"This is even a worse idea than the "2 day dvd lasting" media."
Hell, you can BUY a brand new namebrand 2mp digital camera for $80 US if you hunt the sales. So for the cost of 4 of these "disposable" cameras you can own one that can take all the pictures you want.
Other Prominent Corps Mottos
on
Semper WiFi
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"In case anyone doesn't get it, "Semper Fi" is the Marine Corp motto."
Other prominent mottos we've use include:
"Semper Gumby": Always Flexible. Good for when your supply drop lands in the middle of the neighboring swamp.
"Semper Scrotum": Always On The Ball. Good for damn near any operational situation.
Well, their crappy products too, but hypocrisy as well.
"Proprietary is anticompetitive by definition.
Apple is banking that proprietary is profitable. I'll guess we'll see if they are right.
Though cross-platform proprietary solutions are not completely anti-competitive. If every service was cross-platform, then you'd be free to choose whatever service simply worked best. That's true choice.
Frankly Real's efforts wouldn't annoy me as much if 1) They hadn't kept their own.rm format proprietary and, 2) Their crappy Rhapsody music service worked on OS other than Windows Not that I'd use it anyway, but it's funny to see them ranting for "choice" and against closed formats when they themselves pursue the opposite.
Real: "Proprietary formats are evil! (Unless they're ours)
Real: "Consumers deserve freedom of choice! (As long as you choose Windows)
Maybe they can strike a sweet cooperative deal with SCO. They could save so much by merging their PR departments, since the overlap is complete.
"PCs with internet access are much more interesting. But you have to be at your PC desk, assuming a posture of office environment productivity. Then turn on the PC and wait, and wait, for the 'boot' process. Yes, twenty, thirty seconds go by, you're still waiting."
I'm reading this slouched on the floor, back against the couch, on a whisper-quiet laptop the I rarely shutdown - I put it into sleep mode and it comes to life faster than the TV. When the rain stops I'll be on the patio knocking out some work while actually getting some fresh air in the bargain.
A quality wireless laptop system is the ultimate appliance.
"Strangely, the 2 replies that others have posted in regards to my attempt are outscoring me. This whole "no longer an AC" thing isn't all it was cracked up to be."
Ah grasshopper, the first step in gaining karma is to realize that there is no score. Post freely, and with forethought. What follows will follow.
Too bad we can't mod articles up. That's the funniest thing I've read in quite awhile.
Just in time too - bad Friday juju around the office at the moment. I think I'll forward this around and lift the collective mood before a coffee pot goes flying into a random cubicle.
"Then the dot-com thing ruined it. It was filled with kids with green hair and tounge piercings who wanted to get started in "computer graphics."
No doubt the suit-and-tie mainframers thought the same thing when "those kids in some garage" started making "toy computers" to sell for personal use.;-)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I'd definitely like to see some closer scrutiny of the negative mods. Meta-moderating doesn't seem to be weeding enough of the bad ones out. The Moderator Guidelines make it clear to:
"Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this".
A sizable minority of moderators are clearly ignoring that, if they ever even bother to read the guidelines at all. I think out of all my mod points, I've only ever assigned a negative mod once, maybe twice. There's really no need to most of the time, since even though I often strongly disagree with the poster, that's NOT what moderation is supposed to be about.
Having said that, email CmdrTaco
with any abuse. He says its rare he removes moderator access, but apparently it does happen.
"This is similar. A user has unknowlingly installed software onto their system and now Microsoft's software doesn't work with it. It sounds like a more "Business 101" answer would be that the user should call the company that wrote the spyware and get them to help."
Kind of rough for a user to know who to call if they unknowingly installed that software though, eh?:-)
Call it Software Business 101. Company X better make damn sure that their release is able to work in the prevailing environment present in The Real World.
If your user base is rife with malware, sure it's treacherous seas, but Company X bears the burden of making sure their ship can handle the tides if they want to sail those waters.
Prevention (design, security, user education) smoothes the seas tremendously, of course.
"Ah, but my point was that the thirteen-year-old got raked over the coals...and then had to flatten and rebuild the box himself. ANd a lot of people have someone who will gladly rake them over the coals for installing spyware on their box."
I think that's a great approach!
Sadly though, I'm quite certain that's not the case in the average Joe User household because most of them simply don't know they've got malware running.:-/
Every now and then when I visit friends and relatives, I become painfully aware of how even my kids take for granted computer system knowledge that is a complete mystery to others.
I'm afraid households like yours and mine (and every other Slashdot reader) are rare outposts in the malware-infested forests of the 'Net.
I hate to say it, but that is one seriously butt-ugly computer. Kudos to them for the Mac SE cases and such, but damn. That thing looks like a Fischer-Price reject.
A Dell Dimension under the desk with an LCD sitting on the desktop seems like something they'll have a chance of still wanting in their room when a few years of growing up have passed.
And that's assuming their tastes haven't shifted from Disney to SpongeBob Squarepants in just a few months' time anyway.
Actually... A SpongeBob PC... Now THAT is an idea.;-)
"So you would strip home users of admin rights?
How would they apply patches then?"
Same way we do it around here (6 machines in our house). First, they don't have admin privileges. On the OS X boxen, if they download something that requires admin privileges to install, it pops up the "Admin Password Required" dialog. Then they either get me or cancel and ask later. On the Winboxen I install everything personally.
Simple. Never had a problem. Even our 5-year-old groks it.
For the solo clueless home Win user, XP could add a little warning in addition to requiring the separate Admin password. Couple that with MS spending some of that $40-60 billion on user education. It's Redmond's ass in a sling after all.
"Linux is 100% vulnerable to root users installing trojans.
Must be Linux's fault that users install trojans."
If a linux vendor ships their distro with Joe User's account running as root by default, then yes I completely agree, that vendor is at fault if they then discover that 3/5 of their installed base has malware that's interfering with a system patch they want to release.
"The only case where I've had a problem is on the kids' gaming machine. One of them had installed something which came with a "present" attached without asking me first. He got to oversee the fun of flattening the machine down to the ground and rebuilding it."
Good thing the average home computer isn't anything like that one. Oh, wait...
Again, not trolling, but your "exceptional case" is the norm in most households. And they don't all have someone who works for MS living with them to sort it out after the fact. That was my point.
"It's RedHat/Dell/HP/Whoever's responsibility to fix and maintain upgrade paths until the spyware is removed?"
If Company A is releasing a patch that will break 3 out of 5 machines because 3 out of 5 machines have malware installed, then yes. Period. Whether they fix it through their own code, through user education and suppport, or (here we go) by not creating an OS so rife with holes and intertwined code that it is to malware was a dead deer carcass is to maggots. Either way Company A is holding the bag.
Why? User perception. Period. It's Business 101.
Refer to my (and others') observation - Joe User doesn't know and doesn't give a rat's ass. All they will know is that SP(x) "broke" their "perfectly functioning machine".
And frankly MS has not done themselves any favors in this department. Their concept of the sandbox was the entire OS. Longhorn purportedly fixes that, but the public isn't running Longhorn are they?
"They've not made it as difficult for malware authors as they could have, but it's impossible to make it impossible, if the user has admin rights, and that includes *every* home user"
"But, you can turn the firewall features off _very_ easily."
You mean like I've always been able to do in OS X? A simple toggle next to each service?
"I really like the popup blocker and other IE changes in SP2 as well"
You mean like I've always been able to do in Safari and Firefox?
I'm not trolling, but expounding features that I've enjoyed elsewhere for years reminds me of why I avoid MS products as much as I can - the other options allow me to enjoy now what MS might deliver long after the fact.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is even a worse idea than the "2 day dvd lasting" media."
Hell, you can BUY a brand new namebrand 2mp digital camera for $80 US if you hunt the sales. So for the cost of 4 of these "disposable" cameras you can own one that can take all the pictures you want.
"In case anyone doesn't get it, "Semper Fi" is the Marine Corp motto."
Other prominent mottos we've use include:
Well, their crappy products too, but hypocrisy as well.
"Proprietary is anticompetitive by definition. Apple is banking that proprietary is profitable. I'll guess we'll see if they are right.
Though cross-platform proprietary solutions are not completely anti-competitive. If every service was cross-platform, then you'd be free to choose whatever service simply worked best. That's true choice.
Frankly Real's efforts wouldn't annoy me as much if 1) They hadn't kept their own .rm format proprietary and, 2) Their crappy Rhapsody music service worked on OS other than Windows Not that I'd use it anyway, but it's funny to see them ranting for "choice" and against closed formats when they themselves pursue the opposite.
Real: "Proprietary formats are evil! (Unless they're ours)
Real: "Consumers deserve freedom of choice! (As long as you choose Windows)
Maybe they can strike a sweet cooperative deal with SCO. They could save so much by merging their PR departments, since the overlap is complete.
Damn, just when I ran out of mod points too.
"Because a rover on mars has about the same chance of reproducing as an average
Hey now, that kind of generalized bashing is totally uncalled for... the Mars rover has a much better chance.
"PCs with internet access are much more interesting. But you have to be at your PC desk, assuming a posture of office environment productivity. Then turn on the PC and wait, and wait, for the 'boot' process. Yes, twenty, thirty seconds go by, you're still waiting."
I'm reading this slouched on the floor, back against the couch, on a whisper-quiet laptop the I rarely shutdown - I put it into sleep mode and it comes to life faster than the TV. When the rain stops I'll be on the patio knocking out some work while actually getting some fresh air in the bargain.
A quality wireless laptop system is the ultimate appliance.
"True. But we've had an army looking for them since 2001."
They should hire bill collectors to hunt down al Qaeda leadership. Those bastards can find you anywhere.
(I guess I should've added a comment about never encountering fellow cyclists who actually use deodorant on the morning group rides...)
"It was reported that Lance Armstrong is about to have his 6th Tour de France title taken away"
Care to cite some sources? Google came up blank.
"Strangely, the 2 replies that others have posted in regards to my attempt are outscoring me. This whole "no longer an AC" thing isn't all it was cracked up to be."
Ah grasshopper, the first step in gaining karma is to realize that there is no score . Post freely, and with forethought. What follows will follow.
"This explains all of
Although given the comments in the "Total Cost of 0wnership" thread, that was apparently a package deal with the gullibility gene. ;-)
Too bad we can't mod articles up. That's the funniest thing I've read in quite awhile.
Just in time too - bad Friday juju around the office at the moment. I think I'll forward this around and lift the collective mood before a coffee pot goes flying into a random cubicle.
"Then the dot-com thing ruined it. It was filled with kids with green hair and tounge piercings who wanted to get started in "computer graphics."
No doubt the suit-and-tie mainframers thought the same thing when "those kids in some garage" started making "toy computers" to sell for personal use. ;-)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
"I hate this moderation system."
I'd definitely like to see some closer scrutiny of the negative mods. Meta-moderating doesn't seem to be weeding enough of the bad ones out. The Moderator Guidelines make it clear to:
"Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this".
A sizable minority of moderators are clearly ignoring that, if they ever even bother to read the guidelines at all. I think out of all my mod points, I've only ever assigned a negative mod once, maybe twice. There's really no need to most of the time, since even though I often strongly disagree with the poster, that's NOT what moderation is supposed to be about.
Having said that, email CmdrTaco with any abuse. He says its rare he removes moderator access, but apparently it does happen.
"Frog blast the vent core!!!
That trip down memory lane just made my night. :-)
"This is similar. A user has unknowlingly installed software onto their system and now Microsoft's software doesn't work with it. It sounds like a more "Business 101" answer would be that the user should call the company that wrote the spyware and get them to help."
Kind of rough for a user to know who to call if they unknowingly installed that software though, eh? :-)
Call it Software Business 101. Company X better make damn sure that their release is able to work in the prevailing environment present in The Real World.
If your user base is rife with malware, sure it's treacherous seas, but Company X bears the burden of making sure their ship can handle the tides if they want to sail those waters.
Prevention (design, security, user education) smoothes the seas tremendously, of course.
"Ah, but my point was that the thirteen-year-old got raked over the coals...and then had to flatten and rebuild the box himself. ANd a lot of people have someone who will gladly rake them over the coals for installing spyware on their box."
I think that's a great approach!
Sadly though, I'm quite certain that's not the case in the average Joe User household because most of them simply don't know they've got malware running. :-/
Every now and then when I visit friends and relatives, I become painfully aware of how even my kids take for granted computer system knowledge that is a complete mystery to others.
I'm afraid households like yours and mine (and every other Slashdot reader) are rare outposts in the malware-infested forests of the 'Net.
I hate to say it, but that is one seriously butt-ugly computer. Kudos to them for the Mac SE cases and such, but damn. That thing looks like a Fischer-Price reject.
A Dell Dimension under the desk with an LCD sitting on the desktop seems like something they'll have a chance of still wanting in their room when a few years of growing up have passed.
And that's assuming their tastes haven't shifted from Disney to SpongeBob Squarepants in just a few months' time anyway.
Actually... A SpongeBob PC... Now THAT is an idea.
"So you would strip home users of admin rights? How would they apply patches then?"
Same way we do it around here (6 machines in our house). First, they don't have admin privileges. On the OS X boxen, if they download something that requires admin privileges to install, it pops up the "Admin Password Required" dialog. Then they either get me or cancel and ask later. On the Winboxen I install everything personally.
Simple. Never had a problem. Even our 5-year-old groks it.
For the solo clueless home Win user, XP could add a little warning in addition to requiring the separate Admin password. Couple that with MS spending some of that $40-60 billion on user education. It's Redmond's ass in a sling after all.
"Linux is 100% vulnerable to root users installing trojans. Must be Linux's fault that users install trojans."
If a linux vendor ships their distro with Joe User's account running as root by default, then yes I completely agree, that vendor is at fault if they then discover that 3/5 of their installed base has malware that's interfering with a system patch they want to release.
Fail to design, designed to fail.
"The only case where I've had a problem is on the kids' gaming machine. One of them had installed something which came with a "present" attached without asking me first. He got to oversee the fun of flattening the machine down to the ground and rebuilding it."
Good thing the average home computer isn't anything like that one. Oh, wait...
Again, not trolling, but your "exceptional case" is the norm in most households. And they don't all have someone who works for MS living with them to sort it out after the fact. That was my point.
"It's RedHat/Dell/HP/Whoever's responsibility to fix and maintain upgrade paths until the spyware is removed?"
If Company A is releasing a patch that will break 3 out of 5 machines because 3 out of 5 machines have malware installed, then yes. Period. Whether they fix it through their own code, through user education and suppport, or (here we go) by not creating an OS so rife with holes and intertwined code that it is to malware was a dead deer carcass is to maggots. Either way Company A is holding the bag.
Why? User perception. Period. It's Business 101.
Refer to my (and others') observation - Joe User doesn't know and doesn't give a rat's ass. All they will know is that SP(x) "broke" their "perfectly functioning machine".
And frankly MS has not done themselves any favors in this department. Their concept of the sandbox was the entire OS. Longhorn purportedly fixes that, but the public isn't running Longhorn are they?
You wrote:
"How so?"
Followed by:
"They've not made it as difficult for malware authors as they could have, but it's impossible to make it impossible, if the user has admin rights, and that includes *every* home user"
Asked and answered.
"But, you can turn the firewall features off _very_ easily."
You mean like I've always been able to do in OS X? A simple toggle next to each service?
"I really like the popup blocker and other IE changes in SP2 as well"
You mean like I've always been able to do in Safari and Firefox?
I'm not trolling, but expounding features that I've enjoyed elsewhere for years reminds me of why I avoid MS products as much as I can - the other options allow me to enjoy now what MS might deliver long after the fact.
"So now MS has to make its OS work with spyware?"
Yes.
Sucks to be them, but they got themselves into this position in the first place.