Yes, Harlan can be difficult, but he can also be gracious and charming, depending on which side of the bed he stepped off that morning. I've walked out of some of his presentations at SF conventions when he spewed venomous words directed at some of my friends (Iguanacon), and yet he was a smiling, amiable grandfather figure when he met my children at a reading they attended at the Booksmith in San Francisco. They both still talk about what a great fellow he was when they met him. My wife has a much closer relationship with him (he was GoH at a Westercon that she chaired), so she has a different perspective.
But yeah, he's a lot like some Linux fanboys you may have met on/.
And note that Ellison himself acknowledges the debt he owes to other writers like Frank M. Robinson (The Glass Inferno, The Dark Beyond The Stars, The Power, Waiting, The Donor, etc.) in the introduction and dedication to "Gentleman Junkie." Ellison lived on Robinson's couch in Chicago for months and months while he was researching and writing all the juvenile delinquent/gangbanger stories in that collection, before he sold it and moved to Hollywood to make his reputation as a screenwriter. Robinson is one of the most generous souls on the planet, having fed and housed (and edited) dozens of struggling writers over the years. And, oh yeah, he's a pretty damned fantastic writer, too.
The other point (going back to the original topic of TFA) is that is that you can't download and install the Conficker Worm as easily on linux as you can on windows.:-)
Or just apply Windows XP Service Pack 3, which rolls up everything included in SP2 and all security updates released between the two SP releases. Never heard any problems reported with SP3. Then, after re-booting, you have to run Windows Update again to apply all the other updates (including MS08-067, which fixes Conficker) released post-SP3.
Seems like it might be easier just to migrate to Linux.
But if "Grandma" is going to be running Linux, I suppose she can probably get along quite well with OpenOffice 2.4, that comes already set up for her out of the box in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10. Point is kind of moot there.
And point of whole thread is finding a way to avoid Windows worms, and easiest path to success in this is switching to Linux. Problem solved.
You prevent the worm by keeping your system properly updated. Microsoft released a fix way back in October 2008 (See MS08-067, or KB958644 from the MS Knowledgebase). Anyone who ran Windows Update even once since Halloween of last year should be safe from this worm. I had to spend two days updating my network of 700+ workstations to safeguard my employer's computer assets and keep my job, but that's what I am paid to do. Of course, I didn't have to lift a finger to protect my Macintosh or Linux clients. They don't get such nasty colds.
But more than 9 million clueless Windows users apparently couldn't be bothered to do so, and ended up inadvertently joining the Conficker BotNet. Now they are no longer the 0wners of their computers, and have handed over administrative control to the Conficker author, who can send commands to their computers at his/her whim.
OOo 3.0 does require a bit of tweaking to upgrade in 8.10, but there are lots of hints on the user forums, including several step-by-step tutorials, very clearly written. You can't be afraid of opening a terminal session, if you want it to work right, though.
I haven't done this in over a month, and I'm pretty sure that Synaptic should be able to take care of this by now pretty easily. Or, you could just wait another month or so and download Jaunty, which should have OOo 3.0 included as a standard package (timing the release with Intrepid was a sticky problem late last year).
Strange. I've not had any issues getting WiFi to work on my Linux boxes. I dual-boot one between XP and XUbuntu, and it worked great first time out. I have another system booting between Vista/Win7/Intrepid_8.10 and it works just dandy, too under all 3 OS environments. Never had a problem myself, though I have seen many posts in the forums where people complain about WiFi support under different distros of *nux.
I can't be the only one who immediately thought about the warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie where they keep the Ark of the Covenant. You lose something in there, you'll never find it again.
I'm not defending Volt or Microsoft. Hell, I used to work for Volt, many years ago, but would never do so again. I'm just pointing out that the letter was sent by Volt to their temps, not by Microsoft. It is not something that I find particularly surprising, since I know how they operate.
Apparently, this does need to be explained, if you didn't quite grok what I said. Are you suggesting that Microsoft ordered Volt to cut their temp employees' pay by 10% rather than have Volt reduce their overhead charges by the same amount? TFA (and its associated linked article) report that Microsoft is cutting by 10% the amount it pays to temp agencies, but there is no indication that MS told them to cut the temp's hourly rate by that amount. The agency could ease the pain by simply reducing their exhorbitant administrative charges that are often 60%-80% over what they pay their temps. But Volt would never consider that option.
And I don't think that even if Vista had been a smashing success that it would make any bit of difference, given our current global economic collapse. If you haven't yet noticed, the entire financial system is crumbling all around us. A successful release of Vista or even of Windows 7 isn't going to turn things around. We're all going down with this. We just have to adjust our lifestyles to acclimate to the new economic environment. I can envision a future not too far away where life in Redmond won't be all that different from everyday life in Mumbai. Just be glad you have any kind of job at all.
I think you're confused. Where the hell did you hear that Microsoft accepted any bailout money? If they did, why didn't Apple? As far as I know, the companies that have been bailed out are the investment banks on Wall Street, the commercial banks (CitiGroup, BofA, Wells Fargo, etc.), AIG Insurance, Chrysler and General Motors. Merrill Lynch ended up being bought out by Bank of America, Bear Stearns was bought (at $2/share) by JPMorgan/Chase, and Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail (which caused the AIG Bailout, since AIG had insured Lehman Bros. against bankruptcy).
RTFA. MS isn't asking them to take the pay cut. Volt (the temp agency) is doing this. And Vista isn't the real problem with Microsoft, only a part of the problem.
I chatted with a Microsoft employee over the weekend, and while he wasn't among the 1,400 laid off a few weeks ago, he is being transferred from one project to another. Unlike at my job, where the newest employees are the ones being cut, he mentioned that the layoffs at MS are hitting the people with the most seniority (the more expensive workers on the payroll). He also said Union Activists are shamelessly agitating tech workers across the entire Pacific Northwest trying to get them to commit career suicide by unionizing the IT industry, as your post so clearly demonstrates.
Keep waving your sign, Norma Rae, and agitating everyone in sight to stop working and go on strike! That's sure to get our nation back into productive competition with the rest of the world, and boost the United States' economy right into the stratosphere!
It's not a mystery at all. Go read Venezia's blog posts on this topic going back to last summer, and pay special attention to the comments by people who worked with Childs in the past, who all vouch for his integrity and skills as an admin. One of the commenters was Childs' former Supervisor, who says everyone with a brain was leaving the department because they were sick of the Newsome's political appointees who were put in management positions and made it impossible to continue working there. All of the best and brightest had left by the spring of 2008. Childs was simply the last competent person left in the building, and when the newly appointed CIO demanded he turn over to her every password they used for every function in the Department. He refused, and she had him arrested. It was then that she discovered they had no Disaster Recovery Plan except the one that Childs had been developing on his own time (simply because no one else had any idea how to do it). Then Venezia began investigating the Department, found that the CIO had set up a Sharepoint site hosting highly confidential information that was publicly available to anyone in the world who wanted to see it. Then the D.A. posted the usernames and passwords of everyone in SF City Government who had a VPN account, submitting this document as "evidence" of Childs' mischief, and again, made this information public.
I think Childs has a solid case, and the City of San Francisco may have to pay out millions of dollars to compensate him for at least seven months (probably more) sitting in a stinking jail cell unable to make a living or pay his bills while they destroyed his reputation. In the end, I expect Kamala Harris will have to resign over this one case. She certainly won't be re-elected.
To bring more local outrage to the case, bear in mind that the former BART police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man on New Years Day was slapped with only a $3 million bail amount, and was out of jail and back with his family within 24 hours after his bail hearing. And he was free to move around for about a month before he was finally arrested and charged with a crime. He's not rich by any means, but he was a police officer, so you can easily spot the double-standard here.
Terry Childs was arrested last July, immediately slapped with a $5 million bail, and has not yet been given a trial date (though he will have his first hearing on February 27). The asshat District Attorney didn't even know what crime to charge him with for weeks after his arrest, as she gathered evidence to make those charges (evidence which she then published, including the usernames and passwords of every SF City Employee who had a VPN account).
And how many innocent people did Terry Childs murder?
You are correct. Windows 7 (like Vista) is a client OS. The current Microsoft Server OS is Windows Server 2008, and that won't be changed dramatically for a while. Server 2008 R2 is in beta right now (available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers), but isn't expected to be released to market until 2010, probably around the same time Windows 7 will be available in retail outlets.
I worked with four versions of Windows 2000. Professional was just the desktop client. Then there was Windows2000 Server, Windows2000 Advanced Server (which added Windows Cluster Services and was required for building clusters) and Windows2000 Enterprise Server (for large SQL database use, which not only included cluster services, but also very robust support for their flagship RDBMS).
This is, in fact, what Microsoft did with Vista. Every Vista DVD manufactured includes all SKUs of every edition (Home Basic/Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate). They are all there in the DVD you get when you buy Vista, regardless of what you paid. The only difference is the Product Key included with your package.
This is what enabled Microsoft to offer the Instant Upgrade feature so that after you installed your version of Vista, and later decided to upgrade to a different version, all you had to do was click a few links to go to Microsoft's Vista support site, enter your credit card number in the Instant Upgrade wizard, and they would email you a new Product Key that you would enter into your system to instantly unlock all the features of your new version. After changing the product key, you would be prompted to re-boot your computer and then you would have the new version.
Then again, we're talking Fannie Mae here. They couldn't even run their normal business operations competently, blew away BILLIONS of dollars and staffed most of these critical IT positions with H1-B employees who had no loyalty to the organization. And in a previous post, a former Fannie Mae employee said they gave just about everyone root access to all servers in the farm. With a track record like this, what gives you any confidence that they maintained a reliable backup strategy as well?
To hell with tracking down "hackers." The story asserts that after a three year undercover investigation, the operation prevented only $70 million worth of fraud and identity theft (which would have been absorbed by the banks). For cryin' out loud, that's a fucking drop in the bucket! Why the hell couldn't they have directed these resources into investigating THE BANKS THEMSELVES, which have now robbed the American taxpayers of over $700 BILLION in bailout money? Why couldn't they have investigated Bernard Madoff and prevented the loss of $50 BILLION stolen from his investors? Or why did they not investigate this guy http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/01/22/presto-another-fund-manager-disappears%E2%80%A6/ who stole $300 MILLION from other investors?
If their role is to protect citizens from crime, I think the FBI's priorities need to be re-evaluated.
I also have to deal with office politics a lot more than I have to deal with complicated technical issues. I've experienced a similar situation as that in the article, though not involving layoffs. Our favorite manager, the person most responsible for building the IT structure at my office, was screwed by upper management two years ago. Let's call him Rodney. The CIO said straight to his face as he interviewed for a higher position, "As long as you work under me, you'll never get another promotion."
Of course, he believed her and, true to her word, he did not get the promotion. Instead, he even got penalized. So he did the best thing he could think of and transferred to a different job, with no pay increase and no promotion, but worked under a much better CIO. Within one year of his departure, almost all the IT staff who remained in our office found other jobs in Rodney's company. I think there are maybe only two people left here who did not follow Rodney to his new job. Our program is now "doing more with less" because the stupid CIO was a vindictive bitch who treated her own staff like slaves, and foolishly expected them to return her poison with loyalty. She still has her job, but probably not for much longer.
Yeah, I've got my resume floating around the IT job boards, too, but unfortunately, Rodney's office is now fully staffed, and he doesn't have any new positions to fill.
Perhaps this is the real issue...avoiding the sorts of doctors who would be able to figure out his problem. Surely he can afford comprehensive health care coverage.
Remember Gil Amelio? He followed Scully, and proceeded to pull Apple stock down to around $10 a share. That's about the time I should have bought a ton of Apple stock. Too bad my time machine was running Windows NT at the time.
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Yes, Harlan can be difficult, but he can also be gracious and charming, depending on which side of the bed he stepped off that morning. I've walked out of some of his presentations at SF conventions when he spewed venomous words directed at some of my friends (Iguanacon), and yet he was a smiling, amiable grandfather figure when he met my children at a reading they attended at the Booksmith in San Francisco. They both still talk about what a great fellow he was when they met him. My wife has a much closer relationship with him (he was GoH at a Westercon that she chaired), so she has a different perspective.
But yeah, he's a lot like some Linux fanboys you may have met on /.
And note that Ellison himself acknowledges the debt he owes to other writers like Frank M. Robinson (The Glass Inferno, The Dark Beyond The Stars, The Power, Waiting, The Donor, etc.) in the introduction and dedication to "Gentleman Junkie." Ellison lived on Robinson's couch in Chicago for months and months while he was researching and writing all the juvenile delinquent/gangbanger stories in that collection, before he sold it and moved to Hollywood to make his reputation as a screenwriter. Robinson is one of the most generous souls on the planet, having fed and housed (and edited) dozens of struggling writers over the years. And, oh yeah, he's a pretty damned fantastic writer, too.
The other point (going back to the original topic of TFA) is that is that you can't download and install the Conficker Worm as easily on linux as you can on windows. :-)
Or just apply Windows XP Service Pack 3, which rolls up everything included in SP2 and all security updates released between the two SP releases. Never heard any problems reported with SP3. Then, after re-booting, you have to run Windows Update again to apply all the other updates (including MS08-067, which fixes Conficker) released post-SP3.
Seems like it might be easier just to migrate to Linux.
But if "Grandma" is going to be running Linux, I suppose she can probably get along quite well with OpenOffice 2.4, that comes already set up for her out of the box in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10. Point is kind of moot there.
And point of whole thread is finding a way to avoid Windows worms, and easiest path to success in this is switching to Linux. Problem solved.
Uh, yse they did use it. They also re-branded it as something called "Windows Defender."
You prevent the worm by keeping your system properly updated. Microsoft released a fix way back in October 2008 (See MS08-067, or KB958644 from the MS Knowledgebase). Anyone who ran Windows Update even once since Halloween of last year should be safe from this worm. I had to spend two days updating my network of 700+ workstations to safeguard my employer's computer assets and keep my job, but that's what I am paid to do. Of course, I didn't have to lift a finger to protect my Macintosh or Linux clients. They don't get such nasty colds.
But more than 9 million clueless Windows users apparently couldn't be bothered to do so, and ended up inadvertently joining the Conficker BotNet. Now they are no longer the 0wners of their computers, and have handed over administrative control to the Conficker author, who can send commands to their computers at his/her whim.
OOo 3.0 does require a bit of tweaking to upgrade in 8.10, but there are lots of hints on the user forums, including several step-by-step tutorials, very clearly written. You can't be afraid of opening a terminal session, if you want it to work right, though.
I haven't done this in over a month, and I'm pretty sure that Synaptic should be able to take care of this by now pretty easily. Or, you could just wait another month or so and download Jaunty, which should have OOo 3.0 included as a standard package (timing the release with Intrepid was a sticky problem late last year).
Strange. I've not had any issues getting WiFi to work on my Linux boxes. I dual-boot one between XP and XUbuntu, and it worked great first time out. I have another system booting between Vista/Win7/Intrepid_8.10 and it works just dandy, too under all 3 OS environments. Never had a problem myself, though I have seen many posts in the forums where people complain about WiFi support under different distros of *nux.
I can't be the only one who immediately thought about the warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie where they keep the Ark of the Covenant. You lose something in there, you'll never find it again.
I'm not defending Volt or Microsoft. Hell, I used to work for Volt, many years ago, but would never do so again. I'm just pointing out that the letter was sent by Volt to their temps, not by Microsoft. It is not something that I find particularly surprising, since I know how they operate.
Apparently, this does need to be explained, if you didn't quite grok what I said. Are you suggesting that Microsoft ordered Volt to cut their temp employees' pay by 10% rather than have Volt reduce their overhead charges by the same amount? TFA (and its associated linked article) report that Microsoft is cutting by 10% the amount it pays to temp agencies, but there is no indication that MS told them to cut the temp's hourly rate by that amount. The agency could ease the pain by simply reducing their exhorbitant administrative charges that are often 60%-80% over what they pay their temps. But Volt would never consider that option.
And I don't think that even if Vista had been a smashing success that it would make any bit of difference, given our current global economic collapse. If you haven't yet noticed, the entire financial system is crumbling all around us. A successful release of Vista or even of Windows 7 isn't going to turn things around. We're all going down with this. We just have to adjust our lifestyles to acclimate to the new economic environment. I can envision a future not too far away where life in Redmond won't be all that different from everyday life in Mumbai. Just be glad you have any kind of job at all.
I think you're confused. Where the hell did you hear that Microsoft accepted any bailout money? If they did, why didn't Apple? As far as I know, the companies that have been bailed out are the investment banks on Wall Street, the commercial banks (CitiGroup, BofA, Wells Fargo, etc.), AIG Insurance, Chrysler and General Motors. Merrill Lynch ended up being bought out by Bank of America, Bear Stearns was bought (at $2/share) by JPMorgan/Chase, and Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail (which caused the AIG Bailout, since AIG had insured Lehman Bros. against bankruptcy).
RTFA. MS isn't asking them to take the pay cut. Volt (the temp agency) is doing this. And Vista isn't the real problem with Microsoft, only a part of the problem.
I chatted with a Microsoft employee over the weekend, and while he wasn't among the 1,400 laid off a few weeks ago, he is being transferred from one project to another. Unlike at my job, where the newest employees are the ones being cut, he mentioned that the layoffs at MS are hitting the people with the most seniority (the more expensive workers on the payroll). He also said Union Activists are shamelessly agitating tech workers across the entire Pacific Northwest trying to get them to commit career suicide by unionizing the IT industry, as your post so clearly demonstrates.
Keep waving your sign, Norma Rae, and agitating everyone in sight to stop working and go on strike! That's sure to get our nation back into productive competition with the rest of the world, and boost the United States' economy right into the stratosphere!
It's not a mystery at all. Go read Venezia's blog posts on this topic going back to last summer, and pay special attention to the comments by people who worked with Childs in the past, who all vouch for his integrity and skills as an admin. One of the commenters was Childs' former Supervisor, who says everyone with a brain was leaving the department because they were sick of the Newsome's political appointees who were put in management positions and made it impossible to continue working there. All of the best and brightest had left by the spring of 2008. Childs was simply the last competent person left in the building, and when the newly appointed CIO demanded he turn over to her every password they used for every function in the Department. He refused, and she had him arrested. It was then that she discovered they had no Disaster Recovery Plan except the one that Childs had been developing on his own time (simply because no one else had any idea how to do it). Then Venezia began investigating the Department, found that the CIO had set up a Sharepoint site hosting highly confidential information that was publicly available to anyone in the world who wanted to see it. Then the D.A. posted the usernames and passwords of everyone in SF City Government who had a VPN account, submitting this document as "evidence" of Childs' mischief, and again, made this information public.
I think Childs has a solid case, and the City of San Francisco may have to pay out millions of dollars to compensate him for at least seven months (probably more) sitting in a stinking jail cell unable to make a living or pay his bills while they destroyed his reputation. In the end, I expect Kamala Harris will have to resign over this one case. She certainly won't be re-elected.
To bring more local outrage to the case, bear in mind that the former BART police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man on New Years Day was slapped with only a $3 million bail amount, and was out of jail and back with his family within 24 hours after his bail hearing. And he was free to move around for about a month before he was finally arrested and charged with a crime. He's not rich by any means, but he was a police officer, so you can easily spot the double-standard here.
Terry Childs was arrested last July, immediately slapped with a $5 million bail, and has not yet been given a trial date (though he will have his first hearing on February 27). The asshat District Attorney didn't even know what crime to charge him with for weeks after his arrest, as she gathered evidence to make those charges (evidence which she then published, including the usernames and passwords of every SF City Employee who had a VPN account).
And how many innocent people did Terry Childs murder?
You are correct. Windows 7 (like Vista) is a client OS. The current Microsoft Server OS is Windows Server 2008, and that won't be changed dramatically for a while. Server 2008 R2 is in beta right now (available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers), but isn't expected to be released to market until 2010, probably around the same time Windows 7 will be available in retail outlets.
I worked with four versions of Windows 2000. Professional was just the desktop client. Then there was Windows2000 Server, Windows2000 Advanced Server (which added Windows Cluster Services and was required for building clusters) and Windows2000 Enterprise Server (for large SQL database use, which not only included cluster services, but also very robust support for their flagship RDBMS).
This is, in fact, what Microsoft did with Vista. Every Vista DVD manufactured includes all SKUs of every edition (Home Basic/Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate). They are all there in the DVD you get when you buy Vista, regardless of what you paid. The only difference is the Product Key included with your package.
This is what enabled Microsoft to offer the Instant Upgrade feature so that after you installed your version of Vista, and later decided to upgrade to a different version, all you had to do was click a few links to go to Microsoft's Vista support site, enter your credit card number in the Instant Upgrade wizard, and they would email you a new Product Key that you would enter into your system to instantly unlock all the features of your new version. After changing the product key, you would be prompted to re-boot your computer and then you would have the new version.
Dirty cops are still on a different threat level than dirty engineers. Dirty cops have guns.
Then again, we're talking Fannie Mae here. They couldn't even run their normal business operations competently, blew away BILLIONS of dollars and staffed most of these critical IT positions with H1-B employees who had no loyalty to the organization. And in a previous post, a former Fannie Mae employee said they gave just about everyone root access to all servers in the farm. With a track record like this, what gives you any confidence that they maintained a reliable backup strategy as well?
To hell with tracking down "hackers." The story asserts that after a three year undercover investigation, the operation prevented only $70 million worth of fraud and identity theft (which would have been absorbed by the banks). For cryin' out loud, that's a fucking drop in the bucket! Why the hell couldn't they have directed these resources into investigating THE BANKS THEMSELVES, which have now robbed the American taxpayers of over $700 BILLION in bailout money? Why couldn't they have investigated Bernard Madoff and prevented the loss of $50 BILLION stolen from his investors? Or why did they not investigate this guy http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/01/22/presto-another-fund-manager-disappears%E2%80%A6/ who stole $300 MILLION from other investors?
If their role is to protect citizens from crime, I think the FBI's priorities need to be re-evaluated.
I also have to deal with office politics a lot more than I have to deal with complicated technical issues. I've experienced a similar situation as that in the article, though not involving layoffs. Our favorite manager, the person most responsible for building the IT structure at my office, was screwed by upper management two years ago. Let's call him Rodney. The CIO said straight to his face as he interviewed for a higher position, "As long as you work under me, you'll never get another promotion."
Of course, he believed her and, true to her word, he did not get the promotion. Instead, he even got penalized. So he did the best thing he could think of and transferred to a different job, with no pay increase and no promotion, but worked under a much better CIO. Within one year of his departure, almost all the IT staff who remained in our office found other jobs in Rodney's company. I think there are maybe only two people left here who did not follow Rodney to his new job. Our program is now "doing more with less" because the stupid CIO was a vindictive bitch who treated her own staff like slaves, and foolishly expected them to return her poison with loyalty. She still has her job, but probably not for much longer.
Yeah, I've got my resume floating around the IT job boards, too, but unfortunately, Rodney's office is now fully staffed, and he doesn't have any new positions to fill.
Perhaps this is the real issue...avoiding the sorts of doctors who would be able to figure out his problem. Surely he can afford comprehensive health care coverage.
Remember Gil Amelio? He followed Scully, and proceeded to pull Apple stock down to around $10 a share. That's about the time I should have bought a ton of Apple stock. Too bad my time machine was running Windows NT at the time.