I don't think you need to script it - by looking at how many comments you've posted so far to Slashdot I'd say you have more than enough time to rough it out and do it by hand.
Most did nothing at all to back up your assertion.
Really. Well, here's my original point, which you as usual managed to "miss" completely:
The problem of course is that around here it's commonly understood that because I installed Fedora on the two Celeron boxen in my room and didn't spend a dime, that deploying 25,000 desktops across an enterprise should be no more complicated or expensive. Therefore, these folks must be retarded - after all I get all my apt-get help from IRC just fine. WTF? Yes, therefore "M$" must be in on it.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
There we go. If you want, I can paste it again and again, until you stop "missing" the point.
Well I'm sorry you feel that way. I think you might be a troll too, considering your reply to one of the links above.
*gasp* the article itself.
Yeah. Apropos, I love the fact that I have to include the "Open Source Consortium" or risk failure:
2) The Open Source community, especially the Open Source Consortium (others included the Gnome Foundation), was entirely excluded from the project after the initial trial. BCC IT's department thought they could undertake the deployment themselves. The failure of this project proves this was not the case.
Now, let me save you some keyboard lubricant. Go back to my original post, and then read it very carefully. Understand what I said in that post. Then read through these links or through the whole article. I hope something clicks, because (and here's another prediction) your next reply to me is going to be a correlation between the total number of comments and the ones that confirm my prediction, and I really don't have the ti
I'm not making an "argument" here, regardless of what you might have thought. I'm pointing out what the "general consensus" will be among people who will post to this article. After 30 minutes my predictions are correct.
Who's talking about Microsoft?
For both my points, take the time to go through the comments posted so far. I'm a little busy right now and I can't go round them up for you.
Now did you have a specific point about what I posted or are you just looking for a scrape?
The problem of course is that around here it's commonly understood that because I installed Fedora on the two Celeron boxen in my room and didn't spend a dime, that deploying 25,000 desktops across an enterprise should be no more complicated or expensive. Therefore, these folks must be retarded - after all I get all my apt-get help from IRC just fine. WTF? Yes, therefore "M$" must be in on it.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
No, I just find you infinitely annoying and I think you're an anathema to all I find exciting and noteworthy in the free software universe. You are the prototype fanatical zealot that turns everyone away from what he think's he's "defending".
You read more of my writing than my mom does
Really? What does she think about your never-ending insults, fact-twisting and outright lies?
A trojan that relies on human action is slow growing
Nope, you'rewrong. And other worms that relied on vulnerabilities were easily circunvented with a $25 NAT router or just patching the damn box - a patch for Blaster was available a full month before the exploit made it to the wild.
Your box is probably part of someone's botnet.
So is probably your Linux box. Wow, I can't prove that can I?
My five year old girl thinks free software is easy enough to use, but I'll never stoop to the M$ low of blaming her for OS problems.
Your "five year old" (if she indeed exists) can be discounted as a data point given that you've obviously decided that "M$" is "teh evil" anyway. And if a user got his Debian box pwned due to a vulnerability for which a patch was available a month before, would you blame "Linsucks" or the user? I'll take bets on that from the peanut gallery.
Yes, you sound like a broken record.
ROFLMAO! I just took a peek at your posting history twitter, and all I could hear was an annoying scratching sound.
But, you know, many people would exchange the populism of democracy to sane and stable dictatorship.
Really? Would you? Because the dear leader said so?
I don't know about you but I'd rather die on some dark back alley due to lack of healthcare than live "happily" under the thumb of some megalomaniac who operates like the good old enlightened tirants of the middle ages and has life-or-death power over my person.
Holy crap, I cannot fathom the thought process that generates ignorant comments like yours. I guess we need another massive world war with 50M+ dead to remind us how expensive freedom is.
So the aliens will locate us by tracking down Hitler's speeches, and when they get here they'll see the KFC logo. I guess they'll cap it off by landing in Darfur. First impressions are so important...
No, I'm sorry but you are wrong. The GNU tools were useful and were used a great deal before the Linux kernel came along.
I'm not saying that's the case, of course the GNU project and the toolchain predate Linux itself. What I'm saying is that Linux is what has brought the FOSS thing to where it is today, and it brought everything else along for the ride. Without GNU Linux would have taken a lot longer to push out; without Linux GNU would not have had the visibility and maturity that it has today. The FSF would not have nearly the same pull as it has today. It's a symbiotic relationship, and the "you must call it GNU/Whatever" crap from Stallman doesn't help. That's all.
If BSD were the popular free Unix clone then this whole thing would have died long ago because companies like IBM would have had no incentive to give back their changes and the OS as a whole would have stagnated quickly. And the people associated with GNU are not the only ones in the planet who are capable of creating a C compiler. It would have been a question of "when", not "if".
It is the combination of the GNU toolchain, the kernel and the GPL which have created the phenomenon. Drop any of those and you have a quaint niche operating system with a few wacky fans. So Torvalds owes Stallman as much as Stallman owes Torvalds, but not more or less. Stallman's mistake is to strut around claiming the Linux folks owe him more than he owes them. That's disingenious at best and dishonest at worst.
And without Linux these "but GNU is teh best" arguments would simply not exist, because it was Linux that propelled the GNU project to where it is today, not Stallman's bitching or his obvious inability to ship a working kernel. So maybe they should be co-heroes or something?
ROFL, it's always good to see the art of "missing the point" is not lost on slashbots, even the ones who can articulate full sentences. You danced around my basic argument so beautifully and brought up so many non-sequiturs that I'm getting a headache just going back through your posts and trying to make sense of what you were saying. Have a nice life.
Re:Rumsfeld was not the architect of the Iraq war
on
Rumsfeld Stepping Down
·
· Score: 0
That's interesting and all, but I think I'm inclined to cut Israel (or the "zionists") a hell of a lot of slack given that they've been living for too long under the shadow of a half-billion people whose declared aim is to obliterate them by any means possible, and have tried to do just that at least three times so far. Palestine is just a funnel for people who are generally nastier than the palestinians themselves.
And about Lebanon... Israel's goal was to give Hezbollah something to think about, not destroy or otherwise fuck up Lebanon. Perhaps if the Lebanese government weren't puppets of Syria and Iran they would have gotten rid of Hezbollah a long time ago and wouldn't have to deal with their stupid "we're so cool" policy of kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Personally I'm jiggy with the "if you hit me with a slingshot I'm going to blow you away with my.357 magnum" camp, because you obviously want to fuck with me, so why wait until it gets worse?
And finally, I love the reference to the genocides... except that Israel didn't murder 700 thousand Palestinians. If they wanted to do that they would have done so a long time ago.
...wanted them all to have a decent standard of living
because:
I got laid off from a Fortune 100 company four years ago and spent two years looking for work before giving up and going back to school for a job in a non transferable industry, medicine.
Yeah, that sure discounts the possibility of you being bigoted against Indians, who according to you are nothing but a mass of "starving, desperate people". I get it.
Now fuck off
I keep telling you it's probably counter-productive to link to that - you're modded offtopic and anyone with half a brain can read my response. You're going to have to try harder.
half trained techs as "winners" from starving, divided, helpless and desperate crowds
Wow twitter, your usual "M$" routine is not surprising (and offtopic to boot) but I didn't know you were also an ignorant racist. You have no clue at all what India or the people who live there are like, do you?
I haven't seen a lot of disagreement about this topic.
Huh? I haven't seen a lot of agreement about this topic. And if there are infections that are being automated they are the direct result of not patching the box, period. WTF?
They could do a whole lot more
Not without breaking everything. And that "conditioning" you talk about exists in all software, Microsoft is hardly the only ones that default to that sort of behavior. If you're going to complain about something at least first look around to see if everybody else is not doing it as well.
It does not justify the cost of fixing the problem properly.
Good lord, what part of "breaking everything" did you miss back there?
I haven't had any malware problems on my mac. Have you had any on yours?
ROFL. So why haven't you? Because Apple has a 2% market share? Or because OS X is so much more secure? Make up your mind.
Here's a TV.
That's nice. Apropos because the PC is like a TV in that it has a fixed number of inputs and outputs, one way to interact with it and exactly one possible configuration state. Right?
Microsoft is guilty of transfering the burden of trust completely to the user. Idiot users then are then essentially screwed. Free software and Apple will "fix" this by taking the decision away from the user, and idiot users will simply become more sophisticated. That should be a gas, but it will be as broken as it is now. If the user finds Microsoft's "solution" unpalatable then they should switch to OS X, where they'll get the "Please enter your root password" dialog every time they download and try to run some malware. I'm sure they won't do anything dumb. And they'll patch their boxes religiously, unlike they did with their Windows boxes. After all, we all know using OS X increases your IQ automagically. Yeah, that system you seem so confident will someday exist is going to be interesting to watch.
because they're looking at the mess on Windows and taking preventative measures.
Whoa, and here I thought Microsoft was "incompetent" and Linux and OS X were inherently superior and ready for the perfect storm of 500 million people suddenly poking and prodding them. Interesting.
The majority of infections to date are the result of worms that require no interaction from the user.
I disagree, by simple observation. Every single infected machine I've ever seen infected with something was a direct result of the lack of patching or user action. And believe me, I've seen quite a few.
This is due in large part to the fact that Windows does a very poor job of informing the user what is data (and very low risk) and what is an executable (and very high risk).
It used to. "Used to" being the operative keyword here. From locking down Outlook and OE to implementing the zone bits for downloaded files, I think Microsoft have done as much as they could without risking some severe compatibility problems. Now the backwards compat thing is a hole they dug themselves into, but that can't be changed now.
simply because they have a monopoly and that problem does not significantly affect their bottom line.
If you think that Microsoft is not doing X because "they have a monopoly" then I can't really help you. They have 30 billion dollars in the bank and they've done as much as they can without, again, breaking just about every corporate Windows environment in the planet. And if you think it doesn't affect their bottom line, watch those stupid Apple ads sometime.
I suspect not, because Apple responds to their customers.
Once Apple has 400 million customers we'll see how fast they patch those holes that even now they've been taking altogether too long to patch in some cases, and in other patching silently before anyone knows what's going on. You are perpetuating the "LOLOL M$ dosen't patch" bullshit that they used to deserve seven years ago but is no longer true. I dare you to show me an instance of Microsoft failing to patch something since Windows 2000 was released. Now if you're complaining because they don't patch fast enough for you, I'd wait until Linux or Apple have to test 30,000 different combinations of hardware and software before releasing a patch and then we'll talk.
The problem of users installing malware is largely not that of the user, but of the system designer.
I think not. You cannot engineer away stupidity without making the device useless. But since we have no frame of reference, I guess we'll have to wait quite a few years to find out.
Being infected by spyware and adware, however, relies on the security of the browser, and being infected with a worm relies on the security of the operating system's Internet connectivity.
This is true only if you assume that every single malware and worm infection has been caused by a vulnerability in the browser, which is clearly not the case. I think that the vast majority of infections occur because people are simply naive and careless. Most of the fastest-spreading Windows worms in history have required significant user interaction to be successful. Executables in ZIP files being run by stupid people are the norm, not the exception. They just have to look at that REALLY COOL SCREENSAVER or those NAKED PICTURES of Anna Kornikouva or whatever. They just have to click "Yes" in that IE warning dialog because they just have to look at that cool web page. They just have to install that really cool P2P application their friends are using, which incidentally comes loaded with malware.
Eventually FireFox will gain enough traction that you'll see people installing that REALLY COOL XPI add-in. And who will you blame? Mozilla? No, of course not. In that case it will be the user's fault. Just as it's the user's fault when their Linux box gets pwned - after all, they should patch, right?
There are vulnerabilities and then there is stupidity. Even for remote exploits like Blaster, even if you didn't apply the patch that was released a month before the exploit, a $20 Linksys router would have saved you a lot of trouble.
Microsoft might have neglected security in the name of convenience for a time, and they've had a couple (and I do mean a couple) of nasty breakouts that can be traced to their lack of focus on security. And Windows does have more attack vectors than OS X or Linux. But a lot of the "bad press" they get can be traced directly to a large portion of their 500 million users who simply shouldn't be allowed near a computer, regardless of the OS, because they are responsible for having their machines infested. I suspect that when or if OS X gets 500 million users we'll see much of the same thing. It's not like Unix can magically increase your IQ by 40 points. Unix is just a lot more idiot proof than Windows - the laws of evolution dictate that you'll simply see a dramatic increase in the number of sophisticated idiots. The only way to stop that would be to lock the computer down so hard it becomes useless except for a few "authorized" tasks. You can see this today in large corporations that manage thousands of Windows desktops. Melissa and the "ILOVEYOU" deal taught them well.
Funny how every comment was almost exactly like "Thanks, thats great!"
Yes, because "OMFG TEH M$ Is TEH SUPPaH SUXX0RZZ!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!" is so much better. They already decided to back down on their decision and rightly so, what kind of discussion did you expect to see there? Is anyone who doesn't hate Microsoft a "fanboy" as far as you're concerned?
but it was strange seeing people who -like- Microsoft!
I guess that's one of the big differences between your "community" (the free software one I guess?) and the rest of us - we deal with Microsoft because we have to or want to, but normally don't see any value in throwing inane bullshit at them (go read the IE blog sometime). You on the other hand obviously suffer from some sort of selective tunnel vision if you find it positively insulting that there's someone out there that doesn't think Microsoft is the spawn of satan. Funny how that works.
...except if there's a couple of billion dollars to be made.
That bit about the lawsuits aimed at YouTube competitors is especially tasty. I don't know if Cuban has an axe to grind here, but if true it just confirms that Google is now simply interested in what all publicly traded companies do: maximizing shareholder value. Everything else is secondary.
Like WGA, this is aimed at Joe Windows or Small Company, who think it's OK to copy the Office disks and install them at home. Like WGA, it will be easily defeated, so it's not intended to eliminate piracy. It's just a hassle that will curtail casual low-scale piracy.
Since Microsoft's Office revenue overwhelmingly comes from big business site license and volume contracts that won't be affected by OGA (and weren't by WGA either), Joe Windows and Small Company will put up with it because they don't have the pull Super Corporation has with Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think you need to script it - by looking at how many comments you've posted so far to Slashdot I'd say you have more than enough time to rough it out and do it by hand.
Really. Well, here's my original point, which you as usual managed to "miss" completely:
There we go. If you want, I can paste it again and again, until you stop "missing" the point.
No, it's a prediction. You're big on this semantics thing, aren't you?
Interesting.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16918232 It's free, so someone must be stealing money
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16919058 Smells like baloney!
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16918080 This guy has it all figured out. Nee "I installed Fedora on my boxen everyone else is stupid"
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16918426 No learning curve.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16917970 Grandma as a data point
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16918190 It's no big deal
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16917764 You asked "who's talking about Microsoft?" originally.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16917728 Of course, it's all about maintaining "viruses", as if any halfway-decent enterprise hadn't figured this out by now.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16917548 Microsoft is in on it.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16917528 LOL!
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16917872 Priceless
Now a few good ones, including one you replied to essentially calling the OP stupid:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16918078
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207498&c id=16917964
Well I'm sorry you feel that way. I think you might be a troll too, considering your reply to one of the links above.
Yeah. Apropos, I love the fact that I have to include the "Open Source Consortium" or risk failure:
2) The Open Source community, especially the Open Source Consortium (others included the Gnome Foundation), was entirely excluded from the project after the initial trial. BCC IT's department thought they could undertake the deployment themselves. The failure of this project proves this was not the case.
Now, let me save you some keyboard lubricant. Go back to my original post, and then read it very carefully. Understand what I said in that post. Then read through these links or through the whole article. I hope something clicks, because (and here's another prediction) your next reply to me is going to be a correlation between the total number of comments and the ones that confirm my prediction, and I really don't have the ti
I'm not making an "argument" here, regardless of what you might have thought. I'm pointing out what the "general consensus" will be among people who will post to this article. After 30 minutes my predictions are correct.
For both my points, take the time to go through the comments posted so far. I'm a little busy right now and I can't go round them up for you.
Now did you have a specific point about what I posted or are you just looking for a scrape?
Try $43 OEM. That's the middle price range for mid-size VARs - I surmise Dell, HP, Gateway and IBM get a better price.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
No, I just find you infinitely annoying and I think you're an anathema to all I find exciting and noteworthy in the free software universe. You are the prototype fanatical zealot that turns everyone away from what he think's he's "defending".
Really? What does she think about your never-ending insults, fact-twisting and outright lies?
Nope, you're wrong. And other worms that relied on vulnerabilities were easily circunvented with a $25 NAT router or just patching the damn box - a patch for Blaster was available a full month before the exploit made it to the wild.
So is probably your Linux box. Wow, I can't prove that can I?
Your "five year old" (if she indeed exists) can be discounted as a data point given that you've obviously decided that "M$" is "teh evil" anyway. And if a user got his Debian box pwned due to a vulnerability for which a patch was available a month before, would you blame "Linsucks" or the user? I'll take bets on that from the peanut gallery.
ROFLMAO! I just took a peek at your posting history twitter, and all I could hear was an annoying scratching sound.
Really? Would you? Because the dear leader said so?
I don't know about you but I'd rather die on some dark back alley due to lack of healthcare than live "happily" under the thumb of some megalomaniac who operates like the good old enlightened tirants of the middle ages and has life-or-death power over my person.
Holy crap, I cannot fathom the thought process that generates ignorant comments like yours. I guess we need another massive world war with 50M+ dead to remind us how expensive freedom is.
Well then, don't. You welp "FUD" and then turn around and spew some of yours with gusto. What a tool.
So the aliens will locate us by tracking down Hitler's speeches, and when they get here they'll see the KFC logo. I guess they'll cap it off by landing in Darfur. First impressions are so important...
I'm not saying that's the case, of course the GNU project and the toolchain predate Linux itself. What I'm saying is that Linux is what has brought the FOSS thing to where it is today, and it brought everything else along for the ride. Without GNU Linux would have taken a lot longer to push out; without Linux GNU would not have had the visibility and maturity that it has today. The FSF would not have nearly the same pull as it has today. It's a symbiotic relationship, and the "you must call it GNU/Whatever" crap from Stallman doesn't help. That's all.
It is the combination of the GNU toolchain, the kernel and the GPL which have created the phenomenon. Drop any of those and you have a quaint niche operating system with a few wacky fans. So Torvalds owes Stallman as much as Stallman owes Torvalds, but not more or less. Stallman's mistake is to strut around claiming the Linux folks owe him more than he owes them. That's disingenious at best and dishonest at worst.
And without Linux these "but GNU is teh best" arguments would simply not exist, because it was Linux that propelled the GNU project to where it is today, not Stallman's bitching or his obvious inability to ship a working kernel. So maybe they should be co-heroes or something?
ROFL, it's always good to see the art of "missing the point" is not lost on slashbots, even the ones who can articulate full sentences. You danced around my basic argument so beautifully and brought up so many non-sequiturs that I'm getting a headache just going back through your posts and trying to make sense of what you were saying. Have a nice life.
And about Lebanon... Israel's goal was to give Hezbollah something to think about, not destroy or otherwise fuck up Lebanon. Perhaps if the Lebanese government weren't puppets of Syria and Iran they would have gotten rid of Hezbollah a long time ago and wouldn't have to deal with their stupid "we're so cool" policy of kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Personally I'm jiggy with the "if you hit me with a slingshot I'm going to blow you away with my .357 magnum" camp, because you obviously want to fuck with me, so why wait until it gets worse?
And finally, I love the reference to the genocides... except that Israel didn't murder 700 thousand Palestinians. If they wanted to do that they would have done so a long time ago.
because:
Yeah, that sure discounts the possibility of you being bigoted against Indians, who according to you are nothing but a mass of "starving, desperate people". I get it.
I keep telling you it's probably counter-productive to link to that - you're modded offtopic and anyone with half a brain can read my response. You're going to have to try harder.
Wow twitter, your usual "M$" routine is not surprising (and offtopic to boot) but I didn't know you were also an ignorant racist. You have no clue at all what India or the people who live there are like, do you?
Huh? I haven't seen a lot of agreement about this topic. And if there are infections that are being automated they are the direct result of not patching the box, period. WTF?
Not without breaking everything. And that "conditioning" you talk about exists in all software, Microsoft is hardly the only ones that default to that sort of behavior. If you're going to complain about something at least first look around to see if everybody else is not doing it as well.
Good lord, what part of "breaking everything" did you miss back there?
ROFL. So why haven't you? Because Apple has a 2% market share? Or because OS X is so much more secure? Make up your mind.
That's nice. Apropos because the PC is like a TV in that it has a fixed number of inputs and outputs, one way to interact with it and exactly one possible configuration state. Right?
Microsoft is guilty of transfering the burden of trust completely to the user. Idiot users then are then essentially screwed. Free software and Apple will "fix" this by taking the decision away from the user, and idiot users will simply become more sophisticated. That should be a gas, but it will be as broken as it is now. If the user finds Microsoft's "solution" unpalatable then they should switch to OS X, where they'll get the "Please enter your root password" dialog every time they download and try to run some malware. I'm sure they won't do anything dumb. And they'll patch their boxes religiously, unlike they did with their Windows boxes. After all, we all know using OS X increases your IQ automagically. Yeah, that system you seem so confident will someday exist is going to be interesting to watch.
Whoa, and here I thought Microsoft was "incompetent" and Linux and OS X were inherently superior and ready for the perfect storm of 500 million people suddenly poking and prodding them. Interesting.
I disagree, by simple observation. Every single infected machine I've ever seen infected with something was a direct result of the lack of patching or user action. And believe me, I've seen quite a few.
It used to. "Used to" being the operative keyword here. From locking down Outlook and OE to implementing the zone bits for downloaded files, I think Microsoft have done as much as they could without risking some severe compatibility problems. Now the backwards compat thing is a hole they dug themselves into, but that can't be changed now.
If you think that Microsoft is not doing X because "they have a monopoly" then I can't really help you. They have 30 billion dollars in the bank and they've done as much as they can without, again, breaking just about every corporate Windows environment in the planet. And if you think it doesn't affect their bottom line, watch those stupid Apple ads sometime.
Once Apple has 400 million customers we'll see how fast they patch those holes that even now they've been taking altogether too long to patch in some cases, and in other patching silently before anyone knows what's going on. You are perpetuating the "LOLOL M$ dosen't patch" bullshit that they used to deserve seven years ago but is no longer true. I dare you to show me an instance of Microsoft failing to patch something since Windows 2000 was released. Now if you're complaining because they don't patch fast enough for you, I'd wait until Linux or Apple have to test 30,000 different combinations of hardware and software before releasing a patch and then we'll talk.
I think not. You cannot engineer away stupidity without making the device useless. But since we have no frame of reference, I guess we'll have to wait quite a few years to find out.
This is true only if you assume that every single malware and worm infection has been caused by a vulnerability in the browser, which is clearly not the case. I think that the vast majority of infections occur because people are simply naive and careless. Most of the fastest-spreading Windows worms in history have required significant user interaction to be successful. Executables in ZIP files being run by stupid people are the norm, not the exception. They just have to look at that REALLY COOL SCREENSAVER or those NAKED PICTURES of Anna Kornikouva or whatever. They just have to click "Yes" in that IE warning dialog because they just have to look at that cool web page. They just have to install that really cool P2P application their friends are using, which incidentally comes loaded with malware.
Eventually FireFox will gain enough traction that you'll see people installing that REALLY COOL XPI add-in. And who will you blame? Mozilla? No, of course not. In that case it will be the user's fault. Just as it's the user's fault when their Linux box gets pwned - after all, they should patch, right?
There are vulnerabilities and then there is stupidity. Even for remote exploits like Blaster, even if you didn't apply the patch that was released a month before the exploit, a $20 Linksys router would have saved you a lot of trouble.
Microsoft might have neglected security in the name of convenience for a time, and they've had a couple (and I do mean a couple) of nasty breakouts that can be traced to their lack of focus on security. And Windows does have more attack vectors than OS X or Linux. But a lot of the "bad press" they get can be traced directly to a large portion of their 500 million users who simply shouldn't be allowed near a computer, regardless of the OS, because they are responsible for having their machines infested. I suspect that when or if OS X gets 500 million users we'll see much of the same thing. It's not like Unix can magically increase your IQ by 40 points. Unix is just a lot more idiot proof than Windows - the laws of evolution dictate that you'll simply see a dramatic increase in the number of sophisticated idiots. The only way to stop that would be to lock the computer down so hard it becomes useless except for a few "authorized" tasks. You can see this today in large corporations that manage thousands of Windows desktops. Melissa and the "ILOVEYOU" deal taught them well.
Yes, because "OMFG TEH M$ Is TEH SUPPaH SUXX0RZZ!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!" is so much better. They already decided to back down on their decision and rightly so, what kind of discussion did you expect to see there? Is anyone who doesn't hate Microsoft a "fanboy" as far as you're concerned?
but it was strange seeing people who -like- Microsoft!
I guess that's one of the big differences between your "community" (the free software one I guess?) and the rest of us - we deal with Microsoft because we have to or want to, but normally don't see any value in throwing inane bullshit at them (go read the IE blog sometime). You on the other hand obviously suffer from some sort of selective tunnel vision if you find it positively insulting that there's someone out there that doesn't think Microsoft is the spawn of satan. Funny how that works.
I sure hope this is not the end for him. We've seen enough careers and reputations get bogged down in the "I think I'll design an OS now" phase.
That bit about the lawsuits aimed at YouTube competitors is especially tasty. I don't know if Cuban has an axe to grind here, but if true it just confirms that Google is now simply interested in what all publicly traded companies do: maximizing shareholder value. Everything else is secondary.
Ah well. It was fun while it lasted.
Since Microsoft's Office revenue overwhelmingly comes from big business site license and volume contracts that won't be affected by OGA (and weren't by WGA either), Joe Windows and Small Company will put up with it because they don't have the pull Super Corporation has with Microsoft.