... the use of temps also helps the stock value. When
layoffs occur, stock prices go down. But because contractors are not
officially employees, the company is not required to publicly disclose a large
release of those working in these positions.
"This," West says, "makes the company look
like it is performing better than it actually is. It gives people a
false sense of what's going on in the organization."
When times are bad, Microsoft can lay off hundreds of contingent workers
without a word to the analysts or to shareholders.
See this also, about the practice of firing every consultant after one year,
then hiring them after 100 days of unemployment:
"Those who work neither as
blue- nor orange-badges may wonder why they should care about Microsoft's
practices. The answer is that from day 366 to day 466, Microsoft temps still
get paid. Only the check is written not by Bill Gates, but by the State of
Washington. [unemployment benefits from the state]
As our state government faces budget crisis after budget crisis, there are
legions of temporary workers that regularly go on the dole because their
assignments have ended. Whether a Microsoft employee or not, every Washington
resident pays for the company's unwillingness to put these people on its
payroll.
"And I don't see Yahoo to be the ones to do that."
I agree. To me, the Yahoo people seem completely different from the Google people. Google people respect the needs of others. Google cooperates with the needs of their customers. Google people care for themselves and me at the same time.
My experience is that Yahoo managers are abusers, basically. For me, the feeling of Yahoo is that they think they are more intelligent than me, and that it is entirely acceptable for them to take advantage of some shortcoming or weakness that I might have so that they can make more money.
With Yahoo, I often see advertisements that imply that I'm stupid. One ad I just saw urged me to borrow money to redecorate my home. Another wanted to sell me car insurance, but only if I replied before April 15. With Yahoo, there are lots of "Special Offers". I just saw a link masquerading as a dialog box. When Yahoo shows that it cannot be trusted, then the good services that the company provides become far less valuable to me.
"So let us, as citizens, behave ourselves in a manner like we would have our government govern us. Let's be polite in conversation, concerned for others, honest in our dealings, and willing to do something to make changes when we see something wrong. No, we won't all agree about everything, but we can agree to disagree agreeably."
I agree thoroughly. Send me an email message, and let's talk.
"5. I am not aware of a United States chemical or biological weapons program. Perhaps you could post more information."
I've been reading books about U.S. government activities since I was serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam war. At that time, the government was lying to U.S. citizens about what we were doing at the base at which I was stationed in Thailand. I was shocked that the U.S. government would so easily lie, and I began to be interested in knowing more.
I've put together two articles that collect links about mostly hidden violent U.S. government activities. I've been amazed at one of the responses I've gotten: Most people have very little knowledge of U.S. government violence, even though the U.S. government has killed more than 3,000,000 since the Second World War.
The U.S. government is a world leader in biological weapons, although you don't hear about that much any more.
Try visiting the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command. The site says, "The operational capabilities of the command include the safe, secure, storage of chemical weapons at the eight United States stockpile sites at Anniston Ala., Blue Grass, Ky., Edgewood, Md., Newport, Ind., Pine Bluff, Ark., Pueblo, Colo., Tooele, Utah and Umatillla, Ore." Most of the site is not accessible to people like you and me who pay taxes to support this. The site is written to show only the mostly defensive activities.
However, the U.S. government is heavily involved in EVERY kind of weapons manufacture. For example, see the October 29, 2002 article in The Guardian US weapons secrets exposed.
The response to violence should be to study why it occurs to make sure
that you are not contributing it, and to fix the underlying problems,
rather than engage in more violence. Peace cannot happen overnight. If there have been years of trouble-making, it will take years to correct. Since the present violence in Iraq began more than 50 years ago, it may be necessary to have 50 years of attempts at peace to correct it.
One system I patched still has major problems, but seems faster and more reliable. (Intel 815EEA2 motherboard, 866 MHz P3 processor, WinXP SP1, with Q815411 patch.)
I'm now running a test with a Gigabyte 81EXP motherboard, Intel chipset, 2.53 MHz P4 processor. No results yet.
Windows XP Service Pack 1 causes memory management problems that my experience shows are far,
far worse than Microsoft says. The new 815411
patch seems to fix the problems on the one system on which I have tested
it. The title is "Programs Run Slower After You Install Windows XP SP-1", but that doesn't make sense. Why do they run slower? Because the operating system is trying to recover from memory management errors?
To see the problem, start 20 instances of Mozilla, each with 10 tabs. As you
are doing this, you will find that the responsiveness of the Windows XP system becomes
much slower. Then, when the limit of installed memory is reached, and the
system begins using virtual memory, all instances of Mozilla will crash. After the crashes, the
Windows XP system remains unstable. The instability can only be fixed by
re-booting.
The Slashdot article referenced this article: Service Pack glitch causes system slowdowns (Notice the nonsense subtitle in this article:
"Windows XP SP1 update flaw affects memory-allocating programs".)
Microsoft is apparently afraid that the patch causes more problems, so the patch has limited availability. Also, by making people who want the patch call Microsoft, the company may be collecting information about the problems people are having. It seems from the way the notice of the patch is worded that if you call Microsoft, you may have to pay.
I downloaded the patch from other sources, and found that they all were the same, so that relieved worries of a bad patch.
I support Windows XP for my customers, so I use it, too. I often have 20 instances of Mozilla open, each with several tabs. This works okay until I reach the limit of installed memory. Once the OS begins using virtual memory, the system becomes unstable.
Microsoft Windows operating systems have always been bad at managing memory. The first usable Windows OS was 3.0. It had terrible memory handling.
It's amazing that after all these years Microsoft has not learned how to handle memory allocations.
You say you don't know the situation. There have been a lot of problems with Macromedia bugs. It doesn't matter what eEye said. They were dealing with a political situation, I imagine. They said they had found many more bugs.
Both of these bugs were fixed the same day that eEye told Macromedia about them. That's very different than saying they were fixed the same day anyone found them.
One of my computers was compromised by an attack on a Macromedia vulnerability, long before Macromedia was told the fault existed.
Macromedia is not "dedicated to building secure products", or maybe they are and are not effective at it. Macromedia may be dedicated to fixing bugs when they are told about them.
After Macromedia fixed the bugs, there were still millions of computers that still had the old software and the old vulnerabilities.
Every decryption article I've seen involved knowing what you are looking for. Every cryptographer seems to look for mathematical shortcomings that would not be valid if several algorithms were mixed. Mixing algorithms (say AES and DES) prevents attacking using a knowledge of the underlying mathematics of each algorithm.
It is still possible to try a statistical attack, on anything, of course. But, with mixed algorithms you are preventing an attack using some mathematical weakness that may be discovered in the future.
This is what I'm saying: Mixed algorithms prevent the success of any kind of mathematical analysis that is based on a knowledge of the underlying algorithms.
Slashdot Mirror
In Washington and Oregon, you can apply for unemployment compensation (because you pay taxes).
From the article:
"This," West says, "makes the company look like it is performing better than it actually is. It gives people a false sense of what's going on in the organization."
When times are bad, Microsoft can lay off hundreds of contingent workers without a word to the analysts or to shareholders.
See this also, about the practice of firing every consultant after one year, then hiring them after 100 days of unemployment:
"Those who work neither as blue- nor orange-badges may wonder why they should care about Microsoft's practices. The answer is that from day 366 to day 466, Microsoft temps still get paid. Only the check is written not by Bill Gates, but by the State of Washington. [unemployment benefits from the state]
As our state government faces budget crisis after budget crisis, there are legions of temporary workers that regularly go on the dole because their assignments have ended. Whether a Microsoft employee or not, every Washington resident pays for the company's unwillingness to put these people on its payroll.
From the headline of the Slashdot story: "... Open Source Bill Passess
From the parent comment: "What does 'passess' mean?"
Slashdot editors hav important matters on their minds, and cannot be botherd with unimportant things like the spelling of verbs.
"And I don't see Yahoo to be the ones to do that."
I agree. To me, the Yahoo people seem completely different from the Google people. Google people respect the needs of others. Google cooperates with the needs of their customers. Google people care for themselves and me at the same time.
My experience is that Yahoo managers are abusers, basically. For me, the feeling of Yahoo is that they think they are more intelligent than me, and that it is entirely acceptable for them to take advantage of some shortcoming or weakness that I might have so that they can make more money.
With Yahoo, I often see advertisements that imply that I'm stupid. One ad I just saw urged me to borrow money to redecorate my home. Another wanted to sell me car insurance, but only if I replied before April 15. With Yahoo, there are lots of "Special Offers". I just saw a link masquerading as a dialog box. When Yahoo shows that it cannot be trusted, then the good services that the company provides become far less valuable to me.
"So let us, as citizens, behave ourselves in a manner like we would have our government govern us. Let's be polite in conversation, concerned for others, honest in our dealings, and willing to do something to make changes when we see something wrong. No, we won't all agree about everything, but we can agree to disagree agreeably."
I agree thoroughly. Send me an email message, and let's talk.
"5. I am not aware of a United States chemical or biological weapons program. Perhaps you could post more information."
I've been reading books about U.S. government activities since I was serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam war. At that time, the government was lying to U.S. citizens about what we were doing at the base at which I was stationed in Thailand. I was shocked that the U.S. government would so easily lie, and I began to be interested in knowing more.
I've put together two articles that collect links about mostly hidden violent U.S. government activities. I've been amazed at one of the responses I've gotten: Most people have very little knowledge of U.S. government violence, even though the U.S. government has killed more than 3,000,000 since the Second World War.
The U.S. government is a world leader in biological weapons, although you don't hear about that much any more. Try visiting the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command. The site says, "The operational capabilities of the command include the safe, secure, storage of chemical weapons at the eight United States stockpile sites at Anniston Ala., Blue Grass, Ky., Edgewood, Md., Newport, Ind., Pine Bluff, Ark., Pueblo, Colo., Tooele, Utah and Umatillla, Ore." Most of the site is not accessible to people like you and me who pay taxes to support this. The site is written to show only the mostly defensive activities.
However, the U.S. government is heavily involved in EVERY kind of weapons manufacture. For example, see the October 29, 2002 article in The Guardian US weapons secrets exposed.
The U.S. government has a long history of encouraging and perpetrating violence. For example, see US sent biological weapons to Iraq in 1980s.
I've pulled together some links in two articles: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories and What should be the Response to Violence?
The response to violence should be to study why it occurs to make sure that you are not contributing it, and to fix the underlying problems, rather than engage in more violence. Peace cannot happen overnight. If there have been years of trouble-making, it will take years to correct. Since the present violence in Iraq began more than 50 years ago, it may be necessary to have 50 years of attempts at peace to correct it.
After reading Antiwar.com, here are a few other links I've pulled together: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories
The U.S. government is becoming increasingly corrupt.
More about U.S. government corruption: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories
The principles for which the U.S. was known are being increasingly abandoned.
Mod parent and grandparent up!!!! Excellent ideas.
Brilliant analysis.
Floppy disk RAID. Funnier than any April Fools day joke.
One system I patched still has major problems, but seems faster and more reliable. (Intel 815EEA2 motherboard, 866 MHz P3 processor, WinXP SP1, with Q815411 patch.)
I'm now running a test with a Gigabyte 81EXP motherboard, Intel chipset, 2.53 MHz P4 processor. No results yet.
Best OS review I've ever seen.
Windows XP Service Pack 1 causes memory management problems that my experience shows are far, far worse than Microsoft says. The new 815411 patch seems to fix the problems on the one system on which I have tested it. The title is "Programs Run Slower After You Install Windows XP SP-1", but that doesn't make sense. Why do they run slower? Because the operating system is trying to recover from memory management errors?
To see the problem, start 20 instances of Mozilla, each with 10 tabs. As you are doing this, you will find that the responsiveness of the Windows XP system becomes much slower. Then, when the limit of installed memory is reached, and the system begins using virtual memory, all instances of Mozilla will crash. After the crashes, the Windows XP system remains unstable. The instability can only be fixed by re-booting.
See the Slashdot article: XP Service Pack Slows Programs
The Slashdot article referenced this article: Service Pack glitch causes system slowdowns (Notice the nonsense subtitle in this article: "Windows XP SP1 update flaw affects memory-allocating programs".)
Microsoft is apparently afraid that the patch causes more problems, so the patch has limited availability. Also, by making people who want the patch call Microsoft, the company may be collecting information about the problems people are having. It seems from the way the notice of the patch is worded that if you call Microsoft, you may have to pay.
I downloaded the patch from other sources, and found that they all were the same, so that relieved worries of a bad patch.
Sources:
Neowin
Q815411_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe
Q815411_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe
Q815411_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe
http://www.paricom.com/matt/xphotfix/
I've encountered SERIOUS memory management problems in WinXP SP1. I think the problem is much worse than Microsoft knows.
The parent comment is only +5 now. Mod it to +10!!!
Excellent and totally accurate description.
From the Slashdot story: "A video clip (Windows Media Player required) the construction, operation, and demolition."
A verb an action word. I know verbs minor details to a Slashdot editor, but they important to others of us.
True. LOL.
Exactly. Never underestimate the self-destructiveness of business people.
Record people: Eat a toad in the morning. That way, nothing worse will happen all day.
Not when you are scrambling the bytes in between encryptions. That destroys any possibility of a mathematical attack.
Each different password has a different scrambling, anyway.
I support Windows XP for my customers, so I use it, too. I often have 20 instances of Mozilla open, each with several tabs. This works okay until I reach the limit of installed memory. Once the OS begins using virtual memory, the system becomes unstable.
Microsoft Windows operating systems have always been bad at managing memory. The first usable Windows OS was 3.0. It had terrible memory handling.
It's amazing that after all these years Microsoft has not learned how to handle memory allocations.
Ross,
Here is a better explanation:
#5610902, Mixed algorithms prevent mathematical attacks.
The method I mentioned prevents attacks based on knowing the mathematics of the algorithm.
You say you don't know the situation. There have been a lot of problems with Macromedia bugs. It doesn't matter what eEye said. They were dealing with a political situation, I imagine. They said they had found many more bugs.
Both of these bugs were fixed the same day that eEye told Macromedia about them. That's very different than saying they were fixed the same day anyone found them.
One of my computers was compromised by an attack on a Macromedia vulnerability, long before Macromedia was told the fault existed.
Macromedia is not "dedicated to building secure products", or maybe they are and are not effective at it. Macromedia may be dedicated to fixing bugs when they are told about them.
After Macromedia fixed the bugs, there were still millions of computers that still had the old software and the old vulnerabilities.
Every decryption article I've seen involved knowing what you are looking for. Every cryptographer seems to look for mathematical shortcomings that would not be valid if several algorithms were mixed. Mixing algorithms (say AES and DES) prevents attacking using a knowledge of the underlying mathematics of each algorithm.
It is still possible to try a statistical attack, on anything, of course. But, with mixed algorithms you are preventing an attack using some mathematical weakness that may be discovered in the future.
This is what I'm saying: Mixed algorithms prevent the success of any kind of mathematical analysis that is based on a knowledge of the underlying algorithms.