I think that what would lead to far more crashes is if they actually tried to market this as a "car that can't crash". It's bad enough how "overconfidently" people who have luxury cars with "saftey features" drive, imagine how moronically they'd drive this one.
I can't imagine them marketing it as such though, because someone is bound to crash an "uncrashable" car sooner or later, and that would be just asking for lawsuits.
Most people still don't seem to realise this, but guerilla marketing has now long since become an everyday, "mundane" marketing activity that every large corporation does, all the time. It's dead-standard in the advertising industry that when you place a contract an agency, you also place a guerilla marketing contract as part of it. All decent ad agencies have a guerilla marketing division.
Posting fake messages in forums like slashdot, and creating fake blogs and fake "fan" websites and so on are all totally commonplace, standard methods employed on a day to day basis by these agencies. This stuff is going on all the time; talk to anyone who works in advertising if you think it's just tinfoil hat stuff, you'd be surprised. When you really think about it, the chances that companies like MS are not posting fake comments here is pretty much zero. (I've also seem some pro-Apple posts here that seemed just a tad suspect to me.)
If one is aware of it, it becomes easier to spot. They tend to follow a certain pattern, to maximise 'manipulation' of the reader. So they aren't usually blatantly pro-MS; usually they say something that sounds pro-OSS, to gain your trust, but then turn it around. E.g. a good one will look something like this: "I'm a big fan of Linux, and push it whenever I can, but we tried to migrate our company to Linux and it was a big flop because of the lack of a good calendaring app - we ended up switching back to Windows".
I don't agree that these posts have no effect.
Most people still don't seem to realise this, but guerilla marketing has now long since become an everyday, "mundane" marketing activity that every large corporation does, all the time. It's dead-standard in the advertising industry that when you place a contract an agency, you also place a guerilla marketing contract as part of it. All decent ad agencies have a guerilla marketing division.
Posting fake messages in forums like slashdot, and creating fake blogs and fake "fan" websites and so on are all totally commonplace, standard methods employed on a day to day basis by these agencies. Anyone who thinks this stuff isn't going on is, well, naive, because when you think about it, the chances that companies like MS are not posting fake comments here is pretty much zero. (I've also seem some pro-Apple posts here that seemed just a tad suspect to me.)
If one is aware of it, it becomes easier to spot. They tend to follow a certain pattern, to maximise 'manipulation' of the reader. So they aren't usually blatantly pro-MS; usually they say something that sounds pro-OSS, to gain your trust, but then turn it around. E.g. a good one will look something like this: "I'm a big fan of Linux, and push it whenever I can, but we tried to migrate our company to Linux and it was a big flop because of the lack of a good calendaring app - we ended up switching back to Windows".
I don't agree that these posts have no effect. Companies wouldn't do it if it didn't have an effect. I think they definitely have an effect.
That's a nice straw-man, but that's all it is: The police are in fact under extremely strict laws about the conditions under which they may fire their weapons in the line of duty. Those laws would have made it illegal for a police officer to have fired on this vehicle if he/she had been in this particular situation, and it would probably have been murder.
The government is secretive about everything so that the public comes to expect secrecy as the norm, and will thus be more complacent and undemanding of transparency in cases where there really might be a cover-up.
If the government had a general policy of keeping things in the open whenever possible, then at those times when they really want to cover something up, they'd have a much harder time of it, because (a) the public would expect and demand more transparency, as the 'norm' and (b) the public would realise there "must actually be a cover-up this time" in cases where secrecy is applied, because the secrecy would be far more unusual.
So it's better for the government to just generally say to everyone all the time, "hey, we're the government, everything we do is secret and the public should have no expectation of knowing any of it". This way they can do anything they like.
Sure, social engineering applies here, not technical vulnerabilities, but your straw-man has absolutely nothing to do with the point: The person I was responding to (you?) WRONGLY claimed that IM is not decades old (feeling foolish perhaps?). In fact I only brought up security because the person I was replying to had already implied that security was the issue ("corporate IM solution was secure", "feeling safe" etc.) Look, you were wrong, just admit it, don't try change the subject.
Did you ever use the 'talk' program in UNIX? IM software IS decades old; and in any case, the security principles for IM software are no different from any other TCP/IP client/server communications software, all these things have been well-established since the 70's. Learn your history before commenting.
Actually, you can use either, as long as you're consistent. It depends if you're referring to the company as a single entity, or as a collection of individuals that form the company. In some cases one or the other may "feel" more correct. If you want to slam grammar, you'd better learn grammar first!
Two words: Opportunity cost. I'm surprised you don't seem to be aware of this, since you seem to imply you know a lot about economics.
In any case, there appears to be a claim here that Mac is more expensive "because it's possible to build your own computer cheaper", at least in principle. But this is ONLY true IF you are capable of building your own (and have some time to waste on it), these conditions don't apply to 90% of the population. Would you claim that my mom could save money by building her own computer? I hardly think so, she just doesn't know how. She could pay someone to do it, sure, but then she can only 'gain' if she can find someone willing to do computer technician work for free, i.e. a person who values their time as worthless. Maybe if she's lucky she'll find someone to do that, but can the entire population all find free technicians? Fat chance.
Yes, you missed the joke. Here it is: "... if there was such a bug". The whole point of all this 'trusted computing' stuff is to ultimately control prevent computers from being able to run other OSs (and other 'non-approved' software) at all... it's not a bug, it's by design. It's an attempt by the major hardware and software ISVs to truly control the platform and who 'may or may not play', thus ensuring they'd never have to worry about pesky competitors ever again. 'Security' is only the false premise by which to trick users into accepting this; most current security problems can in fact be solved by other solutions that do not surrender as much control to the 'dominant players'.
Hey AC, all I said is that you can't compare the two, because nobody can know how many bugs are really in a closed product. Not you, not me. So you can't make an argument one way or another. Nice knee-jerk reaction you have there, but in case you weren't paying attention, I wasn't pushing a specific viewpoint: I was merely responding to a claim that it made sense to compare the products in this way.
What are you going on about? I'm talking about hackers, not admins. You know, the guys who find the exploits. You don't think they ever look at Apache source code to help them find exploits? Come on.
An exploit is an exploit from the admin perspective, and has nothing to do with source code, but that is completely orthogonal to my point. Both admins have to patch their systems. Duh.
One also wonders how often someone quietly abuses an exploit that they've found, without publishing the exploit. We'll never know how often this goes on. That of course applies to 'both worlds'.
Apples and Oranges. If the source code for IIS was opened up today, how many new vulnerabilities would quickly be reported within a year? Probably dozens within the first few months alone. You think that there are few IIS vulnerabilities reported because there ARE fewer bugs. But the bugs are there. It's just harder to find them in a closed source product. And especially that they hold only a small market share, IIS systems are also less attractive to hackers in the first place.
Amazing how quickly people seem to forget though, and how nobody actually learns from history, even recent history. Microsoft can (illegally) crush any competitor they like by simply tying a product very heavily to Windows, and search engines are no exception. Yet people here think Google is somehow immune to this because they care about quality. When a monopoly in one market is illegally abused to force domination in another market, quality doesn't even enter into the equation. What a naive view. MS have already set their sights on Google; they're dead in the water. And nobody here even seems to know what "antitrust", "product tying", "Sherman act" etc. mean anymore - terms that everyone seemed to know about during the antitrust trial regarding Netscape.
I must say, although I downloaded Opera 8 as part of this 'joke', I installed it and tried it out, it really is a very good browser. It's innovative, has some very nice/useful features, the interface is elegant and well thought out. Made me think "why can't Microsoft write software like this? Instead we get a dumb old brick like IE."
Still, I'll probably stick with FireFox just out of inertia. Will try Opera out a bit more though.
Like people, all companies have some amounts of good and bad in them. It's not some binary zero/one value - it's shades of gray. Also like people, some companies are mostly good but occasionally bad, and others are mostly bad but occasionally good. We judge people on the sum of their actions, not individual actions.
It's true though that saying your company's motto is "do no evil" is just asking for extra scrutiny. OTOH, it's a clever marketing move in an industry whose collective image has been VERY much tainted in the public eye by certain dominant players. They're standing up and saying, "look, you CAN get IT companies that don't try rip you off and do actually provide quality products".
BTW since when is defending the generic form (or similar forms) of your company's most valuable trademark from abuse by other companies "evil"? Not only is it not evil, but you are required by law to protect your trademarks if you don't want to lose them. I don't get it. If I try to start a search engine called e.g. "Boogle.com", of course I'm trying to make money riding off the popularity of Google's trademark.
Because everyone in the IT industry has been screwed over in the butt time and again by a certain other major IT company and their unethical practices. Now whenever any other IT company looks poised to grow (e.g. Google, Apple), people immediately get jittery because they think every CEO in this industry must have the same lack of ethics, and so they think uh-oh, we're going to have to bend over again if we let this company get big.
Meanwhile 'that other company' continues to rip everyone off. But people can't do anything about that. So they take out their frustration on smaller companies instead, where they still actually have some control. I mean, how many times have we heard "[Google/Apple] is the new _________?" It's getting tired already.
Dancin_Santa is one of the craftier trolls on slashdot. Check his post history, he is often trolling... his "hooks" are usually fairly subtle though, which simply means he is good at trolling. In this case though it's not subtle, it's obvious that he is outright lying about Google's ad results.
People, don't feed the trolls.
Heh.. I have an odd printing problem on my Windows system, it seems to keep randomly switching the USB port numbers or something every few days or so, so effectively it is as if I keep plugging the printer into different ports (although I haven't touched the cable in months). Every time this happens it creates a new copy of the driver, so I now have no less than "hp LaserJet 1000", "hp LaserJet 1000 (Copy 2)", "hp LaserJet 1000 (Copy 3)" and "hp LaserJet 1000 (Copy 4)". It's pretty much random which one is going to be the current "active"/"Ready" one, so every time I print I first have to manually check which of these I should use.
So you're saying that we should completely remove any and all context from the action before we judge it, and that we're hypocritical if we don't do so? That's nonsense. You cannot remove an action from its context when judging something. As a simple example, if a mugger walks up behind you at the ATM, and if a little old lady who wants to know the time walks up behind you at the ATM, these two --- precisely the same action, note --- are obviously two totally different things, and cannot be compared. Intentions differ, outcomes differ, effects differ - all from the same action. Is this hard for you to understand? Here's another example: a mother takes a photograph of her naked baby in a bath, or a paedophile takes a photograph of a naked baby in a bath. Same action, same photograph --- totally different context. Totally different intentions, different effects, yet using your aguments, it would be hypocritical to judge the two any differently.
Microsoft have an absolutely abysmal track record when it comes to ethics, and they have not done anything to redeem themselves either. They show no intentions to change, and Bill Gates himself has effectively stated that patents should be abused by large companies to gain strangleholds over markets. Even today the company continues to extract monopoly prices for markets they have a lockhold over. By their own actions, they have made it clearly impossible to trust any of their actions, at all.
Let me give an analogy that might make it more clear. Say you have a new girlfriend, who seems like a very nice person. A few months into the relationship, you find she lied about one or two small things. You probably forgive her and go on... she has enough goodwill with you that you will wait and see if it's a trend, or an isolated incident. This is Google. Now say you have a girlfriend or wife you've been with for fifteen years, and in all that time she has consistently lied to you frequently. Moreover, she is still lying to you even today, with no sign of changing. Why should you ever give her the benefit of the doubt about anything? Any sensible person wouldn't.
Again, in this analogy, the most recent action could be precisely the same thing. And yet you would of course evaluate the same action differently. The context is totally different. This is not hypocritical at all - it's just a logical and sensible way of evaluating intentions, and ultimately people bring it on themselves how other people view them in the long term, so it's not unfair either. Our relationships with companies are no different really to our relationships with people, all the same principles apply.
Slashdot Mirror
That wasn't my post, at all! :( .. it was a 1st draft, I previewed and changed it totally, but it submitted the 1st draft anyway. Oh well.
Here, maybe that'll help ya.
I think that what would lead to far more crashes is if they actually tried to market this as a "car that can't crash". It's bad enough how "overconfidently" people who have luxury cars with "saftey features" drive, imagine how moronically they'd drive this one.
I can't imagine them marketing it as such though, because someone is bound to crash an "uncrashable" car sooner or later, and that would be just asking for lawsuits.
Something went a little wrong posting that one, sorry.
Here's a bit more info on Astroturfing.
Most people still don't seem to realise this, but guerilla marketing has now long since become an everyday, "mundane" marketing activity that every large corporation does, all the time. It's dead-standard in the advertising industry that when you place a contract an agency, you also place a guerilla marketing contract as part of it. All decent ad agencies have a guerilla marketing division.
Posting fake messages in forums like slashdot, and creating fake blogs and fake "fan" websites and so on are all totally commonplace, standard methods employed on a day to day basis by these agencies. This stuff is going on all the time; talk to anyone who works in advertising if you think it's just tinfoil hat stuff, you'd be surprised. When you really think about it, the chances that companies like MS are not posting fake comments here is pretty much zero. (I've also seem some pro-Apple posts here that seemed just a tad suspect to me.)
If one is aware of it, it becomes easier to spot. They tend to follow a certain pattern, to maximise 'manipulation' of the reader. So they aren't usually blatantly pro-MS; usually they say something that sounds pro-OSS, to gain your trust, but then turn it around. E.g. a good one will look something like this: "I'm a big fan of Linux, and push it whenever I can, but we tried to migrate our company to Linux and it was a big flop because of the lack of a good calendaring app - we ended up switching back to Windows".
I don't agree that these posts have no effect.
Most people still don't seem to realise this, but guerilla marketing has now long since become an everyday, "mundane" marketing activity that every large corporation does, all the time. It's dead-standard in the advertising industry that when you place a contract an agency, you also place a guerilla marketing contract as part of it. All decent ad agencies have a guerilla marketing division.
Posting fake messages in forums like slashdot, and creating fake blogs and fake "fan" websites and so on are all totally commonplace, standard methods employed on a day to day basis by these agencies. Anyone who thinks this stuff isn't going on is, well, naive, because when you think about it, the chances that companies like MS are not posting fake comments here is pretty much zero. (I've also seem some pro-Apple posts here that seemed just a tad suspect to me.)
If one is aware of it, it becomes easier to spot. They tend to follow a certain pattern, to maximise 'manipulation' of the reader. So they aren't usually blatantly pro-MS; usually they say something that sounds pro-OSS, to gain your trust, but then turn it around. E.g. a good one will look something like this: "I'm a big fan of Linux, and push it whenever I can, but we tried to migrate our company to Linux and it was a big flop because of the lack of a good calendaring app - we ended up switching back to Windows".
I don't agree that these posts have no effect. Companies wouldn't do it if it didn't have an effect. I think they definitely have an effect.
In some parts of South Africa (same country as Ubuntu is from, incidentally) "gentoo" is a slang word for a prostitute.
That's a nice straw-man, but that's all it is: The police are in fact under extremely strict laws about the conditions under which they may fire their weapons in the line of duty. Those laws would have made it illegal for a police officer to have fired on this vehicle if he/she had been in this particular situation, and it would probably have been murder.
The government is secretive about everything so that the public comes to expect secrecy as the norm, and will thus be more complacent and undemanding of transparency in cases where there really might be a cover-up.
If the government had a general policy of keeping things in the open whenever possible, then at those times when they really want to cover something up, they'd have a much harder time of it, because (a) the public would expect and demand more transparency, as the 'norm' and (b) the public would realise there "must actually be a cover-up this time" in cases where secrecy is applied, because the secrecy would be far more unusual.
So it's better for the government to just generally say to everyone all the time, "hey, we're the government, everything we do is secret and the public should have no expectation of knowing any of it". This way they can do anything they like.
Sure, social engineering applies here, not technical vulnerabilities, but your straw-man has absolutely nothing to do with the point: The person I was responding to (you?) WRONGLY claimed that IM is not decades old (feeling foolish perhaps?). In fact I only brought up security because the person I was replying to had already implied that security was the issue ("corporate IM solution was secure", "feeling safe" etc.) Look, you were wrong, just admit it, don't try change the subject.
Did you ever use the 'talk' program in UNIX? IM software IS decades old; and in any case, the security principles for IM software are no different from any other TCP/IP client/server communications software, all these things have been well-established since the 70's. Learn your history before commenting.
Actually, you can use either, as long as you're consistent. It depends if you're referring to the company as a single entity, or as a collection of individuals that form the company. In some cases one or the other may "feel" more correct. If you want to slam grammar, you'd better learn grammar first!
Two words: Opportunity cost. I'm surprised you don't seem to be aware of this, since you seem to imply you know a lot about economics.
In any case, there appears to be a claim here that Mac is more expensive "because it's possible to build your own computer cheaper", at least in principle. But this is ONLY true IF you are capable of building your own (and have some time to waste on it), these conditions don't apply to 90% of the population. Would you claim that my mom could save money by building her own computer? I hardly think so, she just doesn't know how. She could pay someone to do it, sure, but then she can only 'gain' if she can find someone willing to do computer technician work for free, i.e. a person who values their time as worthless. Maybe if she's lucky she'll find someone to do that, but can the entire population all find free technicians? Fat chance.
Yes, you missed the joke. Here it is: "... if there was such a bug". The whole point of all this 'trusted computing' stuff is to ultimately control prevent computers from being able to run other OSs (and other 'non-approved' software) at all ... it's not a bug, it's by design. It's an attempt by the major hardware and software ISVs to truly control the platform and who 'may or may not play', thus ensuring they'd never have to worry about pesky competitors ever again. 'Security' is only the false premise by which to trick users into accepting this; most current security problems can in fact be solved by other solutions that do not surrender as much control to the 'dominant players'.
Hey AC, all I said is that you can't compare the two, because nobody can know how many bugs are really in a closed product. Not you, not me. So you can't make an argument one way or another. Nice knee-jerk reaction you have there, but in case you weren't paying attention, I wasn't pushing a specific viewpoint: I was merely responding to a claim that it made sense to compare the products in this way.
What are you going on about? I'm talking about hackers, not admins. You know, the guys who find the exploits. You don't think they ever look at Apache source code to help them find exploits? Come on.
An exploit is an exploit from the admin perspective, and has nothing to do with source code, but that is completely orthogonal to my point. Both admins have to patch their systems. Duh.
One also wonders how often someone quietly abuses an exploit that they've found, without publishing the exploit. We'll never know how often this goes on. That of course applies to 'both worlds'.
Huh? He said "non-mainstream". Maybe you read it wrong?
Apples and Oranges. If the source code for IIS was opened up today, how many new vulnerabilities would quickly be reported within a year? Probably dozens within the first few months alone. You think that there are few IIS vulnerabilities reported because there ARE fewer bugs. But the bugs are there. It's just harder to find them in a closed source product. And especially that they hold only a small market share, IIS systems are also less attractive to hackers in the first place.
Amazing how quickly people seem to forget though, and how nobody actually learns from history, even recent history. Microsoft can (illegally) crush any competitor they like by simply tying a product very heavily to Windows, and search engines are no exception. Yet people here think Google is somehow immune to this because they care about quality. When a monopoly in one market is illegally abused to force domination in another market, quality doesn't even enter into the equation. What a naive view. MS have already set their sights on Google; they're dead in the water. And nobody here even seems to know what "antitrust", "product tying", "Sherman act" etc. mean anymore - terms that everyone seemed to know about during the antitrust trial regarding Netscape.
I must say, although I downloaded Opera 8 as part of this 'joke', I installed it and tried it out, it really is a very good browser. It's innovative, has some very nice/useful features, the interface is elegant and well thought out. Made me think "why can't Microsoft write software like this? Instead we get a dumb old brick like IE."
Still, I'll probably stick with FireFox just out of inertia. Will try Opera out a bit more though.
Like people, all companies have some amounts of good and bad in them. It's not some binary zero/one value - it's shades of gray. Also like people, some companies are mostly good but occasionally bad, and others are mostly bad but occasionally good. We judge people on the sum of their actions, not individual actions.
It's true though that saying your company's motto is "do no evil" is just asking for extra scrutiny. OTOH, it's a clever marketing move in an industry whose collective image has been VERY much tainted in the public eye by certain dominant players. They're standing up and saying, "look, you CAN get IT companies that don't try rip you off and do actually provide quality products".
BTW since when is defending the generic form (or similar forms) of your company's most valuable trademark from abuse by other companies "evil"? Not only is it not evil, but you are required by law to protect your trademarks if you don't want to lose them. I don't get it. If I try to start a search engine called e.g. "Boogle.com", of course I'm trying to make money riding off the popularity of Google's trademark.
Because everyone in the IT industry has been screwed over in the butt time and again by a certain other major IT company and their unethical practices. Now whenever any other IT company looks poised to grow (e.g. Google, Apple), people immediately get jittery because they think every CEO in this industry must have the same lack of ethics, and so they think uh-oh, we're going to have to bend over again if we let this company get big.
Meanwhile 'that other company' continues to rip everyone off. But people can't do anything about that. So they take out their frustration on smaller companies instead, where they still actually have some control. I mean, how many times have we heard "[Google/Apple] is the new _________?" It's getting tired already.
Dancin_Santa is one of the craftier trolls on slashdot. Check his post history, he is often trolling ... his "hooks" are usually fairly subtle though, which simply means he is good at trolling. In this case though it's not subtle, it's obvious that he is outright lying about Google's ad results.
People, don't feed the trolls.
Hmmmmmm .. are you paid by number of words posted? ;)
Heh .. I have an odd printing problem on my Windows system, it seems to keep randomly switching the USB port numbers or something every few days or so, so effectively it is as if I keep plugging the printer into different ports (although I haven't touched the cable in months). Every time this happens it creates a new copy of the driver, so I now have no less than "hp LaserJet 1000", "hp LaserJet 1000 (Copy 2)", "hp LaserJet 1000 (Copy 3)" and "hp LaserJet 1000 (Copy 4)". It's pretty much random which one is going to be the current "active"/"Ready" one, so every time I print I first have to manually check which of these I should use.
So you're saying that we should completely remove any and all context from the action before we judge it, and that we're hypocritical if we don't do so? That's nonsense. You cannot remove an action from its context when judging something. As a simple example, if a mugger walks up behind you at the ATM, and if a little old lady who wants to know the time walks up behind you at the ATM, these two --- precisely the same action, note --- are obviously two totally different things, and cannot be compared. Intentions differ, outcomes differ, effects differ - all from the same action. Is this hard for you to understand? Here's another example: a mother takes a photograph of her naked baby in a bath, or a paedophile takes a photograph of a naked baby in a bath. Same action, same photograph --- totally different context. Totally different intentions, different effects, yet using your aguments, it would be hypocritical to judge the two any differently.
Microsoft have an absolutely abysmal track record when it comes to ethics, and they have not done anything to redeem themselves either. They show no intentions to change, and Bill Gates himself has effectively stated that patents should be abused by large companies to gain strangleholds over markets. Even today the company continues to extract monopoly prices for markets they have a lockhold over. By their own actions, they have made it clearly impossible to trust any of their actions, at all.
Let me give an analogy that might make it more clear. Say you have a new girlfriend, who seems like a very nice person. A few months into the relationship, you find she lied about one or two small things. You probably forgive her and go on ... she has enough goodwill with you that you will wait and see if it's a trend, or an isolated incident. This is Google. Now say you have a girlfriend or wife you've been with for fifteen years, and in all that time she has consistently lied to you frequently. Moreover, she is still lying to you even today, with no sign of changing. Why should you ever give her the benefit of the doubt about anything? Any sensible person wouldn't.
Again, in this analogy, the most recent action could be precisely the same thing. And yet you would of course evaluate the same action differently. The context is totally different. This is not hypocritical at all - it's just a logical and sensible way of evaluating intentions, and ultimately people bring it on themselves how other people view them in the long term, so it's not unfair either. Our relationships with companies are no different really to our relationships with people, all the same principles apply.