There's a few things that Microsoft could do - not exactly virus detection, but more in the area of "helping users".
Mostly, they could be quite straightforward. Firstly, give people the 2 logins like Redhat does, so your Win 2K set up gives you a "safe user" and an "administrator" by default.
When your Windows is installed, the first thing it does is connect to Microsoft, and shuts out any other connection, until you've got all your patches installed. Then, it allows you to do things.
Thirdly, do things to try and defeat various nasties. Put something in Outlook Express to take any file that ends with a nasty but could be disguised as an OK file (eg a.txt.vbs) and give the user a red warning about opening it.
I'm saying that all these options could be switched off, but would be on by default.
Vlasic pickles is one fine example of their ruthlessness. Wal-Mart basically forced Vlasic to make the big size containers with more pickles in them than most humans should eat within a reasonable amount of time. Wal-Mart basically forced a price structure on them too with this giant jar of pickles. As a result, you the consumer have a choice. Pay for the giant jar and end up throwing away the vast majority of the pickles, or buy the more expensive jar in the grocery store. Joe Consumer buys the giant jar with the rockbottom price. As a result, Wal-Mart has now forced Vlasic to cannibalize themselves and they end up having to file bankruptcy.
So, Vlasic Pickles were "forced" to supply to Wal Mart? What, some guys came round with guns and forced them to sign a contract?
I've heard this from people in the UK, how supermarkets are ruining their business by forcing all kinds of practises on them. There's a very simple thing to be said - don't supply to them, then.
The trap that some suppliers have gotten themselves into is that they are configured to supply to a small number of very large customers. It's very seductive. Only one bunch of people to deal with, and often a massive scaling up of your business. But at the same time, you can end up dependent upon that company, and they will just keep demanding more and slashing prices. And your choice will be what? Force a major restructure of your business if you refuse?
I wouldn't class any of these things as real "innovations". Improvements, yes, but then in a whole lot of areas, other people can be given as much credit as Virgin for other innovations (Easyjet have done far more for airline competition than Virgin, for example).
What Virgin have done very successfully is establish a brand, and with all the publicity stunts, made themselves appear very go-ahead and innovative.
I agree. That's the only way to do it, or use some arbitary end date like "31/12/9999", although I've sometimes worried about the programmers that will be required to rework all the code in 8000 years.
The USA was formed on the idea of being an alternative to Europe, but it's doing the same thing - pandering to vested interests. With Europe, it was about property in the old sense, in the USA it is intellectual property.
If businesses feel that operating in the USA means they've going to get sued by one of the old companies, they're either less likely to start up, or will operate from a freer environment.
As a country, the USA could end up in deep trouble in about 20 years - an ageing population, crippled with debt and little innovation because of markets controlled by a few players.
I wasn't so much referring to being in an underpaid job, I was thinking more about the choice of profession you work in.
Sometimes, some things that people say "don't do that" come right around. When I was growing up, people wanted their kids to have office jobs. Now, an office job can just mean a production line work. Plumbers now earn fantastic money, although that may be transient. I imagine that lots of people are looking at the rewards of being lawyers, but what happens if it becomes oversubscribed? Shop work is seen as lowly, but if you are running a large supermarket or your own successful shops, you won't be on a bad wage.
Personally, I've been in IT for about 18 years, and I still get excited about it. It's evolved from coding to other areas like project management now, but the power of the technology still excites me.
My previous reply wasn't a flame, but I was trying to shock by saying "if you don't like the job, get the fsck out". If you can't get the fsck out though, better lump it (or to paraphrase Mr Pink, "learn to be a plumber").
My experience is that as long as you have a few good levels of management above you, you can manage (that also extends to coding, too). It's hard to have things like working procedures if seniors don't support you.
I've had to take shitty pieces of work, I had to lump them, but once I realised the hole I was in, worked hard on getting out. The trouble some companies find themselves in (this happened in the mid 90s) is that as recessions lift, they can find big turnover because people who couldn't leave now could.
I think it's a question of what is natural and just "feels right". Hard to explain the difference, but one is taking nature and choosing paths based on it, the other is interfering with it.
Selective breeding has served us well, and the consequences of an action happen slowly and the impact can be seen. Do we really know the impact of something that we are doing with GM?
Even in selective breeding there are problems. Most chicken is tasteless because it's been bred for efficiency over flavour now.
That's a question of a massive human benefit at a possible risk.
The problem is, I'm still not convinced with GM that there's much of a human benefit and the risk is huge. OK people will say "but GM is safe" (like ASP.NET is secure, eating beef is perfectly safe).
I'm not a luddite, and if there are genuine benefits to counter the risks, it's worth doing, but I don't see many genuine benefits.
Most global hunger problems have far more to do with man than with anything else. Whether it be policies of deliberate starvation, non-intervention of neighbours or centralised farming by dictatorships, most of the world's famine could be dealt with by better people in charge.
GM won't deal with putting better people in charge.
That's the real question. If we do x with a crop, how does that fsck up the ecosystem? The effects could be catastrophic, and with the complexity and diversity of the ecosystem, it's probably impossible to predict.
For me, taking a risk would be fine if there were good reason. But most of the GM benefits are purely about commerce. Civilisation isn't under threat if we don't use GM.
And like having root access, you'd better be sure that you're cafeful in what you do. Particularly as in this case, there's no backup.
The problem I have with GM is that I don't really see much benefit. OK, sure, people can produce more of a crop. But what if we are already producing adequate amounts of a crop, anyway, and the result will just be more subsidies for western farmers. Although, I can see that GM applied in certain environments may help countries be more self-supporting.
It's not really a criticism of.net, which I agree is nice.
It's more a thing of new versions of things coming out all the time (whether software, methodologies, whatever) without people considering the risks of jumping into it.
Seriously, if you can't do something about your problems, and can't ultimately leave then there isn't much you can do except lump it.
As for point 4, how do you figure that you can't justify paying people for support. How about this for a justification - pay people a couple of hours of overtime for each night they are on the rota, which then affords the company the expectation of having support. My attitude - if you don't pay me to be on call, and it's not working hours, don't expect me to be in range. When I leave work, I will go where I want, and if that means I've taken the dog for a walk on the hills where reception is near non-existent, or gone to visit a friend in hospital, you have no support. Has your company considered how much the downtime and the risk of a lack of support for a night might cost them? Or do they just rely on you staying at home every night waiting for that call?
The trouble is, Apple makes more beautiful looking machines. I'm not some Apple fanboy, BTW. I just wouldn't want my ugly PC sitting in my living room. On the other hand, I wouldn't object to having one of the new iMacs in there.
In terms of security, the Forms Authentication problem in ASP.NET this week is enough for me to now be accelerating my migration off Microsoft.
My attitude was voiced by someone on TV recently. To paraphrase: don't follow the money. Do what you like doing, because you'll take an interest, get good at it and the money will follow.
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Mostly, they could be quite straightforward. Firstly, give people the 2 logins like Redhat does, so your Win 2K set up gives you a "safe user" and an "administrator" by default.
When your Windows is installed, the first thing it does is connect to Microsoft, and shuts out any other connection, until you've got all your patches installed. Then, it allows you to do things.
Thirdly, do things to try and defeat various nasties. Put something in Outlook Express to take any file that ends with a nasty but could be disguised as an OK file (eg a .txt.vbs) and give the user a red warning about opening it.
I'm saying that all these options could be switched off, but would be on by default.
Solar is great because it's cleaner and there's all that roof space on people's houses. It means self-generation, and kick starting of it is vital.
The other thing is... STOP DRIVING BIG SUVs.
It's quite obvious that they are just printing what they are given, as long as the headline is sexy/suits their point of view.
The trouble is, this won't work for the RIAA. Wal-Mart will simply go elsewhere in the world to source the CDs they want.
So, Vlasic Pickles were "forced" to supply to Wal Mart? What, some guys came round with guns and forced them to sign a contract?
I've heard this from people in the UK, how supermarkets are ruining their business by forcing all kinds of practises on them. There's a very simple thing to be said - don't supply to them, then.
The trap that some suppliers have gotten themselves into is that they are configured to supply to a small number of very large customers. It's very seductive. Only one bunch of people to deal with, and often a massive scaling up of your business. But at the same time, you can end up dependent upon that company, and they will just keep demanding more and slashing prices. And your choice will be what? Force a major restructure of your business if you refuse?
Why use Avant over Firefox? You are getting all the issues with IE and none of the things like XUL.
What Virgin have done very successfully is establish a brand, and with all the publicity stunts, made themselves appear very go-ahead and innovative.
I agree. That's the only way to do it, or use some arbitary end date like "31/12/9999", although I've sometimes worried about the programmers that will be required to rework all the code in 8000 years.
I'll check that Prosco Inc don't mind me having the domain first, though.
Be a shame if someone contacted Prosco Inc to tell them about it. How about some /.ers fund Prosco Inc's lawsuit ;)
Are you new here? ;)
OK, maybe that is a good thing.
If businesses feel that operating in the USA means they've going to get sued by one of the old companies, they're either less likely to start up, or will operate from a freer environment.
As a country, the USA could end up in deep trouble in about 20 years - an ageing population, crippled with debt and little innovation because of markets controlled by a few players.
I wasn't so much referring to being in an underpaid job, I was thinking more about the choice of profession you work in.
Sometimes, some things that people say "don't do that" come right around. When I was growing up, people wanted their kids to have office jobs. Now, an office job can just mean a production line work. Plumbers now earn fantastic money, although that may be transient. I imagine that lots of people are looking at the rewards of being lawyers, but what happens if it becomes oversubscribed? Shop work is seen as lowly, but if you are running a large supermarket or your own successful shops, you won't be on a bad wage.
Personally, I've been in IT for about 18 years, and I still get excited about it. It's evolved from coding to other areas like project management now, but the power of the technology still excites me.
My experience is that as long as you have a few good levels of management above you, you can manage (that also extends to coding, too). It's hard to have things like working procedures if seniors don't support you.
I've had to take shitty pieces of work, I had to lump them, but once I realised the hole I was in, worked hard on getting out. The trouble some companies find themselves in (this happened in the mid 90s) is that as recessions lift, they can find big turnover because people who couldn't leave now could.
Like, where? What people would benefit from having GM over non-GM?
Selective breeding has served us well, and the consequences of an action happen slowly and the impact can be seen. Do we really know the impact of something that we are doing with GM?
Even in selective breeding there are problems. Most chicken is tasteless because it's been bred for efficiency over flavour now.
The problem is, I'm still not convinced with GM that there's much of a human benefit and the risk is huge. OK people will say "but GM is safe" (like ASP.NET is secure, eating beef is perfectly safe).
I'm not a luddite, and if there are genuine benefits to counter the risks, it's worth doing, but I don't see many genuine benefits.
GM won't deal with putting better people in charge.
For me, taking a risk would be fine if there were good reason. But most of the GM benefits are purely about commerce. Civilisation isn't under threat if we don't use GM.
And like having root access, you'd better be sure that you're cafeful in what you do. Particularly as in this case, there's no backup.
The problem I have with GM is that I don't really see much benefit. OK, sure, people can produce more of a crop. But what if we are already producing adequate amounts of a crop, anyway, and the result will just be more subsidies for western farmers. Although, I can see that GM applied in certain environments may help countries be more self-supporting.
It's more a thing of new versions of things coming out all the time (whether software, methodologies, whatever) without people considering the risks of jumping into it.
Seriously, if you can't do something about your problems, and can't ultimately leave then there isn't much you can do except lump it.
As for point 4, how do you figure that you can't justify paying people for support. How about this for a justification - pay people a couple of hours of overtime for each night they are on the rota, which then affords the company the expectation of having support. My attitude - if you don't pay me to be on call, and it's not working hours, don't expect me to be in range. When I leave work, I will go where I want, and if that means I've taken the dog for a walk on the hills where reception is near non-existent, or gone to visit a friend in hospital, you have no support. Has your company considered how much the downtime and the risk of a lack of support for a night might cost them? Or do they just rely on you staying at home every night waiting for that call?
In terms of security, the Forms Authentication problem in ASP.NET this week is enough for me to now be accelerating my migration off Microsoft.
My attitude was voiced by someone on TV recently. To paraphrase: don't follow the money. Do what you like doing, because you'll take an interest, get good at it and the money will follow.