MS is already circling the drain, Google^W Alphabet is chasing after them as fast as they can, and all Facebook can do is copy/buy everyone else in desperation. Their purchase of Instagram and wholesale copying of Snapchat likely bought them a 2 or 3 year extension.
Nonsense.
According to slashdot, MS has been circling the drain almost as long as BSD has been dying.
Nope, still making billions a year in profit and that is now spanning multiple business lines instead of only Windows/Office.
In theory, Microsoft has this ability as it is. They've done a great job of unifying the higher level parts of Windows 10 (and yes, I have my complaints about Windows 10). If Intel came out with a low-powered SOC with a radio, x86 Phone could happen. I totally agree that Samsung will ultimately lose. They are going to pull a Sony so hard, and this is coming from someone who likes Sony enough to still seek out their phones at full price.
You're right, Microsoft are already most of the way there and I am sure they are hoping the next attempt will be the one that finally puts it all together.
The latest rumors I saw indicated they may be using an ARM chip able to run x86.
The important thing for people to keep in mind when they are saying that Microsoft should just give up is that we're approaching the time that there will no longer be separate mobile / tablet / PC form factors with separate OS etc.
You'll have one platform that runs across them all and adapts to your current needs: phone while moving, dock for desktop, maybe a bluetooth type connection to a tablet when needed.
So absolutely Microsoft will try again in this space. Only this time it will be a phone running full-fledged Windows with the ability to run x86. It sucks that they have created a few platforms in a row that are immediately relegated to the trashbin of history (Windows Phone 7, 8 and 10 Mobile) but unifying is the endgame for all these players.
IMO it will be Samsung left in the cold because only Google / Apple / Microsoft have all the pieces to complete the puzzle.
The F-35 is useful! It was supposed to be a pork barrel project and it fulfills this role absolutely perfectly, what the hell is your problem?
This is funny but absolutely true. The US military is the biggest make-work project in the history of mankind and a great proving ground for socialist policies.:)
They are unifying all their platforms on a common kernel with universal app frameworks.
Next, for the 90% of people that don't need tons of computing power, they replace your PC / Laptop / Phone with one device in a phone form factor.
When you are at a desk and need a keyboard and mouse you dock and voila you are good to go. Heck, using a mechanism similar to the Surface Book, the base / dock could contain a discrete GPU etc. to even enable people to do CAD / Video work.
The bonus for people using this type of setup is that there is no more having to sync multiple profiles, data, preferences, etc. across multiple devices. You carry it with you in your pocket and back up to Azure and you're done.
As someone else mentioned in the thread, the big stumbling block is the availability of apps for the mobile portion of this end run. They need to develop stuff in house or pay the popular 3rd party app developers to get it done. I liked Windows phone but the lack of support by developers killed it for me.
The $200k figure is internalized costs; the cost of providing free credit protection to those affected (which almost noone takes them up on), and investigators to figure out what was breached, how, by whom, and to maybe patch the hole they got in through.
This is a good point about the PR stunt of credit protection. What a joke.
The externalized amount, the burden on those whose data was stolen, is far greater.
Also a really good point. Until someone class actions up on a few of these companies we're going to see IT security continue to race to the bottom just like everything else in this industry.
Having tried the preventive approach on computer security for years, I came to the reluctant conclusion that it's a losing game. In every business scenario I've dealt with, it is simply impossible to protect against every threat and every zero-day exploit that comes down the pipe. Software patching, firewalls, antivirus, specialized appliances, you name it - they all have their limitations. You can protect against any number of possible exploits, but if only one gets through, you lose. So businesses must weight the costs spending more and more on preventive security solutions versus the cost of a security breach.
Obviously the implications of a breach are more severe for some businesses than others, but in many cases I deal with it makes more sense to focus on a good recovery solution rather than focussing mainly on prevention.
You're exactly right. The first thing that I tell people about computer system security is that there is no such thing.
As you said, in computer security when you're on the defense -- you lose. All you can do is raise the bar as high as you can with the budget and resources given to you, and then you plan for recovery with the expectation you'll need to at some time. Security is risk mitigation and nothing more.
I think the issue here is that when people are having their information compromised in a widely publicized manner every few months it becomes accepted. So the "cost" to these companies is going down as far as reputation and possibly lawsuits as well. They shouldn't be getting off this easily but really.. no one seems to care. Until they go to take out that new car loan and find out their identity has been jacked and they are going to spend the next few years trying to clear up their credit score, that is..
Once you take the profit motive out and allow centrally planned offices to remove the research redundancy and the creativity of committees to combine in these controlled ways... there is no limit to the disasters you can accomplish.
Don't forget the importance of having everyone on the engineering team educated in public institutions.
What a load of shit.
There can be bad management in private organizations just like there is bad management in public organizations.
And if we're talking about research and development, the public always does the bulk of pure research anyways..
Please, let me know when you are aware of a "Capitalist" system? Because what we have ISN'T CAPITALISM.
Think about it: - the subprime crisis happened for a number of reasons, but one of the primary ones was that 3 rating agencies have had the blessing in federal law since what, the 1920s(?) to be the "official" rating companies. Without that benediction, investors would have to actually scour the marketplace for reliable sources of information which would THEMSELVES be proven by market-testing over time. - rather than have an FDA telling us all what to eat and what not to eat (which is apparently entirely bought and paid for by corporate interests) people would have to actually figure it.
The question is, which is better: a central "authority" that is corruptible and can be co-opted, or NO authority, forcing people to figure shit out for themselves?
There are obviously terrible ideas.
Agencies like the FDA were created in the first place because when these things were not regulated and vetted products were being sold that lied in their claims / ingredients / safety.
Not everyone has the time, education and/or equipment to test all the things that they use in day to day life themselves.. don't be absurd.
I've been wondering if Capitalism is fatally flawed. We've seen reckless, foolish greed destroy lives time and time again. It seems capitalism elevates psychopathic individuals to positions of great power and responsibility. Of course people of that sort abuse their power. Strip resources from everything within reach, leaving behind waste and destruction.
Unregulated capitalism is the wild west. That is why you need a government and regulatory oversight to correct problems that arise.
The really big problem is regulatory capture and the money in politics that removes these checks.. which is what we have right now. A run-away train.
every time nuclear power is touted as the end all be all solution going forward (by people here and on other sites), I shake my head.
I know that the technical problems have all been solved and we have breeder reactors and everything is unicorns and rainbows.. until you involve people and the dollars and cents.
Then corners get cut, the technical people aren't listened to, and we deal with enormous costs (transferred to the public) and with the possibility of radioactivity for thousands of years.
Unions raise wages at first. The dark side that they don't tell you about is that this causes the companies to try to find other ways to cut costs, and eventually leads to the jobs moving overseas.
Aren't they doing that every chance they get already?
Just like with their foothold in the enterprise for Office 365 via existing customer base using Active Directory and Exchange, I assume many of their Azure customers they got the same way, whereas AWS didn't have that advantage.
I see MS overtaking Amazon for this reason.
Using Office 365 / Azure AD is a natural extension of what many companies are already using at the enterprise level.
Add in Skype and cloud PBX and you can run a lot of businesses right out of their cloud service on demand and without a capital cost..
Some of these questionable policies are driven by business regulations and auditors. If you're going through a PCI or Sarbanes-Oxley certification process you're going to have to get all of those checkboxes marked on the auditors' spreadsheets, whether or not they make sense.
Good luck trying to get the auditor to explain why you need to change your passwords every 90 days, in my experience they can't defend their requirements and simply say things like it's "best practice".
It is only to limit how long a compromised password can be used without being noticed.
Slashdot Mirror
and the idiotic polarization of politics in the States basically causing it to drop out of leadership on the most important issue of our time. Sad!
MS is already circling the drain, Google^W Alphabet is chasing after them as fast as they can, and all Facebook can do is copy/buy everyone else in desperation. Their purchase of Instagram and wholesale copying of Snapchat likely bought them a 2 or 3 year extension.
Nonsense.
According to slashdot, MS has been circling the drain almost as long as BSD has been dying.
Nope, still making billions a year in profit and that is now spanning multiple business lines instead of only Windows/Office.
Making easy money for bankers!
In theory, Microsoft has this ability as it is. They've done a great job of unifying the higher level parts of Windows 10 (and yes, I have my complaints about Windows 10). If Intel came out with a low-powered SOC with a radio, x86 Phone could happen. I totally agree that Samsung will ultimately lose. They are going to pull a Sony so hard, and this is coming from someone who likes Sony enough to still seek out their phones at full price.
You're right, Microsoft are already most of the way there and I am sure they are hoping the next attempt will be the one that finally puts it all together.
The latest rumors I saw indicated they may be using an ARM chip able to run x86.
The important thing for people to keep in mind when they are saying that Microsoft should just give up is that we're approaching the time that there will no longer be separate mobile / tablet / PC form factors with separate OS etc.
You'll have one platform that runs across them all and adapts to your current needs: phone while moving, dock for desktop, maybe a bluetooth type connection to a tablet when needed.
So absolutely Microsoft will try again in this space. Only this time it will be a phone running full-fledged Windows with the ability to run x86. It sucks that they have created a few platforms in a row that are immediately relegated to the trashbin of history (Windows Phone 7, 8 and 10 Mobile) but unifying is the endgame for all these players.
IMO it will be Samsung left in the cold because only Google / Apple / Microsoft have all the pieces to complete the puzzle.
Length is good but complexity doesn't really help if you have a good lockout policy and good monitoring.
Complexity rules just mean that a) people write it on a sticky note and stick it to their monitor or b) constant password resets / helpdesk calls.
No.
The word innovation has been overused to the point where it no longer has any meaing whatsoever.
Most of the industry is cyclical and evolutionary rather than revolutionary or disruptive.
The F-35 is useful! It was supposed to be a pork barrel project and it fulfills this role absolutely perfectly, what the hell is your problem?
This is funny but absolutely true. The US military is the biggest make-work project in the history of mankind and a great proving ground for socialist policies. :)
Shame they don't make useful stuff, though.
If you are going to expand and contract instances based on demand you aren't going to spring for a bunch of proprietary server licensing.
Rather than have to predict your maximum load ahead of time or have licenses sitting on the shelf you just run Linux and don't worry about it at all.
and get back in the game.
They are unifying all their platforms on a common kernel with universal app frameworks.
Next, for the 90% of people that don't need tons of computing power, they replace your PC / Laptop / Phone with one device in a phone form factor.
When you are at a desk and need a keyboard and mouse you dock and voila you are good to go. Heck, using a mechanism similar to the Surface Book, the base / dock could contain a discrete GPU etc. to even enable people to do CAD / Video work.
The bonus for people using this type of setup is that there is no more having to sync multiple profiles, data, preferences, etc. across multiple devices. You carry it with you in your pocket and back up to Azure and you're done.
As someone else mentioned in the thread, the big stumbling block is the availability of apps for the mobile portion of this end run. They need to develop stuff in house or pay the popular 3rd party app developers to get it done. I liked Windows phone but the lack of support by developers killed it for me.
water is wet.
Ever since you did, you have been blowing something up almost monthly with your updates.
The $200k figure is internalized costs; the cost of providing free credit protection to those affected (which almost noone takes them up on), and investigators to figure out what was breached, how, by whom, and to maybe patch the hole they got in through.
This is a good point about the PR stunt of credit protection. What a joke.
The externalized amount, the burden on those whose data was stolen, is far greater.
Also a really good point. Until someone class actions up on a few of these companies we're going to see IT security continue to race to the bottom just like everything else in this industry.
Having tried the preventive approach on computer security for years, I came to the reluctant conclusion that it's a losing game. In every business scenario I've dealt with, it is simply impossible to protect against every threat and every zero-day exploit that comes down the pipe. Software patching, firewalls, antivirus, specialized appliances, you name it - they all have their limitations. You can protect against any number of possible exploits, but if only one gets through, you lose. So businesses must weight the costs spending more and more on preventive security solutions versus the cost of a security breach.
Obviously the implications of a breach are more severe for some businesses than others, but in many cases I deal with it makes more sense to focus on a good recovery solution rather than focussing mainly on prevention.
You're exactly right. The first thing that I tell people about computer system security is that there is no such thing.
As you said, in computer security when you're on the defense -- you lose. All you can do is raise the bar as high as you can with the budget and resources given to you, and then you plan for recovery with the expectation you'll need to at some time. Security is risk mitigation and nothing more.
I think the issue here is that when people are having their information compromised in a widely publicized manner every few months it becomes accepted. So the "cost" to these companies is going down as far as reputation and possibly lawsuits as well. They shouldn't be getting off this easily but really.. no one seems to care. Until they go to take out that new car loan and find out their identity has been jacked and they are going to spend the next few years trying to clear up their credit score, that is..
Once you take the profit motive out and allow centrally planned offices to remove the research redundancy and the creativity of committees to combine in these controlled ways ... there is no limit to the disasters you can accomplish.
Don't forget the importance of having everyone on the engineering team educated in public institutions.
What a load of shit.
There can be bad management in private organizations just like there is bad management in public organizations.
And if we're talking about research and development, the public always does the bulk of pure research anyways..
So the circle-jerk can stop.
Please, let me know when you are aware of a "Capitalist" system?
Because what we have ISN'T CAPITALISM.
Think about it:
- the subprime crisis happened for a number of reasons, but one of the primary ones was that 3 rating agencies have had the blessing in federal law since what, the 1920s(?) to be the "official" rating companies. Without that benediction, investors would have to actually scour the marketplace for reliable sources of information which would THEMSELVES be proven by market-testing over time.
- rather than have an FDA telling us all what to eat and what not to eat (which is apparently entirely bought and paid for by corporate interests) people would have to actually figure it.
The question is, which is better: a central "authority" that is corruptible and can be co-opted, or NO authority, forcing people to figure shit out for themselves?
There are obviously terrible ideas.
Agencies like the FDA were created in the first place because when these things were not regulated and vetted products were being sold that lied in their claims / ingredients / safety.
Not everyone has the time, education and/or equipment to test all the things that they use in day to day life themselves.. don't be absurd.
I've been wondering if Capitalism is fatally flawed. We've seen reckless, foolish greed destroy lives time and time again. It seems capitalism elevates psychopathic individuals to positions of great power and responsibility. Of course people of that sort abuse their power. Strip resources from everything within reach, leaving behind waste and destruction.
Unregulated capitalism is the wild west. That is why you need a government and regulatory oversight to correct problems that arise.
The really big problem is regulatory capture and the money in politics that removes these checks.. which is what we have right now. A run-away train.
This has always been the case.
Unfortunately, most companies treat information security as an IT task instead of a company wide mindset.
In the push and pull of security vs. convenience IT generally loses.. but they *do* get to take the blame once things go wrong.
every time nuclear power is touted as the end all be all solution going forward (by people here and on other sites), I shake my head.
I know that the technical problems have all been solved and we have breeder reactors and everything is unicorns and rainbows.. until you involve people and the dollars and cents.
Then corners get cut, the technical people aren't listened to, and we deal with enormous costs (transferred to the public) and with the possibility of radioactivity for thousands of years.
Unions raise wages at first. The dark side that they don't tell you about is that this causes the companies to try to find other ways to cut costs, and eventually leads to the jobs moving overseas.
Aren't they doing that every chance they get already?
Just like with their foothold in the enterprise for Office 365 via existing customer base using Active Directory and Exchange, I assume many of their Azure customers they got the same way, whereas AWS didn't have that advantage.
I see MS overtaking Amazon for this reason.
Using Office 365 / Azure AD is a natural extension of what many companies are already using at the enterprise level.
Add in Skype and cloud PBX and you can run a lot of businesses right out of their cloud service on demand and without a capital cost..
This is all true but password changes do reveal password compromises.
And having compromised tomat001 they can go straight onto guessing tomat002.
Really, why don't banks force everyone to change the PIN on their cards every month?
Obviously, reasonable password policies don't allow you to do that.
Some of these questionable policies are driven by business regulations and auditors. If you're going through a PCI or Sarbanes-Oxley certification process you're going to have to get all of those checkboxes marked on the auditors' spreadsheets, whether or not they make sense.
Good luck trying to get the auditor to explain why you need to change your passwords every 90 days, in my experience they can't defend their requirements and simply say things like it's "best practice".
It is only to limit how long a compromised password can be used without being noticed.