janes of the Digital Forest by saying that they "know better" because they firmly believe that they are the "washed and annointed" of the Digital World.
I was using BSD, RSX-11M and VaxVMS before you were the glint in your Father's eye - each OS currently availabel has it's strong points and it's weak points, and *NIX is no exception to this fact.
It's also so refreshing to see *NIX Admins who, in the final analysis, can't prove their point and then resort to personal, Ad Hominem attacks against those who disagree with them - especially when the *NIX admin feels the need to look tough by using an expletive as the closing word.
Bovine Fertilizer.
ScottKin
If you actually *do* use your terminal window as stated, then you're .01% of the Mac OS-suX users that does so, while the other 99.99% of the other Mac OS-suX users just buy the thing because they've bought-in to the inane "switch" ads - I mean, if you're going to buy a computer based upon a "touchy-feely" TV Ad featuring a teen that has obviously used too much Alegy medication, or because some Umbrella-magnate from New York wants it to "rain every day", then you deserve a Mac. If you want to get some real *business* work done, get a PC with Windows XP or Windows 2k. If you want to *try* to get some real *business* work done and waste 80% of your time trying to get your PC to work with the hardware you have, run Linux on your PC.
Don't agree? That's your perogative - however, disagreeing doesn't necessarrily make one "right".
ScottKin
You've GOT to be kidding me!
This logic is akin to having someone claim that they invented the Ford Model T Car/Automobile/Horseless Carriage because they lent Henry Ford the pen that he used to sign patent documents.
At best, Mr. Gore did exactly what Farber said - he helped those who were helping the development process along, and nothing more. The telling-clue would be to ask Mr. Gore what a syn-flood is or what causes packet fragmentation; I'd bet that he'd look at you and try to stammer his way out of the question.
ScottKin
Steel Battalion looks awesome - but DANG, who thought-up that joystick/throttle/control panel setup!??! That's a little overboard, IMHO - but I'm sure that some people will go for that level of realism.
ScottKin
To correct you:
/. is "Target Shooting", with Microsoft as the target.
No, the Gamecube came-out shortly after the PS/2, with the Xbox slightly later.
However, you totally failed to catch my point: the favorite sport on
Also, remember that Sony and Nintendo have had much more time making product in the Gaming scene than Microsoft, and that it's all a matter of time.
Also, since when was ANY game available simultaneously on PS/2, Nintendo Gamecube AND the GameBoy Advanced???!??!? THE SAME GAME!???!?!?
Put the crack-pipe down and step away from the keyboard, sir!!!!
ScottKin
Splinter Cell Hitman 2 Madden NFL 2002 Madden NFL 2003 (along with most of the EA Sports franchise) Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 (for that fact, most of the entire Activision franchise)
Now, the Xbox has been out for how long now? Just barely a year, and they have quite an impressive stable of games:
Xbox Games Catalog
Give Microsoft and the Xbox the ammount of time it took Sony to gather their collection of PS2 games (I won't even acknowledge the PSOne catalog, since the Xbox is *significantly* superior to the original PS/PSOne), and you'll see them being on-par with where the PS2 Catalog is now.
Game Development houses have repeatedly stated that developing products on the Xbox is also *significantly* easier than for PS/2 products.
It just goes to show you that people will take any opportunity to poke the most sucessfull Software company in history in the eye, even if it is just for spite!
ScottKin
Microsoft XML Architect and W3C XML Standard Co-creator Jeal Paoli announce XML integration with "Office 11" on November 14th...
Open Source community (in no doubt lead/prodded/cajoled/wrangled by Sun's Scott McNealy) tries to upstage W3C's work on XML by producing their own standard on November 20th.
Can you say "wanna-be"?
Also, I think the "editors" of /. should be lynched for turning an honest response from Microsoft into a "we-don't-play-that-no-mo" response. Microsost NEVER said that they weren't going to work within that working-group or not. CowboyNeal et. al. are just a bunch of freakin' gits who love to "sucker-punch" anyone they can.
I think /. should change their background color to "yellow" - because this STINKS of "Yellow Journalism"
ScottKin - looking for CowboyNeal so I can PUMMEL him into consciousness.
UCSD's Concurrent Systems Architecture Group
www.windowsclusters.org
NCSA NT Cluster Consortium
Real Application Performance
These are just a few links - many more are out there if you search for "Windows HPC"
ScottKin
Thank you for your thought-out reply.
I make absolutely no direct correlation in my post between software security issues and "adding functionality" - but it *is* an interesting point. Microsoft has this wonderful thing called "Windows Update", where they notify you in the "Notification" area (aka systray) when new updates are available. They also have Service packs for Windows 2000 that are fixes and patches - a good number of them being security fixes. So, to say that Microsoft is *not* resolving these issues is a "straw man" at best and disingenous at worst.
I'd like to see your source of the comment concerning loss of backwards compatability - backwards compatability has been an integral part of Microsoft's software development mantra ever since Microsoft signed the contract with IBM to provide MS-DOS 1.0.
Reply to Rant 1: If you were Microsoft, how do you expect to protect your software from unexpected misuse of features? Does GM protect people who are drunk from using their cars as lethal weapons? If Microsoft were to cover every single possible security exploit imaginable, you would lose-out on some very handy features like Windows Update. Get angry at the hackers, crackers and cript-monkeys that exploit these features instead of at the manufacturer of the software, and support *very* strong anti-hacking/cracking laws. This echoes the recent court case in Florida where a student murdered a teacher and was not convicted of the crime - the distributer of the handgun, however, was sued for over US$1,000,000.00 because they sold the gun. "Software doesn't hack/crack systems - people do!"
Evidently, you haven't been paying attention to the news that Microsoft *is* doing exactly what you suggested - Secure Computing under the Paladium project. Unfortunatley, for the Open Source & Software/Music Piracy Advocates, it also includes DRM software.
Looks like you *can't* have that cake you were talking about.
ScottKin
An interesting analogy on the "roads to rails" theme. Didn't that happen when people stopped using the horse-and-carriage and moved to cars? Muddy "streets" were un-usable, so they had to put hard pavement down in big cities. It's called "adaptation"
I'm sure that if Linus absolutely froze the Linux kernel when 0.0.1 was released, we would have a whole bunch of people saying "Linus WHO?" Software development is an on-going, ever-evolving process. WindowsXP has many superior advances than Win9x. WinME was a mis-step by Microsoft, and everyone accepts that, so why dredge it up? How many botched versions of the Linux kernel have their been? How many revisions has the kernel gone through? Would your average Windows user had put-up with the number of kernel revs Linux has gone through in respect to Windows 9x/ME/XP?
I think it would do most of the people who are narrow-focused in how Open Source is developed to try to gain some perspective on how companies like Microsoft do their products, the levels of code-checks, testing, code reviews, more testing, more code reviews, etc. goes on with a Microsoft Product. There is no such thing as a bug-free program and there never has been one since someone did the first if-then-else loop.
90% of all software problems with Windows can be directly related to 4 core tendencies:
1) User installed crappy shareware/freeware program that screwed around with system settings and installed their own DLLs to do very non-standard things.
2) User still demands on using software written "3 previous *major* versions of Windows" ago and refuses to upgrade their applications.
3) User has hardware that is either incompatible with Windows and refuses to update said hardware and tries to wedge drivers from older versions of Windows to get his out-of-spec hardware to work.
4) User is just so much of a flaming dork that he has gone in and MANUALLY removed DLLs or other system files because that's how they thought they could save some more disk space on their 320MB Hard Drive they first used with Windows 3.0.
With those 4 tendencies, no wonder that "Windows" has received the perceived reputation of being, shall we say, "problematic", when it wasn't a problem with Windows itself, but the screwed-up environment that the user placed Windows into?
If a change in Windows causes another software companies program to be broken, then the *other* software company had better provide updates to their software. Remember: it's not "Windows for PhotoShop".
Another analogy: I'm absolutely hooked on the "MechWarrior" franchise that Microsoft has rescued from Activision - so much that I spent $85.00 on a Saitek X-36 Joystick and matching Throttle quadrant to always have "HOTAS" (Hands-On-Throttle-And-Stick) control. It worked very well on Win98. I upgraded to WinXP to find that my joystick/gameport Stick and Throttle were not fully supported by WinXP. So, I fortunately found a refurbished X-36 USB port Stick and Throttle that actually worked better and only cost me $50. I recognized the need to upgrade to a superior OS, and upgraded what I considered to be a major part of my system. Every other program that I've used since Win9x has worked, without exception.
When Microsoft begins working on a new OS or a major update to the current OS, exhaustive Software Testing is performed on the OS on HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of PCs, and using THOUSANDS of Applications and other 3rd-party software packages. Microsoft's internal Software Library has multiple copies of every software package in existence, even dating back to Windows 3.0 and even before that. Apple, Sun, and most major OS companies have the same pieces in place, all to ensure that their OS is 99.999% compatible. Ask your average Apple user how many applications they were FORCED to upgrade when Apple released OS 9? Most OS 9 apps were NOT backward-compatible with MacOS 8 - the same thing with the upgrade Windows 9x to XP, but not as widespread as the *massive* changes from MacOS 8 to OS 9. Thankfully, you are able to run most OS 9 apps on OS X - imagine what the hue-and-cry would have been if Apple hadn't done their job and checked for some backward compatibility with OS 9.
If you take a look at the "security bugs" that have been causing trouble for Windows and how they got there, you can sum most of it up into 2 distinct areas:
1) Buffer Overflow and Underrun
2) Services for Windows Update and LAN environments.
Most programmers can grasp the problems of Buffer management and what buffer overflow and underrun can cause. These conditions, however, were "unexpected deltas" in how users would be *normally* using their systems and software; they didn't expect for mentally unstable sociopaths who would actually craft URLs to cause arbitrary instructions or code to be run on a Windows machine running IE - it wasn't a tendency that they had counted on, so it naturally and logically wasn't included in any type of quantitative Software Testing procedures, and wasn't even considered a bugable event. The "hackers and crackers" have changed the game significantly. Interestingly enough, it's been recently shown that UNIX, the bastion of "tough as iron" computing, is also vulnerable to buffer overflow and underrun "tricks".
The only way you're going to get a totally bug-free system is to have it run on only ONE companies hardware, with ONLY the software provided by or approved by THAT company, with NO ROOM for any changes or the ability to install other programs. That's why most IBM Mainframes like the System/370 worked so well and created the IBM mythos of "BIG IRON = RELIABILITY" - there was not enough lattitude in it's hardware or software design for any kind of reliability factor to creep in. Yes, things broke, but it was more mechanical than software: tape drive jams, punched card jams, printer jams, function-switch failures.
In Short: no one is perfect. It's an imperfect world, and to expect Microsoft or any other software company AND/OR Open Source initiatives to make "perfect" or even "bug-free" software is nothing short of a pipe dream - there are too many other "wild" variables to take into account.
ScottKin
Microsoft gained the right to use SMB when IBM and Microsoft were working together on OS/2, just before they split-up the project and IBM went on to develop OS/2 and Microsoft focused more effort on WindowsNT. Microsoft had the rights to develop SMB as they saw fit, and Samba was developed at a significantly later time so UNIX boxen could talk properly to SMB-based networks.
It's amusing how the *NIX world likes to put the cart before the Ox in saying that Microsoft must keep SMB a certain way. It would do the Samba people right for Microsoft to change it in some small manner, just enough to cause minor headaches with the developers of Samba and to show the UNIX world that their "castle" is not as big as they thought it was.
Let them whine!
ScottKin
Ah, yes - The intelligence of the average Linux-geek shines through.
You must have attended "South Park" High School.
If you don't like it, go whine to your momma!
ScottKin
...has just been knocked-down in reliability by SOMEONE FROM WITHIN THEIR OWN GROUP?!?!
I'm sorry, but I'm sitting here and having a (small) chuckle at the people who constantly attacked Microsoft for not being "secure" - people who now have (probably) been compromized (again) by someone (hopefully not) within the Open Source community, or at least someone who gained sufficient access to the source code to insert their code. From what I've read so far, this seems to have been a fairly trivial thing for the "infiltrator" to accomplish.
First, there were the trojanized versions of OpenSSH, BitchX, dsniff and a few other tools. Now, we have trojanized versions of some fairly non-trivial tools. What's next? Who knows? No one does.
The really funny thing is that because of it's own charter and design, the Open Source community has created their own FUD about their own products. Let's all hope that they take the initiative to prevent such things from happening again. Remember: "Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me...fool me five times and someone please kick me in the head!"
The really excellent thing about this happening is that the Open Source community got together, spread the info about the trojan/exploit rapidly and did an excellent job of damage control. The people that found the trojan (http://www.hlug.org) should be commended for their dedication to checking source code - something that should have happend (IMHO) quite a way up the development chain. Unfortunately, it appears that due to the very nature of Open Source development (i.e. the ability of pretty much ANYONE to contribute source-code to the development tree and even have it included in the latest CVS) that this will not be the last "event" concerning compromised source-code - unless the Open Source development community seriously re-work their development cycle and include exhaustive souce-code review before ANY source-code is released for "public" consumption.
ScottKin
I nominage "SirAnodos" for the new GPL/Open Source/Slashdot FUD/Lie/Untruth Creator.
I certainly hope that his twisted thoughts are not representative of the rest of the Open Source community.
SocttKin
"Toes!!! I just love hairy toes!!!"
Oh, and the part where Pepsi trips and "bloodies his pug"
Also, there's Goodgulf Greyteeth who "left something on the bunsen..."
Or, how about the elf who was picking his nose and had his finger iserted up to his 5th digit (well, count the number of digits on your hand...can you say "elbow"?)!!
All very good, sophomoric humor!!
I never laughed as hard as I did when I read that book.
An interesting comment that seems to be parroted by many in this thread.
sidenote: I began my "career" in Data Processing as a Computer Operator on CDC 6600 and 7600 Supercomputers (the CDC 6600 was the world's first, true "Supercomputer) at Lawrence Berkeley Lab back in the late '70s/early 80's, so I *do* know a little about "Supercomputers". Originally, the only kind of "Supercomputer" was one where there was only one "system image", where a main CPU would parcel-out portions of executable code to PPU's (Peripheral Processing Units) that were either generic in their operational parameters or specialized (Population Matrix Manipulators, Multipliers, Vector Processing). Consequently, there was only a single-image processing model because the additional processors were only given the instructions necessarry for them to perform the duties for which they were made. This is in sharp contrast to current "Clusering" or "Grid" systems, where multiple system images are run on multiple, network-connected PC-based systems or, with the case of "Blade" systems, PC-on-a-card solutions.
MOSIX (http://www.mosix.org) implementations cause the lines between classic SiS solutions and Clusters/Grids to blur even more, due to the way that it handles node-to-node communications and control of the running processes. Yes, it is still a distributed-node processing scheme, but compiled code nearly runs as if it were running on an SiS solution.
While it's true that "Clusters" or "Grids" are significantly different in design and implementation than single-image Supercomputers, the necessity for SiS solutions is becoming less and less clear. The University of Kentucky showed this as far back as 1999 with KLAT2 (http://aggregate.org/KLAT2), as it's LinPACK results placed it on-par with supercomputers rated ~200th at the Top500 List - at only US$41,000.00...and that was back in 1999. Today, there are many "Clusters" and "Grids" that can directly compete (performace-wise) with SGI, IBM & Cray SiS solutions. In fact, a few groundbreaking bits of Clustering magic have come directly from one of the largest single users of SiS systems - Sandia Labs (http://www.sandia.gov)
The lines will continue to blur...
ScottKin
Not unless you're getting hard dollars from some charitable source for support of your project. What the Open Source community does is, quite simply, "volunteerism" - which is a very noble cause in and of itself.
If more people were involved in some sort of "volunteer" activities (whether it be Open Source coding, The Red Cross/Red Crescent, or community shelters) there would be a whole bunch of people who would be less miserable in this world.
It's just too sad that some "Open Source Advocates" are so lacking in interpersonal skills and tact, and are filled with mis-guided venom and anger towards Microsoft and Bill Gates; their vitriol, if allowed to run un-checked will be the death-knell for Open Source as a viable option.
ScottKin
It's the brand of bovine fertilizer pushed by "Malcontent" that continues to errode any sense of reasonablility of the Linux/Open Source Community. They belittle someone because he happens to be the richest man in the world and that he got their by selling something that's been in the market longer than the product they're making, regardless if he GIVES HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF HIS MONEY AWAY. How much has Linus or RMS given away to charities in comparison to what Bill & Melinda Gates donate to charity?
Anyone who even TRIES to connect the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS that they give-away to charity to some obscene connection to Microsoft sales needs to be either taken out and LYNCHED or HAVE THEIR HEAD EXAMINED!
PATHETIC PUTZES!!! SCREW YOUR CYNICISM!
ScottKin
At least the "rioting fans" weren't KILLING each other like the usual outcome of most major Soccer Matches.
0 5/ 16/uefa_riot_ap/
.vs SPECTATOR DEATHS at NFL Football games. Then we'll see which country needs their collective HEADS EXAMINED!
Soccer even has "The Pre-Match MATCH" against FANS!!!
http://images.cnnsi.com/soccer/world/news/2000/
Count the number of SPECTATOR DEATHS at Soccer matches
ScottKin
Absolutely!
.vs "Football" games is staggeringly out-of-balance towards the "Soccer" side of the scale.
I thing the ratio of deaths and violence at "Soccer" matches
ScottKin
Ah, yes - I can smell it in the air.
Election Time - where leftists want everything to be free, except their own time and work!
Just wait until you graduate - I'm saying that because you sound just like one of those "speshul" college-kids, all full of leftist "let's share!" enthusiasm. "Real Life" will smack you upside your sharply-honed head (i.e.
"pointy") when it comes time to pay for food, a place to live, clothing that doesn't say "LOOK!!! I'M A FREAK!!!" to your new employer.
In other words - GROW UP!
ScottKin
...and?
DS1/T1 (1.544mbits/sec) is the Telecom trunking standard in the US, the rest of the world uses E1(2.048mbits/sec)
Our "Football" games don't have rabid, drunk-as-a-skunk hooligans rioting (and in one case, the rioting led to a fire which destroyed a good portion of one Stadium and resulted in some SPECTATOR deaths), and your "Football" doesn't have the Super Bowl and the obligatory "I'm Going to DisneyLand" comment from the championship game's MVP.
Baseball is exiting. Cricket....OH, PUH-LEEEEEZ!!!! Who cares about a game that can last DAYS!?!??!?
If we want to use "Aluminum" and "Color" and "favorite" over "Aluminium" and "Colour" and "favourite", that's our choice.
Maybe we don't use "Queen's English" because the only Queens we have anything to do about are on Castro Street in San Francisco.
Deal with it!
ScottKin