How would one get a program to run without executing it?
In Windows when you doubleclick on readme.txt, you're not telling your computer to open the readme.txt file with the text processor. You're executing the text file. If the text file is in fact readme.txt.exe, a fact you didn't notice because because the.exe has a text file icon in its header and you're using the default "hide extensions" behavior, you just executed a program. That program can do anything you as a user can do, including upload all your Quickbooks files to any server on the Internet and then delete the local copies. This is social engineering.
Also, any program can load and execute and file as if it were a.exe, even if the extension is something else, like.zip. Even if it couldn't, you can rename a.zip file to.exe and execute it, so why couldn't a simple script file do so? If the.zip file is in fact an executable file downloaded from the Internet, there's no reason why Windows would think this is not a legitimate user-installed program once it's renamed and/or moved to a good location to execute programs from. More recent updates of Windows will warn you if the code is unsigned and/or located in some place not approved for programs, but that's easy enough to work around.
Oh: and there are far more obscure ways, like loading your program as a.doc file into wordpad or the clipboard and then using an operating system exploit to execute code and jump to the code contained within. You could construct a "malformed" document for nearly any Windows program that causes a fault in the program to execute the (carefully constructed malformed) data as code. There are hundreds of ways to get a program to run without doing something you would normally associate with "executing" it. None of these tricks are half as effective as social engineering the user to believe that he's installing a useful application.
Also, your computer has running programs called "services". These "services" run, usually with system privileges, all the time. There are known to be many hundreds of exploits for the default set of Windows services, and the pool of exploits not commonly known is well, unknown, but generally among experts believed to be "large". Some of these services are exposed to the Internet, and anybody who knows of an exploit for a service running on your computer can "execute" any code he wants. He pretty much has more control of your computer than you do once he finds it - and he's looking, believe me he's looking.
That's available too. There are hundreds of these. I'm not going to benchmark them all for you and find the best performing one. Try them until you find one you like.
There does exist Linux malware. It's mostly focused on database exploits and rootkits, but it's out there and it always has been. For the most part though, these things target servers and are employed in targeted attacks. If the bad guys can compromise the webserver for a hosting provider they can launch their real attack on the Windows desktop. These things don't become widespread because as soon as they're common enough to get noticed the professionals who maintain servers load the updates and for the most part all is well again.
The vast majority of malware you will find on the Internet is Windows desktop based attacks, because that's where the money is. The attackers compromise the most-hit adservers, actually pay for ads, or compromise the most popular websites in order to deliver their malware to their real targets: Windows based hosts. They employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make sure their malware servers are highly placed in all the common search engines. The attack vector is usually either drive-by downloads (ie6? Still?) or social engineering (really, is your porn provider the best place to get an A/V codec that installs with an.EXE?).
I've heard it said - hell, I've said - that Unix-like operating systems are more resistant to these sort of attacks, but frankly that's not entirely correct. If you can get the user to run your app, you can get your script to run every time the user logs in. Even if the system is perfectly secure, your app can still do anything the user can do - including read the contents of all user-readable files and post the contents of a form to any IP on the Internet. Maybe you can't get system privileges usually, but the end-user facilities available on a Linux desktop are a valuable resource. If anything, a Linux box is potentially more dangerous. Windows boxes don't come with Python and Perl by default after all.
That said, unless you're specifically a high value target (and hence, should be paying for high priced system admin), the threats are just not there.
Why not just have a program "scan" your hard drive for viruses for a few minutes, find a bunch of stuff, and then charge you a fee to remove said "viruses?"
Windows malware is an evolutionary ecosystem. The parties net billions of dollars a year on both sides. This is not going to change in the forseeable future. There are no functional OS-X, Linux, BSD or Solaris malware systems in the wild. We can speculate about why but really it's more useful to adapt to the world as it is. You can use Windows and swim in this cesspool... or not. Choices are great, aren't they?
3.b. Make a clone image of the system to an external hard drive so that next time you can be done in 20 minutes. I recommend clonezilla for this because it's free, boots from a pen drive, supports Windows and Linux, and will save to a USB drive or open Windows share on the network.
4) It is usually a good idea to use something else than Internet Explorer for surfing;-)
Another good tip is to load a good hosts file. You would be amazed how much it helps. There's no host like localhost. It's cheezy, it's retro, it's cheating. But it doesn't cause cancer.*
*This statement has not been evaluated by the AMA. Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. Everything causes cancer.
Typically, yes, cleaning a virus infection from a windows computer costs more billable time than the replacement computer costs. I see a bunch of contrary responses, but I'm guessing they just don't know what's going on here.
Unfortunately, the cost of replacing the machine is just the beginning. After you have the new machine, the crudware infestation it comes with must be removed and that's often a wipe and reinstall from Microsoft media anyway. Then the broken OEM drivers have to be replaced with the functional OEM drivers from the vendor's website, and the installers for those don't always work properly. Then you have to add the drivers for add-on equipment like that combo scanner/fax/printer that the drivers never quite worked for and was discontinued years ago. Then you have to find all the user data from the old machine and put it on the new machine, even the user data that's hidden in stupid places like the programs folder for the application. You'll need to install the third party antivirus, all the Windows updates, and the usual suspects: Flash, Acrobat Reader, an office suite. Then it's all got to be tested with the end user to make sure they've got everything back they need to get their work done. Then if you're going to avoid doing this again in six months, you should take the precaution of capturing a system image.
Yeah, when you're billing at a reasonable rate the cost of the machine is very little. But still, it's something and when a small business is down because the viruses make their computer unusable it's usually best to fix it now rather than wait on a replacement PC to get the doors open again.
If you're reading this and you're a small business owner your best course is to go to EBay right now and buy another system that's the same model as yours for about $150. Then have your IT guy clone your system to it, take it home and put it in storage. Then when your system goes down, you've got a replacement to swap right in and load your data backups on (you DO make data backups, right?) so you can stay functional while your IT guy makes the dead system back into a spare for you.
Ballmer: Well, we've done very well on Netbooks. When they first came out, I'm not sure if people knew whether they were PCs or something else, and I think everybody kind of understands now that a Netbook is a small-form-factor, low-cost personal computer. And we're doing very well with Windows XP, which fits. Vista does not fit, and we're working hard to make sure Windows 7 fits very well on the Netbooks.
Goofy foot is what happens when everybody else changes direction and you don't. Most "modern" computer companies don't go goofy footed twice in a row.
Yeah, we could all use with more reviews and less rhetoric. We'll get the reviews. They're coming. No doubt this topic is going to get at least one slashdot article every day until the thing launches on the first of July. In the meantime everybody and his brother is going to whine about the features he wanted that he didn't get, whether he's tried the thing or not. It's like the anti-Christmas.
Personally I've got 12 machines to put through their paces on this thing and I'm not going to know how it fared for a couple weeks. It'll probably be a year before I know who's going to roll it out and when (based on when the enterprise in-house apps can be rewritten and/or validated). In the mean time I've got to find out if the deployment tool is the grand pool of wonderful that Vista's was (hack, puke!)
And yet Vista is doing well. Millions of copies sold. 20% market share already.
I said here a year ago that it wouldn't hit 30%, ever. And it won't. It was foresight then. Now it's just obvious.
On release day W7 will have hundreds of millions of "copies sold" too. That's part of what Software Assurance is all about: hey! Check how many licensed users we have on release day! Vista licensing has become such a laughingstock that OEMs don't even pretend that the software will run on their computer - but you get a license whether you want one or not.
But the Vista name has too much "baggage" associated with it.
Yep, that's how the folks in Redmond see it. They labored for seven long years and came out with the Second Coming of operating systems and then had a marketing glitch. Not their fault really - those freetards and their netbooks spoiled their timing. Intel hosed up the Vista Capable logo thing and Jobs, well, how's a desktop OS supposed to compete with cool new tech like the iPhone? This is how they "fixed" the "glitch". They reengineered the name. Now everybody's free to explore it anew; discovering its richness and potential, learning its subtleties, evolving their understanding until they can take full advantage of this new and vastly more powerful operating system.
I'm going to go ahead and quote a child post. I know it's bad form.
When you stop being a Microsoft sockpuppet.
Yeah, that.
Macthorpe, you had better hope W7 gets a better reception than Vista. Othewise your employer's going to look at the astroturf and find it's faded some and replace it.
That is sad. So you're saying this persists into W7? 260 bytes for a max path is a rather severe restriction. I think Unix supported longer filenames than that, even before there was a Windows. They can't still be on that, can they? That would be ridiculous.
The right to life, is the right to not be killed without due process.
The right to life I'm talking about in my post above is more about the natural right each of us is endowed with by our creator, and less about those rights enumerated in the US Constitution, which protects only those of us who live under it, and is limited in other ways. We have a Human right to life.
I agree with you about not entitling people to free medical services. That's not my issue at all. There is some basic level of immunisation and treatment that is for the public health and within the domain of stuff that should be automatic, but that's not what we're talking about here.
What I have a problem with is insurance companies creating a monopoly on care so that people who can pay cash can't get care. Doctors who want to practice for cash can't make a living. "Negotiated group discounts" prevent reasonable for-cash prices for medical practices that also accept insurance. That's just wrong in many different ways. If you aren't covered, you can't get care. If you don't belive me: try. You will find the attempt informative. Call around to your local health providers, and try to get care while pretending to not have coverage. In almost every case, they will not talk to you at all.
For what I pay in annual premiums for medical care in some countries I could have my own doctor to wait upon my every sniffle. It's over $1000/month between me and my employer. Are there any doctors in the third world out there who want to live in my basement? It's warm, and we have cable and food. It pays $12k/yr and you'll work maybe 12 hours/yr and the rest of the time is your own. Bring your whole family, I don't care as long as when my family is sick you'll treat us. Maybe I can hook you up with a clinic to work in when you're not busy with your main job, and you can clear $100k or better with $0 overhead. Sure, you're busy in your village or whatever, but hey, could your extended family maybe use US$6,000 a month? Wouldn't that buy a lot of whatever it is your village needs? How is your time better spent?
I'm looking over the application linked above and it looks unlikely a lawyer ever read it before it was filed. It seems nearly certain a Unix SVR3 admin never did or the claims would be fewer. So what was the lawyer for again? Does he help with the engineering? Does he proof the application? Does he have a historical background in technology that will tell him things like "All this stuff in your claims is ancient tech"? For $9500 I would expect him to work the 'scope for me. I think for $9500 you get the typing skills of the paralegal he pays $14/hr, and he expects you to proof it yourself.
I'm going to go with... no. Just no.
And... good attorney? In patent law? Are you kidding? Is that one that self-combusts or what? The symbolic dissonance is causing some serious pain here.
Note: That doesn't make him a good guy. Some jobs a decent guy won't take. But he did keep his deal. MS should hope Kevin Johnson does the same at Juniper Networks. Sometimes the deal isn't the same thing your PR says it is (of course).
Direct Link to the more recent patent. USPTO needs to look into tinyurl code for short link redirects to content. They're not alone.
It looks like your basic troll patent. They try to get all of the possible potential access control mechanisms for programs in the hope that in the future some of them are employed, without bothering to check that all of them are not already employed decades since. Shoddy work, as one would expect. Is it this easy to get a patent? Maybe I should field a few. What are they, $500?
Somebody will settle anyway. More and more I'm coming to the controversial point of view that asshats like this are doing us a service. They're illustrating that the copyright and patent system we have now works against its stated purpose: to promote progress of science and the useful arts. If only we could start over...
Unless you have had an employer who works in those fields, your experience will be considered "hobby" and won't count for much, if anything.
It's not that hard to set up a corporation with a few fellow students and buy a domain with some hosting. Some folks just consider it elective curricula.
if you don't have it, you won't insure yourself (and they'll see $0 from you).
This would be true only if you were buying specific insurance against a specific genetic ailment. But that's not how it works. If they find you have a specific ailment, then can choose not to offer you coverage. But even if you don't have it, you still need coverage against everything else so you still have to pay.
You have some strange definition of monopoly I've not heard before.
Risk assessment is not a solution to medical costs
on
My Genome, My Self?
·
· Score: 1
This is a supply side problem. We have gatekeepers for doctors. We have gatekeepers for medicines. We have gatekeepers for coverage and the coverage is a gatekeeper for care. The gatekeepers are financially motivated. If you fail any gate, you get no care at all. The gates don't just pass/fail, they also rate limit for the the purpose of maintaining the scarcity of medicine and care, and hence drive up the price. The entire system is designed to hide the cost from the end user, so the upward spiral of cost is guaranteed.
Gene testing for actuarially costly predispositions is just a shortcut to "no care".
To have a more humane system we need to remove these gates. We need to have a federal system for doctor approval, and it needs a fast track and a cross training program to channel in displaced workers. We need to get the FDA out of the pocket of big Pharma. We need to neuter the tort system. We need to do not just one, but all of these things, not gradually but all at once. We also need some sort of agreement on what level of medical intervention is socially useful, and what should be diverted to hospice care.
And... it ain't gonna happen. So let's meet back here in a decade and whine about it some more.
Slashdot Mirror
So the worst offenders on Windows are all from Unix.
I think we may be approaching the day when it's most appropriate to spell that all the way out as GNU/Unix.
How would one get a program to run without executing it?
In Windows when you doubleclick on readme.txt, you're not telling your computer to open the readme.txt file with the text processor. You're executing the text file. If the text file is in fact readme.txt.exe, a fact you didn't notice because because the .exe has a text file icon in its header and you're using the default "hide extensions" behavior, you just executed a program. That program can do anything you as a user can do, including upload all your Quickbooks files to any server on the Internet and then delete the local copies. This is social engineering.
Also, any program can load and execute and file as if it were a .exe, even if the extension is something else, like .zip. Even if it couldn't, you can rename a .zip file to .exe and execute it, so why couldn't a simple script file do so? If the .zip file is in fact an executable file downloaded from the Internet, there's no reason why Windows would think this is not a legitimate user-installed program once it's renamed and/or moved to a good location to execute programs from. More recent updates of Windows will warn you if the code is unsigned and/or located in some place not approved for programs, but that's easy enough to work around.
Oh: and there are far more obscure ways, like loading your program as a .doc file into wordpad or the clipboard and then using an operating system exploit to execute code and jump to the code contained within. You could construct a "malformed" document for nearly any Windows program that causes a fault in the program to execute the (carefully constructed malformed) data as code. There are hundreds of ways to get a program to run without doing something you would normally associate with "executing" it. None of these tricks are half as effective as social engineering the user to believe that he's installing a useful application.
Also, your computer has running programs called "services". These "services" run, usually with system privileges, all the time. There are known to be many hundreds of exploits for the default set of Windows services, and the pool of exploits not commonly known is well, unknown, but generally among experts believed to be "large". Some of these services are exposed to the Internet, and anybody who knows of an exploit for a service running on your computer can "execute" any code he wants. He pretty much has more control of your computer than you do once he finds it - and he's looking, believe me he's looking.
Sleep well.
That's available too. There are hundreds of these. I'm not going to benchmark them all for you and find the best performing one. Try them until you find one you like.
There does exist Linux malware. It's mostly focused on database exploits and rootkits, but it's out there and it always has been. For the most part though, these things target servers and are employed in targeted attacks. If the bad guys can compromise the webserver for a hosting provider they can launch their real attack on the Windows desktop. These things don't become widespread because as soon as they're common enough to get noticed the professionals who maintain servers load the updates and for the most part all is well again.
The vast majority of malware you will find on the Internet is Windows desktop based attacks, because that's where the money is. The attackers compromise the most-hit adservers, actually pay for ads, or compromise the most popular websites in order to deliver their malware to their real targets: Windows based hosts. They employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make sure their malware servers are highly placed in all the common search engines. The attack vector is usually either drive-by downloads (ie6? Still?) or social engineering (really, is your porn provider the best place to get an A/V codec that installs with an .EXE?).
I've heard it said - hell, I've said - that Unix-like operating systems are more resistant to these sort of attacks, but frankly that's not entirely correct. If you can get the user to run your app, you can get your script to run every time the user logs in. Even if the system is perfectly secure, your app can still do anything the user can do - including read the contents of all user-readable files and post the contents of a form to any IP on the Internet. Maybe you can't get system privileges usually, but the end-user facilities available on a Linux desktop are a valuable resource. If anything, a Linux box is potentially more dangerous. Windows boxes don't come with Python and Perl by default after all.
That said, unless you're specifically a high value target (and hence, should be paying for high priced system admin), the threats are just not there.
Why not just have a program "scan" your hard drive for viruses for a few minutes, find a bunch of stuff, and then charge you a fee to remove said "viruses?"
Ask and you shall receive.
Windows malware is an evolutionary ecosystem. The parties net billions of dollars a year on both sides. This is not going to change in the forseeable future. There are no functional OS-X, Linux, BSD or Solaris malware systems in the wild. We can speculate about why but really it's more useful to adapt to the world as it is. You can use Windows and swim in this cesspool... or not. Choices are great, aren't they?
3.b. Make a clone image of the system to an external hard drive so that next time you can be done in 20 minutes. I recommend clonezilla for this because it's free, boots from a pen drive, supports Windows and Linux, and will save to a USB drive or open Windows share on the network.
4) It is usually a good idea to use something else than Internet Explorer for surfing ;-)
Another good tip is to load a good hosts file. You would be amazed how much it helps. There's no host like localhost. It's cheezy, it's retro, it's cheating. But it doesn't cause cancer.*
*This statement has not been evaluated by the AMA. Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. Everything causes cancer.
Typically, yes, cleaning a virus infection from a windows computer costs more billable time than the replacement computer costs. I see a bunch of contrary responses, but I'm guessing they just don't know what's going on here.
Unfortunately, the cost of replacing the machine is just the beginning. After you have the new machine, the crudware infestation it comes with must be removed and that's often a wipe and reinstall from Microsoft media anyway. Then the broken OEM drivers have to be replaced with the functional OEM drivers from the vendor's website, and the installers for those don't always work properly. Then you have to add the drivers for add-on equipment like that combo scanner/fax/printer that the drivers never quite worked for and was discontinued years ago. Then you have to find all the user data from the old machine and put it on the new machine, even the user data that's hidden in stupid places like the programs folder for the application. You'll need to install the third party antivirus, all the Windows updates, and the usual suspects: Flash, Acrobat Reader, an office suite. Then it's all got to be tested with the end user to make sure they've got everything back they need to get their work done. Then if you're going to avoid doing this again in six months, you should take the precaution of capturing a system image.
Yeah, when you're billing at a reasonable rate the cost of the machine is very little. But still, it's something and when a small business is down because the viruses make their computer unusable it's usually best to fix it now rather than wait on a replacement PC to get the doors open again.
If you're reading this and you're a small business owner your best course is to go to EBay right now and buy another system that's the same model as yours for about $150. Then have your IT guy clone your system to it, take it home and put it in storage. Then when your system goes down, you've got a replacement to swap right in and load your data backups on (you DO make data backups, right?) so you can stay functional while your IT guy makes the dead system back into a spare for you.
Here, have a "modern" computer.
Ballmer: Well, we've done very well on Netbooks. When they first came out, I'm not sure if people knew whether they were PCs or something else, and I think everybody kind of understands now that a Netbook is a small-form-factor, low-cost personal computer. And we're doing very well with Windows XP, which fits. Vista does not fit, and we're working hard to make sure Windows 7 fits very well on the Netbooks.
Goofy foot is what happens when everybody else changes direction and you don't. Most "modern" computer companies don't go goofy footed twice in a row.
Yeah, we could all use with more reviews and less rhetoric. We'll get the reviews. They're coming. No doubt this topic is going to get at least one slashdot article every day until the thing launches on the first of July. In the meantime everybody and his brother is going to whine about the features he wanted that he didn't get, whether he's tried the thing or not. It's like the anti-Christmas.
Personally I've got 12 machines to put through their paces on this thing and I'm not going to know how it fared for a couple weeks. It'll probably be a year before I know who's going to roll it out and when (based on when the enterprise in-house apps can be rewritten and/or validated). In the mean time I've got to find out if the deployment tool is the grand pool of wonderful that Vista's was (hack, puke!)
And yet Vista is doing well. Millions of copies sold. 20% market share already.
I said here a year ago that it wouldn't hit 30%, ever. And it won't. It was foresight then. Now it's just obvious.
On release day W7 will have hundreds of millions of "copies sold" too. That's part of what Software Assurance is all about: hey! Check how many licensed users we have on release day! Vista licensing has become such a laughingstock that OEMs don't even pretend that the software will run on their computer - but you get a license whether you want one or not.
I've been calling it Vista2 for months.
Wouldn't that be ME III?
But the Vista name has too much "baggage" associated with it.
Yep, that's how the folks in Redmond see it. They labored for seven long years and came out with the Second Coming of operating systems and then had a marketing glitch. Not their fault really - those freetards and their netbooks spoiled their timing. Intel hosed up the Vista Capable logo thing and Jobs, well, how's a desktop OS supposed to compete with cool new tech like the iPhone? This is how they "fixed" the "glitch". They reengineered the name. Now everybody's free to explore it anew; discovering its richness and potential, learning its subtleties, evolving their understanding until they can take full advantage of this new and vastly more powerful operating system.
Or not.
The branding has undergone significant changes with respect to vistaliciousness.
I'm going to go ahead and quote a child post. I know it's bad form.
When you stop being a Microsoft sockpuppet.
Yeah, that.
Macthorpe, you had better hope W7 gets a better reception than Vista. Othewise your employer's going to look at the astroturf and find it's faded some and replace it.
That is sad. So you're saying this persists into W7? 260 bytes for a max path is a rather severe restriction. I think Unix supported longer filenames than that, even before there was a Windows. They can't still be on that, can they? That would be ridiculous.
The right to life, is the right to not be killed without due process.
The right to life I'm talking about in my post above is more about the natural right each of us is endowed with by our creator, and less about those rights enumerated in the US Constitution, which protects only those of us who live under it, and is limited in other ways. We have a Human right to life.
I agree with you about not entitling people to free medical services. That's not my issue at all. There is some basic level of immunisation and treatment that is for the public health and within the domain of stuff that should be automatic, but that's not what we're talking about here.
What I have a problem with is insurance companies creating a monopoly on care so that people who can pay cash can't get care. Doctors who want to practice for cash can't make a living. "Negotiated group discounts" prevent reasonable for-cash prices for medical practices that also accept insurance. That's just wrong in many different ways. If you aren't covered, you can't get care. If you don't belive me: try. You will find the attempt informative. Call around to your local health providers, and try to get care while pretending to not have coverage. In almost every case, they will not talk to you at all.
For what I pay in annual premiums for medical care in some countries I could have my own doctor to wait upon my every sniffle. It's over $1000/month between me and my employer. Are there any doctors in the third world out there who want to live in my basement? It's warm, and we have cable and food. It pays $12k/yr and you'll work maybe 12 hours/yr and the rest of the time is your own. Bring your whole family, I don't care as long as when my family is sick you'll treat us. Maybe I can hook you up with a clinic to work in when you're not busy with your main job, and you can clear $100k or better with $0 overhead. Sure, you're busy in your village or whatever, but hey, could your extended family maybe use US$6,000 a month? Wouldn't that buy a lot of whatever it is your village needs? How is your time better spent?
I'm looking over the application linked above and it looks unlikely a lawyer ever read it before it was filed. It seems nearly certain a Unix SVR3 admin never did or the claims would be fewer. So what was the lawyer for again? Does he help with the engineering? Does he proof the application? Does he have a historical background in technology that will tell him things like "All this stuff in your claims is ancient tech"? For $9500 I would expect him to work the 'scope for me. I think for $9500 you get the typing skills of the paralegal he pays $14/hr, and he expects you to proof it yourself.
I'm going to go with... no. Just no.
And... good attorney? In patent law? Are you kidding? Is that one that self-combusts or what? The symbolic dissonance is causing some serious pain here.
He did what he was paid to do.
Note: That doesn't make him a good guy. Some jobs a decent guy won't take. But he did keep his deal. MS should hope Kevin Johnson does the same at Juniper Networks. Sometimes the deal isn't the same thing your PR says it is (of course).
Start here.
Direct Link to the more recent patent. USPTO needs to look into tinyurl code for short link redirects to content. They're not alone.
It looks like your basic troll patent. They try to get all of the possible potential access control mechanisms for programs in the hope that in the future some of them are employed, without bothering to check that all of them are not already employed decades since. Shoddy work, as one would expect. Is it this easy to get a patent? Maybe I should field a few. What are they, $500?
Somebody will settle anyway. More and more I'm coming to the controversial point of view that asshats like this are doing us a service. They're illustrating that the copyright and patent system we have now works against its stated purpose: to promote progress of science and the useful arts. If only we could start over...
Unless you have had an employer who works in those fields, your experience will be considered "hobby" and won't count for much, if anything.
It's not that hard to set up a corporation with a few fellow students and buy a domain with some hosting. Some folks just consider it elective curricula.
They want to pay Novell in worthless stock.
And the directors will get their pay in worthless options going forward.
It's amazing how long this zombie company can stay on its feet.
if you don't have it, you won't insure yourself (and they'll see $0 from you).
This would be true only if you were buying specific insurance against a specific genetic ailment. But that's not how it works. If they find you have a specific ailment, then can choose not to offer you coverage. But even if you don't have it, you still need coverage against everything else so you still have to pay.
Yeah. But the arrows don't point crosswise.
I think the BSD people are happy that Microsoft chose to use good code.
It was good code when MS got it. I doubt the coders who wrote it were happy when they saw how MS "improved" it.
You have some strange definition of monopoly I've not heard before.
This is a supply side problem. We have gatekeepers for doctors. We have gatekeepers for medicines. We have gatekeepers for coverage and the coverage is a gatekeeper for care. The gatekeepers are financially motivated. If you fail any gate, you get no care at all. The gates don't just pass/fail, they also rate limit for the the purpose of maintaining the scarcity of medicine and care, and hence drive up the price. The entire system is designed to hide the cost from the end user, so the upward spiral of cost is guaranteed.
Gene testing for actuarially costly predispositions is just a shortcut to "no care".
To have a more humane system we need to remove these gates. We need to have a federal system for doctor approval, and it needs a fast track and a cross training program to channel in displaced workers. We need to get the FDA out of the pocket of big Pharma. We need to neuter the tort system. We need to do not just one, but all of these things, not gradually but all at once. We also need some sort of agreement on what level of medical intervention is socially useful, and what should be diverted to hospice care.
And... it ain't gonna happen. So let's meet back here in a decade and whine about it some more.