What makes it far more major, is that its one of the extremely rare remotely exploitable vulnerability that IIS6 have had. Contrary to Slashdot beleif, IIS6 (IIS7 more so though) is totally rock solid and extremely secure, so having something like that pop up is quite scary.
Contrary to Slashdot belief, Slashdotters usually rant about Microsoft client operating systems, like Vista or Win7. Ranting about Server Software is bad form, primarily because Linux/Apache is the primary platform, and Slashdot should therefore rant that Linux is nipping MS in the bud with its uncompetitive practices.
Humans aren't actually better at it than robots; humans are notoriously bad at estimating conditional probabilities.
I must disagree with that, see under Prospect theory. Short version, the human mind is bad at estimating and evaluating long odds or short odds, but it is surprisingly good at estimating mid range probabilities on the fly. The real problem is that the human mind treats the same data sets differently if presented in different manner, hence the name prospect theory. The best example was when the two proponents gave a test each to his own students. the premise was that there could be a terrible epidemic. one course was told:" if you order to inoculate every american, 3% will die from complications related to the vaccine."; the other course was told:"97% of the people will survive". guess what the answer was in each case? an overwhelming majority in the second case wanted to inoculate everyone, while that was not the case in the first course. Notice that nothing was said about how efficient the vaccine was (decision under uncertainty)
At least a robotic mind, in both cases, would say:
P1+P2=1
P1=0.03
P2=0.97
and go on from there.
one other interesting thing, if a little offtopic, is that the average response of students forced to decide each on his/her own was more accurate than the "debating society" model, in cases like " how many peas are in this transparent jar?". Richard Thaler found an explanation by "drugging" the results, i.e. planting an outspoken accomplice who talked first and forcefully told an extremely high number, or an extremely low number. In those cases, the crowd followed and the response overestimated or underestimated accordingly.
Since you can never be 100% certain of a target, the robots would have to use fuzzy logic. That is something that humans are better than robots at; I'm not really comfortable with hardware designed to be lethal making decisions like this. Truly autonomous killer robots are probably not a good idea -- haven't 60 years of B movies taught us anything?
Non-technical individuals that have no desire to "upset" the voodoo magic that makes their computer connect to the intarnet.
IE enthusiasts.
People who use websites that only work in IE (like my employer's time card system brought to you by Mrs. Arnold's fifth grade class).
These people will always keep IE's share above some percentage (I'd take a stab of about 66.6%).
Also, and I appreciate Asa's non-profit work but I must question his for-profit source that he cited. Where and how was this data collected? It's a very difficult problem and everyone of these browser-share or operating system-share reports that hits Slashdot are ripped apart by readers as being statistically flawed. No transparency causes me to instantly dismiss these findings.
Believe it or not,IE is non profit as well.Proof of that is, MS is giving it away with each copy of operating system it sells. The financial math for them is as such: 1. "our newest operating systems are nowhere near good enough, for getting people to upgrade"; 2."the ratio of new computers sold vs the installed base is lower than it was in the good old days, making backward compatibility even more important. that makes the old policy of " shifting the goalposts" unworkable"; 3."Moore's law ain't what it used to be; for a user who browses the web, checks email, does something in Excel and Word, and uses a terminal emulator for data entry, the perceived value of changing the computer with a new one has no value, provided that the user interfaces remain the same; if the new computer has Vista or Win7, the perceived value is probably negative";
4. solution: if we seed the world with our IE, with its quirks, active-x controls and incompatibilities, and marry it forcefully with our operating systems, we'll be able to sell more copies of our operating system. IE does not run on any other platform, and the big installed base with IE6 as standard will do the marketing for us."
Maybe that's what causes the end of the world? December 21, 2012... Firefox surpasses IE in marketshare, causing Steve Ballmer to lose his mind and launch Microsoft's nuclear missiles. Someone get Art Bell on the line, I think I've got a program idea for him
...aaaaah, that's what he needed the 3.8 billion for..."Bill, I really wouldn't want to bother you, but for that money I get cheyenne mountain thrown in as well!!!"
Microsoft is currently working on a $40B stock buy back, having recently completed ANOTHER $40B stock buy back. That's the amusing thing about the people who say that Apple is getting bigger than MS, based purely on cash in hand. Yes, MSFT "only" has $25B cash. That's after buying back $80B of stock.
in most companies , the concept of stock buyback is flimsily misunderstood to say the least: let me go on and explain. In the fiscal years from 2005 to 2008, MSFT retired about 66 billion dollars in its own stock; at the same time, it issued a bit less than 14 billion in stock. This is probably for the most part the result of the exercise of stock options by the employees. Net result, they retired about 42 bn.in their own equity. as of end 2008, their return on equity has been about 48%.That comes from dividing about 17 bn net income by their 36bn stockholders equity. Now, if they had let the cash build up, their stockholders equity would have been 78 bn, and their return on equity a more down to earth 22%. Going back to the stock option plans: if the employees are assigned a significant number of options, say 10% of the issued capital,they can force a massive dilution on other shareholders. a neat 10% stock buyback will set everything right, but on a practical level is the same as paying out 10% of the company to the employees involved.
"VMware" will announce its first layoffs in June. Microsoft is now hovering like a vulture, waiting to scoop up "VMware".
Microsoft does not want to spend its cash hoard of $25 billion when the interest rate on bonds is essentially at zero -- relative to inflation.
That means also that its 25 bn cash hoard is yielding 0 as well, so adding up to the cash hoard is losing them money. I work in the financial world, and I see no immediate logic to the move. they have cash in hand, they are still producing cash after investments, and any acquisition target is either small enough to be considered petty cash, or big enough to warrant a stock swap offering. Furthermore, why tip you hand? they issued about 5bn, say that a comfortable cash level is 10 bn after the acquisitions, and all the pundits will scramble for tech companies with a market cap between 12 and 18 bn market capitalization ( I am assuming a premium of 40% over the current price). Not a particularly smart move.
One possible explanation, which currently does NOT bear contemplating, is that they'vee seen in the crystal ball the day when they won't be cash positive, and starting to build the name amongst bond investors is sensible anyway. one added plus is that bond investors have been left holding the short stick recently, so paradoxycally the stock owners feel better off when there are bond investors in the company instead of the other way around, as it should be according to logic and law.
Austria is pulling out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns.
They do not have to worry. LHC will pull Austria out of its place eventually.
Interesting. I wonder if anyone has tried a couple of tests that spring to my mind:
1. computer are configure as an "xp out of the box rig", with latest updates; 2.computer configured as silly XP: firefox instead of explorer, thunderbird instead of outlook, etc. etc. 3. Vista out of the box; 4. Win7 out of the box.
After this, let's all assault these rigs and see what happens. Remember, the economics depend also on hardware, since while xp is running on the installed park, probably win7 and vista won't; How much will you have to pay to replace the hardware? Halve that, invest it onto XP security, rinse, lather, repeat.
1.check the improvement between Win7 and Vista; 2.check both against Windows XP.
After all, what's the problem with Microsoft making available the Best and Fastest Operating System it can produce?
Remember: in all the corporations, this issue is very real. MS is trying to make me pay for a new operating system, which is slower than the previous one, and that requires bigger hardware. Where's the value here? Yes, they can go on buying the producers of XP addons and quietly retire their products... but that won't produce customer satisfaction.
people always underestimate the dangers of physical delivery. Let's think this through: I am a smartie who knows computers and is interested in blackmail. Where do I get thosehard disks? you see, ebay and such are markets, so you have to tell them where you want those disks sent, under what name, on which credit card....then you must retrieve them, probably giving some proof of identity. So, given that my objectives are:
1. get rich; 2. do NOT get caught in the process;
I do not think that's the best option. For example, if I had sold the THAAD data to North Korea, i'd probably get a free ticket to some strange place, with refreshments.Waterboarding anyone?
We have a similar problem in Italy, and the problem is not Broadband, i.e. cable or ADSL access, but free-to-air signals. Imagine that i had No television in my house, BUT a computer with DVD RW, and a not-so-bleeding edge video card. Why should I pay the TV tax for? the junkies like me that watch TV as well want 16:9 1080i or 1080p lcd television, a dvd player to match, dolby surround sound... not a 19" screen and no remote control. The content coming from the public TV network via broadband in italy is free for users in other countries, why should I pay for it? especially because, since I own a normal TV, i'd pay it twice over.
Now we're gonna get the swine flu spread all over from the flying pigs.
I didn't think we would see this day. So either its flying pigs or hell freezing over. Then again maybe there is a side to Microsoft that we weren't even aware of.
"Freezing: Microsoft's Answer to Global Warming!!!! (c)"
Next up, the Army and Navy. After that, government agencies... finally, big businesses and the public.
Yes, so we will be able to buy XP instead of the best and most secure OS, Vista!!!!!
I think that this is the best own goal ever done by MS in its long life, on two counts. first, they are saying that XP is arguably more secure than vista. second, they are saying that while all organizations are created equals, some are more equal than others. Why is it that i cannot buy XP anymore, while the Air force can? So, I do not think that "big business and the public" will ever be able to buy that. Never. not ever. BUT, that does not mean that this will not have repercussions.Big business will use it as a lever to delay, yet again, the adoption of Vista/win7, by browbeating MS into admitting that they will support XP longer than publicly stated ( I do not think that they will leave the Air force high and dry in four years, do you?), and demanding equal treatment. moreover, I do not think it possible that this XP will not percolate in the public domain. One more unintended consequence: any attempt into selling Vista/win 7 by implying that Xp is less secure is meaningless now: "go tell the blue boys, then come back!"
from the post:"A patch was released by Microsoft last October that fixes the problem, but the computers infected were reportedly too old to be patched." "....musssst....not.....say.....MS conspiracy......"
I work in the Field, I am an admirer of Taleb (met him a couple of times), and I must say that financial math is here to stay, even if I may contest the reason why this will happen. The sum total that Banks, regulators and politicians invested in financial modeling, both in terms of money and of reputation, is immense. Value at risk is now the yardstick by which balance sheet risk is measured in the banking system [and look where it brought us], all financial instruments are measured, and Joe Public is informed about how risky his mutual fund is, and all precisely indicated to the second percentage decimal, for example 5,61%. I do not see the authorities "coming out" and saying:" well, we'll have to be honest to the public. Best practice will be that any VAR measure will be published as an interval, and the limits will be multiples of 5%", which in the example would mean writing to the investor "the risk measure of your fund is calculated as being between 0% and 10%".
If anything, I think that the quest for a perfect control of risk will be intensified, and as always happens in the field, something will be found that predicted exactly the financial crisis and it will become a second Holy Grail [insert your Monty Python joke Here ]. Of course,it could be a statistical fluke, like the Super bowl indicator. anyway, the need for quants will not dwindle.
Rubbish, my PC (built for the equivalent of about $500 (over 2 years ago - granted I upgraded the GPU last year but that would have only added another $100 after replacing the old one) and it runs Vista perfectly fine including all the latest games.
This whole thing about having to spend a fortune on hardware for vista is BS. You do NOT need to a 'killer' machine to run a 'killer' OS as you so put it.
Granted it took a while for the graphics drivers for games to mature properly to the point of being similar to XP, but that happened a while ago, and on any modern (and not necessarily expensive PC), the performance difference will be minimal between Vista/7 and XP.
My point exactly. My rig cost me about a grand, so why should I change it for something that's only marginally different? remember: companies have a huge installed base of computers,that are running XP pro sp3 perfectly right now!
Let's switch to a car analogy: I have a 6 year old BMW 320D touring. it has about 50.000 miles on it, as good as new as BMW diesel engines go. ( My cousin's has 250.000 miles on it). Enters a BMW engineer and says:" I am proud to offer you the 2009 model of your car! vastly better!!" My questions are:"is it bigger?" "no, obviously!" " does it have a better mileage on the road?" "...well. marginally so..., but whereas your model had a max speed of 135 Miles per hour, this one goes 150!!! [hint: speed limit where I live is 65mph]" "how much would it cost me to switch?" "about 35 grand." " so why should I change?" "Because we're pulling assistance and spares on your model year, so from now on, you're on your own!! (smiles)"
I think companies are more likely to depend on old software that runs only on XP. So they target the correct users indeed.
Most non-corporate users only use programs to browse the tubes, print documents, send email and view photo's, nothing that depends on XP:)
Do not forget gamers/power users. I loathe the fact that I need a killer machine, to run a killer OS, to run Call of duty about at the same Frame per second rate as my old machine, with a few bells and whistles involved that I do not care particularly about.I'd end up paying 1.000 bucks on hardware, 250 on OS, and 50 on the game just to stay where I am now.
One other consideration is that these strategy of enabling XPsp3 in windows 7 will surely put some noses out of joint, plus leaving the door open for interesting legal questions. Imagine this scenario: in an all win XP sp3 outfit, the company buys half a dozen copies of win7. are these particular associated copies of XP officially supported while all the legacy copies aren't?
Remember: if a company has a particular, mission critical application that runs in XP, and this application is "good enough/fast enough" as is, the requirement of the company is "cheap xp machines with xp installed", NOT "rich win 7 machines with win7 plus a virtual machine with XP", if only because cost of hardware goes up. Given the low price of entry level hardware these days, the OS is representing a bigger slice of the pie than previously, so pressure there is higher. I would not be surprised if somebody did a "spoiling attack" claiming that all this design is a win7 tax and demanding to be able to buy legitimate XP copies....at old win xp prices.
I think there's a definite irony in that most of the systems that failed are the last descendants of mobile secure and fail safe systems, or fail safe communication routing systems... Collectively we are dumbed down by the plenty of electronic solutions available, so we disregard good engineering in designing our systems. I bet that most of the redundant/back up lines going in most of the offices are routed through the same physical tubes!!!!!! that's Homer Simpson design team!!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
[...]
What makes it far more major, is that its one of the extremely rare remotely exploitable vulnerability that IIS6 have had. Contrary to Slashdot beleif, IIS6 (IIS7 more so though) is totally rock solid and extremely secure, so having something like that pop up is quite scary.
Contrary to Slashdot belief, Slashdotters usually rant about Microsoft client operating systems, like Vista or Win7. Ranting about Server Software is bad form, primarily because Linux/Apache is the primary platform, and Slashdot should therefore rant that Linux is nipping MS in the bud with its uncompetitive practices.
Humans aren't actually better at it than robots; humans are notoriously bad at estimating conditional probabilities.
I must disagree with that, see under Prospect theory. Short version, the human mind is bad at estimating and evaluating long odds or short odds, but it is surprisingly good at estimating mid range probabilities on the fly. The real problem is that the human mind treats the same data sets differently if presented in different manner, hence the name prospect theory.
The best example was when the two proponents gave a test each to his own students. the premise was that there could be a terrible epidemic. one course was told:" if you order to inoculate every american, 3% will die from complications related to the vaccine."; the other course was told:"97% of the people will survive".
guess what the answer was in each case? an overwhelming majority in the second case wanted to inoculate everyone, while that was not the case in the first course. Notice that nothing was said about how efficient the vaccine was (decision under uncertainty)
At least a robotic mind, in both cases, would say:
P1+P2=1
P1=0.03
P2=0.97
and go on from there.
one other interesting thing, if a little offtopic, is that the average response of students forced to decide each on his/her own was more accurate than the "debating society" model, in cases like " how many peas are in this transparent jar?".
Richard Thaler found an explanation by "drugging" the results, i.e. planting an outspoken accomplice who talked first and forcefully told an extremely high number, or an extremely low number. In those cases, the crowd followed and the response overestimated or underestimated accordingly.
Since you can never be 100% certain of a target, the robots would have to use fuzzy logic. That is something that humans are better than robots at; I'm not really comfortable with hardware designed to be lethal making decisions like this. Truly autonomous killer robots are probably not a good idea -- haven't 60 years of B movies taught us anything?
I wonder what Susan Calvin thinks about that.
More likely it's ripping off these people. http://hackaday.com/2009/05/17/magic-wands-for-disney/ They released open source code for their project here. http://gitorious.org/fantasia
that would make it "prior art", and even I do not think MS could be such a noob.
That consists of
These people will always keep IE's share above some percentage (I'd take a stab of about 66.6%). Also, and I appreciate Asa's non-profit work but I must question his for-profit source that he cited. Where and how was this data collected? It's a very difficult problem and everyone of these browser-share or operating system-share reports that hits Slashdot are ripped apart by readers as being statistically flawed. No transparency causes me to instantly dismiss these findings.
Believe it or not,IE is non profit as well.Proof of that is, MS is giving it away with each copy of operating system it sells.
The financial math for them is as such:
1. "our newest operating systems are nowhere near good enough, for getting people to upgrade";
2."the ratio of new computers sold vs the installed base is lower than it was in the good old days, making backward compatibility even more important. that makes the old policy of " shifting the goalposts" unworkable";
3."Moore's law ain't what it used to be; for a user who browses the web, checks email, does something in Excel and Word, and uses a terminal emulator for data entry, the perceived value of changing the computer with a new one has no value, provided that the user interfaces remain the same; if the new computer has Vista or Win7, the perceived value is probably negative";
4. solution: if we seed the world with our IE, with its quirks, active-x controls and incompatibilities, and marry it forcefully with our operating systems, we'll be able to sell more copies of our operating system. IE does not run on any other platform, and the big installed base with IE6 as standard will do the marketing for us."
Maybe that's what causes the end of the world? December 21, 2012... Firefox surpasses IE in marketshare, causing Steve Ballmer to lose his mind and launch Microsoft's nuclear missiles. Someone get Art Bell on the line, I think I've got a program idea for him
...aaaaah, that's what he needed the 3.8 billion for..."Bill, I really wouldn't want to bother you, but for that money I get cheyenne mountain thrown in as well!!!"
Microsoft is currently working on a $40B stock buy back, having recently completed ANOTHER $40B stock buy back. That's the amusing thing about the people who say that Apple is getting bigger than MS, based purely on cash in hand. Yes, MSFT "only" has $25B cash. That's after buying back $80B of stock.
in most companies , the concept of stock buyback is flimsily misunderstood to say the least: let me go on and explain.
In the fiscal years from 2005 to 2008, MSFT retired about 66 billion dollars in its own stock; at the same time, it issued a bit less than 14 billion in stock. This is probably for the most part the result of the exercise of stock options by the employees. Net result, they retired about 42 bn.in their own equity.
as of end 2008, their return on equity has been about 48%.That comes from dividing about 17 bn net income by their 36bn stockholders equity. Now, if they had let the cash build up, their stockholders equity would have been 78 bn, and their return on equity a more down to earth 22%.
Going back to the stock option plans: if the employees are assigned a significant number of options, say 10% of the issued capital,they can force a massive dilution on other shareholders. a neat 10% stock buyback will set everything right, but on a practical level is the same as paying out 10% of the company to the employees involved.
"VMware" will announce its first layoffs in June. Microsoft is now hovering like a vulture, waiting to scoop up "VMware".
Microsoft does not want to spend its cash hoard of $25 billion when the interest rate on bonds is essentially at zero -- relative to inflation.
That means also that its 25 bn cash hoard is yielding 0 as well, so adding up to the cash hoard is losing them money.
I work in the financial world, and I see no immediate logic to the move. they have cash in hand, they are still producing cash after investments, and any acquisition target is either small enough to be considered petty cash, or big enough to warrant a stock swap offering. Furthermore, why tip you hand? they issued about 5bn, say that a comfortable cash level is 10 bn after the acquisitions, and all the pundits will scramble for tech companies with a market cap between 12 and 18 bn market capitalization ( I am assuming a premium of 40% over the current price).
Not a particularly smart move.
One possible explanation, which currently does NOT bear contemplating, is that they'vee seen in the crystal ball the day when they won't be cash positive, and starting to build the name amongst bond investors is sensible anyway. one added plus is that bond investors have been left holding the short stick recently, so paradoxycally the stock owners feel better off when there are bond investors in the company instead of the other way around, as it should be according to logic and law.
Austria is pulling out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns.
They do not have to worry. LHC will pull Austria out of its place eventually.
Interesting. I wonder if anyone has tried a couple of tests that spring to my mind:
1. computer are configure as an "xp out of the box rig", with latest updates;
2.computer configured as silly XP: firefox instead of explorer, thunderbird instead of outlook, etc. etc.
3. Vista out of the box;
4. Win7 out of the box.
After this, let's all assault these rigs and see what happens. Remember, the economics depend also on hardware, since while xp is running on the installed park, probably win7 and vista won't; How much will you have to pay to replace the hardware? Halve that, invest it onto XP security, rinse, lather, repeat.
I think the TFA misses the REAL issue, which is:
1.check the improvement between Win7 and Vista;
2.check both against Windows XP.
After all, what's the problem with Microsoft making available the Best and Fastest Operating System it can produce?
Remember: in all the corporations, this issue is very real. MS is trying to make me pay for a new operating system, which is slower than the previous one, and that requires bigger hardware. Where's the value here? Yes, they can go on buying the producers of XP addons and quietly retire their products... but that won't produce customer satisfaction.
people always underestimate the dangers of physical delivery.
Let's think this through: I am a smartie who knows computers and is interested in blackmail. Where do I get thosehard disks? you see, ebay and such are markets, so you have to tell them where you want those disks sent, under what name, on which credit card....then you must retrieve them, probably giving some proof of identity.
So, given that my objectives are:
1. get rich;
2. do NOT get caught in the process;
I do not think that's the best option.
For example, if I had sold the THAAD data to North Korea, i'd probably get a free ticket to some strange place, with refreshments.Waterboarding anyone?
We have a similar problem in Italy, and the problem is not Broadband, i.e. cable or ADSL access, but free-to-air signals.
Imagine that i had No television in my house, BUT a computer with DVD RW, and a not-so-bleeding edge video card. Why should I pay the TV tax for? the junkies like me that watch TV as well want 16:9 1080i or 1080p lcd television, a dvd player to match, dolby surround sound... not a 19" screen and no remote control. The content coming from the public TV network via broadband in italy is free for users in other countries, why should I pay for it? especially because, since I own a normal TV, i'd pay it twice over.
My 8 year old computer ran xp just fine... celeron 1.1 with 512 ram Vista wants that as a minimum, if that's just for the os how are you going to use it for anything else? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/system-requirements.aspx
Best use? comic relief! press the "ON" button, and look at Vista trying to squeeze itself in the RAM. the Funniest half an hour you'll get.
...and there was a great gnashing of teeth.
...tsk, tsk.....it really is a great wailing and gnashing of teeth.
quote the source next time.
Now we're gonna get the swine flu spread all over from the flying pigs.
I didn't think we would see this day. So either its flying pigs or hell freezing over. Then again maybe there is a side to Microsoft that we weren't even aware of.
"Freezing: Microsoft's Answer to Global Warming!!!! (c)"
Next up, the Army and Navy. After that, government agencies ... finally, big businesses and the public.
Yes, so we will be able to buy XP instead of the best and most secure OS, Vista!!!!!
I think that this is the best own goal ever done by MS in its long life, on two counts. first, they are saying that XP is arguably more secure than vista. second, they are saying that while all organizations are created equals, some are more equal than others. Why is it that i cannot buy XP anymore, while the Air force can?
So, I do not think that "big business and the public" will ever be able to buy that. Never. not ever. BUT, that does not mean that this will not have repercussions.Big business will use it as a lever to delay, yet again, the adoption of Vista/win7, by browbeating MS into admitting that they will support XP longer than publicly stated ( I do not think that they will leave the Air force high and dry in four years, do you?), and demanding equal treatment. moreover, I do not think it possible that this XP will not percolate in the public domain.
One more unintended consequence: any attempt into selling Vista/win 7 by implying that Xp is less secure is meaningless now: "go tell the blue boys, then come back!"
from the post:"A patch was released by Microsoft last October that fixes the problem, but the computers infected were reportedly too old to be patched."
"....musssst....not.....say.....MS conspiracy......"
Because the level of irony created in anyone wearing it would destroy time.
I heard the rumor that wearing it is forbidden within three miles of the Large Hadron Collider.
Next on the GE project sheet: the Holodeck!!! (c)
I work in the Field, I am an admirer of Taleb (met him a couple of times), and I must say that financial math is here to stay, even if I may contest the reason why this will happen.
The sum total that Banks, regulators and politicians invested in financial modeling, both in terms of money and of reputation, is immense. Value at risk is now the yardstick by which balance sheet risk is measured in the banking system [and look where it brought us], all financial instruments are measured, and Joe Public is informed about how risky his mutual fund is, and all precisely indicated to the second percentage decimal, for example 5,61%. I do not see the authorities "coming out" and saying:" well, we'll have to be honest to the public. Best practice will be that any VAR measure will be published as an interval, and the limits will be multiples of 5%", which in the example would mean writing to the investor "the risk measure of your fund is calculated as being between 0% and 10%".
If anything, I think that the quest for a perfect control of risk will be intensified, and as always happens in the field, something will be found that predicted exactly the financial crisis and it will become a second Holy Grail [insert your Monty Python joke Here ]. Of course,it could be a statistical fluke, like the Super bowl indicator.
anyway, the need for quants will not dwindle.
Rubbish, my PC (built for the equivalent of about $500 (over 2 years ago - granted I upgraded the GPU last year but that would have only added another $100 after replacing the old one) and it runs Vista perfectly fine including all the latest games. This whole thing about having to spend a fortune on hardware for vista is BS. You do NOT need to a 'killer' machine to run a 'killer' OS as you so put it. Granted it took a while for the graphics drivers for games to mature properly to the point of being similar to XP, but that happened a while ago, and on any modern (and not necessarily expensive PC), the performance difference will be minimal between Vista/7 and XP.
My point exactly. My rig cost me about a grand, so why should I change it for something that's only marginally different?
remember: companies have a huge installed base of computers,that are running XP pro sp3 perfectly right now!
Let's switch to a car analogy: I have a 6 year old BMW 320D touring. it has about 50.000 miles on it, as good as new as BMW diesel engines go. ( My cousin's has 250.000 miles on it). Enters a BMW engineer and says:" I am proud to offer you the 2009 model of your car! vastly better!!"
My questions are:"is it bigger?"
"no, obviously!"
" does it have a better mileage on the road?"
"...well. marginally so..., but whereas your model had a max speed of 135 Miles per hour, this one goes 150!!! [hint: speed limit where I live is 65mph]"
"how much would it cost me to switch?"
"about 35 grand."
" so why should I change?"
"Because we're pulling assistance and spares on your model year, so from now on, you're on your own!! (smiles)"
Somehow, that does not make me smile.
First requirement for Testers:"the ability to see one particular colour, i.e. blue, will be an absolute requirement."
I think companies are more likely to depend on old software that runs only on XP. So they target the correct users indeed.
Most non-corporate users only use programs to browse the tubes, print documents, send email and view photo's, nothing that depends on XP :)
Do not forget gamers/power users. I loathe the fact that I need a killer machine, to run a killer OS, to run Call of duty about at the same Frame per second rate as my old machine, with a few bells and whistles involved that I do not care particularly about.I'd end up paying 1.000 bucks on hardware, 250 on OS, and 50 on the game just to stay where I am now.
One other consideration is that these strategy of enabling XPsp3 in windows 7 will surely put some noses out of joint, plus leaving the door open for interesting legal questions. Imagine this scenario: in an all win XP sp3 outfit, the company buys half a dozen copies of win7. are these particular associated copies of XP officially supported while all the legacy copies aren't?
Remember: if a company has a particular, mission critical application that runs in XP, and this application is "good enough/fast enough" as is, the requirement of the company is "cheap xp machines with xp installed", NOT "rich win 7 machines with win7 plus a virtual machine with XP", if only because cost of hardware goes up. Given the low price of entry level hardware these days, the OS is representing a bigger slice of the pie than previously, so pressure there is higher. I would not be surprised if somebody did a "spoiling attack" claiming that all this design is a win7 tax and demanding to be able to buy legitimate XP copies....at old win xp prices.
I think there's a definite irony in that most of the systems that failed are the last descendants of mobile secure and fail safe systems, or fail safe communication routing systems...
Collectively we are dumbed down by the plenty of electronic solutions available, so we disregard good engineering in designing our systems. I bet that most of the redundant/back up lines going in most of the offices are routed through the same physical tubes!!!!!! that's Homer Simpson design team!!!!!