Dvorak's article is completely useless. He's concerned with the fact that MS doesn't coddle the media like they once did and that their marketing material is overly pro-corporate (imagine that!) and lacking in punctuation--there was nothing in the article about the OS. I'm not sure how this guy manages to stay employed other than the fact that he's entertaining in his complete lack of relevance.
Also, the cheap vodka/martini/two-olives analogy made no sense...it did make me want a martini though.
I think "friends and networking" deserved its own bullet point (unless it fell under A). I wouldn't have imagined I'd maintain some of the contacts I have to-date, and they've led me to opportunities that would have been difficult to come by otherwise.
Buffer overflows are an unescapable symptom, C is the real problem. Car accidents aren't the problem...steering wheels are.
Maybe the people writing web apps need better training? No matter how safe you make the language, there will be people using it who are inexperienced, unfamiliar, or otherwise uneducated about the nuances of paranoid programming. It's very narrow-sighted to blame the tool.
I don't think it's an issue of an employee wanting to share his data w/ his home PC...after all, that's very convenient from the employee's perspective. It's an issue of employees not understanding the implications of clicking "share" on Google desktop--that being the knowledge that this data must reside on someone's servers, and it definitely isn't the servers that are [supposed to be] protected by the corporate IT staff. Your average corporate network user likely won't have the background/training to realize this, so the act of sharing to their home PC probably won't be a concious act of breaking corporate IT policy.
From the perspective of a CIO or someone trying to protect their corporate network, this is definitely not a joke. If employees have the ability to install this and modify it to share data to Google, given a decent-sized employee base (probably a few hundred would suffice), it's a guarantee that someone will do so. An employee sharing arbitrary, potentially sensitive data to an outside source where no-one is reviewing the process is a nightmare for a IT manager.
WRT the poster above who basically implied we should blindly trust Google with this...THAT is a joke.
but I do think they try to make sure something will slip by once in a while, just to keep it in the public's mind that they need this software, so that they'll keep it installed and pay for upgrades
But which AV company would volunteer for this role? If a single company had a monopoly, this might be believable, but with a healthy competition going on right now in the AV industry, no AV company is going to intentionally let a recognized virus through. They look far better if they can release press that recognizes the quality of their coverage than they would if they were in the headlines as not catching virus X while most other vendors did.
Not to mention the risk factor...I don't believe the benefit of "slipping" on a virus or two would even approach the risk involved if this kind of activity ever leaked to the public. It's a 100% guarantee this would sink the company from the PR alone, not to mention whatever lawsuits would be filed.
I do believe the AV industry will blow threats out of proportion, but I think people who propose that the AV industry actually creates the threat severely underestimate the number of bored/malicious/greedy coders out there who churn this stuff out.
Kind of ties in to the future of anti-virus...AV is moving towards file behavioral analysis to determine a file's viral status since signature detection presents an increasingly serious zero-day problem. Virtualizing a file is a great way to determine behavior, and Intel is working on hardware-assisted virtualization:
It's not like someone took a gun to the artist's head and told him to do it.
I got the impression that was the point of his article...that CC isn't the end-all answer to copyright, though CC-zealots tend to push it that way. I didn't read it as an article saying CC should be buried and forgotten, only that it shouldn't be pushed as the future of copyright. Just as open source is a good idea that's not going away, it also shouldn't be pushed as the ONLY solution for the software industry.
It was a well-written piece providing a balance to those who take extreme view-points WRT copyright.
>in an effort to do the most good with the information we have acquired
Not to be cynical, but I believe that will only apply so far as they are profiting from this program. If this starts to turn into a money loser, any policy that might be costing them a competitive advantage while only gaining them an improved community image will probably be the first to go.
I'm only 1/3rd of the way through it, but up to this point the book has been about execution environments and infection strategies of both existing and theoretical viruses. I bought the book mostly to look at his analysis techniques, it looks like that part comes later. But if you care about a 1/3rd opinion, I've enjoyed everything I've read so far. It's been fascinating to see the different techniques applied to past viruses, you can appreciate the creativity virus writers put into their creations.
Those are just from a quick Google. Then there's the list of Linux and Mac OS X vulnerabilities (take a look around www.cert.org). How could you possibly claim that Linux and Mac OS X "don't get viruses" when any one of those vulnerabilities might be actively exploited. Just because a worm or virus doesn't make the news doesn't mean it's not out there.
I'll be here waiting
Hope I didn't keep you too long. I'm not sure why you're fighting this fight, particularly if you position yourself as someone knowledgeable on IT.
OS X and Linux don't even get viruses.
If you mean viruses and worms in the klez, sircam, or slammer sense, no. But to if you're trying to imply these OS' are impervious to viruses, that would be an incredibly naive thing to say. Particularly for an "Authority on IT Leadership".
To label 17 years worth of relationships as falling into either "exceptional" or "competing in a bullshit competition with each other or otherwise medicore" suggets a black-and-white viewpoint not recognizing the potential in between. I think the true talent lies with those able to utilize the unique strengths of different people. Yeah, some people won't make the cut, but making a judgement along the lines of "17 years of people and 2 qualify as exceptional" is a harsh standard to impose.
I don't think most developers I know would dare to proclaim their code hacker-proof, but I think they would be red-faced just the same were their code publicly exploited. This doesn't show any arrogance on the part of MS, this shows a willingness to admit that their code can be exploited, and a certain humility to allow it to happen in an acknowledged, open forum. I know there is no more open forum than the real world, but when the exploits are out there the engineers can hide behind the Microsoft(tm) name. In this setting, the programming errors had faces and egos to go with them. I think it doubtful the engineers believed they would walk out with no egg on their face (or pie, depending on whether or not you're Bill Gates), so there's a down-to-earth quality to this event that MS doesn't typically show.
It's a monthly thing they do called "Hot Seat" or something like that, where they take a controversial issue, pick a guy who should have a strong inside perspective on it, and drill him with 3 or 4 hard questions.
Couldn't agree with you more. I'm trying to purchase a new phone, my current Samsung is 2 1/2 years old and the battery is about to go. I want the exact same thing you do, a functional clamshell phone that gets the job done. I don't want to fork out another $100 for a camera I'm never going to use or personal organizing software that will never get touched. Hopefully the companies will listen to this kind of feedback....
My soul is proprietary, thank-you-very-much. (Under an exclusive license, at that.;))
We believe parts of your soul have been copied from the intellectual property of SCO. Your friends and family and anyone else you have come in contact with can expect to be hearing from our lawyers.
-Darl
You ever wonder what will happen when everyone gets this service? It's kind of like our local AM station traffic reports that are the standard. "I-75 north is a mess, make sure you get off before Moores Mill," and waddya know, Moores Mill turns into a mess.
I don't know, Moores Mill may have turned into a mess anyhow, hard to say, but I always wonder about these services that are available to everyone that supposedly let you in on some inside secret.
Why the hell did Google let Debenhams brazenly advertise under their competitor's name?
Well, that's what this whole thing is about, isn't it? And what is Google's responsibility here? They shouldn't have to concern themselves with what names might or might not belong to competitors unless the law instructs them to.
Besides, what guidelines would they follow? If a company's proposed search term was trademarked? Like an earlier post mentioned, would a toy company not be allowed to use the search term "playmate"? Who would decide whether or not a company was a competitor?
I don't think Google has any responsibility at all here. And as for being surprised that Debenhams would do that...well, that's a bit naive to expect the free market NOT to do something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Dvorak's article is completely useless. He's concerned with the fact that MS doesn't coddle the media like they once did and that their marketing material is overly pro-corporate (imagine that!) and lacking in punctuation--there was nothing in the article about the OS. I'm not sure how this guy manages to stay employed other than the fact that he's entertaining in his complete lack of relevance. Also, the cheap vodka/martini/two-olives analogy made no sense...it did make me want a martini though.
I think "friends and networking" deserved its own bullet point (unless it fell under A). I wouldn't have imagined I'd maintain some of the contacts I have to-date, and they've led me to opportunities that would have been difficult to come by otherwise.
Buffer overflows are an unescapable symptom, C is the real problem. Car accidents aren't the problem...steering wheels are.
Maybe the people writing web apps need better training? No matter how safe you make the language, there will be people using it who are inexperienced, unfamiliar, or otherwise uneducated about the nuances of paranoid programming. It's very narrow-sighted to blame the tool.
I don't think it's an issue of an employee wanting to share his data w/ his home PC...after all, that's very convenient from the employee's perspective. It's an issue of employees not understanding the implications of clicking "share" on Google desktop--that being the knowledge that this data must reside on someone's servers, and it definitely isn't the servers that are [supposed to be] protected by the corporate IT staff. Your average corporate network user likely won't have the background/training to realize this, so the act of sharing to their home PC probably won't be a concious act of breaking corporate IT policy.
From the perspective of a CIO or someone trying to protect their corporate network, this is definitely not a joke. If employees have the ability to install this and modify it to share data to Google, given a decent-sized employee base (probably a few hundred would suffice), it's a guarantee that someone will do so. An employee sharing arbitrary, potentially sensitive data to an outside source where no-one is reviewing the process is a nightmare for a IT manager.
WRT the poster above who basically implied we should blindly trust Google with this...THAT is a joke.
but I do think they try to make sure something will slip by once in a while, just to keep it in the public's mind that they need this software, so that they'll keep it installed and pay for upgrades
But which AV company would volunteer for this role? If a single company had a monopoly, this might be believable, but with a healthy competition going on right now in the AV industry, no AV company is going to intentionally let a recognized virus through. They look far better if they can release press that recognizes the quality of their coverage than they would if they were in the headlines as not catching virus X while most other vendors did.
Not to mention the risk factor...I don't believe the benefit of "slipping" on a virus or two would even approach the risk involved if this kind of activity ever leaked to the public. It's a 100% guarantee this would sink the company from the PR alone, not to mention whatever lawsuits would be filed.
I do believe the AV industry will blow threats out of proportion, but I think people who propose that the AV industry actually creates the threat severely underestimate the number of bored/malicious/greedy coders out there who churn this stuff out.
I thought this was a pretty amusing article:
Search Marketing Company 180solutions Ranks Seventh On the 2005 Inc. 500 (press release on 180solutions.com web site)
Either Inc. didn't do their research on companies in their top 10, or they truly don't care how the money is made, only that it is made.
Kind of ties in to the future of anti-virus...AV is moving towards file behavioral analysis to determine a file's viral status since signature detection presents an increasingly serious zero-day problem. Virtualizing a file is a great way to determine behavior, and Intel is working on hardware-assisted virtualization:
http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/
Tie the two ideas together, and you might see one of the ways Intel is hoping to use it's virtualization technology.
It's not like someone took a gun to the artist's head and told him to do it.
I got the impression that was the point of his article...that CC isn't the end-all answer to copyright, though CC-zealots tend to push it that way. I didn't read it as an article saying CC should be buried and forgotten, only that it shouldn't be pushed as the future of copyright. Just as open source is a good idea that's not going away, it also shouldn't be pushed as the ONLY solution for the software industry.
It was a well-written piece providing a balance to those who take extreme view-points WRT copyright.
>in an effort to do the most good with the information we have acquired Not to be cynical, but I believe that will only apply so far as they are profiting from this program. If this starts to turn into a money loser, any policy that might be costing them a competitive advantage while only gaining them an improved community image will probably be the first to go.
Doubtful there will be any shortage of vulnerabilities for a while.
I'm only 1/3rd of the way through it, but up to this point the book has been about execution environments and infection strategies of both existing and theoretical viruses. I bought the book mostly to look at his analysis techniques, it looks like that part comes later. But if you care about a 1/3rd opinion, I've enjoyed everything I've read so far. It's been fascinating to see the different techniques applied to past viruses, you can appreciate the creativity virus writers put into their creations.
Cases where it's actually happened:
Slapper
Lion
Scalper
Those are just from a quick Google. Then there's the list of Linux and Mac OS X vulnerabilities (take a look around www.cert.org). How could you possibly claim that Linux and Mac OS X "don't get viruses" when any one of those vulnerabilities might be actively exploited. Just because a worm or virus doesn't make the news doesn't mean it's not out there.
I'll be here waiting
Hope I didn't keep you too long. I'm not sure why you're fighting this fight, particularly if you position yourself as someone knowledgeable on IT.
OS X and Linux don't even get viruses.
If you mean viruses and worms in the klez, sircam, or slammer sense, no. But to if you're trying to imply these OS' are impervious to viruses, that would be an incredibly naive thing to say. Particularly for an "Authority on IT Leadership".
To label 17 years worth of relationships as falling into either "exceptional" or "competing in a bullshit competition with each other or otherwise medicore" suggets a black-and-white viewpoint not recognizing the potential in between. I think the true talent lies with those able to utilize the unique strengths of different people. Yeah, some people won't make the cut, but making a judgement along the lines of "17 years of people and 2 qualify as exceptional" is a harsh standard to impose.
I don't think most developers I know would dare to proclaim their code hacker-proof, but I think they would be red-faced just the same were their code publicly exploited. This doesn't show any arrogance on the part of MS, this shows a willingness to admit that their code can be exploited, and a certain humility to allow it to happen in an acknowledged, open forum. I know there is no more open forum than the real world, but when the exploits are out there the engineers can hide behind the Microsoft(tm) name. In this setting, the programming errors had faces and egos to go with them. I think it doubtful the engineers believed they would walk out with no egg on their face (or pie, depending on whether or not you're Bill Gates), so there's a down-to-earth quality to this event that MS doesn't typically show.
There are few motivations as powerful as public humiliation.
It's a monthly thing they do called "Hot Seat" or something like that, where they take a controversial issue, pick a guy who should have a strong inside perspective on it, and drill him with 3 or 4 hard questions.
Furthermore, it will contribute to the chlorination of the gene pool.
Like and endless supply of always-accessible sexual favors!? Hmmm.....seems I've been had....
I'd venture to say that is your opinion, not some level of enlightenment you have obtained above the rest of humanity.
Couldn't agree with you more. I'm trying to purchase a new phone, my current Samsung is 2 1/2 years old and the battery is about to go. I want the exact same thing you do, a functional clamshell phone that gets the job done. I don't want to fork out another $100 for a camera I'm never going to use or personal organizing software that will never get touched. Hopefully the companies will listen to this kind of feedback....
We believe parts of your soul have been copied from the intellectual property of SCO. Your friends and family and anyone else you have come in contact with can expect to be hearing from our lawyers. -Darl
You ever wonder what will happen when everyone gets this service? It's kind of like our local AM station traffic reports that are the standard. "I-75 north is a mess, make sure you get off before Moores Mill," and waddya know, Moores Mill turns into a mess.
I don't know, Moores Mill may have turned into a mess anyhow, hard to say, but I always wonder about these services that are available to everyone that supposedly let you in on some inside secret.
Well, that's what this whole thing is about, isn't it? And what is Google's responsibility here? They shouldn't have to concern themselves with what names might or might not belong to competitors unless the law instructs them to.
Besides, what guidelines would they follow? If a company's proposed search term was trademarked? Like an earlier post mentioned, would a toy company not be allowed to use the search term "playmate"? Who would decide whether or not a company was a competitor?
I don't think Google has any responsibility at all here. And as for being surprised that Debenhams would do that...well, that's a bit naive to expect the free market NOT to do something like that.