I know already what will happen. Because it already happened. One of my friends from work already called me with this message. After I was done laughing I explained to him that this is bullshit, showed him why (by guessing his ip from his visits to my site) and told him that he should be using better p2p programs anyway.
I know plenty of people who know next to nothing about computers but who are told by their friends/co-workers were to go. How did you learn about napster? I heard about it from a friend. And I spread the news.
This war of attrition is not happening. P2P use is rising.
Do you know what those stories do about P2P in the news? Educate millions to the existance of P2P. A recent dutch program highlighted the use of Freenet for downloading childporn. Eheh, thank YOU Nova. Wanna make a bet that Freenet saw a spike in the number of downloads that night?
Nah, the MPAA/RIAA are fighting a loosing battle as long as they keep alienating legit buyers. I can watch a ripped movie on any device (like my PSP) and not see any bloody unskippable fbi warnings (I am dutch the fbi got about the same power of me as it got over terrorists (None whatsoever)) and boring ads.
Give us cheap content free of hazzle, iTunes shown the way. Yes the MPAA/RIAA seem to only want to raise the prices on iTunes not extend it with their back catalog.
Noob users who might be scared by this go to their friends who know and tell them the real deal. Have you turned someone to the piracy side today? Resistance is futile, you will be torrented.
Lawyer: Your honor, we want you to award us 1 million dollar in damages for copyright infringement against the defendant.
Jduge: Indeed, do you have any evidence of this charge?
Lawyer: Of course, the defendant visited a website!
Jugge: and?
Lawyer: AND we logged his IP!
Judge: and?
Lawyer: and? your honor I don't understand, we got his IP!!!
Judge: yes but what do you alledge the defendant did.
Lawyer: he visited our site!
Judge: and downloaded copyrighted material wich the original copyright owner did not give him permission to do?
Lawyer: wha? He visited our site!
Judge: That is not actually illegal you know. In fact I can see only one criminal act and that is your site records personal information without a privacy statement.
Reading down it suddenly turns from rumor investigation into a prediction article for what will happen in the "new" economy in 2006. Most of wich I got absolutly no clue whatsoever about so it makes it hard to judge the various predictions.
Myself I think 2006 WILL see a new entry into the computer in the living room market. It is called the PS3 and rumors about that are nowadays so solid it we even have some idea about how it will be done. The PS3 will have an optional addon in the form of a HD wich will contain a version of the linux kernel (no not GNU/Linux, I said kernel) and presumably some kind of userspace software to use it. Cool as booting linux is the usual purpose is to then get a working enviroment.
Note that is NOT clear yet that this addon will turn your PC into a desktop. Merely that it can boot the kernel. Logic would dictate that Sony wouldn't do this without a very good reason, like trying to get a shot at putting the desktop in the living room, but who knows.
It is however an optional extra and this makes it clear that Sony is not exactly making a major push out of it. Unless of course all the really good games require the add-on.
So how does this relate to a Google PC? Well Sony can do this attempt on the back of its regular launch of a new console. The console, sony hopes, will be attractive enough on its own to get into millions of homes. To then add a tiny amount of extra effort and be able to stealthly introduce their own PC like solution into those exact same homes must be nice bonus. It is well known that the asian tech giants are not at all happy with MS dominance on the PC market and would love to get their teeth into it.
So a linux desktop to attack MS where have you heard that before eh? Well don't forget that Sony (if it will truly do this) has two gigantic advantages over such efforts as Lindows. 100% Hardware support. No problem with getting companies to create proper drivers for a tiny marketshare. The team behind the PS3 knows what hardware is inside and could easily write the drivers. One often mentioned problem of Linux swept away in an instant. Oh and I bet it also makes the whole "configuration" a lot easier. There is after all only going to be one.
Second Linux problem? No games. Well for some reason I do not think that buying the Linux addon is going to brick your PS3 and make it impossible to game with it. Another problem of Linux instantly swept away.
Now Google doesn't have anything like that. While its software is "installed" on every pc (A common browser) it is almost impossible for them to PUSH their technology. They certainly can't piggy back it onto anything. The recent deal with opera on the mobile market is perhaps the only way Google can "force" its way onto a computer.
Or put another way, PS3 would be bought for games and the desktop is an extra. GooglePC would be bought for.... Well it would be the same as the Lindows PC. An computer that could be quite good but would never be the real thing. Even such simple things as getting Flash to work would be a killer for a browser PC. So why should a person buy a crippled PC when for a few bucks more they can get one that is a proper windows machine (Security? Yeah like walmart buyers know about that).
There might be another possible avenue of approach and that is to pull an iPod with the GooglePC. Part of Apples success is that it was rich and powerfull enough to make a bet and order the parts for the iPod in such numbers that it could get huge discounts. It is not that the iPod is better then say iRiver or even Creatives offerings. But as shown painfully clear with the iPod Nano, Apple could simply offer more for less. its competitors simply can't put the same hardware inside for the same price.
Apple when it entered the MP3 player market was an accidental giant (Sony/Philips/etc were all asleep at the wheel) who could simply squish all competitors.
Is the PC market similary open? Can a company with enough muzzle simply order a milli
Surveillance cameras are on 24/7 speed cameras only when you speed.
You can easily avoid being recorded by a speed camera. Don't speed. I know, it is a difficult trick to figure out.
Whenever you try a serious conversation about surveillance cameras an idiot like you bring up speed cameras and instantly show that only criminals are afraid of cameras. Nice way to cloud the issue.
IBM is the cool company nowadays. They are hip and happening. Yes pigs are flying when International Business Machines has more fun articles then a home consumer company like MS.
Sun? Geez, the only thing they get in the news for is for licking MS ass. Hardly/. material perhaps you should find a MS fanboy website.
This is linux land greenhorn and IBM is our current pet of the week. I think it is very telling that it is IBM who is involved in all the next gen game consoles and not the likes of Intel or AMD. Both of whom should be really worried IF the cell lives up to Sony's dream and does turn the PS3 into the living room PC.
What I would like to know is how powerfull those IBM chips really are. How can a 360 have such power at such a low price (a fraction of what a similar Intel/AMD chip would cost).
The revolution from Nintendo will also have an IBM powerpc inside according to fairly solid rumors. So for the next console war IBM is pretty much the sure winner.
Bill Gates is scared shitless of tiny countries (cue kiwi's protesting) shifting, everytime some goverment somewhere has looked at opensource for solution MS has send out the big guns.
No this will be intresting. France recently ruled copy protection on DVD's illegal, region encoding is under fire and now MS is going to enforce something that nobody wants but the movie industry? WHY?
I think this could be a big mistake for MS. XP already did poorly, to many people still on 98 or 2k to MS tastes. The last thing they need is for Vista to be even less appealing.
100. Musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a "public performance".
Geez, the music industry is really grabbing every penny it can eh. What about charging a fee on my iPod because I might hum along? Cops patrolling the streets for illegal whistlers?
I hope in 365 days we will have the following story "top 1000 things that happened in 2006 that nobody cared about: 1000 rampaging citizens slaughterd music execs and police cheered them on".
On the subject of wether the PS3 or the Xbox 360 or the revolution would win the next generation war IBM was heared to say "Money money money, were in the money". (If you have been paying attention it is not Sony vs MS vs Nintendo but IBM vs IBM vs IBM. I like a three horse race where there is only 1 horse.
Have you ever visitited a site called distrowatch? [url:http://distrowatch.com/]
There is a shitload of them and while there are a lot of the generic desktop ones you can find *nix like installs for every need. From different hardware platforms to performing just one role to "who the fuck is going to need this" distro's.
Please do not lump the *nix'es together with windows.
Even with the more generic distro's it is still relativly easy to get a very dressed down install. Getting a pure apache server that does not have 1 bit of image capable code in it is not that hard. I do it all the time, if you install X on a webserver I will put an Itanium in your trousers.
Yes of course a Suse or a Mandrake default install will select a lot of defaults. What do you expect? Sadly even the best coders have yet to come with a install CD that can read your mind and choose exactly those packages you want and need.
Is kinda like blaiming car makers for not making cars with 3 seats only because you never plan on carrying four passengers (I would suggest the F1 McClaren, while indeed catering for the 3 seat market, is not a typical car).
If you want a linux/bsd/gnu/* desktop that does only desktop and no server task then you can have it. Same the other way around. Your desktop can be as inclusive or reclusive as you want. Just pick the right distro. QUE DISTRO WAR in 3.....2.....1.....GO
He points out that it is the big shops that buy a lot of machines at once. While home users and small businesses only by 1-3 machines at a time.
Everyone know that actually making a sale is were the real costs are. It is why fastfood places are so keen to supersize you. Yes you get more food for less but the cost to them is not the food, it is getting you into the restaurant in the first place.
Same with computers, having a store/warehouse, a tech support, an inventory and advertising is the real cost and remains pretty much the same wether the customer then buys 1 machine or a thousand. Leaving it easy to conclude that more profit will be made on the 1000 volume sale. (It is also the reason Intel won't sell you a single chip. They only sell them in batches of a 1000 because selling them seperate would make it impossible to generate enough profit.)
Further more I do not get his crap about software being included in small setups vs large setups. I think he is talking about that net send tool (sorry am been on linux to long) wich was used for a while for spam. The one he doesn't mention might have been the personal webserver wich had a worm attack a few years ago that was highly amusing (to a guy not responsible for the windows servers only the real ones).
Well these were security risks not needed for a lot of setups? Well yeah but we are talking MS Windows here. The same MS windows were hardcore servers are vulnerable to the WMF exploit because for some reason a MS SQL server includes image rendering code. And a browser. And a media player. And a instant messenger. And directX and god knows what more.
The knife of MS including everything and the kitchen sink into its OS cuts both ways but is also the MS way. Don't like it, don't use it. It is hardly fair to blame the entire tech industry for the faults of one company.
And that is my real beef with this article. It should have been a rant against MS not computer makers. I never seen a consumer Dell PC that included unneeded features like hardware scsi raid they forgot to tell you about. I WISH!!! How many times have you bought a dirt cheap machine and found they fobbed you with damn pro ECC memory eh?
Blame MS for MS faults and blame users for buying MS. Do not fault Dell for not hacking the shit out of Windows to make it a secure OS.
Oh and the dumbfuck author forgot one tiny little thing. In a number of update EULA's MS gives itself the right to get access to the machine the software is installed on. This is often in clear violation of big industry rules. Banks especially have very strict rules about allowing outsiders (MS) access to their network. It is one of the dirty little secrets that ain't talked about much but you can be damn sure that NO bank is willing to honor those EULA. They would be in serious legal trouble if they did.
So perhaps MS really caters to nobody? Odd then that it still outsells everyone else? Oh well, back to my nice secure Linux machine. At least I know who control the code here [NSA SElinux module: Yes US]
Windows is one OS with 800 bugs, unix/linux/os-x/bsd is a whole collection from a whole slew of different companies.
Only a MS-tool would not instantly spot this. Others have already pointed this out but of course they are just Unix and OS-X and BSD and Linux hippies. Oh and wich OS makes it unsafe to simple browse the web right now? Thank you. Bill Gates called, he is about to take a dump and needs you to swallow it all.
All this article shows is how easily statistics can be used to tell a complete lie.
I mean, "Intel inside" so you can "leap ahead" of the rest (cue businessmen beating their competitors, gamers getting that extra kill etc etc)
Now they are trowing away a widely known slogan in the hope of recreating the success of the old one. Does McDonalds replace the M even if it tries to change its image of greasy fastfood? Does Coca-Cola launch a new blue and white bottle?
No, you don't destroy slogans/names unless you feel that to not get a new image is going to kill you or if your marketting department has been let loose out of the basement.
Intel inside has a lot of spoofs but that is good. Only the well known can be spoofed. Neither does Intel have a bad name among the general public. AMD is nibbling away but is that the time to go for a new slogan? Right when you want people to think "Hmmm well that machine looks hot but why doesn't it have that Intel Inside logo? I don't trust it. What is AMD anyway a chinese clone?" you remove that.
I think this is the case of the runaway marketting department, any person living in a country were a national industry has been privatised can tell you what that is like. Were a name like "PTT" is twisted around and recoloured and resloganed so many times and people still call it by the old name because people don't change. For the dutch how many new names has your medical insurance company or elec/gas company had in the last decade?
I say that the moment we are finished with shooting the lawyers we move on to the marketing people. Who is with me?
It is on wikipedia (if I need to give you the keyword you are not worthy of oxygen) and it is a lot wider then the intel inside logo.
So either it is not the real final logo OR it will be much smaller when used on a new computer case OR all computer cases will have to be redesigned for the larger sticker?
WTF am I talking about? Well all grey boxes come with a little hole in the front where the builder can put his Intel or AMD logo. Since the new logo is far wider then high it doesn't fit. Shrink it and you would have a lot of whitespace.
It seems an odd design for me. Granted the high end cases that people actually display don't even have a ugly sticker place and dirt cheap cases people will not give a shit but still it seems odd.
I can't think that companies like Dell or HP are glad to have to do an adjustment to all their cases to fit the new logo. Perhaps that is where part of the 2.5 billion dollars is going to?
Of course people make mistakes. Anyone can accidently delete their home directory. BUT good protocol and good people would make the impact minimal. All your local code deleted? Well just recover either from your own backups OR the company backups.
Accidents happen but disasters are made. So get good protocols in place that prevent accidents from turning into disasters.
Simple example, config files for the server. Apache especially can be nasty.
A: Document every change, put the configs in a CVS like system and make sure it clear that nobody can just alter the file.
B: Split it (the firewall idea) into logic parts so that your carefully tuned thread settings are not in the same file as the far more often changed virtual host settings.
C: make sure the editor in question automatically makes backups. So even if the user accidently deletes the contents all will not be lossed.
Now it should be virtually impossible to accidently loose the apache config (wich I have seen happen). Good people do make mistakes but they know how to recover from them.
Perhaps I worded it wrong. I am sure there is some famous quote that says it all.
The MAD threath was always that one of the sides would be MAD enough to actually pull the trigger. The nuclear war would be like no other war before. Normal wars are either to defend OR to conquer but a nuclear exchange would be a murder/suicide. Like those cases were a father decides to kill his family and then himself.
The first reason for a nuclear war would be desperation. The reason the US and the USSR never had a ground war and kept their proxy wars limited was that neither wanted to push the other to the edge.
The other reason to start a nuclear war is that you might think you could actually win.
This was one if the reasons anyone with a brain was so against star wars (No not the prequels the space defence program of the reagan era) as it could make the US think it could win a nuclear war or even worse make the USSR think it had no choice but to strike before the US became invulnerable.
Now lets look at the world today. US still working on Star Wars. A reaganite in the white house. USSR collapsed and in huge uncertainty of what is going to happen next with the US doing everything it can to upset the russian goverment and people.
China is still there with the old goverment possibly feeling attacked by the capatalist west.
The rogue nations don't matter. none of them are capable of triggering the lethal mutual exchange of weapons. Even as you suggest a dirty bomb in NY would cause the US to whipe muslims from the face of the earth, so what? No rogue nation has the capability to retaliate in force.
Only the former USSR and china and of course the US got the arsenal to create this end of the world scenario. Right at this moment it seems unlikely to happen BUT then again the same could have been said at the hight of the cold war.
The greatest threat I can see if russia/USSR continues on its slide to a 3rd world nation. Their is already a lot of sentement in russia to go back to a communist goverment. The whole collapse of the USSR rested on the believe that it would bring better times. So far this has not happened in fact the majority of the citizens have never had it so bad. A reforming of the USSR itself would be no threath (why should they reform just to commit suicide) but the reaction of the US might bring us right back to the days of the cold war with one tiny difference. This time the russians would have a lot of resentment. Think germany pre-ww2.
No, I don't think world war 3 The nuclear edition is going to happen but it is not impossible either. If anything the collapse of the cold war has made a World War 3 more likely. The world has lost a lot of stability while the US has gained a lot of perceived invulnerability. During the cold war the US more or less behaved because it did not want to push the russians to far. Will the US be so restrained? The war on terror would suggest not (perhaps this is World War 3? Remember WW2 had a longer pre-history then the invasion of poland.). The US can't even be bothered to be nice to its NATO allies anymore.
Strangely enough I do not think the risk comes from N. Korea or similar directly. To strike would be suicide. You do not commit suicide unless you think there is no other choice. The real threath is the rest of the world mostly the US pushing these nations into a corner.
As you say yourselve your current ERP software is no longer good enough. I presume that simply upgrading to a new version of the current software is not desired.
So you are looking at all the ERP packages out there and have to decide on a new one. Should you then let the enviroment it runs on be a deciding factor?
I think both yes and no. Obviously you should select the package that is best for your needs considering all the factors like costs, reliabilty, likelihood of the software company to continue to exist, security, usability and god knows what more. There are enough books out there to tell you what to check.
The OS shouldn't have to matter. In an ideal world it doesn't but this world isn't ideal. Choosing one OS or the other has significant effects.
Flamewar material would be to point out that the current wmf mess would suggest that windows is still as insecure as ever. Then again you can ask wether this security hole is a risk for a backoffice system.
Then there is a question of lock-in, going for windows only solutions tends to force you to continue with windows only solutions for ever. You will loose your competent admins either because you fire them to replace them with far cheaper window admins or they will quit on their own. You will be another MS shop. Is this bad? Well not really. ERP software is usually a long term solution anyway and who can say if your company is even going to be around a decade from now? Plus a backoffice lock-in can at least be easier broken then a frontoffice lock-in.
Anyway AS/400 could be considered just as much of a lock-in choice.
Do the people who want to switch to the Windows only solution do this because that ERP package is the best or because it runs on windows?
I would personally seriously question any real software that does not run on multiple platforms. We are not talking games here wich are bound to the OS by choice of libraries.
I would also take a good long hard look at real uptime of such a solution under real workloads. INCLUDE the upcoming wmf patch and such delights as code red wich are bound to happen in the life time of your new erp solution.
AS/400 == nightmare but at least it is a nightmare you control and not every scriptkiddie on the internet.
If the choice for the new ERP system is going to be based on OS choice alone however I would recommend you get your CV ready.
Even for a CNN article this is kinda, ehm, short? They quote figures but with absolutly no basis. 105 billion? WOW that is a huge wad of cash. But globally? Restricted to the US? 55 million americans affected that is what like 1 in 5? Again WOW.
As for the department of Homeland Security getting a budget cut. Well is it even its task? Isn't credit card fraud something for the FBI to tackle? And social security number fraud would probably fall under either your social security agency or the IRS.
The securing of military IT would be a task for the military and I think the NSA does something with it as well. The US seems to have so many agencies to keep it secure that I cannot remember them all.
So is that 16 million perhaps the budget for the departments of homeland security OWN security? Do they really have to keep the entire US of A safe with that money or just their own network.
I like a panic story as much as the next guy but at least give me some basis and do not just trow some random numbers around.
What exactly is lumped into that 105 billion dollar figure. Every bad check? Counterfit credit cards? Stolen Half-Life keys? And whose job is it to keep us safe? Army? NSA? CIA? FBI? Local police? Department of Homeland Security? Or more likely, all of them for different parts of it?
There was a program, if you could call it that, that aired late at night and was just an endless stream of commercials. It was ages ago but I think it was a way to distribute new ads to those who have to watch them for some reason. Like those late night education shows that you are supposed to record if intrested and then watch later during more normal hours. The BBC still has these.
This is a bit like that. Most "real" ads are carefully placed in an enviroment/surrounding were you already would be looking and hopefully attract your attention. So for instance the huge blank space between the slashdot dupe and the comments, eh I mean the nice blinking ad that I did not filter out because I do not steal from cowboyneal is placed there because hopefully as you scroll down you will see the ad and become intrested.
This guys adsite however has no content apart from the ads. So why should people visit it apart from pure curiousity. Surely this would not result in any hits?
TV regulators at least do not seem to think so. The programs that show the funniest ads are usually not regulated as a half hour advertisement blok would be. The BBC and most european channels could not show them if anyone thought that a commercial shown during such a program would result in extra sales.
I can understand that people might want to pay X amuunt of money to have their face plasterd on times square or something, but to pay money to get your image on a guys homepage with no other content? I truly just don't get it. Either all the "advertisers" see it as a joke OR advertisers are stupid OR and this is worse. This guys site actually works. People really will visit a site with nothing but ads and generate sales.
This could be bad. If this continues slashvertisements will soon be the only content. TV channels will be nothing but ads with the occasional break for the station logo. And it will work. ARGH!
On the rare occasions I am not overruled by marketting I tend to prefer the following development setup.
The developers personal machine. Full access, do what you wish, if you cannot trust your people with that then do not employ them. No developer worth his salt will ruin a desktop machine. Someone who either on purpose or by accident comprimeses his machine should be fired. Almost every developer has his own preferences and methods of working, I see no reason to restrict them on their own machine. Want to test a replacement for apache? Go right ahead.
The test server is the step where the locally developed code/setups etc are being tested. Access to this machine is limited by protocol. Basically any chance will have to be documented and be reasoned(?). So a chance would have to accompenied by who did it, why they did, on whose authority and exactly what was done. The test server is NOT a development enviroment, it is a proving ground for new developments. This is sometimes very hard to explain. So in caps, "YOU DO NOT DEVELOP ON THE TEST SERVER, YOU TESTIF the test server works as expected with the new chance then this will be ported to the live server. Friday afternoon is a bad time for this but somehow always seems to be the time desired by the guys who sign the paychecks.
But in principle I see no reason to deny any developer root access to any of these machines. What needs to be in place is proper protocol to make sure that people know how to deal with chances (no point in documenting all the chances if people don't read them) and that you have good people who do not mess with machines.
I have been the victim of bad restrictions to often to have any fate in people that create them. I had to personally subvert a production webserver to handle IM traffic because the office network blocked them and our sales support staff needed it. (Case of an outside department being absorbed in the larger organisation) It tooks over 3 months for them to finally get official permission to upgrade the firewall rules. I myself was denied SSH access to the outside webservers for a full week until I told them I would simply work from home permanantly until it was fixed.
If you have good people they can be trusted with root access. If you do not have such people then they cannot be trusted with being let into the building. My first IT job had a guy who installed a keylogger. He didn't have root access, he simply had a limited account on a windows machine and downloaded some exploit kit.
But in the same job I was being outsourced to a very large dutch company and had root access on their AIX production machines. I, a new then new newbie noob had to do my development on the production machines since my desktop was to restricted to install the software needed and in any case couldn't handle the filesizes involved (good luck opening a 2gig database dumb in either word or notepad on NT4.0). One morning I was early (so I could leave early and miss the endless meetings) and was asked by the director of the company to start a database. I was the only person who could do that, if I had not started that database the entire national compnay with a hundred offices could not have started the working day. (Was a temp agency).
A stable production enviroment does not come from limiting your employees, it comes from not letting your unix admin quit in disgust and having proper training in place so your critical servers do not depend on a hired developer who is still reading his Unix for dummy's manual.
If the above sounds fancifull then be glad I did not tell the complete story. It was the most insane enviroment I ever been in. It was so bad that when the company was bought by a rival and they learned about the true state of the accounts it even made the one national newspaper. While it focusses mostly on financial issues it also reported that they found the IT department to be a total mess. Not bad for your first assignment eh?
Red Hat is now apparently one of the good old boys. Mmmm, well ehm, that is good isn't it? Better then if it would be considered as a bunch of commie hippies. While I like commies and hippies they are usually not that popular in coorperate america.
Red Hat perhaps shows that you can make money from Opensource software. IBM already knows this. You give the software away for free. Then charge them their first born for support. Business never changes. Buy cheap sell dear. Nothing is cheaper then opensource, and nothing is more expensive then IBM tech support. Well MS support if you think downtime expenses should be charged to support costs.
Those wild days when the sky was the limit and the internet was called the information superhighway and you could run an succesfull company with half the workers playing on the consoles drinking beer.
Oh and those wonderfull windows exploits, works, spyware, wild tangent, trojan horses, worms and blue screens. And then, linux. What I never thought I could afford happened. I had a unix at home. It looked just like the real thing. Root easily accesible from your user account to make it workable to split your accounts. Didn't you hate it when in windows if you wanted to install any software no matter how trivial you had to logout and login as admin to do it and the only way to get some work done was to always get admin privileges on every machine?
Nowadays when someone gives me the root password on a unix like machine I always demand a pay raise. It probably means they expect me to fix it in the weekend.
Thank you MS for making me stick with linux. The energy bill had me y contemplating scrapping my dual P3 linux desktop and only keep my P4 gaming rig. Windows 2003 is actually pretty stable, now all they got to do is clear the goddamn fucking security holes.
Geez, just a few articles ago people were actually talking about how MS was changing and bam we get the mother of all exploits. The only thing worse would be a worm. This is so easily exploitable. Just make an account on forum that allows those awfull avatar images and bam.
I can't believe the slashdot reader reaction either, first bunch of posts are some insane ramblings about hackers/crackers and the rest have some insane fix that even the most moronic idiot can see is a total failure.
Yes fucktards who suggest that whole unregister crap, because of the way MS has setup its OS many a windows program comes with its own copy of the dll it uses EVEN if it is a copy of a Windows OS dll. To avoid versioning problems it is easier to include it then hope the user OS has the right version.
Do a dupe check your dll's in the main windows directories and where you install your programs some times. What do you think the chances are they will all be patched? It is a well known problem and in fact one of the reasons the whole dynamic linking idea was so attractive.
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I know plenty of people who know next to nothing about computers but who are told by their friends/co-workers were to go. How did you learn about napster? I heard about it from a friend. And I spread the news.
This war of attrition is not happening. P2P use is rising.
Do you know what those stories do about P2P in the news? Educate millions to the existance of P2P. A recent dutch program highlighted the use of Freenet for downloading childporn. Eheh, thank YOU Nova. Wanna make a bet that Freenet saw a spike in the number of downloads that night?
Nah, the MPAA/RIAA are fighting a loosing battle as long as they keep alienating legit buyers. I can watch a ripped movie on any device (like my PSP) and not see any bloody unskippable fbi warnings (I am dutch the fbi got about the same power of me as it got over terrorists (None whatsoever)) and boring ads.
Give us cheap content free of hazzle, iTunes shown the way. Yes the MPAA/RIAA seem to only want to raise the prices on iTunes not extend it with their back catalog.
Noob users who might be scared by this go to their friends who know and tell them the real deal. Have you turned someone to the piracy side today? Resistance is futile, you will be torrented.
Lawyer: Your honor, we want you to award us 1 million dollar in damages for copyright infringement against the defendant.
Jduge: Indeed, do you have any evidence of this charge?
Lawyer: Of course, the defendant visited a website!
Jugge: and?
Lawyer: AND we logged his IP!
Judge: and?
Lawyer: and? your honor I don't understand, we got his IP!!!
Judge: yes but what do you alledge the defendant did.
Lawyer: he visited our site!
Judge: and downloaded copyrighted material wich the original copyright owner did not give him permission to do?
Lawyer: wha? He visited our site!
Judge: That is not actually illegal you know. In fact I can see only one criminal act and that is your site records personal information without a privacy statement.
Lawyer: ah.
Judge: Indeed.
Myself I think 2006 WILL see a new entry into the computer in the living room market. It is called the PS3 and rumors about that are nowadays so solid it we even have some idea about how it will be done. The PS3 will have an optional addon in the form of a HD wich will contain a version of the linux kernel (no not GNU/Linux, I said kernel) and presumably some kind of userspace software to use it. Cool as booting linux is the usual purpose is to then get a working enviroment.
Note that is NOT clear yet that this addon will turn your PC into a desktop. Merely that it can boot the kernel. Logic would dictate that Sony wouldn't do this without a very good reason, like trying to get a shot at putting the desktop in the living room, but who knows.
It is however an optional extra and this makes it clear that Sony is not exactly making a major push out of it. Unless of course all the really good games require the add-on.
So how does this relate to a Google PC? Well Sony can do this attempt on the back of its regular launch of a new console. The console, sony hopes, will be attractive enough on its own to get into millions of homes. To then add a tiny amount of extra effort and be able to stealthly introduce their own PC like solution into those exact same homes must be nice bonus. It is well known that the asian tech giants are not at all happy with MS dominance on the PC market and would love to get their teeth into it.
So a linux desktop to attack MS where have you heard that before eh? Well don't forget that Sony (if it will truly do this) has two gigantic advantages over such efforts as Lindows. 100% Hardware support. No problem with getting companies to create proper drivers for a tiny marketshare. The team behind the PS3 knows what hardware is inside and could easily write the drivers. One often mentioned problem of Linux swept away in an instant. Oh and I bet it also makes the whole "configuration" a lot easier. There is after all only going to be one.
Second Linux problem? No games. Well for some reason I do not think that buying the Linux addon is going to brick your PS3 and make it impossible to game with it. Another problem of Linux instantly swept away.
Now Google doesn't have anything like that. While its software is "installed" on every pc (A common browser) it is almost impossible for them to PUSH their technology. They certainly can't piggy back it onto anything. The recent deal with opera on the mobile market is perhaps the only way Google can "force" its way onto a computer.
Or put another way, PS3 would be bought for games and the desktop is an extra. GooglePC would be bought for .... Well it would be the same as the Lindows PC. An computer that could be quite good but would never be the real thing. Even such simple things as getting Flash to work would be a killer for a browser PC. So why should a person buy a crippled PC when for a few bucks more they can get one that is a proper windows machine (Security? Yeah like walmart buyers know about that).
There might be another possible avenue of approach and that is to pull an iPod with the GooglePC. Part of Apples success is that it was rich and powerfull enough to make a bet and order the parts for the iPod in such numbers that it could get huge discounts. It is not that the iPod is better then say iRiver or even Creatives offerings. But as shown painfully clear with the iPod Nano, Apple could simply offer more for less. its competitors simply can't put the same hardware inside for the same price.
Apple when it entered the MP3 player market was an accidental giant (Sony/Philips/etc were all asleep at the wheel) who could simply squish all competitors.
Is the PC market similary open? Can a company with enough muzzle simply order a milli
You can easily avoid being recorded by a speed camera. Don't speed. I know, it is a difficult trick to figure out.
Whenever you try a serious conversation about surveillance cameras an idiot like you bring up speed cameras and instantly show that only criminals are afraid of cameras. Nice way to cloud the issue.
Sun? Geez, the only thing they get in the news for is for licking MS ass. Hardly /. material perhaps you should find a MS fanboy website.
This is linux land greenhorn and IBM is our current pet of the week. I think it is very telling that it is IBM who is involved in all the next gen game consoles and not the likes of Intel or AMD. Both of whom should be really worried IF the cell lives up to Sony's dream and does turn the PS3 into the living room PC.
What I would like to know is how powerfull those IBM chips really are. How can a 360 have such power at such a low price (a fraction of what a similar Intel/AMD chip would cost).
The revolution from Nintendo will also have an IBM powerpc inside according to fairly solid rumors. So for the next console war IBM is pretty much the sure winner.
Pot calling kettle.
When it comes to china blocking porn any US citizen has only one right and that is to shut the fuck up.
No this will be intresting. France recently ruled copy protection on DVD's illegal, region encoding is under fire and now MS is going to enforce something that nobody wants but the movie industry? WHY?
I think this could be a big mistake for MS. XP already did poorly, to many people still on 98 or 2k to MS tastes. The last thing they need is for Vista to be even less appealing.
100. Musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a "public performance".
Geez, the music industry is really grabbing every penny it can eh. What about charging a fee on my iPod because I might hum along? Cops patrolling the streets for illegal whistlers?
I hope in 365 days we will have the following story "top 1000 things that happened in 2006 that nobody cared about: 1000 rampaging citizens slaughterd music execs and police cheered them on".
On the subject of wether the PS3 or the Xbox 360 or the revolution would win the next generation war IBM was heared to say "Money money money, were in the money". (If you have been paying attention it is not Sony vs MS vs Nintendo but IBM vs IBM vs IBM. I like a three horse race where there is only 1 horse.
In aussie jailes they serve american beer.
Australians are not as much globe trotters as their new zealand cousins but the few I met tend to view the law as an optional extra.
Put it another way, americans are confused that in holland it ain't illegal to smoke a joint. Australians don't give a shit wether it is legal or not.
There is a shitload of them and while there are a lot of the generic desktop ones you can find *nix like installs for every need. From different hardware platforms to performing just one role to "who the fuck is going to need this" distro's.
Please do not lump the *nix'es together with windows.
Even with the more generic distro's it is still relativly easy to get a very dressed down install. Getting a pure apache server that does not have 1 bit of image capable code in it is not that hard. I do it all the time, if you install X on a webserver I will put an Itanium in your trousers.
Yes of course a Suse or a Mandrake default install will select a lot of defaults. What do you expect? Sadly even the best coders have yet to come with a install CD that can read your mind and choose exactly those packages you want and need.
Is kinda like blaiming car makers for not making cars with 3 seats only because you never plan on carrying four passengers (I would suggest the F1 McClaren, while indeed catering for the 3 seat market, is not a typical car).
If you want a linux/bsd/gnu/* desktop that does only desktop and no server task then you can have it. Same the other way around. Your desktop can be as inclusive or reclusive as you want. Just pick the right distro. QUE DISTRO WAR in 3.....2.....1.....GO
Everyone know that actually making a sale is were the real costs are. It is why fastfood places are so keen to supersize you. Yes you get more food for less but the cost to them is not the food, it is getting you into the restaurant in the first place.
Same with computers, having a store/warehouse, a tech support, an inventory and advertising is the real cost and remains pretty much the same wether the customer then buys 1 machine or a thousand. Leaving it easy to conclude that more profit will be made on the 1000 volume sale. (It is also the reason Intel won't sell you a single chip. They only sell them in batches of a 1000 because selling them seperate would make it impossible to generate enough profit.)
Further more I do not get his crap about software being included in small setups vs large setups. I think he is talking about that net send tool (sorry am been on linux to long) wich was used for a while for spam. The one he doesn't mention might have been the personal webserver wich had a worm attack a few years ago that was highly amusing (to a guy not responsible for the windows servers only the real ones).
Well these were security risks not needed for a lot of setups? Well yeah but we are talking MS Windows here. The same MS windows were hardcore servers are vulnerable to the WMF exploit because for some reason a MS SQL server includes image rendering code. And a browser. And a media player. And a instant messenger. And directX and god knows what more.
The knife of MS including everything and the kitchen sink into its OS cuts both ways but is also the MS way. Don't like it, don't use it. It is hardly fair to blame the entire tech industry for the faults of one company.
And that is my real beef with this article. It should have been a rant against MS not computer makers. I never seen a consumer Dell PC that included unneeded features like hardware scsi raid they forgot to tell you about. I WISH!!! How many times have you bought a dirt cheap machine and found they fobbed you with damn pro ECC memory eh?
Blame MS for MS faults and blame users for buying MS. Do not fault Dell for not hacking the shit out of Windows to make it a secure OS.
Oh and the dumbfuck author forgot one tiny little thing. In a number of update EULA's MS gives itself the right to get access to the machine the software is installed on. This is often in clear violation of big industry rules. Banks especially have very strict rules about allowing outsiders (MS) access to their network. It is one of the dirty little secrets that ain't talked about much but you can be damn sure that NO bank is willing to honor those EULA. They would be in serious legal trouble if they did.
So perhaps MS really caters to nobody? Odd then that it still outsells everyone else? Oh well, back to my nice secure Linux machine. At least I know who control the code here [NSA SElinux module: Yes US]
Only a MS-tool would not instantly spot this. Others have already pointed this out but of course they are just Unix and OS-X and BSD and Linux hippies. Oh and wich OS makes it unsafe to simple browse the web right now? Thank you. Bill Gates called, he is about to take a dump and needs you to swallow it all.
All this article shows is how easily statistics can be used to tell a complete lie.
Now they are trowing away a widely known slogan in the hope of recreating the success of the old one. Does McDonalds replace the M even if it tries to change its image of greasy fastfood? Does Coca-Cola launch a new blue and white bottle?
No, you don't destroy slogans/names unless you feel that to not get a new image is going to kill you or if your marketting department has been let loose out of the basement.
Intel inside has a lot of spoofs but that is good. Only the well known can be spoofed. Neither does Intel have a bad name among the general public. AMD is nibbling away but is that the time to go for a new slogan? Right when you want people to think "Hmmm well that machine looks hot but why doesn't it have that Intel Inside logo? I don't trust it. What is AMD anyway a chinese clone?" you remove that.
I think this is the case of the runaway marketting department, any person living in a country were a national industry has been privatised can tell you what that is like. Were a name like "PTT" is twisted around and recoloured and resloganed so many times and people still call it by the old name because people don't change. For the dutch how many new names has your medical insurance company or elec/gas company had in the last decade?
I say that the moment we are finished with shooting the lawyers we move on to the marketing people. Who is with me?
So either it is not the real final logo OR it will be much smaller when used on a new computer case OR all computer cases will have to be redesigned for the larger sticker?
WTF am I talking about? Well all grey boxes come with a little hole in the front where the builder can put his Intel or AMD logo. Since the new logo is far wider then high it doesn't fit. Shrink it and you would have a lot of whitespace.
It seems an odd design for me. Granted the high end cases that people actually display don't even have a ugly sticker place and dirt cheap cases people will not give a shit but still it seems odd.
I can't think that companies like Dell or HP are glad to have to do an adjustment to all their cases to fit the new logo. Perhaps that is where part of the 2.5 billion dollars is going to?
Accidents happen but disasters are made. So get good protocols in place that prevent accidents from turning into disasters.
Simple example, config files for the server. Apache especially can be nasty.
A: Document every change, put the configs in a CVS like system and make sure it clear that nobody can just alter the file.
B: Split it (the firewall idea) into logic parts so that your carefully tuned thread settings are not in the same file as the far more often changed virtual host settings.
C: make sure the editor in question automatically makes backups. So even if the user accidently deletes the contents all will not be lossed.
Now it should be virtually impossible to accidently loose the apache config (wich I have seen happen). Good people do make mistakes but they know how to recover from them.
Perhaps I worded it wrong. I am sure there is some famous quote that says it all.
The first reason for a nuclear war would be desperation. The reason the US and the USSR never had a ground war and kept their proxy wars limited was that neither wanted to push the other to the edge.
The other reason to start a nuclear war is that you might think you could actually win. This was one if the reasons anyone with a brain was so against star wars (No not the prequels the space defence program of the reagan era) as it could make the US think it could win a nuclear war or even worse make the USSR think it had no choice but to strike before the US became invulnerable.
Now lets look at the world today. US still working on Star Wars. A reaganite in the white house. USSR collapsed and in huge uncertainty of what is going to happen next with the US doing everything it can to upset the russian goverment and people.
China is still there with the old goverment possibly feeling attacked by the capatalist west.
The rogue nations don't matter. none of them are capable of triggering the lethal mutual exchange of weapons. Even as you suggest a dirty bomb in NY would cause the US to whipe muslims from the face of the earth, so what? No rogue nation has the capability to retaliate in force.
Only the former USSR and china and of course the US got the arsenal to create this end of the world scenario. Right at this moment it seems unlikely to happen BUT then again the same could have been said at the hight of the cold war.
The greatest threat I can see if russia/USSR continues on its slide to a 3rd world nation. Their is already a lot of sentement in russia to go back to a communist goverment. The whole collapse of the USSR rested on the believe that it would bring better times. So far this has not happened in fact the majority of the citizens have never had it so bad. A reforming of the USSR itself would be no threath (why should they reform just to commit suicide) but the reaction of the US might bring us right back to the days of the cold war with one tiny difference. This time the russians would have a lot of resentment. Think germany pre-ww2.
No, I don't think world war 3 The nuclear edition is going to happen but it is not impossible either. If anything the collapse of the cold war has made a World War 3 more likely. The world has lost a lot of stability while the US has gained a lot of perceived invulnerability. During the cold war the US more or less behaved because it did not want to push the russians to far. Will the US be so restrained? The war on terror would suggest not (perhaps this is World War 3? Remember WW2 had a longer pre-history then the invasion of poland.). The US can't even be bothered to be nice to its NATO allies anymore.
Strangely enough I do not think the risk comes from N. Korea or similar directly. To strike would be suicide. You do not commit suicide unless you think there is no other choice. The real threath is the rest of the world mostly the US pushing these nations into a corner.
So you are looking at all the ERP packages out there and have to decide on a new one. Should you then let the enviroment it runs on be a deciding factor?
I think both yes and no. Obviously you should select the package that is best for your needs considering all the factors like costs, reliabilty, likelihood of the software company to continue to exist, security, usability and god knows what more. There are enough books out there to tell you what to check.
The OS shouldn't have to matter. In an ideal world it doesn't but this world isn't ideal. Choosing one OS or the other has significant effects.
Flamewar material would be to point out that the current wmf mess would suggest that windows is still as insecure as ever. Then again you can ask wether this security hole is a risk for a backoffice system.
Then there is a question of lock-in, going for windows only solutions tends to force you to continue with windows only solutions for ever. You will loose your competent admins either because you fire them to replace them with far cheaper window admins or they will quit on their own. You will be another MS shop. Is this bad? Well not really. ERP software is usually a long term solution anyway and who can say if your company is even going to be around a decade from now? Plus a backoffice lock-in can at least be easier broken then a frontoffice lock-in.
Anyway AS/400 could be considered just as much of a lock-in choice.
Do the people who want to switch to the Windows only solution do this because that ERP package is the best or because it runs on windows?
I would personally seriously question any real software that does not run on multiple platforms. We are not talking games here wich are bound to the OS by choice of libraries.
I would also take a good long hard look at real uptime of such a solution under real workloads. INCLUDE the upcoming wmf patch and such delights as code red wich are bound to happen in the life time of your new erp solution.
AS/400 == nightmare but at least it is a nightmare you control and not every scriptkiddie on the internet.
If the choice for the new ERP system is going to be based on OS choice alone however I would recommend you get your CV ready.
As for the department of Homeland Security getting a budget cut. Well is it even its task? Isn't credit card fraud something for the FBI to tackle? And social security number fraud would probably fall under either your social security agency or the IRS.
The securing of military IT would be a task for the military and I think the NSA does something with it as well. The US seems to have so many agencies to keep it secure that I cannot remember them all.
So is that 16 million perhaps the budget for the departments of homeland security OWN security? Do they really have to keep the entire US of A safe with that money or just their own network.
I like a panic story as much as the next guy but at least give me some basis and do not just trow some random numbers around.
What exactly is lumped into that 105 billion dollar figure. Every bad check? Counterfit credit cards? Stolen Half-Life keys? And whose job is it to keep us safe? Army? NSA? CIA? FBI? Local police? Department of Homeland Security? Or more likely, all of them for different parts of it?
This is a bit like that. Most "real" ads are carefully placed in an enviroment/surrounding were you already would be looking and hopefully attract your attention. So for instance the huge blank space between the slashdot dupe and the comments, eh I mean the nice blinking ad that I did not filter out because I do not steal from cowboyneal is placed there because hopefully as you scroll down you will see the ad and become intrested.
This guys adsite however has no content apart from the ads. So why should people visit it apart from pure curiousity. Surely this would not result in any hits?
TV regulators at least do not seem to think so. The programs that show the funniest ads are usually not regulated as a half hour advertisement blok would be. The BBC and most european channels could not show them if anyone thought that a commercial shown during such a program would result in extra sales.
I can understand that people might want to pay X amuunt of money to have their face plasterd on times square or something, but to pay money to get your image on a guys homepage with no other content? I truly just don't get it. Either all the "advertisers" see it as a joke OR advertisers are stupid OR and this is worse. This guys site actually works. People really will visit a site with nothing but ads and generate sales.
This could be bad. If this continues slashvertisements will soon be the only content. TV channels will be nothing but ads with the occasional break for the station logo. And it will work. ARGH!
On the rare occasions I am not overruled by marketting I tend to prefer the following development setup.
The developers personal machine. Full access, do what you wish, if you cannot trust your people with that then do not employ them. No developer worth his salt will ruin a desktop machine. Someone who either on purpose or by accident comprimeses his machine should be fired. Almost every developer has his own preferences and methods of working, I see no reason to restrict them on their own machine. Want to test a replacement for apache? Go right ahead.
The test server is the step where the locally developed code/setups etc are being tested. Access to this machine is limited by protocol. Basically any chance will have to be documented and be reasoned(?). So a chance would have to accompenied by who did it, why they did, on whose authority and exactly what was done. The test server is NOT a development enviroment, it is a proving ground for new developments. This is sometimes very hard to explain. So in caps, "YOU DO NOT DEVELOP ON THE TEST SERVER, YOU TESTIF the test server works as expected with the new chance then this will be ported to the live server. Friday afternoon is a bad time for this but somehow always seems to be the time desired by the guys who sign the paychecks.
But in principle I see no reason to deny any developer root access to any of these machines. What needs to be in place is proper protocol to make sure that people know how to deal with chances (no point in documenting all the chances if people don't read them) and that you have good people who do not mess with machines.
I have been the victim of bad restrictions to often to have any fate in people that create them. I had to personally subvert a production webserver to handle IM traffic because the office network blocked them and our sales support staff needed it. (Case of an outside department being absorbed in the larger organisation) It tooks over 3 months for them to finally get official permission to upgrade the firewall rules. I myself was denied SSH access to the outside webservers for a full week until I told them I would simply work from home permanantly until it was fixed.
If you have good people they can be trusted with root access. If you do not have such people then they cannot be trusted with being let into the building. My first IT job had a guy who installed a keylogger. He didn't have root access, he simply had a limited account on a windows machine and downloaded some exploit kit.
But in the same job I was being outsourced to a very large dutch company and had root access on their AIX production machines. I, a new then new newbie noob had to do my development on the production machines since my desktop was to restricted to install the software needed and in any case couldn't handle the filesizes involved (good luck opening a 2gig database dumb in either word or notepad on NT4.0). One morning I was early (so I could leave early and miss the endless meetings) and was asked by the director of the company to start a database. I was the only person who could do that, if I had not started that database the entire national compnay with a hundred offices could not have started the working day. (Was a temp agency).
A stable production enviroment does not come from limiting your employees, it comes from not letting your unix admin quit in disgust and having proper training in place so your critical servers do not depend on a hired developer who is still reading his Unix for dummy's manual.
If the above sounds fancifull then be glad I did not tell the complete story. It was the most insane enviroment I ever been in. It was so bad that when the company was bought by a rival and they learned about the true state of the accounts it even made the one national newspaper. While it focusses mostly on financial issues it also reported that they found the IT department to be a total mess. Not bad for your first assignment eh?
Red Hat perhaps shows that you can make money from Opensource software. IBM already knows this. You give the software away for free. Then charge them their first born for support. Business never changes. Buy cheap sell dear. Nothing is cheaper then opensource, and nothing is more expensive then IBM tech support. Well MS support if you think downtime expenses should be charged to support costs.
Oh and those wonderfull windows exploits, works, spyware, wild tangent, trojan horses, worms and blue screens. And then, linux. What I never thought I could afford happened. I had a unix at home. It looked just like the real thing. Root easily accesible from your user account to make it workable to split your accounts. Didn't you hate it when in windows if you wanted to install any software no matter how trivial you had to logout and login as admin to do it and the only way to get some work done was to always get admin privileges on every machine?
Nowadays when someone gives me the root password on a unix like machine I always demand a pay raise. It probably means they expect me to fix it in the weekend.
Thank you MS for making me stick with linux. The energy bill had me y contemplating scrapping my dual P3 linux desktop and only keep my P4 gaming rig. Windows 2003 is actually pretty stable, now all they got to do is clear the goddamn fucking security holes.
Geez, just a few articles ago people were actually talking about how MS was changing and bam we get the mother of all exploits. The only thing worse would be a worm. This is so easily exploitable. Just make an account on forum that allows those awfull avatar images and bam.
I can't believe the slashdot reader reaction either, first bunch of posts are some insane ramblings about hackers/crackers and the rest have some insane fix that even the most moronic idiot can see is a total failure.
Yes fucktards who suggest that whole unregister crap, because of the way MS has setup its OS many a windows program comes with its own copy of the dll it uses EVEN if it is a copy of a Windows OS dll. To avoid versioning problems it is easier to include it then hope the user OS has the right version.
Do a dupe check your dll's in the main windows directories and where you install your programs some times. What do you think the chances are they will all be patched? It is a well known problem and in fact one of the reasons the whole dynamic linking idea was so attractive.