The number of people affected by a patch to the most widely distributed oracle product is miniscule compared to a the amount of people affected by a typical MS patch.
I guess it depends on your definition of affected. Directly you are certainly correct. The desktop computer home and business users spend most of their time working with would be directly affected. But Oracle databases likely power the back-end of a lot of people's world. Banking, retail, transportation, government records, etc.
Another vendor I could cite as being possibly in the same league would be Cisco. Sure not every home and business user has a Cisco router, switch, access point, etc. but Cisco equipment likely connects a large portion of the Internet's key structure points. And most techies know the IOS has been poked full of holes like so much swiss cheese. If the inner workings of every IOS patch was made public knowledge there are so many more potential attack vectors a black hat would have in their arensal.
If you still don't understand why they should release information, consider the following from the article:
"Microsoft's customers depend on that information to figure out how to respond to Patch Tuesday. The reality is, system administrators will delay deploying a patch based on the details of the bulletin. When details aren't included, he won't install that patch"
I recall reading an article on the ISC website asking folks if they knew the inner working of Oracle's (many, many) patches. It seems as if this vendor as well hides in innermost details of the bugs their patches fix too. It takes many levels of registration, subscription, etc. to get one of their update e-mail newsletters outlining the patches. But even then the details are a bit sketchy. Perhaps this practice isn't just limited to Microsoft. But since Microsoft is perceived as the big bully on the block this makes better fodder.
It's funny that Oracle, one of the world's largest database (and arguably most enterprise deployed) software manufacturers, *might* one day absorb Novell. Makes the old days of Netware with their crappy bundled BTrieve database engine look pretty pale by comparison. Ah...brings back memories:
LOAD BTRIEVE.NLM
CPU EXCEPTION ERROR (0x3H) ATH+++++++.............
this book. I found it an enjoyable yet educational walk through the history of encoding/decoding. Cool stuff. I guess Sicilian mobsters typically aren't Mensa members...
Probably. There are many hidden places in Windows where the default browser might not be Firefox. For example, if you use Microsoft Lookout and have mail message format set as HTML perhaps. Or certain other apps might launch IE when displaying HTML content too. To play it safe I would download and install the patch.
Would be the guy in "Office Space" who went on to make his Jump to Conclusions game. He had a secretary who would gather the requirements from the customers. Then the secretary would take the gathered requirements and pass them along to the engineers. Oh wait, he was laid off. Forget what I said...
Sounds like this story was submitted in the true spirit of a Novell press release. Poor advertising/marketing for decades is one of the main reasons that Novell is teetering on the brink of obscurity much like its competitors back in the late 1980's, Banyan and LANtastic.
Here's a couple of websites that could help you out in the pursuit of managementspeak --> http://members.aol.com/matt999h/bullshit.htm and http://www.ebaumsworld.com/officespace.html. I don't mind folks using terminology for more efficient communication between true peers. But the clueless PHB's that employ the art of B.S. to mask their own incompetence is sadly typical and far too common.
There are likely some departments within Novell that still are dependent on Windows for third party apps. Like an accounting or payroll department perhaps. Are there enterprise level Linux apps that would support them? Not trying to flame. Just a question.
There's a difference between a descriptive noun/acronym and a buzzword. Maybe you should try to leverage the robustness of your vocabulary by purchasing a reference guide from a click and mortar e-commerce site.
Maybe motivational speaker Matt Foley should let them have it and stress to them that if they keep up the typo/cyberquatting they will find out later on in life they won't amount to... JACK SQUAT!!
I hear where you are coming from, but still am uninterested that my own traffic could be filtering through some black box somewhere. If I was interested or if I was a fanatical privacy advocate I would certainly look into some of the tools that can help encrypt Internet transmissions and make them more anonymous. Those folks who do not take these steps are using a public communication system that's wide open. Similarly, if I had wifi in my home and left it wide open and some plain white van was sitting across the street sniffing what I was doing, I wouldn't care. That's why the wifi transmissions were open.
For those who do care by alls means go through all of the super duper encryption methods and anonymous proxy hosts you want. As for me the last time I felt the anti government urges was back in college when I had long hair, listened to the Dead, and wore sandals. I will grant you the current regime has huge issues with the Iraq situation. But the government has had open access to public communication since the telephone, telegraph, etc. were widely implemented.
I guess no one truly "owns" the Internet, which is probably A Good Thing(TM). Here's one recent article I ran across --> http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/12/02/spark.inter net.ownership/index.html. But perhaps I've become numb to the Patriot Act regime, since I really don't care if the government is sniffing my network traffic.
The Internet began as a small group of networked U.S. military and educational institutions, correct? Things since the late 60's/early 70's certainly have grown into global proportions, but at the heart of the U.S. portion of the Internet doesn't the government still maintain a stake in things?
I can echo the sentiments of the first poster regarding the (lack of) coincidence that AT&T forwarded over the traffic nearly concurrent with the U.S. government approving of the AT&T/SBC merger. That is fishy. But as for me I don't have anything I feel that I need to hide so I could care less that the U.S. government might have snippets of my own mundane life. As long as they don't max out my credit card or something...
My theory is that Bill Gates doesn't actually exist. He is just a mythical manifestation of R.E.M. guitarist Mike Mills. Kind of like there is no such person as David Hasselhoff. That name is just a manifestation of Dan Marino when he's not playing the part of Loverboy lead vocalist Mike Reno.
The operative phrase is if you know what you're doing which might account for, what, maybe 0.5% of the Windows XP user population? That's the point. If I knew what I was doing I could customize my diesel automobile to run off of used cooking grease as well as gasoline. If I knew what I was doing I could set up some reflectory assortment of Pringle's cans and wok strainers to get a free DirecTV signal. If I knew what I was doing that is...
First of all how can the be the richest man in the world's office? Bill Lumberg's office was nicer than that! Geez, cheap basic apartment blinds, a cheesy plant, particle board desk, etc. Maybe that's an attempt to endear him as an average joe.
Second of all I wonder how much real direction Bill offers Microsoft nowadays. Or he is more of a figurehead? I would think a company with 50,000 employees and lots of entrenched middle/senior level management would be relatively self sustaining. Perhaps Bill just gives generic wish list contributions, like "It sure would be swell if people could collaborate on a project through a hosted website." And the underlings put flesh and bone to the task.
Third of all if he eats his own cooking, doesn't he get occasionally frustrated with the stability and security shortcomings of Windows? Granted XP is a lot more stable than the Windows 9x/ME branch of their product line, but security is still a concern. Even with SP2 in place. Perhaps his Internet access is going through multiple software firewalls, firewall appliances, etc. so he doesn't get hit by malware.
Forth, this really isn't a day in the life of Bill Gates, and is (as the article is entitled) how he gets his work done. I want to see him on MTV Cribs or the equivalent. Showing off all of his electronic bling. That would be cooler than this self serving advertisement.
If you are willing to be bound onto the Win32 platform Dolphin Smalltalk offers the ability to distribute an application in the form of an executable and a couple of bundled DLL's. Essentially what you are distributing is the VM with a stripped down image that doesn't contain the workspace, system browser, etc. I have the DST X6 Community Edition and it doesn't have this distribution feature activated. That requires purchasing the Professional Edition.
Agreed, out of the various OO languages Smalltalk to me seems the purest and has the most effective/efficient IDE. Essentially the IDE is the image itself. To be able to inspect objects during runtime, make changes to their coding in the System Browser while they are being referenced, etc. is all incredibly convenient. Especially for initial learning purposes. Shame that this language was overtaken by Java, as Smalltalk can be a powerful tool that doesn't leave the programmer caught jumping through syntactic hoops like in Java.
Agreed on all points, especially the Perl maintainability point. If my goal was long term project maintainability, but within a true OO programming language, I would choose Smalltalk over Eiffel any day. That is just my preference and everyone has their own preferences. It's just the syntax and philosophy behind Smalltalk jibes more with what's going on in my head.
From what I have seen Eiffel is like the B&D of object oriented languages. You have one polar opposite like Ruby, where you are free to do things using a variety of approaches. Then in the middle you have something like Python, where you are encouraged to do things using a certain Pythonic approach. Finally you have Eiffel where it's a certain way or else. Compiled the Eiffel code may be fast, but using their IDE makes Eclipse look like lightning. Creating a new project in EiffelStudio with all of the dependencies precompiled is like watching paint dry. Not the "contract" I am looking for:-(
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it depends on your definition of affected. Directly you are certainly correct. The desktop computer home and business users spend most of their time working with would be directly affected. But Oracle databases likely power the back-end of a lot of people's world. Banking, retail, transportation, government records, etc.
Another vendor I could cite as being possibly in the same league would be Cisco. Sure not every home and business user has a Cisco router, switch, access point, etc. but Cisco equipment likely connects a large portion of the Internet's key structure points. And most techies know the IOS has been poked full of holes like so much swiss cheese. If the inner workings of every IOS patch was made public knowledge there are so many more potential attack vectors a black hat would have in their arensal.
I recall reading an article on the ISC website asking folks if they knew the inner working of Oracle's (many, many) patches. It seems as if this vendor as well hides in innermost details of the bugs their patches fix too. It takes many levels of registration, subscription, etc. to get one of their update e-mail newsletters outlining the patches. But even then the details are a bit sketchy. Perhaps this practice isn't just limited to Microsoft. But since Microsoft is perceived as the big bully on the block this makes better fodder.
Dear Snurfle:
Yes. But please keep this fact to yourself.
Sincerely,
NASA Project Manager Who Got the $1.1 Gazillion Project Approved
Dvorak claims OS X and Apple in trouble. Me Tarzan, you Boy. Go find Jane. Need firewood.
LOAD BTRIEVE.NLM
CPU EXCEPTION ERROR (0x3H) ATH+++++++.............
this book. I found it an enjoyable yet educational walk through the history of encoding/decoding. Cool stuff. I guess Sicilian mobsters typically aren't Mensa members...
Probably. There are many hidden places in Windows where the default browser might not be Firefox. For example, if you use Microsoft Lookout and have mail message format set as HTML perhaps. Or certain other apps might launch IE when displaying HTML content too. To play it safe I would download and install the patch.
Would be the guy in "Office Space" who went on to make his Jump to Conclusions game. He had a secretary who would gather the requirements from the customers. Then the secretary would take the gathered requirements and pass them along to the engineers. Oh wait, he was laid off. Forget what I said...
Sounds like this story was submitted in the true spirit of a Novell press release. Poor advertising/marketing for decades is one of the main reasons that Novell is teetering on the brink of obscurity much like its competitors back in the late 1980's, Banyan and LANtastic.
Here's a couple of websites that could help you out in the pursuit of managementspeak --> http://members.aol.com/matt999h/bullshit.htm and http://www.ebaumsworld.com/officespace.html. I don't mind folks using terminology for more efficient communication between true peers. But the clueless PHB's that employ the art of B.S. to mask their own incompetence is sadly typical and far too common.
There are likely some departments within Novell that still are dependent on Windows for third party apps. Like an accounting or payroll department perhaps. Are there enterprise level Linux apps that would support them? Not trying to flame. Just a question.
There's a difference between a descriptive noun/acronym and a buzzword. Maybe you should try to leverage the robustness of your vocabulary by purchasing a reference guide from a click and mortar e-commerce site.
Maybe motivational speaker Matt Foley should let them have it and stress to them that if they keep up the typo/cyberquatting they will find out later on in life they won't amount to... JACK SQUAT!!
I have been caught red handed, cybersquatting on the information superhighway. I should be e-rrested immediately.
Now I have a new buzzword to gratuitously throw out there...typosquatting. Sweet.
The FDA announced that eating a steady diet of old Motorola brick phones will actually improve colon health and act as a cancer fighting agent.
For those who do care by alls means go through all of the super duper encryption methods and anonymous proxy hosts you want. As for me the last time I felt the anti government urges was back in college when I had long hair, listened to the Dead, and wore sandals. I will grant you the current regime has huge issues with the Iraq situation. But the government has had open access to public communication since the telephone, telegraph, etc. were widely implemented.
I guess no one truly "owns" the Internet, which is probably A Good Thing(TM). Here's one recent article I ran across --> http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/12/02/spark.inter net.ownership/index.html. But perhaps I've become numb to the Patriot Act regime, since I really don't care if the government is sniffing my network traffic.
I can echo the sentiments of the first poster regarding the (lack of) coincidence that AT&T forwarded over the traffic nearly concurrent with the U.S. government approving of the AT&T/SBC merger. That is fishy. But as for me I don't have anything I feel that I need to hide so I could care less that the U.S. government might have snippets of my own mundane life. As long as they don't max out my credit card or something...
My theory is that Bill Gates doesn't actually exist. He is just a mythical manifestation of R.E.M. guitarist Mike Mills. Kind of like there is no such person as David Hasselhoff. That name is just a manifestation of Dan Marino when he's not playing the part of Loverboy lead vocalist Mike Reno.
The operative phrase is if you know what you're doing which might account for, what, maybe 0.5% of the Windows XP user population? That's the point. If I knew what I was doing I could customize my diesel automobile to run off of used cooking grease as well as gasoline. If I knew what I was doing I could set up some reflectory assortment of Pringle's cans and wok strainers to get a free DirecTV signal. If I knew what I was doing that is...
First of all how can the be the richest man in the world's office? Bill Lumberg's office was nicer than that! Geez, cheap basic apartment blinds, a cheesy plant, particle board desk, etc. Maybe that's an attempt to endear him as an average joe.
Second of all I wonder how much real direction Bill offers Microsoft nowadays. Or he is more of a figurehead? I would think a company with 50,000 employees and lots of entrenched middle/senior level management would be relatively self sustaining. Perhaps Bill just gives generic wish list contributions, like "It sure would be swell if people could collaborate on a project through a hosted website." And the underlings put flesh and bone to the task.
Third of all if he eats his own cooking, doesn't he get occasionally frustrated with the stability and security shortcomings of Windows? Granted XP is a lot more stable than the Windows 9x/ME branch of their product line, but security is still a concern. Even with SP2 in place. Perhaps his Internet access is going through multiple software firewalls, firewall appliances, etc. so he doesn't get hit by malware.
Forth, this really isn't a day in the life of Bill Gates, and is (as the article is entitled) how he gets his work done. I want to see him on MTV Cribs or the equivalent. Showing off all of his electronic bling. That would be cooler than this self serving advertisement.
If you are willing to be bound onto the Win32 platform Dolphin Smalltalk offers the ability to distribute an application in the form of an executable and a couple of bundled DLL's. Essentially what you are distributing is the VM with a stripped down image that doesn't contain the workspace, system browser, etc. I have the DST X6 Community Edition and it doesn't have this distribution feature activated. That requires purchasing the Professional Edition. Agreed, out of the various OO languages Smalltalk to me seems the purest and has the most effective/efficient IDE. Essentially the IDE is the image itself. To be able to inspect objects during runtime, make changes to their coding in the System Browser while they are being referenced, etc. is all incredibly convenient. Especially for initial learning purposes. Shame that this language was overtaken by Java, as Smalltalk can be a powerful tool that doesn't leave the programmer caught jumping through syntactic hoops like in Java.
Agreed on all points, especially the Perl maintainability point. If my goal was long term project maintainability, but within a true OO programming language, I would choose Smalltalk over Eiffel any day. That is just my preference and everyone has their own preferences. It's just the syntax and philosophy behind Smalltalk jibes more with what's going on in my head.
From what I have seen Eiffel is like the B&D of object oriented languages. You have one polar opposite like Ruby, where you are free to do things using a variety of approaches. Then in the middle you have something like Python, where you are encouraged to do things using a certain Pythonic approach. Finally you have Eiffel where it's a certain way or else. Compiled the Eiffel code may be fast, but using their IDE makes Eclipse look like lightning. Creating a new project in EiffelStudio with all of the dependencies precompiled is like watching paint dry. Not the "contract" I am looking for :-(