The article is going a little slow, so heres the text:
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday December 17, @18:31 from the tis-the-season-to-writhe-and-scream-fa-la-la-la-la dept. While normally we don't do this sort of thing, recent charity work with Child's Play has substantially increased the bandwidth over at Penny Arcade. So to help Gabe & Tycho keep the site running slightly faster than snails-pace, we're helping host their seasonal holiday strip series "The Last Christmas". The cover and the first page are attached to this story, so read on and enjoy until we hit our bandwidth limits! (Warning: Comic may contain Cthulhu)
The difference between Open Source and MS is that inside MS, coders who are technically employed to work on a specific part of the MS empire cannot easily supply fixes and code for inclusion inside IE. That is down to the IE team to fix. Its just the same at work, we are told to remain focused on our own tasks, no matter if colleagues on other projects are floundering.
Once exploits start coming out for Firefox (as most reasonable people expect them to) those many eyes from around the OSS community (some MS employees included no doubt) can look upon the code and work together to cure problems. In some cases, this will mean pre-emptive fixes to bugs as they are noticed rather than waiting for major exploits.
The team is dynamic, and expands to cover itself. Firefox has rapidly become the poster boy project for open source, and as such, I don't think any of us would like to see it fail.
The most amusing part is, the knitting pattern world ARE interested in copyright, and even have very detailed copyright instructions for the woodbe knitter.
I don't think your or my grandmother would ever read these.
Bennomatic just rung me to tell you all the rest of his message:
so far, I'm just going to test the finder."
For some reason he was cut off whilst sending it, and can't get back onto his desktop. If anyone could get an engineer sent to his house he would greatly appreciate it.
from their terms of use (illegally deep linked of course): Permitted Use
You agree that you are only authorized to visit, view and to retain a copy of pages of this Site for your own personal use, and that you shall not duplicate, download, publish, modify or otherwise distribute the material on this Site for any purpose other than to review event and promotional information, for personal use, or to purchase tickets or merchandise for your personal use, unless otherwise specifically authorized by Ticketmaster to do so. You also agree not to deep-link to the site for any purpose, unless specifically authorized by Ticketmaster to do so. The content and software on this Site is the property of Ticketmaster and/or its suppliers and is protected by U.S., Canadian and international copyright laws. We post a legal notice and various credits on pages of the Site, which may not be removed. Please do not remove this notice or these credits, or any additional information contained along with the notices and credits.
Sounds like they still don't agree with the judge;)
Something else I also notice in the wording of that, they tell people not to remove those notices, I wonder if they are refering to hackers, because the notice text isn't in a wiki of any sort, so surely no customer could modify or remove it?
Our Windows server doesn't need a desktop to run. Things operate as services, not as interactive desktop applications.
I log into the administrator account when I need to do things on the machine, otherwise it sits idle. If the admin account decides to die, everyone just carries on regardless. The one time the machine stopped operating as expected was when the DVD writer corrupted itself and stopped the local administrator from logging out, all remote users still carried on regardless.
We have had zero effective downtime since it was installed over 2 years ago, users have never encountered connectivity or access problems.
Maybe it was the case with 98 etc, but windows 2000 has been very stable for our uses. We have more problems with routers and clients than the server itself.
so, if they're so good at identifying them, is it much different to fix them?
Yes, its VERY easy for somebody to notice a bug or unexpected effect. it may also be very easy to suggest a possible fix for that bug. However, in a large system with lots of interconnected parts, you cannot just impliment the fix without being certain that you haven't screwed up other parts.
Take for example the slashdot rendering bug in firefox. Plenty of people have reproduced the bug, plenty of people have suggested work arounds and fixes, however none has been stable enough to go into the proper branch (may have changed since I last looked, 1.0 is still problematic).
Now, another source of bugs and errors is compiler updates. Problems with buffer overflows and other "standardised" bugs can often be removed by changing the compiler switches or obtaining an update to the compiler, this is in effect how MS managed to remove a great many problems with SP2. The inverse is also true, code which worked as expected on one version of the compiler may begin to fail during recompilation many years down the line leading to new unnoticed bugs.
They will have tried it, but found (like everyone else thats ever tried to use Windows search) that it completely misses EVERY filetype that doesn't have a handler configured in the registry.
Source code files are a special problem for me using the windows search.
I know they are there, I know they contain certain strings, yet by default, windows search will NOT scan the file.
I've gone into this in detail in previous discussions, but it basically needs a shotgun registry update to tell it to use the default text search handler for all types of files (one reg entry per file extension).
Slashdot Mirror
The article is going a little slow, so heres the text:
a dept.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday December 17, @18:31
from the tis-the-season-to-writhe-and-scream-fa-la-la-la-l
While normally we don't do this sort of thing, recent charity work with Child's Play has substantially increased the bandwidth over at Penny Arcade. So to help Gabe & Tycho keep the site running slightly faster than snails-pace, we're helping host their seasonal holiday strip series "The Last Christmas". The cover and the first page are attached to this story, so read on and enjoy until we hit our bandwidth limits! (Warning: Comic may contain Cthulhu)
What if Shumaker Levy 9 had impacted with Earth instead of Jupiter?
Instead of a bruise on its surface, we would be dead.
I believe his hypothosis comes from the same logical thinking as:
Dont put all your eggs into one basket.
I believe about 50% of our support tickets are related to spyware.
Redundencies?
Don't need to worry about outsourcing if there no job to do in the first place.
hurt on every other anti-spyware company out there
That really does depend upon whos definition of spyware you use.
There is a fine line between "Authorised partners" and "deceptive bundleware".
The difference between Open Source and MS is that inside MS, coders who are technically employed to work on a specific part of the MS empire cannot easily supply fixes and code for inclusion inside IE. That is down to the IE team to fix. Its just the same at work, we are told to remain focused on our own tasks, no matter if colleagues on other projects are floundering.
Once exploits start coming out for Firefox (as most reasonable people expect them to) those many eyes from around the OSS community (some MS employees included no doubt) can look upon the code and work together to cure problems. In some cases, this will mean pre-emptive fixes to bugs as they are noticed rather than waiting for major exploits.
The team is dynamic, and expands to cover itself.
Firefox has rapidly become the poster boy project for open source, and as such, I don't think any of us would like to see it fail.
If your current map is a screen on your dash, and you've come to rely on it, then yes it is a primary means.
Its like telling people to go back to sliderules and charts instead of using a spreadsheet.
Don't all your new US mobiles have GPS locators inside for 911 use?
When the President decides to disable it, people back home will die.
On a side note, how could they disable Galileo?
Not if your trying to escape from an occupied area, and your meeting up with a rescue team at designated coordinates.
This always narks me about dishwashers.
You pay out hundreds of pounds for this thing.
You then STILL have to put your dishes in the sink and pre-wash them before you can actually give them to the machine.
Why not just put a miniscule bit more effort in and get pots done at that initial stage?
I, for one, worship our Chika chika BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTT chika BZTTTTT overlords.
Wrapping a box in tin foil and sticking an umbrella on top doesn't make it a geostationary satellite ;)
Its not rocket science, everyone knows you have to add a coat hanger antenna and flashing LEDs to pull it off.
The most amusing part is, the knitting pattern world ARE interested in copyright, and even have very detailed copyright instructions for the woodbe knitter.
t ml
I don't think your or my grandmother would ever read these.
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall03/FEATcopyright.h
Bennomatic just rung me to tell you all the rest of his message:
so far, I'm just going to test the finder."
For some reason he was cut off whilst sending it, and can't get back onto his desktop.
If anyone could get an engineer sent to his house he would greatly appreciate it.
[/only_joking]
9 line molesters at that.
The most worrying part is on the site, he challenges people to make smaller molester clones.
I could send you a knitting pattern to make your own, but if i do the KIAA will send out a team of attack grannies.
Why not have a true 3d display cube comprising of lots of 2d screen layers?
If it is indeed transparent, it shouldn't matter how many layers you have.
They still say deep linking isn't allowed.
;)
from their terms of use (illegally deep linked of course):
Permitted Use
You agree that you are only authorized to visit, view and to retain a copy of pages of this Site for your own personal use, and that you shall not duplicate, download, publish, modify or otherwise distribute the material on this Site for any purpose other than to review event and promotional information, for personal use, or to purchase tickets or merchandise for your personal use, unless otherwise specifically authorized by Ticketmaster to do so. You also agree not to deep-link to the site for any purpose, unless specifically authorized by Ticketmaster to do so. The content and software on this Site is the property of Ticketmaster and/or its suppliers and is protected by U.S., Canadian and international copyright laws. We post a legal notice and various credits on pages of the Site, which may not be removed. Please do not remove this notice or these credits, or any additional information contained along with the notices and credits.
Sounds like they still don't agree with the judge
Something else I also notice in the wording of that, they tell people not to remove those notices, I wonder if they are refering to hackers, because the notice text isn't in a wiki of any sort, so surely no customer could modify or remove it?
To see, or not to see, that is the question.
Intel and AMD today announced plans to market Triple Core CPUs specifically for the facial recognition industry.
Security officials today claimed the improvements these triple core chips will bring may actually make their airport scanning devices useful.
Maybe the people who work at Microsoft aren't all big nerds who know 40 million of code by heart.
Billy knows and cherishes every single line of code.
Our Windows server doesn't need a desktop to run. Things operate as services, not as interactive desktop applications.
I log into the administrator account when I need to do things on the machine, otherwise it sits idle.
If the admin account decides to die, everyone just carries on regardless.
The one time the machine stopped operating as expected was when the DVD writer corrupted itself and stopped the local administrator from logging out, all remote users still carried on regardless.
We have had zero effective downtime since it was installed over 2 years ago, users have never encountered connectivity or access problems.
Maybe it was the case with 98 etc, but windows 2000 has been very stable for our uses.
We have more problems with routers and clients than the server itself.
so, if they're so good at identifying them, is it much different to fix them?
Yes, its VERY easy for somebody to notice a bug or unexpected effect.
it may also be very easy to suggest a possible fix for that bug.
However, in a large system with lots of interconnected parts, you cannot just impliment the fix without being certain that you haven't screwed up other parts.
Take for example the slashdot rendering bug in firefox. Plenty of people have reproduced the bug, plenty of people have suggested work arounds and fixes, however none has been stable enough to go into the proper branch (may have changed since I last looked, 1.0 is still problematic).
Now, another source of bugs and errors is compiler updates. Problems with buffer overflows and other "standardised" bugs can often be removed by changing the compiler switches or obtaining an update to the compiler, this is in effect how MS managed to remove a great many problems with SP2.
The inverse is also true, code which worked as expected on one version of the compiler may begin to fail during recompilation many years down the line leading to new unnoticed bugs.
The features your talking about are not available in every version of Windows.
Sure, sp2 fixes some things and adds a popup stopper, but what about people still using Win 98, win Me (shudder!), or win 2000?
MS knows they are behind the curve on this one.
They will have tried it, but found (like everyone else thats ever tried to use Windows search) that it completely misses EVERY filetype that doesn't have a handler configured in the registry.
Source code files are a special problem for me using the windows search.
I know they are there, I know they contain certain strings, yet by default, windows search will NOT scan the file.
I've gone into this in detail in previous discussions, but it basically needs a shotgun registry update to tell it to use the default text search handler for all types of files (one reg entry per file extension).
It bugged the hell out of me when I got XP.