Your history is off too. The VMS roots are even on their face only very lightly there (no code, they just hired a kernel team composed significantly of ex-VMS kernelfolk and some aspects of the VMS design went in), the BSD roots are hardly there at all, and the OS/2 roots were predominant.
Er, no. In fact, the VMS roots were so clear (hardly surprising given Microsoft basically hired the whole team responsible for designing VMS to build NT from scratch) that DEC sued them about it and won a settlement.
The OS/2 roots are nonexistant, because there aren't any. OS/2 was a monolithic, x86 only, single user, non-SMP capable, 16-bit OS with zero security capabilities. Windows NT was a modular, portable, multiuser, pervasively-multithreaded SMP-capable, 32-bit OS with extensive ACL-based security.
Outside of an API personality for running text mode OS/2 applications and a HPFS IFS driver (which Microsoft owned anyway), there's essentially nothing in common whatsoever between OS/2 and NT. The idea that NT is somehow descended from OS/2 is simply flat-out false.
We also have people talking about Windows XP as if it were descended from Windows 1.0 and not OS/2.
Windows XP (or any other version of NT) is in no way a descendant of OS/2. Even a cursory examination of their architectures should make that abundantly clear. Indeed, you'd struggle to find ways they were similar outside of a high-level API for text-mode applications.
Windows NT is the product that would have been OS/2 if not for the famous "divorce". However, it was a completely new and independent codebase, and no released version of OS/2 is in any way derived from it, nor do they share any common ancestry (which, again, becomes completely obvious as soon as you compare the architectures of the two).
It doesn't completely solve it, it "forces" the so-called "silent majority" to indicate their preference.
Recall that in British elections there is no such thing as a write-in candidate or other method of giving a non-standard opinion. In particular, it is impossible to differentiate between expressing that you are equally happy (status quo - others may decide on details irrelevant to you) and equally unhappy (impotence - you'd rather something else which is unavailable) with any of the above.
Sure there is. It's called a donkey vote. Ie: an invalid ballot.
A 99% turnout with 70% of ballots invalid sends a vastly more understandable message than a 30% voter turnout.
What kind of woman has several abortions without it being a (convenient) form of birth control?
The kind that has a lot of sex and doesn't want many - if any - children. At least one of the women I am thinking of also has 3 kids and they struggle to get by as it is.
A condom is convenient. The pill is convenient. Even the morning-after pill is mostly convenient, depending on how badly the side affects hit.
An abortion is not convenient. The only people who say they are, are the people who have zero right to make any judgement at all, because the closest they've knowingly even been to someone who's had one is spitting on them outside of a clinic.
Most of them don't believe in abortion as a convenient form of birth control, though.
I've never met anyone who thinks abortion is a convenient form of birth control, including women who have had several of them.
Contraception is much easier, safer, and cheaper for the mother than abortion, even if you do think abortion is grand.
It's also far from perfect.
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest.
[...]
Now, about the difference between IVF and abortion... IVF is not abortion.
I am fascinated to hear how you've managed to justify that little mental disconnect to yourself. What's the moral difference between creating an embryo in a test tube and then destroying it, and creating an embryo in a uterus and then destroying it ? By what measure can destroying an embryo that was almost certainly an accident be considered a greater crime than deliberately creating dozens (if not hundreds) of them with the absolute foreknowledge they would nearly all be destroyed (ie: creating them to destroy them) ?
Australia's online banking systems are actually really good. Better than anything I've seen in the USA.
Australia's banking systems are so far ahead of America's it's not even funny - and that's before even getting into the absolutely bonkers US credit system.
Never said there was anything unusual about it, in fact as we both pointed out it's quiet "usual".
I think you might be reading my comment with the wrong inflection. When I wrote it, I was trying to point out it's not unusual for banks to do this everywhere, not just Australia.
As I was trying to point out, this is how Australian banks like to rip people off. Not only do they take 2% of a transaction when it's completed in a foreign currency (we are one of the _few_ nations where this is done, let alone the norm) [...]
In what countries is this not normal (or any of the other fees you mention, for that matter) ?
Australia's banks must be pretty bad if people trust PayPal more.
Based on my experiences in Australia, the UK, Switzerland and the USA, Australian banks are _excellent_, relatively speaking.
This is just another aspect of a recent media beat-up of the banks in Australia, spurred on by sob stories about people irresponsibly over-extended in their mortgages. Most people have no concept of how lucky they are in Australia, from a banking perspective.
It's next to impossible to find a credit (or debit) card that will not charge a minimum of 2% on top for foreign currency transactions.
Just a point that there's nothing unusual at all about Australian banks doing this, and certainly all the banks I've ever used while living abroad did exactly the same thing (though the exact amount obviously varies).
I was fortunate enough back in the day to get a Wizard Credit Card, however, which has no additional fees or charges - nor exchange rate padding - for foreign transactions. Hands down the best way to get money out of the country. I'm amazed whoever-it-was that bought Wizard hasn't shut it down.
Because, while some jobs leave our country, goods made in their country are cheaper. If shipping a job to India lowers the average wage here by 10% but the price of goods goes down by 20%, that's a net gain.
Not when the price of goods stays the same because the cost savings are going into bigger profit margins and an executive's bonus.
What our nation must come to grips with is that the world has scarce resources and we cannot attempt to put so many social guarantees into law, especially federal law, without eventually suffering economic catastrophe.
"So many" ? The USA probably has the fewest "social guarantees" written into law in the Western world. Protection for workers is practically nonexistent, the welfare system is pitiful and "healthcare" is a joke.
Only for distribution, downloading can not be make illegal. You can not expect consumers to be responsible for the crimes of the merchant.
It is most certainly a crime to knowingly receive stolen goods, and downloading the latest blockbuster movie or song from thepiratebay is absolutely going to be subject to the same logic.
They could have built AV software into the OS before other vendors started selling a product or before Windows gained monopoly influence or they could have implemented security procedures to make AV unnecessary.
Viruses exploit software defects produced by Microsoft.
Which defects ?
It's obvious that MS will not ship products that are inherently safe from viruses due to bad programming.
It's obvious that *no-one can* ship products[0] that are inherently safe from viruses (due to bad programming or anything else).
Idon't have to pay extra for seat belts when I buy a new car, unless I want belts that perform better to accommodate some unusually bad driving I do. OS security should be the same.
This is nearly a good analogy. AVs are a lot like seatbelts, but the analogy to OS security is not protecting you in a crash, it's avoiding it in the first place. Seatbelts do nothing to prevent you from having a crash. Similarly, AVs do nothing to prevent you from doing all the things that break or circumvent OS security.
[0]By which I mean general purpose OSes.
I would argue that it is proactive, as in it scans things BEFORE they are run, not after.
It's reactive, because by the time the AV has a chance to do anything, the program in question has already made it past the biggest security roadblocks by being run in the first place.
AV is like an airbag. It's there to help protect you once you've crashed, it does nothing to help you avoid the crash in the first place.
While I agree that MSE is better than nothing (and possibly better than competing anti-virus software), I would much rather MS fix the problems that necessitate anti-virus in the first place.
They can't. The problems that need an AV to solve are in the user, not the software.
However, all things being equal, I think Linux does have a greater level of security out of the box than any Microsoft product.
How ? What features and capabilities make it better ?
Most of the Linux boxes that I have seen that are rooted are due to poor management (open SSH with very weak passwords, failing to review logs, etc.), and not actual exploits.
The vast majority of Windows machines are "rooted" due to "poor management". Usually this involves end users running binaries from unknown sources in some fashion.
MS syadmins on the other hand, have a harder job to perform and even a great sysadmin can find themselves facing a nasty 0-day exploit against their systems regardless of well they update and maintain their systems.
Actually it's not difficult. The proportion of Windows "exploits" that don't rely on the end user to do something ignorant and/or stupid is vanishingly small.
The iPad might not be the best tool for other reasons (check out the corresponding iPhone adapter linked in TFS), but it's not for the lack of a real keyboard.
The iPad's onscreen keyboard is painful if you have to type anything that isn't straight alpha characters. Anything involving punctuation, special characters, or lots of numbers - *especially* when they're mixed in with regular alpha characters - is an exercise in frustration. I can't even imagine what would drive someone to prefer an iPad over a laptop or netbook for interacting with anything that's likely to be on the other end of a serial cable, but I'm sure it must have been deeply traumatising.
Slashdot Mirror
If "dangerous weapons" had been allowed to law-abiding citizens 9/11 would never have happened.
Absolutely it would have. There just would have been more dead people before the planes hit.
Your history is off too. The VMS roots are even on their face only very lightly there (no code, they just hired a kernel team composed significantly of ex-VMS kernelfolk and some aspects of the VMS design went in), the BSD roots are hardly there at all, and the OS/2 roots were predominant.
Er, no. In fact, the VMS roots were so clear (hardly surprising given Microsoft basically hired the whole team responsible for designing VMS to build NT from scratch) that DEC sued them about it and won a settlement.
The OS/2 roots are nonexistant, because there aren't any. OS/2 was a monolithic, x86 only, single user, non-SMP capable, 16-bit OS with zero security capabilities. Windows NT was a modular, portable, multiuser, pervasively-multithreaded SMP-capable, 32-bit OS with extensive ACL-based security.
Outside of an API personality for running text mode OS/2 applications and a HPFS IFS driver (which Microsoft owned anyway), there's essentially nothing in common whatsoever between OS/2 and NT. The idea that NT is somehow descended from OS/2 is simply flat-out false.
We also have people talking about Windows XP as if it were descended from Windows 1.0 and not OS/2.
Windows XP (or any other version of NT) is in no way a descendant of OS/2. Even a cursory examination of their architectures should make that abundantly clear. Indeed, you'd struggle to find ways they were similar outside of a high-level API for text-mode applications.
Windows NT is the product that would have been OS/2 if not for the famous "divorce". However, it was a completely new and independent codebase, and no released version of OS/2 is in any way derived from it, nor do they share any common ancestry (which, again, becomes completely obvious as soon as you compare the architectures of the two).
The old classic phrase from the 80's is the major example: "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run."
I challenge you to find a single released version of Lotus that was intentionally broken by a released version of DOS.
How does that solve the problem?
It doesn't completely solve it, it "forces" the so-called "silent majority" to indicate their preference.
Recall that in British elections there is no such thing as a write-in candidate or other method of giving a non-standard opinion. In particular, it is impossible to differentiate between expressing that you are equally happy (status quo - others may decide on details irrelevant to you) and equally unhappy (impotence - you'd rather something else which is unavailable) with any of the above.
Sure there is. It's called a donkey vote. Ie: an invalid ballot.
A 99% turnout with 70% of ballots invalid sends a vastly more understandable message than a 30% voter turnout.
What kind of woman has several abortions without it being a (convenient) form of birth control?
The kind that has a lot of sex and doesn't want many - if any - children. At least one of the women I am thinking of also has 3 kids and they struggle to get by as it is.
A condom is convenient. The pill is convenient. Even the morning-after pill is mostly convenient, depending on how badly the side affects hit.
An abortion is not convenient. The only people who say they are, are the people who have zero right to make any judgement at all, because the closest they've knowingly even been to someone who's had one is spitting on them outside of a clinic.
Most of them don't believe in abortion as a convenient form of birth control, though.
I've never met anyone who thinks abortion is a convenient form of birth control, including women who have had several of them.
Contraception is much easier, safer, and cheaper for the mother than abortion, even if you do think abortion is grand.
It's also far from perfect.
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest.
[...]
Now, about the difference between IVF and abortion... IVF is not abortion.
I am fascinated to hear how you've managed to justify that little mental disconnect to yourself. What's the moral difference between creating an embryo in a test tube and then destroying it, and creating an embryo in a uterus and then destroying it ? By what measure can destroying an embryo that was almost certainly an accident be considered a greater crime than deliberately creating dozens (if not hundreds) of them with the absolute foreknowledge they would nearly all be destroyed (ie: creating them to destroy them) ?
Australia's online banking systems are actually really good. Better than anything I've seen in the USA.
Australia's banking systems are so far ahead of America's it's not even funny - and that's before even getting into the absolutely bonkers US credit system.
Never said there was anything unusual about it, in fact as we both pointed out it's quiet "usual".
I think you might be reading my comment with the wrong inflection. When I wrote it, I was trying to point out it's not unusual for banks to do this everywhere, not just Australia.
As I was trying to point out, this is how Australian banks like to rip people off. Not only do they take 2% of a transaction when it's completed in a foreign currency (we are one of the _few_ nations where this is done, let alone the norm) [...]
In what countries is this not normal (or any of the other fees you mention, for that matter) ?
How do you distinguish a voter who abstains in protest from a voter who is happy with the status quo?
Personally I think this is a problem that is solved as much as is possible by compulsory voting, which is why I'm a strong supporter of it.
Australia's banks must be pretty bad if people trust PayPal more.
Based on my experiences in Australia, the UK, Switzerland and the USA, Australian banks are _excellent_, relatively speaking.
This is just another aspect of a recent media beat-up of the banks in Australia, spurred on by sob stories about people irresponsibly over-extended in their mortgages. Most people have no concept of how lucky they are in Australia, from a banking perspective.
It's next to impossible to find a credit (or debit) card that will not charge a minimum of 2% on top for foreign currency transactions.
Just a point that there's nothing unusual at all about Australian banks doing this, and certainly all the banks I've ever used while living abroad did exactly the same thing (though the exact amount obviously varies).
I was fortunate enough back in the day to get a Wizard Credit Card, however, which has no additional fees or charges - nor exchange rate padding - for foreign transactions. Hands down the best way to get money out of the country. I'm amazed whoever-it-was that bought Wizard hasn't shut it down.
Any effective security procedures from locking down services to tightening up code to remove vulnerabilities.
For example ?
Because, while some jobs leave our country, goods made in their country are cheaper. If shipping a job to India lowers the average wage here by 10% but the price of goods goes down by 20%, that's a net gain.
Not when the price of goods stays the same because the cost savings are going into bigger profit margins and an executive's bonus.
What our nation must come to grips with is that the world has scarce resources and we cannot attempt to put so many social guarantees into law, especially federal law, without eventually suffering economic catastrophe.
"So many" ? The USA probably has the fewest "social guarantees" written into law in the Western world. Protection for workers is practically nonexistent, the welfare system is pitiful and "healthcare" is a joke.
Only for distribution, downloading can not be make illegal. You can not expect consumers to be responsible for the crimes of the merchant.
It is most certainly a crime to knowingly receive stolen goods, and downloading the latest blockbuster movie or song from thepiratebay is absolutely going to be subject to the same logic.
They could have built AV software into the OS before other vendors started selling a product or before Windows gained monopoly influence or they could have implemented security procedures to make AV unnecessary.
What "security procedures" ?
What MS is doing here is first sell you a lacking product (lacking in safety) [...]
What is (or was) it lacking ?
Viruses exploit software defects produced by Microsoft.
Which defects ?
It's obvious that MS will not ship products that are inherently safe from viruses due to bad programming.
It's obvious that *no-one can* ship products[0] that are inherently safe from viruses (due to bad programming or anything else).
Idon't have to pay extra for seat belts when I buy a new car, unless I want belts that perform better to accommodate some unusually bad driving I do. OS security should be the same.
This is nearly a good analogy. AVs are a lot like seatbelts, but the analogy to OS security is not protecting you in a crash, it's avoiding it in the first place. Seatbelts do nothing to prevent you from having a crash. Similarly, AVs do nothing to prevent you from doing all the things that break or circumvent OS security. [0]By which I mean general purpose OSes.
I would argue that it is proactive, as in it scans things BEFORE they are run, not after.
It's reactive, because by the time the AV has a chance to do anything, the program in question has already made it past the biggest security roadblocks by being run in the first place.
AV is like an airbag. It's there to help protect you once you've crashed, it does nothing to help you avoid the crash in the first place.
Security should NOT be considered "separate" from the operating system.
AV software is not there to provide security. It's there to provide a last ditch safety option when the OS's security has been circumvented.
AV software has the same relationship to OS security as airbags have to crash avoidance.
While I agree that MSE is better than nothing (and possibly better than competing anti-virus software), I would much rather MS fix the problems that necessitate anti-virus in the first place.
They can't. The problems that need an AV to solve are in the user, not the software.
Since they did not proactively address security, [...]
Please elaborate on how they could have done so.
However, all things being equal, I think Linux does have a greater level of security out of the box than any Microsoft product.
How ? What features and capabilities make it better ?
Most of the Linux boxes that I have seen that are rooted are due to poor management (open SSH with very weak passwords, failing to review logs, etc.), and not actual exploits.
The vast majority of Windows machines are "rooted" due to "poor management". Usually this involves end users running binaries from unknown sources in some fashion.
MS syadmins on the other hand, have a harder job to perform and even a great sysadmin can find themselves facing a nasty 0-day exploit against their systems regardless of well they update and maintain their systems.
Actually it's not difficult. The proportion of Windows "exploits" that don't rely on the end user to do something ignorant and/or stupid is vanishingly small.
The iPad might not be the best tool for other reasons (check out the corresponding iPhone adapter linked in TFS), but it's not for the lack of a real keyboard.
The iPad's onscreen keyboard is painful if you have to type anything that isn't straight alpha characters. Anything involving punctuation, special characters, or lots of numbers - *especially* when they're mixed in with regular alpha characters - is an exercise in frustration. I can't even imagine what would drive someone to prefer an iPad over a laptop or netbook for interacting with anything that's likely to be on the other end of a serial cable, but I'm sure it must have been deeply traumatising.