Personally, I'd like to see Microsoft be brave, risk alienating their customers, and do things the right way. The question is, has the bad press about security made Microsoft feel threatened enough to take that risk.
From a technological point of view, you're right. However, Microsoft isn't a technology company. It's an extremely effective marketing company with only one client.
Think of it this way and suddenly everything since Windows 3.0 makes a lot more sense.
It's easier to understand in an engineering context rather than a software context. With, say, the latest Dyson vacuum cleaner, any idiot from Hoover can go out and buy one, figure out how Dyson built it then churn them out in some factory in China for a quarter the price.
It's very difficult to prove one way or the other whether or not Hoover developed the idea independently or outright copied it. Therefore, the system makes it illegal to use the same technology regardless of whether or not you developed it entirely independently.
The theory is, this way inventors don't need to be afraid of showing off their invention just in case someone takes their idea and copies it, and innovation is thus encouraged. Think of at as a form of copyright applied to means of solving problems, as opposed to artistic works.
Don't know about the Far East, but in Europe it might have something to do with 3GPP dictating pretty much all the standards and heavy government regulations, there's less time spent letting the market decide something basic like "how do we all talk to each other?" (a question which your average customer is singularly unqualified to answer) and more time spent trying to differentiate your product from everyone elses.
Funny you say that, I've started responding to so-called spam recently.
I now have a 14" long penis, a £500,000 mortgage (on income of a twentieth of that!), more software than I know what to do with and some very nice pictures of Brintey Spears (well, that's who they said she was, but I'm sure she doesn't spell her name like that...).
I get medicines at exceptionally low prices (though I'm a bit concerned about the side effects I've been having from that the last batch of aspirin), and my printer is unlikely to run out of ink until 2009. Provided it doesn't explode like my last one did when I put those special chinese cartridges in. Damn cheap printers.
Of course, none of this comes cheap. But when a nice man in Nigeria has promised you 25% of $20,000,000, you can afford to splash out now and then...
That and it's unlikely OEMs will sign up for it, so you've got to persuade a whole bunch of people who already have an OS (OK, it may or may not be great, but it's familiar) and has most/all of the applications they want. I can't see many people ditching it and spending money on something they've never heard of.
Linux on the desktop has the same problem, but at least it's free so people are more likely to give it a whirl.
What BeOS needs is a killer app. Doesn't have to be unique to BeOS, it just needs to be significantly better than any of its counterparts on other OSes.
RTFA. The firmware for a typical hard drive, along with the password, doesn't live exclusively on the controller. Some (all?) of it is written to the disk itself.
1. For many years it was true. There's still a lot of Windows '9x users out there. If you're running a number of machines in a business, I would hope that's no longer the case.
2. Lousy hardware is almost endemic at the bottom-end of the market. I don't care what OS you run, you'll never get great results with the absolute trash which some companies throw together and sell. Trust me, HPaq/IBM's cheaper desktops are still far better by comparison.
3. And (certainly in the UK), your average broadband provider doesn't demand you install firewall or AV software. So unless your system was patched to XP SP2 when it left the manufacturer, you will get *something* on your system very shortly after connecting it to the Internet. Several of my colleagues have done exactly this as an experiment and proven that the "15 minutes to infect" is about right.
For a well-organised business, few of these are issues. For someone sitting at home with their own PC and no specialist IT support, they all are.
The function used to encrypt the data is a "trapdoor" (ie. easy to encrypt, very hard to decrypt without the keys)
Nobody finds a mathematically quicker way to decrypt it
The difficulty of brute-forcing it increases as the number of bits in the key increase
Then with a long enough key, it is possible to prove that the data is secure for, oooh... a couple of billion years.
Note that these points apply to most forms of encryption in common use today. Every bit you add to they key length doubles the number of potentially-correct keys, so 128-bit encryption is twice as hard to break as 127-bit encryption.
Losing that set of keys effectively means your data is gone for good. Whether or not quantum computing would solve the issue I really don't know.
It's not possible for a broken system to reliably report which parts are broken (think about it... if the system is broken, then it follows that the logic used to check it all works may also be broken).
Nobody complains about it on the Mac because few Mac users consider their computer to be something they can tinker around with and add third-party upgrades very cheaply.
OTOH, this is pretty much the whole point of the PC market.
When you stop for gas, your GPS controller talks to the gas pump. After they compare basketball scores and gossip, the pump is told the total in-Kalifornia miles, and the pump adds the tax.
I'm not a.us'ian, but couldn't the exact same effect be achieved without spending money on GPS systems simply by slapping a few cents/gallon tax on fuel?
The issue isn't a point of how you can legally screw them over, its how you can speak to your boss in terms that he understands. If your boss knows you screwed up or didn't know something you were supposed to then its harder for him to pass that up through management than if you used a canned app that failed and you were doing you job in sustaining that app.
While you are right in PHB terms, this does you no good whatsoever if your business relies on the Internet and you suffer a major security breakin.
I'd consider doing both: proprietary (rear-covering) and open-source (might actually achieve something). Costs more, but nobody can accuse you of not doing your job.
That being said, he must be saying these types of things just for marketing - to help promote his product.
Consider it this way:
Interviewer Do you think you can fix bugs faster than the Linux developers?
Possible answers 1. Not a chance. They've got more developers, the system seems to favour experienced developers more than we can, and they can't hide their bugs and pretend they don't exist. 2. Mmmm... (waffle without actually answering the question) 3. Yes! Of course we can! We're better, we're faster! We're wonderful!
Given the choice, which do you think Gates is going to say?
Normal people think when their computer slows down it's because "it has all this stuff on it" - as if every additional program they install should load it more and so slow it down even when the program's not running.
It wasn't all that long ago that disks maxed out at a couple of gigs, games that could easily fill a couple of hundred megs each had the default option of "install to disk", the FAT filesystem got horribly fragmented, the defrag tool didn't defrag if you so much as moved the mouse and Windows had no concept of DLL versioning or security so it was pretty damn easy for any new program to stamp all over critical files with any random version the publisher had pulled out of nowhere.
It wasn't that long ago that a computer really was slow because "it has all this stuff on it".
The newspaper is free to do all of this. However, the first amendendment, AIUI, doesn't stop you from suing the hell out of the newspaper when they publish something which endangers your life.
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA is working hard to enforce a mandatory cutting of vocal cords of all new babies born in the US
Shame they couldn't have done that when Britney Spears was born.
Personally, I'd like to see Microsoft be brave, risk alienating their customers, and do things the right way. The question is, has the bad press about security made Microsoft feel threatened enough to take that risk.
From a technological point of view, you're right. However, Microsoft isn't a technology company. It's an extremely effective marketing company with only one client.
Think of it this way and suddenly everything since Windows 3.0 makes a lot more sense.
That's the whole point.
It's easier to understand in an engineering context rather than a software context. With, say, the latest Dyson vacuum cleaner, any idiot from Hoover can go out and buy one, figure out how Dyson built it then churn them out in some factory in China for a quarter the price.
It's very difficult to prove one way or the other whether or not Hoover developed the idea independently or outright copied it. Therefore, the system makes it illegal to use the same technology regardless of whether or not you developed it entirely independently.
The theory is, this way inventors don't need to be afraid of showing off their invention just in case someone takes their idea and copies it, and innovation is thus encouraged. Think of at as a form of copyright applied to means of solving problems, as opposed to artistic works.
Don't know about the Far East, but in Europe it might have something to do with 3GPP dictating pretty much all the standards and heavy government regulations, there's less time spent letting the market decide something basic like "how do we all talk to each other?" (a question which your average customer is singularly unqualified to answer) and more time spent trying to differentiate your product from everyone elses.
Result: products compete on useful features.
I think the two worst I've seen were a "1 hour on-site response" contract with Xerox that required 6 months to repair a single piece of hardware,
Now now, be reasonable. That could still be one hour, the just didn't specify which hour.
Funny you say that, I've started responding to so-called spam recently.
I now have a 14" long penis, a £500,000 mortgage (on income of a twentieth of that!), more software than I know what to do with and some very nice pictures of Brintey Spears (well, that's who they said she was, but I'm sure she doesn't spell her name like that...).
I get medicines at exceptionally low prices (though I'm a bit concerned about the side effects I've been having from that the last batch of aspirin), and my printer is unlikely to run out of ink until 2009. Provided it doesn't explode like my last one did when I put those special chinese cartridges in. Damn cheap printers.
Of course, none of this comes cheap. But when a nice man in Nigeria has promised you 25% of $20,000,000, you can afford to splash out now and then...
Had you done the same test 8 years ago but searched for Java versus C/C++, you'd probably have seen the exact same results.
That and it's unlikely OEMs will sign up for it, so you've got to persuade a whole bunch of people who already have an OS (OK, it may or may not be great, but it's familiar) and has most/all of the applications they want. I can't see many people ditching it and spending money on something they've never heard of.
Linux on the desktop has the same problem, but at least it's free so people are more likely to give it a whirl.
What BeOS needs is a killer app. Doesn't have to be unique to BeOS, it just needs to be significantly better than any of its counterparts on other OSes.
Looks pretty true to me.
RTFA. The firmware for a typical hard drive, along with the password, doesn't live exclusively on the controller. Some (all?) of it is written to the disk itself.
I'm not sure it is a troll, for three reasons:
1. For many years it was true. There's still a lot of Windows '9x users out there. If you're running a number of machines in a business, I would hope that's no longer the case.
2. Lousy hardware is almost endemic at the bottom-end of the market. I don't care what OS you run, you'll never get great results with the absolute trash which some companies throw together and sell. Trust me, HPaq/IBM's cheaper desktops are still far better by comparison.
3. And (certainly in the UK), your average broadband provider doesn't demand you install firewall or AV software. So unless your system was patched to XP SP2 when it left the manufacturer, you will get *something* on your system very shortly after connecting it to the Internet. Several of my colleagues have done exactly this as an experiment and proven that the "15 minutes to infect" is about right.
For a well-organised business, few of these are issues. For someone sitting at home with their own PC and no specialist IT support, they all are.
Provided:
Then with a long enough key, it is possible to prove that the data is secure for, oooh... a couple of billion years.
Note that these points apply to most forms of encryption in common use today. Every bit you add to they key length doubles the number of potentially-correct keys, so 128-bit encryption is twice as hard to break as 127-bit encryption.
Losing that set of keys effectively means your data is gone for good. Whether or not quantum computing would solve the issue I really don't know.
Replace parts until it works.
Seriously.
It's not possible for a broken system to reliably report which parts are broken (think about it... if the system is broken, then it follows that the logic used to check it all works may also be broken).
Reminds me of a thought I had some years ago.
They say "a bad workman blames his tools".
I say "a good workman doesn't use poor tools in the first place".
Nobody complains about it on the Mac because few Mac users consider their computer to be something they can tinker around with and add third-party upgrades very cheaply.
OTOH, this is pretty much the whole point of the PC market.
I think state senators need to have "REMEMBER THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES" tattooed onto their butts.
Wouldn't help. IME, most politicians don't know their arse from their elbow.
When you stop for gas, your GPS controller talks to the gas pump. After they compare basketball scores and gossip, the pump is told the total in-Kalifornia miles, and the pump adds the tax.
.us'ian, but couldn't the exact same effect be achieved without spending money on GPS systems simply by slapping a few cents/gallon tax on fuel?
I'm not a
Microsoft will be releasing a patch which fixes this problem soon.
I thought they already this ages ago - it was called Internet Explorer 4.
The issue isn't a point of how you can legally screw them over, its how you can speak to your boss in terms that he understands. If your boss knows you screwed up or didn't know something you were supposed to then its harder for him to pass that up through management than if you used a canned app that failed and you were doing you job in sustaining that app.
While you are right in PHB terms, this does you no good whatsoever if your business relies on the Internet and you suffer a major security breakin.
I'd consider doing both: proprietary (rear-covering) and open-source (might actually achieve something). Costs more, but nobody can accuse you of not doing your job.
Should we use Windows because it was more secure 20 years ago?
Seeing as Windows 1.0
hadn't been released 20 years ago, I'd say not.
That being said, he must be saying these types of things just for marketing - to help promote his product.
Consider it this way:
Interviewer Do you think you can fix bugs faster than the Linux developers?
Possible answers
1. Not a chance. They've got more developers, the system seems to favour experienced developers more than we can, and they can't hide their bugs and pretend they don't exist.
2. Mmmm... (waffle without actually answering the question)
3. Yes! Of course we can! We're better, we're faster! We're wonderful!
Given the choice, which do you think Gates is going to say?
Normal people think when their computer slows down it's because "it has all this stuff on it" - as if every additional program they install should load it more and so slow it down even when the program's not running.
It wasn't all that long ago that disks maxed out at a couple of gigs, games that could easily fill a couple of hundred megs each had the default option of "install to disk", the FAT filesystem got horribly fragmented, the defrag tool didn't defrag if you so much as moved the mouse and Windows had no concept of DLL versioning or security so it was pretty damn easy for any new program to stamp all over critical files with any random version the publisher had pulled out of nowhere.
It wasn't that long ago that a computer really was slow because "it has all this stuff on it".
My company's biggest complaint with GPL is anything developed using GPL libraries must be GPL and released.
Seeing as that's pretty much the whole point of the GPL, perhaps the developer wanted it that way?
You could always ask them to relicense under LGPL.
The newspaper is free to do all of this. However, the first amendendment, AIUI, doesn't stop you from suing the hell out of the newspaper when they publish something which endangers your life.
Our government seems to be under the impression that making something illegal will deter people who are already criminals from doing it.
What other kind of logic do you expect?