I doubt it matters much. If you gave a person or an organization an A+ rating because of years of great experiences, hearing about a single high-profile failure is unlikely to instantly turn your score into an F (axe murder and child rape being notable exceptions).
Seriously, the rootkit, which statistics say I probably didn't buy, is going to make me forget about my PS2, my last CD player and my camera, which all function pretty darn well?
I'm not saying Sony is the best company or has the best products. I am saying that people who felt strongly enough about them to give them an A+ before the rootkit are not going to suddenly abandon them now.
In some ways, the older games are more entertaining because they leave more to the imagination.
This is all good and fine for RPG/adventure games, but I can't imagine anyone using their imagination whill playing driving and sports games. A 3D environment and good physics help these genres quite a bit.
That's why games like Mario and similar side-scrollers will never get old, even when compared with modern games with graphical marvels.
Did anyone ever imagine a real plumber, real turtles and a real princess? Really? Um... Ok. Maybe it's just a lack of imagination on my part, but I never took more out of these games than what I actually saw on the screen.
1. The first guy to do something gets lots of points
2. Anybody who does a lot of work so I don't have to gets points
3. The definition of hard has less to do whith whether the technology looks challenging and more to do with how long it actually takes people to accomplish. This was not instantaneous with a bunch of people piling on working solutions at the same time. This guy stands alone after a significant period of time. That makes this "hard" in a defacto sense of the word and is definately worth some points.
4. I'm not a Mac user. I'm a Windows user. Of course Mac users love their OS. I don't. After supporting several Mac people and trying to make use of it myself, I've decided I actually dislike it quite a lot (no flames, please, this is just a personal preference). However, I _love_ Mac hardware. I've lusted after the clean, light notebooks and the "cheese grater" G5 desktops are shear design elegance. As a current Mac user, judging this by the fact that you wouldn't want to run Windows is missing the fundimental point that Windows users might like the option of buying great hardware from Apple. From my perspective, this is worth lots of points.
Add em all up and this guy can redeem his points for several rounds of beer should I ever meet him:-)
Like any tool, the fault isn't the tool but the people using it. I've worked in (and helped design) some "cubicles" that were closer to Propst's vision... less a cubicle farm than a garden.
Actually my employer has both a cubicle farm, and a garden. The cubes aren't so bad most of the time. Concentration was an issue when I was a cube dweller, but it's not much better now that they've moved me to an office. People often forget that offices have phones and doors and coworkers know how to use both. That's not even counting email and IM.
But the cubes were bearable mostly because of good coworkers. Jokes could be shared as well as knowledge and people generally liked giving each other a hand.
It isn't always peachy though, and that's where the garden/park comes into play. My workplace is in an office center with about four nice sized buildings surounding a large, well groomed park with two ponds, a stream and lots of benches. When I get frustrated I can slip out for a walk. It's amazingly thereputic, even on a winter day.
I've worked at a lot of different places and had plenty of time in my own office at most of them. I'd always work in a cube with a garden near the building over having my own office if I had a choice.
The only differences between a Windows Mobile PDA and a PDA-sized computer that runs Windows XP are software and hardware support. Since most Windows software and PC hardware assume you're not using a PDA formfactor, even this is less usefull than you would immediately assume.
For example, I've heard this thing might run Halo. Great. How do you control it? Once you add a controller, how portable is it? Yes, you can probably think up some stuff that would be usefull, but along the way I'll bet you reject a whole lot of hardware and software that just don't seem to fit. By contrast, almost everything written for the Windows Mobile platform works great on a mobile device.
I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who had a problem with this article. It's one of the most poorly reasoned evaluation of software I have ever personally seen. The article is best summed up by these two paragraphs near the end:
The folks from ExtremeTech also like the fact that Vista will have many more built-in applications. Isn't this why Microsoft got into trouble with the Department of Justice a while back? Isn't this the kind of thing that has both South Korea and the European Union raking them over the coals? Why, yes. Yes, it is.
Be that as it may, as I sit here looking at my SUSE 10 Linux desktop, I can't help but notice that I have, for free, every software application I could ever want. Advantage: Linux.
In the first paragraph he blasts Microsoft for bundling apps. In the second he praises his Linux distro for bundling so many more. Based on this kind of evaluation, Vista literally can't win.
But even earlier in the article he blasts windows for supporting peripherals that do not yet exist. DirectX10 graphic cards and CableCard support both get dismissed because you can't buy them yet (just as you can't buy Vista). Once again, how can Microsoft possibly fix this; by not providing support for this hardware?
Finally, now that Microsoft can't win by adding software or hardware support, Microsoft can't win by adding features. The guy has dug deep to find a little-advertised networking feature that lets you use ipsec for internal communications. He declares this to be bad. He fails to tell you that you are neither required, nor coerced to use this feature. He fails to mention that you will probably not even know it exists unless A) you run a corporate network and B) you dig deep into the OS to find it. My mind is completely numb trying to comprehend how MS is screwing the customer here. Once again, should they have just left the option out?
This guy hasn't merely set the bar too high for Vista, he's replaced the bar with a sign that says, "still too low." This is only worth reading as a reminder that people who support the right thing are more than capable of doing it in the wrong way.
Example 2 - root password is different on every box. Again on NetWare there is no concept of a box having its own administrator outside of the Directory......they look like a significant step backwards and that Windows looks like a more attractive option.
FYI, in the Windows world all servers except domain contollers have a sperate "root" account on each server. You can use your domain credentials for all member servers, but you still must maintain a seperat Administrator account on each server.
This is not necessarily a bad thing either. It has it's uses.
I laughed when I saw this. We're using M3s right now and they're just not enough for our speciallized apps. The reason we're looking at the HP 9600s is because they use a desktop architecture in a (big) laptop body. This was the best we could find without going to a boutique shop like Alienware.
If Novell would open up technologies like ZENWorks, they might get some real interest.
This is a great observation. We're migrating off of NetWare because of the hassle of maintaining two directories(We also have ADS), amoung other reasons. We'd love to keep ZENWorks, but guess what? You still have to maintain two directories.
My converstations with supporters of this are almost commical.
ZENWorks Supporter (SUP): ZEN supports ADS! ZENWorks Skeptic (Skep): Great! I don't have to support multiple directories! SUP: Well, actually you do, but they sync, so you don't have extra maintenance! Skep: Ok, so I get to do all my administration in ADS, right? SUP: Well, no, you have to use Console One, but they're syncing so you don't have to worry about maintaining seperate user accounts! Skep: So I don't have to worry about eDir logons, right? SUP: well, you actually have to logon to eDir. Skep: But it's clientless, right? SUP: Absolutely! No netware client, you just have to logon to eDir through the ZENWorks client. Skep: How is that clientless? SUP: There's no NetWare client, so it's clientless. Skep: Um. Skep: I've had problems with maintaining two seperate accounts in the past. For example, password complexity, expiration, etc are all handled differently in the two directories and this has led to inconsistant password policy. SUP: ZENworks has some great policy options! Skep: Yes, I understand this, but how do I reconcile eDir's grace logons with ADSs warnings before expiration? This kind of seems like a hassle to me. SUP: You don't need to worry, the directories are synced! The syncing is so good, you won't have any problems. Skep: But I am having problems. SUP: Those aren't really problems. You just don't understand. Skep: I do understand, and I also don't want a client that replaces my Windows logon GINA. SUP: The client is not a problem. You'll like it. Skep: um.
If ZENWorks was fully integrated into ADS and had no seperate logon, we'd use it. ZEN is awesome. But as long as Novell and its supporters fail to see issues with the things that we think are issues, we're going to seek other options.
I'm in the same boat only I'm in IT and our HPs are the massive 9600s. We haven't actually given them to our consultants yet because we're afraid of a revolt over the weight, but they're the only solution we currently have to the revolt over the poor performance of our current laptops.
Power vs. Weight. What do you do? In our case, like yours, this is no pencil replacement issue.
How can such access normally be obtained? Do home users behind firewalls and with no ports open need to worry? How can a vendor fix the claimed local privilege escalation vulnerabilities when they are not informed of the issue?
The answer to the first question is pretty easy. Local access can be gained by the cleaning crew in most buildings, by students in others, and don't forget your friendly neighborhood coworkders. The answer to the second question is just as easy. Spouse, kids, kids friends.
I don't have an answer to the third one, but I know how similar questions get answered when Microsoft is the vendor. The answer is: they have the vulnerability. The vulnerability is bad. They should make a "more secure" operating system.
I think you're attacking the article justifiably, but I think you're also defending the vendor without justification. If they can really be owned by a local user exploit, then that is a serious problem.
This is all good and fine, but what kind of an admin thinks it's ok to set up publicly accessable services without approval?
I mean, seriously, a guy is bright enough to set up the FTP site either on our outside network, on the DMZ or on the inside with a hole punched through the firewall, but he doesn't realize this could be some kind of an issue?
This is probably not a case for mentoring. It's more like a case for the kind of reality check where you're forced to ask, "is this guy really right for this job?" In this case, "me working for him," is more of a case of setting him free to find a job where he'll do less damage as he learns.
Let me put it another way. You're a manager of a grocery store. One of your clerks starts selling steak for a dollar a pound less than you have it marked. He figures the store can sell more this way. He changes the price at the register. He doesnt' bother to tell you about this.
This guy would have to be one hell of a great clerk to get mentoring over fireing.
Note that all this doesn't prevent providing a warning to the admin who did it, that he will be fired next time he does this kind of thing
Or why not just fire him on the spot? I don't know about where you work, but punching a hole through the firewall without proper security measures is a pretty serious thing at my company. Yes, we get a $1M contract, but the next day our employee records and customer list is owned by random hacker #278 who then goes around signing up for VISA cards in everyone's names.
Your "it's ok to go around you because you're not fast enough" methodology works just fine on a multilane highway, but not on a modern corporate network. Admins and users who play fast and loose expose others to danger. Maybe you've never gotten a virus or been hacked and you think it can't happen to you, but we know better. Because of the potential consequences, and because our admins should know about them, the admin who sets up such a server on our network might not get a warning before seperation.
Some people have claimed that is my style when I'm just trying to avoid whole projects springing up that are taking the wrong direction and doing the wrong thing. "Speaking as one person" helps make sure projects actaully meet the needs of the user community.
The user community is very sensitive to change. If one of the admins sets up something "special" for an end user, what are some of the things that can go wrong?
If one of my admins sets up a rogue FTP site "to help a user" then when I find out it's not secure and shut it down, I have to deal with dissatified end user. Then, sometimes, the admin (and the user) will turn around and call me the heavy.
But let's say I leave it up and make sure that admin secures it. Then a whole culture springs up around this FTP site when the server isn't really suitable for the purpose (no redundency, etc). These people ignore, or maybe are ignorant of our corporate HTTP file transfer site which is purpose built for five 9s of file transfer uptime. When the FTP site goes down, everybody loses. I do, my admins do, and most of all, the end-users do.
So basically, I can be a hard ass about admins running around doing their own thing. But have the admins bothered to think about why that is? I know it's a fun part of IT to play and be creative. I highly value very creative people on my staff. But at least come to management and make sure your creativity doesn't conflict with another objective. Try to understand the conflict. Use your creativity a little more to make sure your project can avoid the conflict ("hey boss, why don't we just put FTP services on the HTTP file transfer server?"). Then guess what? We're all "speaking as one voice" but you get your creativity too.
Consumers buying cheap knock-offs instead of pricey designer names? Sure. If they make it white, with a circulare click wheel and call it an Aple iPud. I'll buy one to go along with my Rolux.
Meanwhile, everyone else will think, "I can't use iTunes, the defacto standard for legaal online music, plus my friends won't think I'm cool," and they'll walk down the isle and buy an iPod.
So if you plow enormous sums of money into R&D and manufacturing plants, you don't have any extra costs to add to the unit price? Uh, since when?
There are costs, but not all the costs. Marketing and sales costs disappear, for example
Don't you think it cost Sony a good chunk of change to develop the Blu-Ray standard and retool manufacturing to handle it? Don't you figure that if IBM is asking for money to help build a plant, it probably wasn't cheap?
All this stuff is very expensive, but the costs of these are not spread over the PS3 only. Entire industries are being built on these products from these plants. The reason Merill Lynch spread the BluRay costs only over the PS3 was because there are no other BR products slated for this year. ML said they'd slash the estimated "cost" of the BR disk in half if Sony waited until 2007 when other BR products were expected. In other words, all these estimates are assuming Sony is putting the entire cost of BR R&D into the PS3. If that were true, of course the damn thing would be $350 bucks. But it's not true, at least not as far as Sony sees it. If Sony felt they were paying $350 per BR drive, they would never release this drive with this product.
All those upfront costs have to be recovered somehow. How is this any different from paying licensing royalties?
If I pay one million dollars for R&D for software and then I license it, I might expect to make back many times my R&D costs from my licensees. My price will reflect that. If that licensee was Sony then they might end up paying me many millions of dollars rather than my one million dollar cost.
If Sony spends a million dollars for R&D for software then just uses it to make something and sell it, then they've paid just a million dollars.
The first one is open-ended on how much it would cost Sony. The second one is open ended on how much Sony can make. While it's true that Sony could also lose that million dollars if no one buys their stuff, it's also true that because of their stature in this particular industry, that is not a very big risk.
Sony actually payed for a part of IBM's fab in fishkill, NY... So it's not a relationship like IBM had with apple where apple basically just ordered processors.
So if Sony is basically the "manufacturer" of the Cell processor and the manufacturer of the BluRay drive, the cost to them is way off. They don't have to pay someone else's marketing, sales and profit on these products, only the core cost of actually building the parts.
This is like a short term gasoline shortage we had about a decade ago. Almost all the the companies that sold gas got squeezed because they had to pay high prices to their suppliers yet keep prices as low as possible to the consumer. However, one of the big gasoline sellers happend to also be a big oil company that drilled and refined it's own product. They cleaned up. They were able to undercut the competition by several cents, yet make boatloads of money because their "supplier" "charged" them basically the exact same rate through the whole shortage. It's like they say in the comercial, "we cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to you!" The gas pumb was the middleman and the supplier cut it out by selling gas itself.
Will Sony be able to pull it off? Will Sony be able to be both component supplier and console manufacture and therefore be able to offer superior equipment for a price that undercuts the competition? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Great. Brutal, twitchy combat certainly isn't for everyone. But can you answer me a question or two? If you like a slower paced game where you can relax and explore, can't that be done were your lack of time or money isn't a disadvantage? Does it not concern you in the least that Bob, who bought his character on e-bay, gets advantages that you, a player with great skill and cunning, can only get through long hours of daily play? Does it not concern you that your personal skill will have almost no impact on the outcome of your 1st level character's battles with powerful beasties and 50th level players and NPCs?
I play Battlefield 2 once or twice a week, but my brother plays if almost nightly. My brother has a much larger number of unlocked weapons than I do and it's all related to the time that he spends on the game. Even if our skills were even, he'd be able to take me in a one-on-one match and the sole reason would be because of superior firepower. Now BF2 is a game where skill matters greatly, but I'm still stuck in this play-alot-or-get-beat-by-higher-"levels" crap. It's still close enough for me to keep playing, but I hate that aspect of the game.
Seriously, do you actually like the fact that skill isn't the number one factor in the outcome of your games?
There's a difference between simple knowledge that some people participate in unethical behavior and a video game actually rewarding the unethical behavior.
Perhaps I'm being hypochritical. After all, I shoot people on a regular basis in games. But whereas in real life I'm unlikely to be faced with the kind of decisions I must make in Unreal Tournament, my daughter has a much higher chance of an unethical proffesor making offers he shouldn't.
Once again, I think my daughter has a very strong sense of good ethics and I don't worry about her, but I can't help thinking that the potential in game to shape values and and morals is quite real.
I think this makes the offence so much worse. Since it's plausable that what you see on the screen is what you'll get, then you're far more likely to believe what you see is what you'll get. They can give incrimental improvements in smoothness and texture then when you plunk your money down, you'll find out it isn't what you had thought it would be.
Put another way, If I told you I saw batman today, you'd know it was some kind of joke. But if I told you I saw the president, it's plausible, especially if you live in the DC area like I do. Saying I saw the president wouldn't be a joke. It would be a lie.
fuck! I bought my kid GTA a few years ago and haven't bothered to check back since! I thought it would be okay!!
The other day I heard my 16 year old daughter telling a friend that you can sleep with the proffessor to get a good grade in the Sims 2 University expansion pack. To the best of my knowledge, the thought of this had never occured to her before playing this game. She's got very good morals and a strong sense of ethics, so I don't worry about her, but it sure made me think twice about how video games might affect them.
TW
To the Slashdot crowd: I know there's a humor potential here, but I'd appreciate your respect for my very real daughter. Thanks much
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it matters much. If you gave a person or an organization an A+ rating because of years of great experiences, hearing about a single high-profile failure is unlikely to instantly turn your score into an F (axe murder and child rape being notable exceptions).
Seriously, the rootkit, which statistics say I probably didn't buy, is going to make me forget about my PS2, my last CD player and my camera, which all function pretty darn well?
I'm not saying Sony is the best company or has the best products. I am saying that people who felt strongly enough about them to give them an A+ before the rootkit are not going to suddenly abandon them now.
In some ways, the older games are more entertaining because they leave more to the imagination.
This is all good and fine for RPG/adventure games, but I can't imagine anyone using their imagination whill playing driving and sports games. A 3D environment and good physics help these genres quite a bit.
That's why games like Mario and similar side-scrollers will never get old, even when compared with modern games with graphical marvels.
Did anyone ever imagine a real plumber, real turtles and a real princess? Really? Um... Ok. Maybe it's just a lack of imagination on my part, but I never took more out of these games than what I actually saw on the screen.
TW
1. The first guy to do something gets lots of points
:-)
2. Anybody who does a lot of work so I don't have to gets points
3. The definition of hard has less to do whith whether the technology looks challenging and more to do with how long it actually takes people to accomplish. This was not instantaneous with a bunch of people piling on working solutions at the same time. This guy stands alone after a significant period of time. That makes this "hard" in a defacto sense of the word and is definately worth some points.
4. I'm not a Mac user. I'm a Windows user. Of course Mac users love their OS. I don't. After supporting several Mac people and trying to make use of it myself, I've decided I actually dislike it quite a lot (no flames, please, this is just a personal preference). However, I _love_ Mac hardware. I've lusted after the clean, light notebooks and the "cheese grater" G5 desktops are shear design elegance. As a current Mac user, judging this by the fact that you wouldn't want to run Windows is missing the fundimental point that Windows users might like the option of buying great hardware from Apple. From my perspective, this is worth lots of points.
Add em all up and this guy can redeem his points for several rounds of beer should I ever meet him
TW
Like any tool, the fault isn't the tool but the people using it. I've worked in (and helped design) some "cubicles" that were closer to Propst's vision... less a cubicle farm than a garden.
Actually my employer has both a cubicle farm, and a garden. The cubes aren't so bad most of the time. Concentration was an issue when I was a cube dweller, but it's not much better now that they've moved me to an office. People often forget that offices have phones and doors and coworkers know how to use both. That's not even counting email and IM.
But the cubes were bearable mostly because of good coworkers. Jokes could be shared as well as knowledge and people generally liked giving each other a hand.
It isn't always peachy though, and that's where the garden/park comes into play. My workplace is in an office center with about four nice sized buildings surounding a large, well groomed park with two ponds, a stream and lots of benches. When I get frustrated I can slip out for a walk. It's amazingly thereputic, even on a winter day.
I've worked at a lot of different places and had plenty of time in my own office at most of them. I'd always work in a cube with a garden near the building over having my own office if I had a choice.
TW
The only differences between a Windows Mobile PDA and a PDA-sized computer that runs Windows XP are software and hardware support. Since most Windows software and PC hardware assume you're not using a PDA formfactor, even this is less usefull than you would immediately assume.
For example, I've heard this thing might run Halo. Great. How do you control it? Once you add a controller, how portable is it? Yes, you can probably think up some stuff that would be usefull, but along the way I'll bet you reject a whole lot of hardware and software that just don't seem to fit. By contrast, almost everything written for the Windows Mobile platform works great on a mobile device.
TW
I am thinking its microsoft's answer to the blackberry
I was thinking, "you have go to be kidding," then I realized you were probably just hoping they'd have to shut their doors due to patent disputes.
Either way, I got a good laugh out of it.
TW
-No keyboard at a time with mobile computing is moving to keyboards: check
-It's basically a big PDA at a time when the PDA market is on it's death bead: check
-It's not a phone at a time when the smartphone market is growing rapidly: check
Either Microsoft knows something nobody else does, they're just playing a niche for incrimental revenue, or, well, I don't know. I don't get it.
TW
But even earlier in the article he blasts windows for supporting peripherals that do not yet exist. DirectX10 graphic cards and CableCard support both get dismissed because you can't buy them yet (just as you can't buy Vista). Once again, how can Microsoft possibly fix this; by not providing support for this hardware?
Finally, now that Microsoft can't win by adding software or hardware support, Microsoft can't win by adding features. The guy has dug deep to find a little-advertised networking feature that lets you use ipsec for internal communications. He declares this to be bad. He fails to tell you that you are neither required, nor coerced to use this feature. He fails to mention that you will probably not even know it exists unless A) you run a corporate network and B) you dig deep into the OS to find it. My mind is completely numb trying to comprehend how MS is screwing the customer here. Once again, should they have just left the option out?
This guy hasn't merely set the bar too high for Vista, he's replaced the bar with a sign that says, "still too low." This is only worth reading as a reminder that people who support the right thing are more than capable of doing it in the wrong way.
TW
Example 2 - root password is different on every box. Again on NetWare there is no concept of a box having its own administrator outside of the Directory... ...they look like a significant step backwards and that Windows looks like a more attractive option.
FYI, in the Windows world all servers except domain contollers have a sperate "root" account on each server. You can use your domain credentials for all member servers, but you still must maintain a seperat Administrator account on each server.
This is not necessarily a bad thing either. It has it's uses.
TW
I laughed when I saw this. We're using M3s right now and they're just not enough for our speciallized apps. The reason we're looking at the HP 9600s is because they use a desktop architecture in a (big) laptop body. This was the best we could find without going to a boutique shop like Alienware.
TW
If Novell would open up technologies like ZENWorks, they might get some real interest.
This is a great observation. We're migrating off of NetWare because of the hassle of maintaining two directories(We also have ADS), amoung other reasons. We'd love to keep ZENWorks, but guess what? You still have to maintain two directories.
My converstations with supporters of this are almost commical.
ZENWorks Supporter (SUP): ZEN supports ADS!
ZENWorks Skeptic (Skep): Great! I don't have to support multiple directories!
SUP: Well, actually you do, but they sync, so you don't have extra maintenance!
Skep: Ok, so I get to do all my administration in ADS, right?
SUP: Well, no, you have to use Console One, but they're syncing so you don't have to worry about maintaining seperate user accounts!
Skep: So I don't have to worry about eDir logons, right?
SUP: well, you actually have to logon to eDir.
Skep: But it's clientless, right?
SUP: Absolutely! No netware client, you just have to logon to eDir through the ZENWorks client.
Skep: How is that clientless?
SUP: There's no NetWare client, so it's clientless.
Skep: Um.
Skep: I've had problems with maintaining two seperate accounts in the past. For example, password complexity, expiration, etc are all handled differently in the two directories and this has led to inconsistant password policy.
SUP: ZENworks has some great policy options!
Skep: Yes, I understand this, but how do I reconcile eDir's grace logons with ADSs warnings before expiration? This kind of seems like a hassle to me.
SUP: You don't need to worry, the directories are synced! The syncing is so good, you won't have any problems.
Skep: But I am having problems.
SUP: Those aren't really problems. You just don't understand.
Skep: I do understand, and I also don't want a client that replaces my Windows logon GINA.
SUP: The client is not a problem. You'll like it.
Skep: um.
If ZENWorks was fully integrated into ADS and had no seperate logon, we'd use it. ZEN is awesome. But as long as Novell and its supporters fail to see issues with the things that we think are issues, we're going to seek other options.
TW
I saw weblogic, I saw HP and I saw "power brick"
I'm in the same boat only I'm in IT and our HPs are the massive 9600s. We haven't actually given them to our consultants yet because we're afraid of a revolt over the weight, but they're the only solution we currently have to the revolt over the poor performance of our current laptops.
Power vs. Weight. What do you do? In our case, like yours, this is no pencil replacement issue.
TW
How can such access normally be obtained? Do home users behind firewalls and with no ports open need to worry?
How can a vendor fix the claimed local privilege escalation vulnerabilities when they are not informed of the issue?
The answer to the first question is pretty easy. Local access can be gained by the cleaning crew in most buildings, by students in others, and don't forget your friendly neighborhood coworkders. The answer to the second question is just as easy. Spouse, kids, kids friends.
I don't have an answer to the third one, but I know how similar questions get answered when Microsoft is the vendor. The answer is: they have the vulnerability. The vulnerability is bad. They should make a "more secure" operating system.
I think you're attacking the article justifiably, but I think you're also defending the vendor without justification. If they can really be owned by a local user exploit, then that is a serious problem.
TW
This is all good and fine, but what kind of an admin thinks it's ok to set up publicly accessable services without approval?
I mean, seriously, a guy is bright enough to set up the FTP site either on our outside network, on the DMZ or on the inside with a hole punched through the firewall, but he doesn't realize this could be some kind of an issue?
This is probably not a case for mentoring. It's more like a case for the kind of reality check where you're forced to ask, "is this guy really right for this job?" In this case, "me working for him," is more of a case of setting him free to find a job where he'll do less damage as he learns.
Let me put it another way. You're a manager of a grocery store. One of your clerks starts selling steak for a dollar a pound less than you have it marked. He figures the store can sell more this way. He changes the price at the register. He doesnt' bother to tell you about this.
This guy would have to be one hell of a great clerk to get mentoring over fireing.
TW
Note that all this doesn't prevent providing a warning to the admin who did it, that he will be fired next time he does this kind of thing
Or why not just fire him on the spot? I don't know about where you work, but punching a hole through the firewall without proper security measures is a pretty serious thing at my company. Yes, we get a $1M contract, but the next day our employee records and customer list is owned by random hacker #278 who then goes around signing up for VISA cards in everyone's names.
Your "it's ok to go around you because you're not fast enough" methodology works just fine on a multilane highway, but not on a modern corporate network. Admins and users who play fast and loose expose others to danger. Maybe you've never gotten a virus or been hacked and you think it can't happen to you, but we know better. Because of the potential consequences, and because our admins should know about them, the admin who sets up such a server on our network might not get a warning before seperation.
TW
Some people have claimed that is my style when I'm just trying to avoid whole projects springing up that are taking the wrong direction and doing the wrong thing. "Speaking as one person" helps make sure projects actaully meet the needs of the user community.
The user community is very sensitive to change. If one of the admins sets up something "special" for an end user, what are some of the things that can go wrong?
If one of my admins sets up a rogue FTP site "to help a user" then when I find out it's not secure and shut it down, I have to deal with dissatified end user. Then, sometimes, the admin (and the user) will turn around and call me the heavy.
But let's say I leave it up and make sure that admin secures it. Then a whole culture springs up around this FTP site when the server isn't really suitable for the purpose (no redundency, etc). These people ignore, or maybe are ignorant of our corporate HTTP file transfer site which is purpose built for five 9s of file transfer uptime. When the FTP site goes down, everybody loses. I do, my admins do, and most of all, the end-users do.
So basically, I can be a hard ass about admins running around doing their own thing. But have the admins bothered to think about why that is? I know it's a fun part of IT to play and be creative. I highly value very creative people on my staff. But at least come to management and make sure your creativity doesn't conflict with another objective. Try to understand the conflict. Use your creativity a little more to make sure your project can avoid the conflict ("hey boss, why don't we just put FTP services on the HTTP file transfer server?"). Then guess what? We're all "speaking as one voice" but you get your creativity too.
Consumers buying cheap knock-offs instead of pricey designer names? Sure. If they make it white, with a circulare click wheel and call it an Aple iPud. I'll buy one to go along with my Rolux.
Meanwhile, everyone else will think, "I can't use iTunes, the defacto standard for legaal online music, plus my friends won't think I'm cool," and they'll walk down the isle and buy an iPod.
TW
Microsoft PlaysForSure digital music standard
That word does not mean what you think it means
Sure it does. It means the same thing as "FairPlay" or "Patriot Act." I'm sure they'll stop using 'em when we stop falling for 'em.
TW
So if you plow enormous sums of money into R&D and manufacturing plants, you don't have any extra costs to add to the unit price? Uh, since when?
There are costs, but not all the costs. Marketing and sales costs disappear, for example
Don't you think it cost Sony a good chunk of change to develop the Blu-Ray standard and retool manufacturing to handle it? Don't you figure that if IBM is asking for money to help build a plant, it probably wasn't cheap?
All this stuff is very expensive, but the costs of these are not spread over the PS3 only. Entire industries are being built on these products from these plants. The reason Merill Lynch spread the BluRay costs only over the PS3 was because there are no other BR products slated for this year. ML said they'd slash the estimated "cost" of the BR disk in half if Sony waited until 2007 when other BR products were expected. In other words, all these estimates are assuming Sony is putting the entire cost of BR R&D into the PS3. If that were true, of course the damn thing would be $350 bucks. But it's not true, at least not as far as Sony sees it. If Sony felt they were paying $350 per BR drive, they would never release this drive with this product.
All those upfront costs have to be recovered somehow. How is this any different from paying licensing royalties?
If I pay one million dollars for R&D for software and then I license it, I might expect to make back many times my R&D costs from my licensees. My price will reflect that. If that licensee was Sony then they might end up paying me many millions of dollars rather than my one million dollar cost.
If Sony spends a million dollars for R&D for software then just uses it to make something and sell it, then they've paid just a million dollars.
The first one is open-ended on how much it would cost Sony. The second one is open ended on how much Sony can make. While it's true that Sony could also lose that million dollars if no one buys their stuff, it's also true that because of their stature in this particular industry, that is not a very big risk.
TW
Sony actually payed for a part of IBM's fab in fishkill, NY... So it's not a relationship like IBM had with apple where apple basically just ordered processors.
So if Sony is basically the "manufacturer" of the Cell processor and the manufacturer of the BluRay drive, the cost to them is way off. They don't have to pay someone else's marketing, sales and profit on these products, only the core cost of actually building the parts.
This is like a short term gasoline shortage we had about a decade ago. Almost all the the companies that sold gas got squeezed because they had to pay high prices to their suppliers yet keep prices as low as possible to the consumer. However, one of the big gasoline sellers happend to also be a big oil company that drilled and refined it's own product. They cleaned up. They were able to undercut the competition by several cents, yet make boatloads of money because their "supplier" "charged" them basically the exact same rate through the whole shortage. It's like they say in the comercial, "we cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to you!" The gas pumb was the middleman and the supplier cut it out by selling gas itself.
Will Sony be able to pull it off? Will Sony be able to be both component supplier and console manufacture and therefore be able to offer superior equipment for a price that undercuts the competition? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
TW
Glad you got modded up. That would be a nice upgrade.
TW
Great. Brutal, twitchy combat certainly isn't for everyone. But can you answer me a question or two? If you like a slower paced game where you can relax and explore, can't that be done were your lack of time or money isn't a disadvantage? Does it not concern you in the least that Bob, who bought his character on e-bay, gets advantages that you, a player with great skill and cunning, can only get through long hours of daily play? Does it not concern you that your personal skill will have almost no impact on the outcome of your 1st level character's battles with powerful beasties and 50th level players and NPCs?
I play Battlefield 2 once or twice a week, but my brother plays if almost nightly. My brother has a much larger number of unlocked weapons than I do and it's all related to the time that he spends on the game. Even if our skills were even, he'd be able to take me in a one-on-one match and the sole reason would be because of superior firepower. Now BF2 is a game where skill matters greatly, but I'm still stuck in this play-alot-or-get-beat-by-higher-"levels" crap. It's still close enough for me to keep playing, but I hate that aspect of the game.
Seriously, do you actually like the fact that skill isn't the number one factor in the outcome of your games?
TW
If you think that ignorance is the best policy...
There's a difference between simple knowledge that some people participate in unethical behavior and a video game actually rewarding the unethical behavior.
Perhaps I'm being hypochritical. After all, I shoot people on a regular basis in games. But whereas in real life I'm unlikely to be faced with the kind of decisions I must make in Unreal Tournament, my daughter has a much higher chance of an unethical proffesor making offers he shouldn't.
Once again, I think my daughter has a very strong sense of good ethics and I don't worry about her, but I can't help thinking that the potential in game to shape values and and morals is quite real.
TW
I think this makes the offence so much worse. Since it's plausable that what you see on the screen is what you'll get, then you're far more likely to believe what you see is what you'll get. They can give incrimental improvements in smoothness and texture then when you plunk your money down, you'll find out it isn't what you had thought it would be.
Put another way, If I told you I saw batman today, you'd know it was some kind of joke. But if I told you I saw the president, it's plausible, especially if you live in the DC area like I do. Saying I saw the president wouldn't be a joke. It would be a lie.
TW
Computer games aren't supposed to teach values!?
fuck! I bought my kid GTA a few years ago and haven't bothered to check back since! I thought it would be okay!!
The other day I heard my 16 year old daughter telling a friend that you can sleep with the proffessor to get a good grade in the Sims 2 University expansion pack. To the best of my knowledge, the thought of this had never occured to her before playing this game. She's got very good morals and a strong sense of ethics, so I don't worry about her, but it sure made me think twice about how video games might affect them.
TW
To the Slashdot crowd: I know there's a humor potential here, but I'd appreciate your respect for my very real daughter. Thanks much