1 - Buy yourself a gun...Americans think that having more killing machines magically makes their country safer, and it helps them to walk around saying "I'll put a cap in your ass".
I can tell this will be mentioned later when we get to grammar and television. I always cringe when I see this party line. Here is the easy, overquoted answer. If it is against the law to own guns then only the criminals will own guns. I don't own a gun, I don't feel the need to own a gun, but I have the right to own one. Then again, we could also look at other countries that have followed your implied advice and see what happened to their crime rates and so on.
2 - Put on 25 stone Heh. I'm not in great shape, I'm actually a little underweight. I weight 135 lbs (or 61.23kg) and I am 5'10"-ish (or 1.8 meters). Yes there are a large number of overweight people in this country, but when you make general absolute points you have to expect to be wrong. I don't eat at Burger King, I eat a waffle maybe once a year (though my fiance like them and will have one or two a week), and generally I try to eat in a healthy manner. I say generally because I don't pay attention 100% of the time and because "healthy" depends on which statistics you look at.
3 - Learn the lingo Hmm, personally I don't recall ever saying "shucks" or "asswipe". I won't get into a grammar war though, because I am definatly not a grammatist. I even make up words. But people don't make negative comments about my parentage every time I open my mouth and deliver baseless diatribes, so I guess that puts me at least one step in front of you.
4 - Throw away all maps, history books, etc. Sorry, that missing comma was driving me nuts. I studied world history in college, along with ancient life, early literature, and a dozen other subjects that I have very little interest in. Last time I checked I took those courses because it was a requirement. That means each student I saw everyday had also taken or was going to take similar classes to those. Not to mention classes during highschool and even earlier. I'm not a huge geography buff, obviously you know a few things that I don't. Like the boundaries of Poland over the past hundred years, something they desperately need your assistance with since they themselves could not decide on the matter.
5 - Become totally irrational and nonsensical Well, I'm ignoring the first three sentances as they don't make any solid points and are generally nonsensical. Maybe it is irrational of me to expect a rational argument at this point. Or one that makes sense. Note that rational and sensical are not necesarally the same and that i also have a penchant for mispelling the word necessarally:).
6 - Sue everyone you meet Obviously you added the exageration to make a point, so I will ignore the absolute impossibility of suing everyone I meet. They don't make enough money. While I agree that litigation is getting rather extreme in this country, I feel the need to explain that I have never sued anyone in my life. Oh, and I have a job. Err..., nothing really to argue here, just another opinion that does not belong in a debate or as a supporting argument to a claim as wild as the one implied by your post.
7 - Get a "shrink" I believe you meant to preface this with "I need to". Seriously though, was this supposed to make sense? Ill-founded comments like this leave me with nothing to argue and only display, in even greater detail, your complete lack of knowledge concerning the topic at hand. Attempting to deliever such a statement only serves to make your point when you are not, in fact, acting in the very way you are declaiming.
8 - Watch abysmal TV Returning to the first point and the quoted phrase therein, I feel the need to ask just which educational programs and incisive documentaries include "I'll put a cap in your ass". Perhaps, instead
Just in case no one else noticed this, figured I would point it out. The parent points out that thy are unfamiliar with the two languages and also evaluates them as {their list here} languages.
The article wasn't that long, took all of half a minute to read. It boils down to:
1. Earlier law states entities may create their own telco groups (close enough, I don't have that window open anymore) 2. Local and city governments are sub-parts of the state government 3. The government doesn't count as an entity in part 1 4. Therefore: Local and city governments do not have this allowance under the specied law.
3 cheers for all the posters crying about loss of rights and rewriting laws and such, if they had read the article it probably would have been slashdoted by the time I got there:)
EU judgement: Ok, so the DoJ doesn't like the way things went down. Neither do I, perhaps for differant reasons.
I think that in fining MS and then telling them to release the API's, with the ability to charge for said access to the API's, the EU did nothing. Thats right, they made a lot of noise, but in the end they did nothing. Unless you consider forcing MS to open a new market and give some of the profit to the EU courts as something to be proud of.
Consider: EU court system charges MS a fine. Why does the EU government get this money? Was MS competing with the EU government? Does anybody believe the majority of this money will end up in the hands of the companies MS was charged with pushing out of the market? So free check for the EU courts. Next the EU courts tell MS that they have to allow others to use their API's, but MS is allowed to charge a royalty. In other words, thanks for the cash, here's a slap on the wrist and a way to make the money back.
So in the end, the companies that MS has forced out of business are still out of business, the API's they wouldn't release before are now released, but still unavailable to those that cannot afford them, and...?
Maybe next time they will consider not bribing themselves and actually making a decision that will actually help the situation, rather than simply making it look as if they had.
Taking money away from MS won't do a thing towards getting them to compete equally. Opening closed standards and imposing financial monitoring would only be a start to forcing free competition, but it would go a lot further than forcing MS to sell access to (some of) the API's.
In the end I think the EU courts basically took a bribe to look the other way. Except where they had the power to really do somehting ere, they were actually the ones that offered and received the bribe, they just made sure the money was coming out of someone elses pocket.
Amount of Fine:As to the arguments about the amount of the fine, it doesn't matter to MS as long as the amount doesn't affect operating costs. The money will be made back simply by not offering as many special deals on software. MS doesn't even have to raise the retail prices, just the wholesale ones (ie, the real price we pay everywhere but Amazon and BestBuy who carge retail and tell us we're getting a deal).
OSS: No effect. Samba (as an example) hasn't needed the API's this long, and as far as I know they really don't need the Media Player API's. Just a guess.
Considering the costs involved and the time it will take to get it going, I think wireless broadband is going to beat it to the punch. Wireless Broadband should be pretty heavily installed (kind of like early cell companies, but faster) within the next few years, and with 802.16e coming (mobile 802.16) then it will have yet another advantage over Ethernet over power lines.
I'd rather the drunk drivers have to drive a semi into a tower to take my internet out anyways:) At least then they won't do it again...hate to be the poor schmuck that has to go check on that equipment outage though.
I think if the IT market moved slower, say stretched out about 10x, then there would have been room for ethernet over powerlines, but as it is it is I think the window of opportuniy for it has already come and will be gone before they manage to get major systems up and running. I've worked with power companies, I know how long it takes them to do anything.
I mean if an OS upgrade requires 6+ months of wait time (not 6 month after it comes out, 6 months after they decide it might be safe to use) and several to many nuclear plants are still running Windows Nt 4, how long do you think it will take for them to decide to do something that will affect all of their lines?
And then we have to remember that there isn't some kind of magical Spam identification going on, thy are still going to be using the same (or similar) spam filtering tactics to categorize spam...which is a lot of fun because I know my mother doesn't get emaill from on occasion simply because of that...not thast I would be overly woried should my domain get blocked for AOL users:P
So some of those small and medium companies will end up getting blocked imply because they were mis-filtered.
I have to say that I don't agree with the commonly stated idea that all voting by computer screen is bad. I think that many of the points that have been raised are good (possibility of hacking, etc) and that the paper-trail point is a good addition. I'm already planning on writing my first ever letter to my state representatives to suggest some of this and explain some of the problems with the current system.
While I don't believe Open Source is the solution to everything, I'm somewhat surprised that it didn't make better inroads on computer voting. The voting point may have been lost on this simply because DieBold was chosen as a company rather than one that had experience with Open Source (or even 3rd party code reveiw) or a company that had less to hide (see posts involving DieBold ATMs).
I think that the system could be very effective with a few modifications (the idea, not the DieBold system). One, go Open Source. The right to vote is a right for every citizen of the United States. This process should be transparent so that rather than instigate fears that the vote was not counted or could be lost in the computer (purposely or accidentally) the end user could instead be at least more sure that the system was simply a way to tabulate votes since the source was free for anyone to look at. Forget the FUD surrounding Open Source voting, this is like the FUD surrounding handgun laws. Opening the source for voting systems would indeed allow people to view the code and find exploits, BUT rather than just the hackers/whoever having access to the exploits they would also be findable by law abiding citizens, which means they could be fixed. This brings me to two: Two, put the code into a public forum and leave it there for a minimum of 12 months. This should allow time for many people to examine it, test it, tinker with it, atempt to break it. I could see groups of peopple banding together in their spare time. Heck, make it a competition to see who can find the most backdoors, holes, and bugs in the system. Give them extra points if they can provide a clean fix to the specific problem. Three, paper trail and redundancy. Have each vote tabulated not only in the computer but printed to a receipt. Collect the receipts on the way out by way of a locked bin. As people get used to this it might be possible later on to move to a more high-tech method of redundancy, but this should do for now. Place these bins in locked access vaults (still unopened) that require a two or three key access, either at a bank or maybe have something specially built at the courthouse, or somewhere else that is relatively high security. Four, still write the electronic votes to a single removeable memory card or the like. Basically I would see this as a server client deal with the main server receiving the full list of votes from the client voting machines in that room, recording them, then writing the results to a smartcard or compact flash card. At that point the removeable HDD and the flash card are both delievered to the central location and we have additional redundancy. A simple sticker applied to both could mark which district they come from. Five, when the voting period is concluded, the HDD's and cards should be collected by lectoral area and processed. Anything questionable in the results could be double checkd against the machine readable receipts we created in the earlier steps.
So we have code that is more highly trusted, double redundancy for the electronic count, paper trail as backup, and yet I still feel there should be a better way to solve this, simply because making a machine count 280 million pieces of paper has got to suck...
Never ask the sales person how good their product is, all you'll get is whatever they can spout off the top of their head as the newest sales line.
"Our stuff is great, people love it and can't seem tio live without it" - Every sales person that ever lived
Heck, why bother asking the originating company when you already kn ow what the answer is going to be. 1. The company will say the customers love it, 2. The customers will be pissed off at yet another intrusion and time wasting tactic when all tey want to do is see the content they came to see. This isn't TV ya bastards.
If I remember correctly, Fido is using the 802.16 protocol (WiFi Max) and has client conections somethjing like 2.2Mbps down (not sure about up).
I don't see the big deal with Verizon's rollout in DC, there have been rollouts going on for a while now. China is adding 7-ish cities, Brazil is doing the major ones, etc and so on. Plus I have seen 802.16 receivers capable of doing 72Mbps (thi ain't your ma's dsl line). Sure Verizon may be mobile while 802.16 and 802.16a are fixed point installs, but thats what 802.16e will be fore, mobile application.
I'll grant you years, but millions? Some companies may spend millions creating the next Windows game (and then testing it on 5 million systems and trying not to make Windows crash), but spending millions and having to spend millions are two differant issues. I think that I could put together a profesional rpg for under half a million if I had to pay salaries and we weren't making money off early advertising/collectibles/sponsors/etc.
And considering some of the ideas that have been on the back burner between myself and a few others the last few years, it's entirely possible that we could make the game pay for itself almost before it came out, without charging anyone to buy it:)
According to the Department of Treasury on their.gov website, the public debt was $4,692,749,910,013.32 10 years ago (09/30/1994).
Looking at the yearly figures for public debt, it never experienced a drop during Clinton's administration, in fact over the term of his presidncy it increased by $2 trillion. Granted it has increased a little faster under Bush, at $1.4 trillion, but I am not seeing this magic 10 trillion surplus.
Now, one possibility is that instead of paying down the debt with the surplus it was spent elsewhere with a little extra debt thrown in (in less than a year), but then, considering who was in office at the time, this would not be surprising nor would it be Bush's fault.
Also, generally plural usage of a word denotes multiple occurences. Saying "running 1/2 trillion dollar deficits " with the implication that we have been running deficits of this size is only true if we round up, sometimes by quite a bit.
Next: I was unaware that Bush has been in office for 10 years, and generally re-elections are for 4 years not 5.
BTW have you ever noticed how all Bush does is pander to the stupid? Abortion, let's see, nothing has changed and they've had control for 3 full years. Ever wonder why? They are pandering to the stupid religious right. How about this gay marriage issue. What does the shmuck do? Proposes an amendment (which he knows will never get passed). More pandering. Every day I lose more confidence in the ability of the American citizens to make intelligent decisions about who governs this country.
Heh. heh. Ok, so you are saying he has done nothing on these few points or has at most only played to the public eye, then you continue to basically blame American citizens for not making intelligent decisions, etc.
So in essence, things aren't going your way and it is everyone elses fault? So sorry, next time we will all sit around and let you make our decisions for us, rather than try to think for ourselves...right after we stop looking up information from the source, like looking at the US treasury dept for public debt information.
I'm not supporting the 1.4 trillion increase in public debt or the current president. I think there are more than enough real issues (backed by real numbers) to talk about without dreaming up new ones...
No, I agree that the cost to innocents here should be an issue. However it's possible it was (unlikely, but possible). For all we know the illegal acts could have been costing 5x more than all income coming in, so while some people lose x amount of dollars for being down for that period, several others save 5x in tech costs at beating back the DOS attempts and such.
Then again, it wasn't made clear. I would like to think that they could have made what they were searching for public, but even though they had the data safely away it wouldn't have stopped any perpetrators from taking sudden international vacations before the data was sifted and searched through.
For me this isn't a religious area. I don't like spammers or script kiddies, but I see them more in a disgusted fashion then in some sort of "evil" fashion.
Ok, way to many anti-MS people are getting way to happy about MS showing source code for Media Player. Think about it. Other companies will have the source, leads to other companies being able to take advantage of media Player, leads to more companies relying on Media Player.
The idea here is to allow Quicktime, Real (ugh), etc to compete fairly.
I think the only real solution here is to make Media Player an optional install (it's not yet required by the OS, even if it is tied in firmly) and to not allow MS to force OEMs to install it/not install others. At this point other companies will be able to get their media players installed at the OEM level, ensuring them the same level of competition.
Although, for the record, my new Dell laptop came with MediaPlayer, Real, Quicktime, and some Dell Media thing. So I don't see the issue here, other than being unable to remove MediaPlayer. If I could remove MediaPlayer I don't think there would be an issue.
And I would like to thank everyone who made it possible for me to have a bunch of additional media player software packages to block on my firewall. grr.
Look at it this way, if the police had a search warrant to search your house because their was considerable evidence that the thieves had stopped at your house, and they found the get away car in the garage, or the carefully drawn-out plans, would they not have the right to take these items because it was not in their warrant?
Sorry. Now this situation may have been a little differant, and the FBI had a warrant to search the data (and possibly to temproraralyy move the servers, I haven't seen the warrant and doubt if you had either). Now considering that this company was hosting shell script accts and was overrun with all types of kiddie scripts and script kiddies, and the techs had done nothing about limiting the running scripts (or better yet removing them), and then could not find any data in 2 hours, I think the FBI was right to be a litttle concerned that the techs weren't trying to hard. Removal of the machines was in effect cordoning off the area so that no one would touch the data (ie, login to remove their scirpts, etc).
But you can keep rooting for the script kiddies and spammers, we'll all stand behind you (ignore the snickers)
And these will be even smaller then my handheld....or not. Sure you will be able to manipulate them into differant shap[es in your pocket, but what happens on the day you forget one of your pens? And imagine all the wierd looks you'll be getting at the laundramat when you go insane, not because of the ink splotch, but because of the cost:P
Without a LOT of serious work, you CANNOT draw the conclusion that this new system was the ONLY changed variable
I agree, which is why I never stated a belief that the new system was the ONLY changed variable, and in fact was only attributing part of that 16% to the new system. At no point are population changes factored in, or any of a milion other changes that could have caused part of that drop in crime rate, the task is to large. The only way to get even a decent estimate would to slip next door to a parallel dimension that is like ours to every specific except that they did not purchase the computer system in question.
My point instead is that a result that dramatic requires an equally large change. Whether that change accounted for 10%, 14% or even a change in the general state of mind of the officers in question, it is most likely that the given drop in crime rate can be attributed to the adoption of this system.
I am not in the news, so don't have the same degree of familiarity with spin and manipulation of statistics or stories, and my opinions are only along the lines that this was money well spent (original cost made back by labor savings). Perhaps the crime rate drop should be entirely attributed to something else, I don't know. What I do think that a statitical percentage is difficult to fudge if you use the same population and same guidelines and that a dramatic result is caused by a dramatic change.
It is possible that the numbers reflect a secondary change that came about due to the integration of the system. That changed policies caused better efficiency in crime reduction that weren't the absolute direct result of using the new system. Even so, the system itself would have been the stimulus to these changes and whether they could have occurred on their own is even further from the possible to find from finding whether this system did in fact accont for the change in the crime rate.
If the biggest tactics change was implementation of this system, then it is also the most probable reason for the drop in crime. Considering the size of that drop (16% is not small) it is a safe assumption that a large amount of thaty drop is in fact due to the implementation of this new system. Outreach programs didn't change much, the methods of answering a call (beyond the assistance of the computer) didn't change much, what does that leave? Did 16% of the population move to another city so that the crime rate percantage would stay the same while the numbers would seemingly drop? The article itself states things like the amount of time saved booking people, paperwork, etc. So we could also look at the extra time the officers can now spend on the street as a direct result of this system. Even if the system itself isn't providing the extra information necessary to arrest individuals that may have later added to the number of murders, it is still giving officers more time to go out and answer calls, etc.
And there were direct correlations drawn between the system and other violent crimes, which lead me to believe that the same tactics that are being used against other violent crimes (with the use of this new system) are probably being used to get murderers and near-future murderers off the street. I doubt they have decided to only use the system in solving only one type of situation but not use it in a higher fatality one.
Now I'm sure someone will pick apart my words and argue things like "near-future" murderers and try to say things like I am promoting a police state, but that is just their own ignorance. By near-future murderers I mean people that are arrested for another crime with no clue that they would have murdered someone a week from now. So a gang member gets arrested a week before he would have had a violent confrontation with a rival gang member, or shot someone as he was attempting to steal a car. If people who are breaking the law get arrested faster, or are found faster and arrested, then things like this will happen.
The numbers are there, and while anyone can come up with statistics to say anything, this isn't an MS report to show better TCO, this is percentages based on raw numbers, ie, number of murders in a year.
And while I like the idea of outreach programs and such, (from the article) saying that all of the money should have gone to the families of the deceased is just ignorant. I think outreach and police together are the solution, outreach is a slower solution and had it been implemented much earlier perhaps it could have kept the numbers down to the number that was achieved last year. And the system has basically paid for itself in labor cost savings and such, while giving away the money would have had only two affects; 1) made people feel a little better (unless they noticed the price the city placed on their family members life) and 2) made a politician look good.
The system has paid for itself, and even if all it did was help with labor costs, it is worth it because it will keep cops on the street more, cutting down on time filling out paperwork. And those time savings are hard fact as well.
I found myself less informed after reading that article, less intelligent perhaps as well.
First of all, anyone that intends to write an article about a "new" software engineering theory or theoretical application needs to make sure they not only understand what they are talking about, but they also choose to collect quotes from people who know what they are talking about. Here's a hint, if the person says "leverages" in a serious tone of voice they are either a sales-person or only received information from the sales team.
Now, beyond the other comments I could add, such as bad definitions of the framework, and the authors inability to name more than 2 examples of languages available to interact with that framework, there seems to be a large problem with the research content. There isn't any.
I could likely spend 20 to 30 minutes researching background informaiton on the internet and still have a more solid article, simply because I would have real information.
The information provided in this article appears to be the results of carefully skimming sales brochures. There is no real information on the processes involved, reverse engineering, or numbers invilved in terms of performance. We find out that there are "...billions of paths..." but this is just marketing talk, obvious for it's lack of detail. Reverse engineering is detailed as something used by hackers (in the newer, negative sense) to find holes in code. There is no mention of the other side, ie reverse engineering old software when the original developers are not available and no one felt documentation or up-to-date source code was necessary, among many other valid and legal reasons for reverse engineering. There is a brief comment about the extra resource usage, but it is considered negligable (in comparison to...?) and in fact this process is also mentioned as having no negative impact. tanstaffl.
All in all this sounds like something that will be overhyped, overused, and in the end more of a pain than anything else. Clueless managers everywhere will demand all of the code use this new and impervious format when there are many easier ways to prevent security loss without the so far unknown problems with this new method (not to mention security holes in the obfuscation methods itself).
Now when people try to reverse engineer code to look for security holes they won't find them because the holes were swept under the carpet. I may stand up for MS more often than deride them, but the kindest way I can say this is that this new method of obscurity is a little less than bright. Just as I wouldn't use anything beta from MS, you can bet that I won't be using this technology either. I prefer solid code, testing, and a solid license. By the time they have finished reverse engineering version 1, the next version will be underway, leaving them just as far behind as before.
A word that is merely descriptive is not a mark and therefore cannot be Trademarked. However, if a descriptive word becomes distinctive it can attain a secondary meaning. Meaning that although the mark is descriptive, it has customer recognition value for a single product/etc. The way a descriptive word gains this second level of meaning is through advertising and long use.
All MS had to do is prove is that it has name recognition to the general public. Once that is proven then the mark is distinctive rather than just descriptive, which falls into the realm of what is allowed to be trademarked.
Windows has gained recognition as a product, whereas windows means either the opening in the wall or type of item from a user interface. So the base meaning we can choose to use would be the interface window. Windows has spent an incrdible amount of money in marketing an advertising, and as such not only do they have name recognition from the general public, but even among a lot of tech people. In fact, many tech people would automatically assume I meant the software from MS if I mentioned "windows enviroment" in a sentance. This distinction is what makes Windows a trademarkeable word.
I just hit up Wikipedia for the heck of it. Here's a quote concerning a trademark becoming generic: "When a mark stops being identified in the public mind with a product's source and instead comes to mean the general class of product, it has become generic and will likely lose protection" - Trademark - See Consumer Protection and Confusion
The point is, as long as MS continues to pump out money and push it's name on the public, the term 'Windows' will continue to be distinctive to their product, ie it will not become generic.
IBM should put together some diff scripts and take a selection of random works from the last 1000 years or two.
I'm sure with even with minimal translation they could come up with some extremely popular pieces of literature that have the same %-age of similar sentances as SCO has shown exist in their code comparisons.
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if there was a great deal of literature that shows a much higher percentage of alikeness(?). Maybe it would also help show a non-technical courtroom the actual (non)-importance and lack of proof that finding a few thousand matching lines (minus header files) out of millions truly is, especially when the subjects are extremely similar (ie, a similar interface to a specific subset of hardware) written in the same language(s), by people trained by a similar school of thought and experience (covers learning by example).
Darnit, I used the letter 'i' as a counter in a loop, descriptive variable names, and half a million other things I learned from C better sue me for copying your code....even if I haven't written C in years...
Ok, I see where your coming from. Technically my home machines could be considered servers, but not by the same classification I think your aiming for.
I agree that software updates shouldn't necessitate reboots, and thats one of the few things I dislike about Norton products (and the bastard format they use for log files) even if it is only once every 6 months to a year.
I guess I took the easy way out on filtering. I use Norton to do incoming and outgoing filtering on my main windows box (2kserver) and ipchains on my linux box, then top that all off with very wierd rules in my switch. I used to not bother putting firewalls or filtering on my other machines (laptops etc) until I noticed recently that somehow I am getting people probing ports on them, despite the fact that the switch doesn't relay any traffic to anything higher than x.x.x.3 on my network...ah well.
The best trick I have is just redirecting traffic from the switch instead of one of my machines. I just forward a bunch of offensive ports to one address on my windows machine, which then turns around and sends a slightly modified version of the packet out to whatever ip address resolves from this weeks target (fbi.gov, rr.com, whoever I feel should get off their butts and make someone stop trying to hit my machines). If nothing else maybe I'll scare off a few script kiddies who see traffic going out to one address and coming back from somewhere completely differant:)
I got to do a lot of research the first time people started bandying this argument about, guess what? Command language terms are legally allowed to be trademarks as long as they fit a certain set of guidelines that make the usage distinct from the original term, guidelines that MS Windows meets.
I'd start naming cars, but it would take to long. I'll leave it at Mustang, Yukon, Canyon, Solstice...
Or candybars: Snickers, Milky Way, Crunch...
Or maybe we're just talking terms that describe the product: Crunch again, Frosted Mini Wheats, etc, etc
In fact, if Windows had not taken Lindows to court, they could have been found to be in violation of the laws for legal protection of a Trademark by not protecting it.
Wikipedia has lots more info on Trademarks, including a little story about XEROX being forced to run commercials to tell people to call it "copying" instead of "XEROXing" because the "XEROXing" term was genericizing their trademark. Genericized trademark
OK, I run both, but lets do to one of my Windows Boxes what you do to your Linux box: 1. Disable unnecessary services - darnit, I already did this and check only after major installs, but consider it ten minutes if you have to google any of them 2. Configure iptables - Ok, not quite the same, but I installed norton and configured it to ask first on just about everything 3. Updates - ok, this one took a while, luckily I had latest service packs handy already, which meant only 3 reboots for norton (argh) 4. Hrm, didn't do this. But my firewall is blocking all traffic that is externally initiated, and only allowing certain trusted applications out. Outlook doesn't render HTML (this was by default in my 2003 install), IE is patched all the way up...etc etc
As far as disabling IIS...no problem. Well, now I don't have ftp or www servers running, but my mail is still going out if thats what you were implying would break...? You realize that IIS is not required during installation, right?
I agree that Outlook (and in fact IE) should not have access to WScript and CScript anymore than any browser should have access to it's OS's scripting engine (running shell scripts for instance) BUT I also have to say that I have only ever had 2 viruses infect my machines, and one of those was from an Apache server for another popular tech website that had been cracked.
But perhaps I should check CERT again, make sure SSH doesn't have a buffer overrun (dude, is it me or does every verion start out with one of these?:P), etc.
Re:Take down a space station
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Space Burial
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Yep, definately not going to switch to satelitte tv now:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still trying to figure out what that cheap MySQL plug was in the middle...
Yep, feeding the troll, but I can't help it.
:).
1 - Buy yourself a gun...Americans think that having more killing machines magically makes their country safer, and it helps them to walk around saying "I'll put a cap in your ass".
I can tell this will be mentioned later when we get to grammar and television.
I always cringe when I see this party line. Here is the easy, overquoted answer. If it is against the law to own guns then only the criminals will own guns. I don't own a gun, I don't feel the need to own a gun, but I have the right to own one. Then again, we could also look at other countries that have followed your implied advice and see what happened to their crime rates and so on.
2 - Put on 25 stone
Heh. I'm not in great shape, I'm actually a little underweight. I weight 135 lbs (or 61.23kg) and I am 5'10"-ish (or 1.8 meters). Yes there are a large number of overweight people in this country, but when you make general absolute points you have to expect to be wrong. I don't eat at Burger King, I eat a waffle maybe once a year (though my fiance like them and will have one or two a week), and generally I try to eat in a healthy manner. I say generally because I don't pay attention 100% of the time and because "healthy" depends on which statistics you look at.
3 - Learn the lingo
Hmm, personally I don't recall ever saying "shucks" or "asswipe". I won't get into a grammar war though, because I am definatly not a grammatist. I even make up words. But people don't make negative comments about my parentage every time I open my mouth and deliver baseless diatribes, so I guess that puts me at least one step in front of you.
4 - Throw away all maps, history books, etc.
Sorry, that missing comma was driving me nuts. I studied world history in college, along with ancient life, early literature, and a dozen other subjects that I have very little interest in. Last time I checked I took those courses because it was a requirement. That means each student I saw everyday had also taken or was going to take similar classes to those. Not to mention classes during highschool and even earlier. I'm not a huge geography buff, obviously you know a few things that I don't. Like the boundaries of Poland over the past hundred years, something they desperately need your assistance with since they themselves could not decide on the matter.
5 - Become totally irrational and nonsensical
Well, I'm ignoring the first three sentances as they don't make any solid points and are generally nonsensical. Maybe it is irrational of me to expect a rational argument at this point. Or one that makes sense. Note that rational and sensical are not necesarally the same and that i also have a penchant for mispelling the word necessarally
6 - Sue everyone you meet
Obviously you added the exageration to make a point, so I will ignore the absolute impossibility of suing everyone I meet. They don't make enough money. While I agree that litigation is getting rather extreme in this country, I feel the need to explain that I have never sued anyone in my life. Oh, and I have a job. Err..., nothing really to argue here, just another opinion that does not belong in a debate or as a supporting argument to a claim as wild as the one implied by your post.
7 - Get a "shrink"
I believe you meant to preface this with "I need to". Seriously though, was this supposed to make sense? Ill-founded comments like this leave me with nothing to argue and only display, in even greater detail, your complete lack of knowledge concerning the topic at hand. Attempting to deliever such a statement only serves to make your point when you are not, in fact, acting in the very way you are declaiming.
8 - Watch abysmal TV
Returning to the first point and the quoted phrase therein, I feel the need to ask just which educational programs and incisive documentaries include "I'll put a cap in your ass". Perhaps, instead
Just in case no one else noticed this, figured I would point it out. The parent points out that thy are unfamiliar with the two languages and also evaluates them as {their list here} languages.
2 points for ignorance!
Somehting like Community Government...
:)
The article wasn't that long, took all of half a minute to read. It boils down to:
1. Earlier law states entities may create their own telco groups (close enough, I don't have that window open anymore)
2. Local and city governments are sub-parts of the state government
3. The government doesn't count as an entity in part 1
4. Therefore: Local and city governments do not have this allowance under the specied law.
3 cheers for all the posters crying about loss of rights and rewriting laws and such, if they had read the article it probably would have been slashdoted by the time I got there
EU judgement:
Ok, so the DoJ doesn't like the way things went down. Neither do I, perhaps for differant reasons.
I think that in fining MS and then telling them to release the API's, with the ability to charge for said access to the API's, the EU did nothing. Thats right, they made a lot of noise, but in the end they did nothing. Unless you consider forcing MS to open a new market and give some of the profit to the EU courts as something to be proud of.
Consider: EU court system charges MS a fine. Why does the EU government get this money? Was MS competing with the EU government? Does anybody believe the majority of this money will end up in the hands of the companies MS was charged with pushing out of the market? So free check for the EU courts. Next the EU courts tell MS that they have to allow others to use their API's, but MS is allowed to charge a royalty. In other words, thanks for the cash, here's a slap on the wrist and a way to make the money back.
So in the end, the companies that MS has forced out of business are still out of business, the API's they wouldn't release before are now released, but still unavailable to those that cannot afford them, and...?
Maybe next time they will consider not bribing themselves and actually making a decision that will actually help the situation, rather than simply making it look as if they had.
Taking money away from MS won't do a thing towards getting them to compete equally. Opening closed standards and imposing financial monitoring would only be a start to forcing free competition, but it would go a lot further than forcing MS to sell access to (some of) the API's.
In the end I think the EU courts basically took a bribe to look the other way. Except where they had the power to really do somehting ere, they were actually the ones that offered and received the bribe, they just made sure the money was coming out of someone elses pocket.
Amount of Fine:As to the arguments about the amount of the fine, it doesn't matter to MS as long as the amount doesn't affect operating costs. The money will be made back simply by not offering as many special deals on software. MS doesn't even have to raise the retail prices, just the wholesale ones (ie, the real price we pay everywhere but Amazon and BestBuy who carge retail and tell us we're getting a deal).
OSS:
No effect. Samba (as an example) hasn't needed the API's this long, and as far as I know they really don't need the Media Player API's. Just a guess.
Considering the costs involved and the time it will take to get it going, I think wireless broadband is going to beat it to the punch. Wireless Broadband should be pretty heavily installed (kind of like early cell companies, but faster) within the next few years, and with 802.16e coming (mobile 802.16) then it will have yet another advantage over Ethernet over power lines.
:) At least then they won't do it again...hate to be the poor schmuck that has to go check on that equipment outage though.
I'd rather the drunk drivers have to drive a semi into a tower to take my internet out anyways
I think if the IT market moved slower, say stretched out about 10x, then there would have been room for ethernet over powerlines, but as it is it is I think the window of opportuniy for it has already come and will be gone before they manage to get major systems up and running. I've worked with power companies, I know how long it takes them to do anything.
I mean if an OS upgrade requires 6+ months of wait time (not 6 month after it comes out, 6 months after they decide it might be safe to use) and several to many nuclear plants are still running Windows Nt 4, how long do you think it will take for them to decide to do something that will affect all of their lines?
And then we have to remember that there isn't some kind of magical Spam identification going on, thy are still going to be using the same (or similar) spam filtering tactics to categorize spam...which is a lot of fun because I know my mother doesn't get emaill from on occasion simply because of that...not thast I would be overly woried should my domain get blocked for AOL users :P
So some of those small and medium companies will end up getting blocked imply because they were mis-filtered.
I have to say that I don't agree with the commonly stated idea that all voting by computer screen is bad. I think that many of the points that have been raised are good (possibility of hacking, etc) and that the paper-trail point is a good addition. I'm already planning on writing my first ever letter to my state representatives to suggest some of this and explain some of the problems with the current system.
While I don't believe Open Source is the solution to everything, I'm somewhat surprised that it didn't make better inroads on computer voting. The voting point may have been lost on this simply because DieBold was chosen as a company rather than one that had experience with Open Source (or even 3rd party code reveiw) or a company that had less to hide (see posts involving DieBold ATMs).
I think that the system could be very effective with a few modifications (the idea, not the DieBold system).
One, go Open Source. The right to vote is a right for every citizen of the United States. This process should be transparent so that rather than instigate fears that the vote was not counted or could be lost in the computer (purposely or accidentally) the end user could instead be at least more sure that the system was simply a way to tabulate votes since the source was free for anyone to look at.
Forget the FUD surrounding Open Source voting, this is like the FUD surrounding handgun laws. Opening the source for voting systems would indeed allow people to view the code and find exploits, BUT rather than just the hackers/whoever having access to the exploits they would also be findable by law abiding citizens, which means they could be fixed. This brings me to two:
Two, put the code into a public forum and leave it there for a minimum of 12 months. This should allow time for many people to examine it, test it, tinker with it, atempt to break it. I could see groups of peopple banding together in their spare time. Heck, make it a competition to see who can find the most backdoors, holes, and bugs in the system. Give them extra points if they can provide a clean fix to the specific problem.
Three, paper trail and redundancy. Have each vote tabulated not only in the computer but printed to a receipt. Collect the receipts on the way out by way of a locked bin. As people get used to this it might be possible later on to move to a more high-tech method of redundancy, but this should do for now. Place these bins in locked access vaults (still unopened) that require a two or three key access, either at a bank or maybe have something specially built at the courthouse, or somewhere else that is relatively high security.
Four, still write the electronic votes to a single removeable memory card or the like.
Basically I would see this as a server client deal with the main server receiving the full list of votes from the client voting machines in that room, recording them, then writing the results to a smartcard or compact flash card. At that point the removeable HDD and the flash card are both delievered to the central location and we have additional redundancy. A simple sticker applied to both could mark which district they come from.
Five, when the voting period is concluded, the HDD's and cards should be collected by lectoral area and processed. Anything questionable in the results could be double checkd against the machine readable receipts we created in the earlier steps.
So we have code that is more highly trusted, double redundancy for the electronic count, paper trail as backup, and yet I still feel there should be a better way to solve this, simply because making a machine count 280 million pieces of paper has got to suck...
Y'think?
Never ask the sales person how good their product is, all you'll get is whatever they can spout off the top of their head as the newest sales line.
"Our stuff is great, people love it and can't seem tio live without it" - Every sales person that ever lived
Heck, why bother asking the originating company when you already kn ow what the answer is going to be. 1. The company will say the customers love it, 2. The customers will be pissed off at yet another intrusion and time wasting tactic when all tey want to do is see the content they came to see. This isn't TV ya bastards.
If I remember correctly, Fido is using the 802.16 protocol (WiFi Max) and has client conections somethjing like 2.2Mbps down (not sure about up).
I don't see the big deal with Verizon's rollout in DC, there have been rollouts going on for a while now. China is adding 7-ish cities, Brazil is doing the major ones, etc and so on. Plus I have seen 802.16 receivers capable of doing 72Mbps (thi ain't your ma's dsl line). Sure Verizon may be mobile while 802.16 and 802.16a are fixed point installs, but thats what 802.16e will be fore, mobile application.
I'll grant you years, but millions? Some companies may spend millions creating the next Windows game (and then testing it on 5 million systems and trying not to make Windows crash), but spending millions and having to spend millions are two differant issues. I think that I could put together a profesional rpg for under half a million if I had to pay salaries and we weren't making money off early advertising/collectibles/sponsors/etc.
:)
And considering some of the ideas that have been on the back burner between myself and a few others the last few years, it's entirely possible that we could make the game pay for itself almost before it came out, without charging anyone to buy it
According to the Department of Treasury on their
Looking at the yearly figures for public debt, it never experienced a drop during Clinton's administration, in fact over the term of his presidncy it increased by $2 trillion. Granted it has increased a little faster under Bush, at $1.4 trillion, but I am not seeing this magic 10 trillion surplus.
Now, one possibility is that instead of paying down the debt with the surplus it was spent elsewhere with a little extra debt thrown in (in less than a year), but then, considering who was in office at the time, this would not be surprising nor would it be Bush's fault.
Also, generally plural usage of a word denotes multiple occurences. Saying "running 1/2 trillion dollar deficits " with the implication that we have been running deficits of this size is only true if we round up, sometimes by quite a bit.
Next: I was unaware that Bush has been in office for 10 years, and generally re-elections are for 4 years not 5.
Heh. heh. Ok, so you are saying he has done nothing on these few points or has at most only played to the public eye, then you continue to basically blame American citizens for not making intelligent decisions, etc.
So in essence, things aren't going your way and it is everyone elses fault? So sorry, next time we will all sit around and let you make our decisions for us, rather than try to think for ourselves...right after we stop looking up information from the source, like looking at the US treasury dept for public debt information.
I'm not supporting the 1.4 trillion increase in public debt or the current president. I think there are more than enough real issues (backed by real numbers) to talk about without dreaming up new ones...
No, I agree that the cost to innocents here should be an issue. However it's possible it was (unlikely, but possible). For all we know the illegal acts could have been costing 5x more than all income coming in, so while some people lose x amount of dollars for being down for that period, several others save 5x in tech costs at beating back the DOS attempts and such.
Then again, it wasn't made clear. I would like to think that they could have made what they were searching for public, but even though they had the data safely away it wouldn't have stopped any perpetrators from taking sudden international vacations before the data was sifted and searched through.
For me this isn't a religious area. I don't like spammers or script kiddies, but I see them more in a disgusted fashion then in some sort of "evil" fashion.
Ok, way to many anti-MS people are getting way to happy about MS showing source code for Media Player. Think about it. Other companies will have the source, leads to other companies being able to take advantage of media Player, leads to more companies relying on Media Player.
The idea here is to allow Quicktime, Real (ugh), etc to compete fairly.
I think the only real solution here is to make Media Player an optional install (it's not yet required by the OS, even if it is tied in firmly) and to not allow MS to force OEMs to install it/not install others. At this point other companies will be able to get their media players installed at the OEM level, ensuring them the same level of competition.
Although, for the record, my new Dell laptop came with MediaPlayer, Real, Quicktime, and some Dell Media thing. So I don't see the issue here, other than being unable to remove MediaPlayer. If I could remove MediaPlayer I don't think there would be an issue.
And I would like to thank everyone who made it possible for me to have a bunch of additional media player software packages to block on my firewall. grr.
Look at it this way, if the police had a search warrant to search your house because their was considerable evidence that the thieves had stopped at your house, and they found the get away car in the garage, or the carefully drawn-out plans, would they not have the right to take these items because it was not in their warrant?
Sorry. Now this situation may have been a little differant, and the FBI had a warrant to search the data (and possibly to temproraralyy move the servers, I haven't seen the warrant and doubt if you had either). Now considering that this company was hosting shell script accts and was overrun with all types of kiddie scripts and script kiddies, and the techs had done nothing about limiting the running scripts (or better yet removing them), and then could not find any data in 2 hours, I think the FBI was right to be a litttle concerned that the techs weren't trying to hard.
Removal of the machines was in effect cordoning off the area so that no one would touch the data (ie, login to remove their scirpts, etc).
But you can keep rooting for the script kiddies and spammers, we'll all stand behind you (ignore the snickers)
And these will be even smaller then my handheld....or not. Sure you will be able to manipulate them into differant shap[es in your pocket, but what happens on the day you forget one of your pens? And imagine all the wierd looks you'll be getting at the laundramat when you go insane, not because of the ink splotch, but because of the cost :P
Without a LOT of serious work, you CANNOT draw the conclusion that this new system was the ONLY changed variable
I agree, which is why I never stated a belief that the new system was the ONLY changed variable, and in fact was only attributing part of that 16% to the new system. At no point are population changes factored in, or any of a milion other changes that could have caused part of that drop in crime rate, the task is to large. The only way to get even a decent estimate would to slip next door to a parallel dimension that is like ours to every specific except that they did not purchase the computer system in question.
My point instead is that a result that dramatic requires an equally large change. Whether that change accounted for 10%, 14% or even a change in the general state of mind of the officers in question, it is most likely that the given drop in crime rate can be attributed to the adoption of this system.
I am not in the news, so don't have the same degree of familiarity with spin and manipulation of statistics or stories, and my opinions are only along the lines that this was money well spent (original cost made back by labor savings). Perhaps the crime rate drop should be entirely attributed to something else, I don't know. What I do think that a statitical percentage is difficult to fudge if you use the same population and same guidelines and that a dramatic result is caused by a dramatic change.
It is possible that the numbers reflect a secondary change that came about due to the integration of the system. That changed policies caused better efficiency in crime reduction that weren't the absolute direct result of using the new system. Even so, the system itself would have been the stimulus to these changes and whether they could have occurred on their own is even further from the possible to find from finding whether this system did in fact accont for the change in the crime rate.
If the biggest tactics change was implementation of this system, then it is also the most probable reason for the drop in crime. Considering the size of that drop (16% is not small) it is a safe assumption that a large amount of thaty drop is in fact due to the implementation of this new system. Outreach programs didn't change much, the methods of answering a call (beyond the assistance of the computer) didn't change much, what does that leave? Did 16% of the population move to another city so that the crime rate percantage would stay the same while the numbers would seemingly drop?
The article itself states things like the amount of time saved booking people, paperwork, etc. So we could also look at the extra time the officers can now spend on the street as a direct result of this system.
Even if the system itself isn't providing the extra information necessary to arrest individuals that may have later added to the number of murders, it is still giving officers more time to go out and answer calls, etc.
And there were direct correlations drawn between the system and other violent crimes, which lead me to believe that the same tactics that are being used against other violent crimes (with the use of this new system) are probably being used to get murderers and near-future murderers off the street. I doubt they have decided to only use the system in solving only one type of situation but not use it in a higher fatality one.
Now I'm sure someone will pick apart my words and argue things like "near-future" murderers and try to say things like I am promoting a police state, but that is just their own ignorance. By near-future murderers I mean people that are arrested for another crime with no clue that they would have murdered someone a week from now. So a gang member gets arrested a week before he would have had a violent confrontation with a rival gang member, or shot someone as he was attempting to steal a car. If people who are breaking the law get arrested faster, or are found faster and arrested, then things like this will happen.
The numbers are there, and while anyone can come up with statistics to say anything, this isn't an MS report to show better TCO, this is percentages based on raw numbers, ie, number of murders in a year.
And while I like the idea of outreach programs and such, (from the article) saying that all of the money should have gone to the families of the deceased is just ignorant. I think outreach and police together are the solution, outreach is a slower solution and had it been implemented much earlier perhaps it could have kept the numbers down to the number that was achieved last year. And the system has basically paid for itself in labor cost savings and such, while giving away the money would have had only two affects; 1) made people feel a little better (unless they noticed the price the city placed on their family members life) and 2) made a politician look good.
The system has paid for itself, and even if all it did was help with labor costs, it is worth it because it will keep cops on the street more, cutting down on time filling out paperwork. And those time savings are hard fact as well.
I found myself less informed after reading that article, less intelligent perhaps as well.
First of all, anyone that intends to write an article about a "new" software engineering theory or theoretical application needs to make sure they not only understand what they are talking about, but they also choose to collect quotes from people who know what they are talking about.
Here's a hint, if the person says "leverages" in a serious tone of voice they are either a sales-person or only received information from the sales team.
Now, beyond the other comments I could add, such as bad definitions of the framework, and the authors inability to name more than 2 examples of languages available to interact with that framework, there seems to be a large problem with the research content. There isn't any.
I could likely spend 20 to 30 minutes researching background informaiton on the internet and still have a more solid article, simply because I would have real information.
The information provided in this article appears to be the results of carefully skimming sales brochures. There is no real information on the processes involved, reverse engineering, or numbers invilved in terms of performance.
We find out that there are "...billions of paths..." but this is just marketing talk, obvious for it's lack of detail. Reverse engineering is detailed as something used by hackers (in the newer, negative sense) to find holes in code. There is no mention of the other side, ie reverse engineering old software when the original developers are not available and no one felt documentation or up-to-date source code was necessary, among many other valid and legal reasons for reverse engineering. There is a brief comment about the extra resource usage, but it is considered negligable (in comparison to...?) and in fact this process is also mentioned as having no negative impact. tanstaffl.
All in all this sounds like something that will be overhyped, overused, and in the end more of a pain than anything else. Clueless managers everywhere will demand all of the code use this new and impervious format when there are many easier ways to prevent security loss without the so far unknown problems with this new method (not to mention security holes in the obfuscation methods itself).
Now when people try to reverse engineer code to look for security holes they won't find them because the holes were swept under the carpet. I may stand up for MS more often than deride them, but the kindest way I can say this is that this new method of obscurity is a little less than bright. Just as I wouldn't use anything beta from MS, you can bet that I won't be using this technology either. I prefer solid code, testing, and a solid license. By the time they have finished reverse engineering version 1, the next version will be underway, leaving them just as far behind as before.
Not sure why I am bothering, but...
A word that is merely descriptive is not a mark and therefore cannot be Trademarked. However, if a descriptive word becomes distinctive it can attain a secondary meaning. Meaning that although the mark is descriptive, it has customer recognition value for a single product/etc. The way a descriptive word gains this second level of meaning is through advertising and long use.
All MS had to do is prove is that it has name recognition to the general public. Once that is proven then the mark is distinctive rather than just descriptive, which falls into the realm of what is allowed to be trademarked.
Windows has gained recognition as a product, whereas windows means either the opening in the wall or type of item from a user interface. So the base meaning we can choose to use would be the interface window. Windows has spent an incrdible amount of money in marketing an advertising, and as such not only do they have name recognition from the general public, but even among a lot of tech people. In fact, many tech people would automatically assume I meant the software from MS if I mentioned "windows enviroment" in a sentance. This distinction is what makes Windows a trademarkeable word.
I just hit up Wikipedia for the heck of it. Here's a quote concerning a trademark becoming generic:
"When a mark stops being identified in the public mind with a product's source and instead comes to mean the general class of product, it has become generic and will likely lose protection" - Trademark - See Consumer Protection and Confusion
The point is, as long as MS continues to pump out money and push it's name on the public, the term 'Windows' will continue to be distinctive to their product, ie it will not become generic.
Here's a thought for counter-suit.
IBM should put together some diff scripts and take a selection of random works from the last 1000 years or two.
I'm sure with even with minimal translation they could come up with some extremely popular pieces of literature that have the same %-age of similar sentances as SCO has shown exist in their code comparisons.
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if there was a great deal of literature that shows a much higher percentage of alikeness(?). Maybe it would also help show a non-technical courtroom the actual (non)-importance and lack of proof that finding a few thousand matching lines (minus header files) out of millions truly is, especially when the subjects are extremely similar (ie, a similar interface to a specific subset of hardware) written in the same language(s), by people trained by a similar school of thought and experience (covers learning by example).
Darnit, I used the letter 'i' as a counter in a loop, descriptive variable names, and half a million other things I learned from C better sue me for copying your code....even if I haven't written C in years...
Ok, I see where your coming from. Technically my home machines could be considered servers, but not by the same classification I think your aiming for.
:)
I agree that software updates shouldn't necessitate reboots, and thats one of the few things I dislike about Norton products (and the bastard format they use for log files) even if it is only once every 6 months to a year.
I guess I took the easy way out on filtering. I use Norton to do incoming and outgoing filtering on my main windows box (2kserver) and ipchains on my linux box, then top that all off with very wierd rules in my switch. I used to not bother putting firewalls or filtering on my other machines (laptops etc) until I noticed recently that somehow I am getting people probing ports on them, despite the fact that the switch doesn't relay any traffic to anything higher than x.x.x.3 on my network...ah well.
The best trick I have is just redirecting traffic from the switch instead of one of my machines. I just forward a bunch of offensive ports to one address on my windows machine, which then turns around and sends a slightly modified version of the packet out to whatever ip address resolves from this weeks target (fbi.gov, rr.com, whoever I feel should get off their butts and make someone stop trying to hit my machines). If nothing else maybe I'll scare off a few script kiddies who see traffic going out to one address and coming back from somewhere completely differant
I got to do a lot of research the first time people started bandying this argument about, guess what? Command language terms are legally allowed to be trademarks as long as they fit a certain set of guidelines that make the usage distinct from the original term, guidelines that MS Windows meets.
I'd start naming cars, but it would take to long. I'll leave it at Mustang, Yukon, Canyon, Solstice...
Or candybars: Snickers, Milky Way, Crunch...
Or maybe we're just talking terms that describe the product: Crunch again, Frosted Mini Wheats, etc, etc
In fact, if Windows had not taken Lindows to court, they could have been found to be in violation of the laws for legal protection of a Trademark by not protecting it.
Wikipedia has lots more info on Trademarks, including a little story about XEROX being forced to run commercials to tell people to call it "copying" instead of "XEROXing" because the "XEROXing" term was genericizing their trademark.
Genericized trademark
OK, I run both, but lets do to one of my Windows Boxes what you do to your Linux box:
:P), etc.
1. Disable unnecessary services - darnit, I already did this and check only after major installs, but consider it ten minutes if you have to google any of them
2. Configure iptables - Ok, not quite the same, but I installed norton and configured it to ask first on just about everything
3. Updates - ok, this one took a while, luckily I had latest service packs handy already, which meant only 3 reboots for norton (argh)
4. Hrm, didn't do this. But my firewall is blocking all traffic that is externally initiated, and only allowing certain trusted applications out. Outlook doesn't render HTML (this was by default in my 2003 install), IE is patched all the way up...etc etc
As far as disabling IIS...no problem. Well, now I don't have ftp or www servers running, but my mail is still going out if thats what you were implying would break...? You realize that IIS is not required during installation, right?
I agree that Outlook (and in fact IE) should not have access to WScript and CScript anymore than any browser should have access to it's OS's scripting engine (running shell scripts for instance) BUT I also have to say that I have only ever had 2 viruses infect my machines, and one of those was from an Apache server for another popular tech website that had been cracked.
But perhaps I should check CERT again, make sure SSH doesn't have a buffer overrun (dude, is it me or does every verion start out with one of these?
Yep, definately not going to switch to satelitte tv now :)