Since you have devolved to name calling and apparently run out of facts, here's the refutation of the 2 things you said that are demonstrably wrong:
SharePoint? Give me a break. That's one morass of crap that still has to hit the fan. Is their version control still based on VSS?
What are you talking about? Nobody brought up Sharepoint but you, just now.
Or, as an alternative, are you so fucking ignorant of PowerPoint that you didn't know that, like all Office apps, it has integrated collaboration and version control? Of course, this utter ignorance doesn't stop you from posting about it as if you were some sort of expert. Looks like all the guesses I made in the last post were correct.
So you tout as collaboration the track changes functionality? You've got to be kidding me. That garbage hasn't worked correctly in the 10 years it's been out. I thought we were talking tech here, apparently with the equivalent of a brain damaged script kiddie. I should have known since you picked PowerPoint as your example, arguably one of the worst programs in existence for its stated purpose.
What does that even mean? It ships "as secure as possible." Fuck you can't even use a web browser on the damned thing without turning off half a dozen security features.
Ok, I'll admit that maybe there's something you can do to improve it's default security configuration, but six months!? Please God tell me that was 3 days of actual work, and 5.9 months of browsing Fark.com, because that's the only way you don't come out being entirely incompetent.
You really think it's secure? You're an idiot who's probably been pwmed after the first virus/trojan you came across. Here's a little reading to show you how you can harden various systems, although this still doesn't make them secure
Huh? I have no idea what you're trying to communicate here...
That's about the only sentence in your entire diatribe that's actually true. You have no idea, at all. And now you've figuratively opened your big mouth and let everyone else know too. I wish you'd stated this 2 posts ago and saved me some time.
4 upgrades and a seamless migration across architectures. I'd call that pretty amazing.
Big whoop, I did that with Classic, too. Newb. (The architecture was 68k to PPC, but same process.)
You certainly are full of yourself. I was playing with computers long before System 7, and that includes Macs and others big and small that don't even exist anymore.
Hmm. I was more under the impression that marketing did the research, discovered how they could start up the ancillary certification and training revenue, and implemented the ribbon.
That's pretty insulting to the people who worked hard to create the feature.
I personally could care less whether you think its insulting or not. Based on the huge negative reaction to the ribbon, and the large amount of articles on how expensive it would be to retrain people because those same "hard working" idiots didn't put in an option to have the previous menu system as an option says enough.
I'm sorry I "dissed" your new toy.
Rewrote, but without making a single significant change to it (usability-wise), and while removing features in the previous version. This is not something to laud, this is laziness.
So I guess we'll be seeing a re-written GUI for any OS of your choice from you within the year? Here's a news flash: writing a GUI framework for an OS is a non-trivial task. Some of those "useful features" might actually have been avenues for bugs. Since I wasn't involved, I can't say why something was or was not included. I will say the resulting GUI is more than useful, although I never use the Dock and would be happy to permanently kill it except for the unobtrusive bouncing icon that lets me know something needs my attention.
I guess you also missed the shot across Adobe's bow?
That's mobile, aka hardware. I've made it perfectly clear twice now that I'm not talking about hardware.
You have a funny definition of hardware. Flash, last time I checked, is software. There's more going on here than merely Flash on the iPad or iPhone.
Have you even used Vista? It's not a tenth as bad as Slashdotters claim.
It's more than twice as bad. Yes, I have. I also have rather extensive experience with the new release: W7/2008R2. They suck too. Would you like to know how insecure they are? (They aren't any more secure than any other windows OS since the core architecture allows for code DLL insertion which allows for arbitrary code to be run as SYSTEM and voila - pwned. Newb.
I won't go into details about products I haven't tried. I will say that until Keynote gets collaboration and version control features, it's simply not in the same market as PowerPoint...
SharePoint? Give me a break. That's one morass of crap that still has to hit the fan. Is their version control still based on VSS?
If they were pretty much the same, I and millions of others wouldn't be switching. There would be no reason to and the learning curve, however short, wouldn't be worth it.
Oh please. You're switching because you want to be trendy, not because you care about the quality of the software. You've obviously never used Vista or Windows 7,
I bought my first Mac because it did what I needed reliably while the 5 windows laptops I had didn't. I bought my second one because I started using the first for pretty much everything and it would allow me to run Office in a VM which I wound up never needing.
I've spent the last 6 months designing and implementing a Server 2008 R2 system to make it as secure as possible. I think that i might know a little more about the pile of crap pawned off on the unsuspecting public than you.
However, MS does need more supporters since their ranks are thinning, so feel free to support them. But do so by touting their strengths as you perceive them, n
The entire OS was contained in a single folder, for all practical purposes-- nobody had to reformat a disk to upgrade. In fact, I went from System 7.1 to 9.2 on a single machine without ever formatting. The fact that the entire OS ran (what amounted to) a plug-in architecture.
While the OS is no longer in a single folder, there is nothing preventing it other than convention and OSX's installation process.
I was able to do something with OSX I've not seen possible anywhere else. I started with a PowerBook running 10.3, upgraded to 10.4, bought a MacBook Pro (Intel) with 10.4, migrated the PowerBook to the MacBook essentially cloning the PowerBook on the MacbOok, then upgraded to 10.5, and then 10.6, not running into any problems until 10.6 with the dropping of Rosetta by default (I had a couple of boot time PowerPC apps that caused a couple of issues and I wanted a clean system anyways, so wound up reinstalling to get rid of all PowerPC junk). 4 upgrades and a seamless migration across architectures. I'd call that pretty amazing.
Even if you hate the Ribbon, you have to acknowledge that Microssoft was taking a huge risk by implementing it-- but they did the research, they surveyed the users, they truly believed that it was a step forward, and they took that risk.
Hmm. I was more under the impression that marketing did the research, discovered how they could start up the ancillary certification and training revenue, and implemented the ribbon. They are still of the monopoly mind set that they can do whatever they want and the revenue will flow as projected. Witness Vista or Office 2008. Both flows are lower than what they wanted. Even W7 isn't having the revenue they wanted, despite their PR statements.
Those four things I just mentioned? Apple can do that with hardware, but when's the last time they took *any* sort of risk in their OS? Hell, they basically rewrote a windowing system and file browser *from scratch* and we ended up with something nearly identical to what was there before-- Apple doesn't have any guts at all anymore, and they certainly aren't doing anything to move the state of the art forward.
Wow.... Really?
So they rewrote their OS from scratch, put the first arguably consumer friendly GUI on top of UNIX, made it solid, rewrote the GUI (Cocoa), migrated to an alternate architecture, rewrote the OS again (64-bit) all in about 10 years and they take no risks? (MS did what, release the failed Vista after 8 years, then 3 years later release W7 (Vista SP2)?
I guess you also missed the shot across Adobe's bow? No risk there either.
As far as state of the art - Apple's releases have gotten trimmer and faster. MS has gotten fatter and slower (I'm not buying the switch to lazy loading from Vista to W7 as making it "faster", that was a major bug fix)
Then there's the work in graphics which MS essentially tried to respond to with Aero to keep from looking like an entirely dated product.
We'll also not delve into Apple's other software offerings because there's just no state of the art in Keynote, Aperture, Logic Studio, and especially not Final Cut Pro. What are MS's other offerings again?
I did exaggerate to call both Windows and OS X "unusable", that's clearly not the case-- both are a dozen times better than products of 10 years ago.
Well, I'd argue that MS's products are almost exactly the same except more bloated and more junk in the way. It does have a better graphics driver/subsystem from a capability standpoint. As I've never played a DX10 or DX11 game, I'm taking the word of the reviewers.
The thing is, Apple products used to be head and shoulders over the Microsoft equivalents. Now they're pretty much exactly the same.
If they were pretty much the same, I and millions of others wouldn't be switching. There would be no reason to and the learning curve, however short, wouldn't be worth it.
You sound like someone stuck in the past, 15 years ago past no less.
I, and probably 99% of the rest of the current mac users, couldn't care less about pre-OSX Mac OS anything. They sucked. (Yes, I did use it, and it has as much fondness for me as Win 3.11 or NT 3.51, or perhaps OS/2 2.0)
Seriously, move on. You complain about a relatively congruent system and compare it to the Ribbon... wait, menu... wait, Icon system of Windows and the completely non sensical and inconsistent GUI it comes with? If you doubt me - just do a plain install of Win7 or 2008 R2 and check out the default administrative apps and their modal dialogs. There are at least 3 completely different types of windows.
Sony decided that they'd put asshattedry in a whole new category years ago. If it wasn't for Microsoft being there first, they'd be the undisputed champs.
It started in the 80s with the quality of their electronics going downhill while banking on their reputation to keep prices up, and then the "gouge their customer" disease spread like wildfire throughout the rest of their divisions.
Even if Sony comes out with a "good" product, I won't buy it due to their reputation in how they deal with their customers. I have not seen a company with a more feudalistic attitude towards their serfs... err... customers.
Or, this could just be a move by MS to slow down Apple taking down Android, thus leaving only those lovely W7 mobile phones as fish in the barrel of Apples new iphone shotgun this summer.
funny enough - hours regulations created more jobs in the factory sector. 40 hour work weeks meant that instead of having 2 workers per day for 7 days a week, they now had to have at least 3 workers per day for 5 days, plus extras to cover the hours on the 2 remaining days. So by my quick look - that was an extra 3 people employed, or 150% addition.
Did it put a crimp in the employer? I'm sure it did. But so does having to pay their employees anything.
The thing is, I'm not a resident of MA and MA has no rights to enforce any laws where I live, as I'm outside their jurisdiction.
Last time I checked, if I do happen to do business with a MA resident, MA still has 0 rights regarding any such business as it would be interstate commerce, which is solely controlled by the federal gov per the Constitution.
However, I do agree that companies need to be held to stricter standards regarding personal information and probably should be handled by the feds sooner than later.
You've now added clauses to define meanings elsewhere - and "hide" what I consider essential from the user.
I think our basic issue here is that I believe having 100% of the data given in a table is better than 50% of the data in a graphical representation (admittedly just a number pulled out of the air as there is no way to make a quantitative representation of something that will potentially be different for every single installation.)
Not only that, you've now introduced a paradigm where firewall A might be configured with one visualization regarding www, and firewall B with another, and they'll look the same unless you drill down.
So, in short, while it might seem easier on the surface, I believe it is much more complex and far more open to error than the straight tabular data. (btw, the tabular data could also have an initial column stating it's www, thus removing all your complaints about it as it now has all the viewable data. In fact, most are set up that way.)
Please graph a firewall configuration in a manner that is meaningful in this discussion for configuring firewalls.
C (www) --- | ---> S
This simple diagram above showing a firewall rule allowing web traffic from one or more clients to one or more webservers could quite easily represent multiple lines of "tabular data" defining a firewall configuration, yet it can be quickly and intuitively understood even by people with little knowledge of how that specific firewall is configured, let alone the commands and syntax required to actually implement the rule(s).
Instead of not having a clue what "s" is, now I know exactly where an inbound port 80 winds up. (this one includes a little more than a basic firewall by also adding in routing - ie, proxying or NAT)
And, how do I know "(www)" means port 80? (It could be any port, www is irrelevant). What if I was running sshd on 80? What then? What if I was really sneaky and multiplexed port 80 for web and sshd via some proxy client I wrote?
This is where the GUI paradigm being discussed breaks down when you're talking firewalls. Honestly - you cannot make a GUI easier to understand than tabular data regarding firewalls, since firewalls are inherently tabular data. Don't try to fit square pegs into round holes.
Having said that - you can create a GUI/management application that allows some predefined set of configurations that might be a little easier to understand, but that would be a small subset of what we're discussing above.
There are these things called "pictures", "images" or "photos" that some "morons" creating content like to use... they tend to be measured in pixels, and you know what, the "morons" decide they need to link their content to these "picture" things for something called "aesthetics".
These "morons" need to learn about scaling as regards to images et al, and then set the image to a size relative to the screen. Things work much better that way in a non 1024x768 world.
Granted, you could create a tool that would allow for a creation of settings that could then be applied across multiple systems, but that would be much more than a mere GUI tool.
Why ? Because anything that's useful must be "more than a mere GUI tool" ?
No, because in the current topic thread what someone wanted was a GUI to look at a firewall, not an enterprise application run by a well designed GUI. It would help if you followed the thread.
Graphical representation of tabular data is easier and faster to understand than... tabular data?
Almost always. The easiest and most obvious example: graphs.
Please graph a firewall configuration in a manner that is meaningful in this discussion for configuring firewalls.
Last time I checked, firewalls consisted of data best represented in tabular format.
When the system behind a GUI has deep dependencies that the GUI glosses over or "flattens" for "ease of understanding", then there's plenty of openings for new unexpected behavior to crop up.
There is no inherent need for a GUI interface to be oversimplified, or less capable.
The topic started with the whine that firewalls are too difficult, and gee, wouldn't it be nice to just drag n drop firewall configs.... Do keep up.
I'm well aware that a proper interface to a firewall could be written. It will still require almost as much understanding to use as the current effort to write scripts. If you were to make it easier, then you're dumbing it down and "flattening" the problem domain, and all above mentioned criticisms are valid.
I don't believe you and your citation of a secure perimeter. It's likely highly infected.
It actually is separated from the internet, except for a serious hodge podge dual email system. Yes, that means no web access.
Firewalls do often include NAT, so that they can watch statefull packet exchange. But I get the feeling you're new at this, so I'll leave your observations alone.
They may include it, but it certainly isn't necessary, nor has any meaning in defining a firewall. They also often include a switch. This also is totally outside the realm of firewall functionality.
People who brag about these things, as in never's-been-breached, are usually fools.
And some just flaunt their ignorance.
Note that I did not say it was invincible, just that this particular one had not been breached. I do happen to know of several others that are "unbreachable".
While reliability is definitely at the top of the list, speed is number 2. 802.11B just doesn't cut it, and 802.11G prices are, well, let's say I didn't see one anywhere near the $100 mark in a quick initial search.
It's a criticism of both. GUIs by nature are ad-hoc tools that allow individual tweaking - that's their purpose in life. Granted, you could create a tool that would allow for a creation of settings that could then be applied across multiple systems, but that would be much more than a mere GUI tool.
A criticism that applies equally to a collection of automated scripts
No, it doesn't. While scripts can be run by individuals with no sense or knowledge, at least the initial creation and testing of such scripts were done by someone that knew enough to create them. (Granted, there's an assumption here that the script result is meaningful and that the script itself was written by someone with knowledge)
Why ? Graphical representations of complex systems are nearly always easier and quicker to understand than lines of text describing same.
Graphical representation of tabular data is easier and faster to understand than... tabular data?
I think the bigger problem is the presentation of the data than any difference between GUI vs Text output for the topic at hand.
GUIs are most certainly repeatable and their results can absolutely be inspected and verified.
Really? GUIs are repeatable? Have you ever done web QA? The only time it's repeatable is when the system is completely locked down and nothing changes outside of your control. And even then....
When the system behind a GUI has deep dependencies that the GUI glosses over or "flattens" for "ease of understanding", then there's plenty of openings for new unexpected behavior to crop up.
I was under the impression that until Cisco bought Linksys, Linksys was pretty decent hardware. Since they bought it, it's gone seriously downhill.
I'd love a $100 or so wireless router that will actually function for more than 12 months. Heck, for 3+ years of trouble free operation I'd even spend more, although like any bargain hunter here I'd love to pay $10 instead. If you have any decent suggestions, I'm all ears.
Secure perimeters are illusions. Every machine needs its own defense. Firewalls are good for NAT, which foils a few, and stateful inspection, which fools a few more. Otherwise, internal firewalling and boundary checks are the only answer, coupled to download security hashing checks-- and those get bitten, too.
Secure perimeters are real, if done correctly. I know of one personally that has not been breached in a decade.:)
Every machine needs to be properly configured (I guess that can be stated as having its own defense, but I doubt you meant it this way)
Firewalls are not good for NAT. They have nothing to do with NAT.
Firewalls are not good for stateful inspection, they have nothing to do with that either.
What firewalls do is allow connections inbound and outbound. The better ones allow for more rich rules like which protocols on which ports, which machines/macs can connect or even force a user authentication before they can connect to an IP/port. There are also the on the desktop firewalls that allow an application IP/port designation. But that's all a Firewall does.
You do have one point though - if you're running MS desktops yes, they can be owned if they're allowed to connect to external entities at all, and that includes USB drives.
I can't think of a single reason why knowing what the rules do precludes using a GUI tool to simplify and automate management.
I can think of lots of reasons. The only reason I can think of having a GUI automated management tool is so some dumbass that doesn't know what he's doing can appear to manage firewalls.
Now, I can see the purpose of a GUI inspection tool for independent verification. But even then, I believe automated scripts are better.
Manually editing text is time-consuming, fatiguing and error prone. Have a tool to automate that sort of thing is one of the fundamental reasons for having computers in the first place.
This is why we have scripts. I would never manually configure the thing more than once, and that's only during the initial discovery phase. After that, it's script and test, script and test, then deploy when the scripts are spotless. This way I can always recreate anything at any time, without having to go dig up the guy that configured firewall xya 3 years ago and moved on to another division or even external job.
Scripts are repeatable. Scripts and their results can be objectively validated and verified.
GUI tools cannot. They're a nicety for inspection for those that cannot read or understand the scripts, however.
Take a look at the Wii history. They announced the Wii and controller in CES 2004. The prototypes were displayed in sep 2005.
Looks to me like patent filing dates and claims would have to be closely looked at. However, the TFA notes only that IA wanted to license their "tech" to Nintendo. I'd like to license my tech to Nintendo too (I'll make some up in the next few minutes...;) That doesn't give me a real claim nor a court case I can win.
Naah - no modding down. Everyone here should be smart enough to distrust debit cards immensely.
As for internet buys - use 1 time numbers. My main credit card has them available, although I'll admit it is a pain in the tukas to get to the screen that gives you one, and it's not exactly advertised. (read that as you have to know what you're looking for and what the specific verbage is on the menus, or you won't find it)
You are correct - win95 was later. I'd tried using Win NT 3.5 initially on the box that wound up running OS/2. I'll humbly point out that roughly 20 years back is a long time to vividly recall which crap MS OS you ran from, there were so many;)
But, my point stands that MS didn't really do a marketing job on OS/2 2.0, they were selling a consumer product somewhere between $70-99 IIRC, while OS/2 was losing money at $130+ due in large part to the licensing costs with MS alone.
Re:Not many OS/2 Apps that people are wanting
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Is OS/2 Coming Back?
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I know HPFS resists fragmentation, but then again so does NTFS...
Incorrect - NTFS inherently fragments and still does. This was a source of much speculation as to why MS, who wrote a large portion of HPFS, would not have taken that one vital piece into NTFS. One line of reasoning went that the Journaling introduced into NTFS had such a high resource cost at the time that adding the slot/band processing in on top of it would be prohibitively expensive performance-wise. The performance cost and desktop nature of OS/2 were given as reasons that it did not have journaling.
Of course MS may not actually have written the HPFS piece in question.
Slashdot Mirror
Since you have devolved to name calling and apparently run out of facts, here's the refutation of the 2 things you said that are demonstrably wrong:
SharePoint? Give me a break. That's one morass of crap that still has to hit the fan. Is their version control still based on VSS?
What are you talking about? Nobody brought up Sharepoint but you, just now.
Or, as an alternative, are you so fucking ignorant of PowerPoint that you didn't know that, like all Office apps, it has integrated collaboration and version control? Of course, this utter ignorance doesn't stop you from posting about it as if you were some sort of expert. Looks like all the guesses I made in the last post were correct.
So you tout as collaboration the track changes functionality? You've got to be kidding me. That garbage hasn't worked correctly in the 10 years it's been out. I thought we were talking tech here, apparently with the equivalent of a brain damaged script kiddie. I should have known since you picked PowerPoint as your example, arguably one of the worst programs in existence for its stated purpose.
What does that even mean? It ships "as secure as possible." Fuck you can't even use a web browser on the damned thing without turning off half a dozen security features.
Ok, I'll admit that maybe there's something you can do to improve it's default security configuration, but six months!? Please God tell me that was 3 days of actual work, and 5.9 months of browsing Fark.com, because that's the only way you don't come out being entirely incompetent.
You really think it's secure? You're an idiot who's probably been pwmed after the first virus/trojan you came across. Here's a little reading to show you how you can harden various systems, although this still doesn't make them secure
Huh? I have no idea what you're trying to communicate here...
That's about the only sentence in your entire diatribe that's actually true. You have no idea, at all. And now you've figuratively opened your big mouth and let everyone else know too. I wish you'd stated this 2 posts ago and saved me some time.
4 upgrades and a seamless migration across architectures. I'd call that pretty amazing.
Big whoop, I did that with Classic, too. Newb. (The architecture was 68k to PPC, but same process.)
You certainly are full of yourself. I was playing with computers long before System 7, and that includes Macs and others big and small that don't even exist anymore.
Hmm. I was more under the impression that marketing did the research, discovered how they could start up the ancillary certification and training revenue, and implemented the ribbon.
That's pretty insulting to the people who worked hard to create the feature.
I personally could care less whether you think its insulting or not. Based on the huge negative reaction to the ribbon, and the large amount of articles on how expensive it would be to retrain people because those same "hard working" idiots didn't put in an option to have the previous menu system as an option says enough.
I'm sorry I "dissed" your new toy.
Rewrote, but without making a single significant change to it (usability-wise), and while removing features in the previous version. This is not something to laud, this is laziness.
So I guess we'll be seeing a re-written GUI for any OS of your choice from you within the year? Here's a news flash: writing a GUI framework for an OS is a non-trivial task. Some of those "useful features" might actually have been avenues for bugs. Since I wasn't involved, I can't say why something was or was not included. I will say the resulting GUI is more than useful, although I never use the Dock and would be happy to permanently kill it except for the unobtrusive bouncing icon that lets me know something needs my attention.
I guess you also missed the shot across Adobe's bow?
That's mobile, aka hardware. I've made it perfectly clear twice now that I'm not talking about hardware.
You have a funny definition of hardware. Flash, last time I checked, is software. There's more going on here than merely Flash on the iPad or iPhone.
Have you even used Vista? It's not a tenth as bad as Slashdotters claim.
It's more than twice as bad. Yes, I have. I also have rather extensive experience with the new release: W7/2008R2. They suck too. Would you like to know how insecure they are? (They aren't any more secure than any other windows OS since the core architecture allows for code DLL insertion which allows for arbitrary code to be run as SYSTEM and voila - pwned. Newb.
I won't go into details about products I haven't tried. I will say that until Keynote gets collaboration and version control features, it's simply not in the same market as PowerPoint...
SharePoint? Give me a break. That's one morass of crap that still has to hit the fan. Is their version control still based on VSS?
If they were pretty much the same, I and millions of others wouldn't be switching. There would be no reason to and the learning curve, however short, wouldn't be worth it.
Oh please. You're switching because you want to be trendy, not because you care about the quality of the software. You've obviously never used Vista or Windows 7,
I bought my first Mac because it did what I needed reliably while the 5 windows laptops I had didn't. I bought my second one because I started using the first for pretty much everything and it would allow me to run Office in a VM which I wound up never needing.
I've spent the last 6 months designing and implementing a Server 2008 R2 system to make it as secure as possible. I think that i might know a little more about the pile of crap pawned off on the unsuspecting public than you.
However, MS does need more supporters since their ranks are thinning, so feel free to support them. But do so by touting their strengths as you perceive them, n
But you can't be responsible for what some thief does with it, much the same as you are not responsible for what a thief does with you car....
(Yes, I'm aware that there are conditions on those statements. Let's pretend you didn't do anything to "enable" the thief)
The entire OS was contained in a single folder, for all practical purposes-- nobody had to reformat a disk to upgrade. In fact, I went from System 7.1 to 9.2 on a single machine without ever formatting. The fact that the entire OS ran (what amounted to) a plug-in architecture.
While the OS is no longer in a single folder, there is nothing preventing it other than convention and OSX's installation process.
I was able to do something with OSX I've not seen possible anywhere else. I started with a PowerBook running 10.3, upgraded to 10.4, bought a MacBook Pro (Intel) with 10.4, migrated the PowerBook to the MacBook essentially cloning the PowerBook on the MacbOok, then upgraded to 10.5, and then 10.6, not running into any problems until 10.6 with the dropping of Rosetta by default (I had a couple of boot time PowerPC apps that caused a couple of issues and I wanted a clean system anyways, so wound up reinstalling to get rid of all PowerPC junk). 4 upgrades and a seamless migration across architectures. I'd call that pretty amazing.
Even if you hate the Ribbon, you have to acknowledge that Microssoft was taking a huge risk by implementing it-- but they did the research, they surveyed the users, they truly believed that it was a step forward, and they took that risk.
Hmm. I was more under the impression that marketing did the research, discovered how they could start up the ancillary certification and training revenue, and implemented the ribbon. They are still of the monopoly mind set that they can do whatever they want and the revenue will flow as projected. Witness Vista or Office 2008. Both flows are lower than what they wanted. Even W7 isn't having the revenue they wanted, despite their PR statements.
Those four things I just mentioned? Apple can do that with hardware, but when's the last time they took *any* sort of risk in their OS? Hell, they basically rewrote a windowing system and file browser *from scratch* and we ended up with something nearly identical to what was there before-- Apple doesn't have any guts at all anymore, and they certainly aren't doing anything to move the state of the art forward.
Wow.... Really?
So they rewrote their OS from scratch, put the first arguably consumer friendly GUI on top of UNIX, made it solid, rewrote the GUI (Cocoa), migrated to an alternate architecture, rewrote the OS again (64-bit) all in about 10 years and they take no risks? (MS did what, release the failed Vista after 8 years, then 3 years later release W7 (Vista SP2)?
I guess you also missed the shot across Adobe's bow? No risk there either.
As far as state of the art - Apple's releases have gotten trimmer and faster. MS has gotten fatter and slower (I'm not buying the switch to lazy loading from Vista to W7 as making it "faster", that was a major bug fix)
Then there's the work in graphics which MS essentially tried to respond to with Aero to keep from looking like an entirely dated product.
We'll also not delve into Apple's other software offerings because there's just no state of the art in Keynote, Aperture, Logic Studio, and especially not Final Cut Pro. What are MS's other offerings again?
I did exaggerate to call both Windows and OS X "unusable", that's clearly not the case-- both are a dozen times better than products of 10 years ago.
Well, I'd argue that MS's products are almost exactly the same except more bloated and more junk in the way. It does have a better graphics driver/subsystem from a capability standpoint. As I've never played a DX10 or DX11 game, I'm taking the word of the reviewers.
The thing is, Apple products used to be head and shoulders over the Microsoft equivalents. Now they're pretty much exactly the same.
If they were pretty much the same, I and millions of others wouldn't be switching. There would be no reason to and the learning curve, however short, wouldn't be worth it.
You sound like someone stuck in the past, 15 years ago past no less.
I, and probably 99% of the rest of the current mac users, couldn't care less about pre-OSX Mac OS anything. They sucked. (Yes, I did use it, and it has as much fondness for me as Win 3.11 or NT 3.51, or perhaps OS/2 2.0)
Seriously, move on. You complain about a relatively congruent system and compare it to the Ribbon... wait, menu... wait, Icon system of Windows and the completely non sensical and inconsistent GUI it comes with? If you doubt me - just do a plain install of Win7 or 2008 R2 and check out the default administrative apps and their modal dialogs. There are at least 3 completely different types of windows.
Are you trolling or what?
Sony decided that they'd put asshattedry in a whole new category years ago. If it wasn't for Microsoft being there first, they'd be the undisputed champs.
It started in the 80s with the quality of their electronics going downhill while banking on their reputation to keep prices up, and then the "gouge their customer" disease spread like wildfire throughout the rest of their divisions.
Even if Sony comes out with a "good" product, I won't buy it due to their reputation in how they deal with their customers. I have not seen a company with a more feudalistic attitude towards their serfs... err... customers.
Or, this could just be a move by MS to slow down Apple taking down Android, thus leaving only those lovely W7 mobile phones as fish in the barrel of Apples new iphone shotgun this summer.
funny enough - hours regulations created more jobs in the factory sector. 40 hour work weeks meant that instead of having 2 workers per day for 7 days a week, they now had to have at least 3 workers per day for 5 days, plus extras to cover the hours on the 2 remaining days. So by my quick look - that was an extra 3 people employed, or 150% addition.
Did it put a crimp in the employer? I'm sure it did. But so does having to pay their employees anything.
The thing is, I'm not a resident of MA and MA has no rights to enforce any laws where I live, as I'm outside their jurisdiction.
Last time I checked, if I do happen to do business with a MA resident, MA still has 0 rights regarding any such business as it would be interstate commerce, which is solely controlled by the federal gov per the Constitution.
However, I do agree that companies need to be held to stricter standards regarding personal information and probably should be handled by the feds sooner than later.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this.
You've now added clauses to define meanings elsewhere - and "hide" what I consider essential from the user.
I think our basic issue here is that I believe having 100% of the data given in a table is better than 50% of the data in a graphical representation (admittedly just a number pulled out of the air as there is no way to make a quantitative representation of something that will potentially be different for every single installation.)
Not only that, you've now introduced a paradigm where firewall A might be configured with one visualization regarding www, and firewall B with another, and they'll look the same unless you drill down.
So, in short, while it might seem easier on the surface, I believe it is much more complex and far more open to error than the straight tabular data. (btw, the tabular data could also have an initial column stating it's www, thus removing all your complaints about it as it now has all the viewable data. In fact, most are set up that way.)
Please graph a firewall configuration in a manner that is meaningful in this discussion for configuring firewalls.
C (www) --- | ---> S
This simple diagram above showing a firewall rule allowing web traffic from one or more clients to one or more webservers could quite easily represent multiple lines of "tabular data" defining a firewall configuration, yet it can be quickly and intuitively understood even by people with little knowledge of how that specific firewall is configured, let alone the commands and syntax required to actually implement the rule(s).
Hmm, that's easier to read than
Inbound port . . . Destination
80 . . . . . . . webserver.mydomain.com:8080
('. . . " -> because we cannot do tables)
Instead of not having a clue what "s" is, now I know exactly where an inbound port 80 winds up. (this one includes a little more than a basic firewall by also adding in routing - ie, proxying or NAT)
And, how do I know "(www)" means port 80? (It could be any port, www is irrelevant). What if I was running sshd on 80? What then? What if I was really sneaky and multiplexed port 80 for web and sshd via some proxy client I wrote?
This is where the GUI paradigm being discussed breaks down when you're talking firewalls. Honestly - you cannot make a GUI easier to understand than tabular data regarding firewalls, since firewalls are inherently tabular data. Don't try to fit square pegs into round holes.
Having said that - you can create a GUI/management application that allows some predefined set of configurations that might be a little easier to understand, but that would be a small subset of what we're discussing above.
There are these things called "pictures", "images" or "photos" that some "morons" creating content like to use... they tend to be measured in pixels, and you know what, the "morons" decide they need to link their content to these "picture" things for something called "aesthetics".
These "morons" need to learn about scaling as regards to images et al, and then set the image to a size relative to the screen. Things work much better that way in a non 1024x768 world.
Granted, you could create a tool that would allow for a creation of settings that could then be applied across multiple systems, but that would be much more than a mere GUI tool.
Why ? Because anything that's useful must be "more than a mere GUI tool" ?
No, because in the current topic thread what someone wanted was a GUI to look at a firewall, not an enterprise application run by a well designed GUI. It would help if you followed the thread.
Graphical representation of tabular data is easier and faster to understand than... tabular data?
Almost always. The easiest and most obvious example: graphs.
Please graph a firewall configuration in a manner that is meaningful in this discussion for configuring firewalls.
Last time I checked, firewalls consisted of data best represented in tabular format.
When the system behind a GUI has deep dependencies that the GUI glosses over or "flattens" for "ease of understanding", then there's plenty of openings for new unexpected behavior to crop up.
There is no inherent need for a GUI interface to be oversimplified, or less capable.
The topic started with the whine that firewalls are too difficult, and gee, wouldn't it be nice to just drag n drop firewall configs....
Do keep up.
I'm well aware that a proper interface to a firewall could be written. It will still require almost as much understanding to use as the current effort to write scripts. If you were to make it easier, then you're dumbing it down and "flattening" the problem domain, and all above mentioned criticisms are valid.
the "unbreachable" ones meet your requirements and also have no ability for external devices to be hooked up.
I don't believe you and your citation of a secure perimeter. It's likely highly infected.
It actually is separated from the internet, except for a serious hodge podge dual email system. Yes, that means no web access.
Firewalls do often include NAT, so that they can watch statefull packet exchange. But I get the feeling you're new at this, so I'll leave your observations alone.
They may include it, but it certainly isn't necessary, nor has any meaning in defining a firewall. They also often include a switch. This also is totally outside the realm of firewall functionality.
People who brag about these things, as in never's-been-breached, are usually fools.
And some just flaunt their ignorance.
Note that I did not say it was invincible, just that this particular one had not been breached. I do happen to know of several others that are "unbreachable".
While reliability is definitely at the top of the list, speed is number 2. 802.11B just doesn't cut it, and 802.11G prices are, well, let's say I didn't see one anywhere near the $100 mark in a quick initial search.
That is a criticism of the user, not the tool.
It's a criticism of both. GUIs by nature are ad-hoc tools that allow individual tweaking - that's their purpose in life. Granted, you could create a tool that would allow for a creation of settings that could then be applied across multiple systems, but that would be much more than a mere GUI tool.
A criticism that applies equally to a collection of automated scripts
No, it doesn't. While scripts can be run by individuals with no sense or knowledge, at least the initial creation and testing of such scripts were done by someone that knew enough to create them. (Granted, there's an assumption here that the script result is meaningful and that the script itself was written by someone with knowledge)
Why ? Graphical representations of complex systems are nearly always easier and quicker to understand than lines of text describing same.
Graphical representation of tabular data is easier and faster to understand than... tabular data?
I think the bigger problem is the presentation of the data than any difference between GUI vs Text output for the topic at hand.
GUIs are most certainly repeatable and their results can absolutely be inspected and verified.
Really? GUIs are repeatable? Have you ever done web QA? The only time it's repeatable is when the system is completely locked down and nothing changes outside of your control. And even then....
When the system behind a GUI has deep dependencies that the GUI glosses over or "flattens" for "ease of understanding", then there's plenty of openings for new unexpected behavior to crop up.
and the funny thing is - if they allow anything through, ssh tunneling proxy pretty much nixes anything they're trying to block.
I was under the impression that until Cisco bought Linksys, Linksys was pretty decent hardware. Since they bought it, it's gone seriously downhill.
I'd love a $100 or so wireless router that will actually function for more than 12 months. Heck, for 3+ years of trouble free operation I'd even spend more, although like any bargain hunter here I'd love to pay $10 instead. If you have any decent suggestions, I'm all ears.
Secure perimeters are illusions. Every machine needs its own defense. Firewalls are good for NAT, which foils a few, and stateful inspection, which fools a few more. Otherwise, internal firewalling and boundary checks are the only answer, coupled to download security hashing checks-- and those get bitten, too.
Secure perimeters are real, if done correctly. I know of one personally that has not been breached in a decade. :)
Every machine needs to be properly configured (I guess that can be stated as having its own defense, but I doubt you meant it this way)
Firewalls are not good for NAT. They have nothing to do with NAT.
Firewalls are not good for stateful inspection, they have nothing to do with that either.
What firewalls do is allow connections inbound and outbound. The better ones allow for more rich rules like which protocols on which ports, which machines/macs can connect or even force a user authentication before they can connect to an IP/port. There are also the on the desktop firewalls that allow an application IP/port designation. But that's all a Firewall does.
You do have one point though - if you're running MS desktops yes, they can be owned if they're allowed to connect to external entities at all, and that includes USB drives.
I can't think of a single reason why knowing what the rules do precludes using a GUI tool to simplify and automate management.
I can think of lots of reasons. The only reason I can think of having a GUI automated management tool is so some dumbass that doesn't know what he's doing can appear to manage firewalls.
Now, I can see the purpose of a GUI inspection tool for independent verification. But even then, I believe automated scripts are better.
Manually editing text is time-consuming, fatiguing and error prone. Have a tool to automate that sort of thing is one of the fundamental reasons for having computers in the first place.
This is why we have scripts. I would never manually configure the thing more than once, and that's only during the initial discovery phase. After that, it's script and test, script and test, then deploy when the scripts are spotless. This way I can always recreate anything at any time, without having to go dig up the guy that configured firewall xya 3 years ago and moved on to another division or even external job.
Scripts are repeatable. Scripts and their results can be objectively validated and verified.
GUI tools cannot. They're a nicety for inspection for those that cannot read or understand the scripts, however.
Take a look at the Wii history. They announced the Wii and controller in CES 2004. The prototypes were displayed in sep 2005.
Looks to me like patent filing dates and claims would have to be closely looked at. However, the TFA notes only that IA wanted to license their "tech" to Nintendo. I'd like to license my tech to Nintendo too (I'll make some up in the next few minutes...;) That doesn't give me a real claim nor a court case I can win.
Naah - no modding down. Everyone here should be smart enough to distrust debit cards immensely.
As for internet buys - use 1 time numbers. My main credit card has them available, although I'll admit it is a pain in the tukas to get to the screen that gives you one, and it's not exactly advertised. (read that as you have to know what you're looking for and what the specific verbage is on the menus, or you won't find it)
You are correct - win95 was later. I'd tried using Win NT 3.5 initially on the box that wound up running OS/2. I'll humbly point out that roughly 20 years back is a long time to vividly recall which crap MS OS you ran from, there were so many ;)
But, my point stands that MS didn't really do a marketing job on OS/2 2.0, they were selling a consumer product somewhere between $70-99 IIRC, while OS/2 was losing money at $130+ due in large part to the licensing costs with MS alone.
I know HPFS resists fragmentation, but then again so does NTFS...
Incorrect - NTFS inherently fragments and still does. This was a source of much speculation as to why MS, who wrote a large portion of HPFS, would not have taken that one vital piece into NTFS. One line of reasoning went that the Journaling introduced into NTFS had such a high resource cost at the time that adding the slot/band processing in on top of it would be prohibitively expensive performance-wise. The performance cost and desktop nature of OS/2 were given as reasons that it did not have journaling.
Of course MS may not actually have written the HPFS piece in question.