The article refers to another vunet article, Linux Fights Off Hackers
by Iain Thomson, which refers a whitepaper
published by the Honeynet
Project. It
really looks as though McGrath is claiming that the Honeynet Project's
data has been falsified.
From the Honeynet white paper,
"By combining the data from all of the Linuxsystems deployed, we see a
mean life expectancy of 3.0 months for systems that were compromised.
For systems still uncompromised, we see a mean of 4.46 months. Finally,
for the entire population of machines, we see a mean time of
survival,including those still uncompromised: 4.1 months. The longest
surviving Linux honeypot was an unpatched Red Hat 7.3 system that was
online (and never compromised) for over 9 months. This is a dramatic
increase from the life expectancy for default Linux systems of 72 hours
seen in 2001/2002.",
as well as
"This life expectancy is all the more surprisingwhen compared to
vulnerable Win32 systems.Data from the Symantec Deepsight
ThreatManagement System indicates a vulnerableWin32 system has life
expectancy notmeasured in months, but merely hours. Thelimited number
of Win32 honeypots we havedeployed support this, several
beingcompromised in mere minutes. However, wedid have two Win32
honeypots in Brazil onlinefor several months before being compromisedby
worms."
and
"Meanwhile, the time to live for unpatchedWin32 systems appears to
continues todecrease. Such observations have beenreported by various
organizations, includingSymantec [1], Internet Storm Center[2] andeven
USAToday[3]. "
The optimistic note: Health Care IT can learn from the mistakes of the 90s
Big mistakes like how a monopoly lowers quality in the marketplace?
Big mistakes like picking software based on marketshare rather than quality?
The mistakes of the 90s got us into a situation where one vendor practically dictates what the market can do, can break the law with impunity, can bury anything that they don't like, the worst software products control the desktop, etc., etc..
The mistakes of the 90s are here to stay, it seems.
I give this little chance of actually producing open standards, especially with MS in the mix. After all, they'd have to go back on all the 'open is evil' spin they constantly reguritate.
One chief reason I hear people giving for not running linux is that its 'too hard to set up'. For a time, compared to windows, this was true. I think things like this will contribute to closing the 'hard to set up and maintain' gap.
This sounds more like a question to see what kind of mind is running inside the person. If their complaint is something general and whiney, like "its too complicated", "its too hard to learn", or something like that, then they're probably not very smart, and don't like to learn. Thank them for their time.
If their complaint is specific to a type of UNIX, and is technical in its nature, then you at least know what kind of UNIX they are familiar with, and you have some info about how technically savvy they might be. Nit picky though they might be, they are probably thorough. Try to find out out irritating they are before hiring.
If they compare strengths and weakness of several strains of UNIX, they are probably experienced, curious, smart, and like to learn. Hire at once.
If they say how great windows is or how UNIX isn't the 'industry standard', they are brain damaged and likely a threat to society. Push button to open trap door beneath applicant. Listen for cries of horror
A friend of mine has a brother who had a bad case of ADD, and he went on some kind of special ADD diet that is supposed to remove all kinds of substances, both naturally occuring and artificial (like preservatives). It was very successfull. He doesn't need to take ritalin.
MS needs to win this one if US patents are going to be respected by the international community in the long run. I say the long run because right now, other countries ostensibly repect US patents because they want to sell their goods and services in the US. I'm not economicist, but I think the US has the largest economy.
However, it won't be that way forever. At some point in the future, its quite concievable that other countries won't care about US patents, and we can cry foul all we want, impose santions all we want, with no or little effect. If for example, MS sues some Chinese or Indian software company for using linux, they can choose to do business in another country.
Although this seems unlikely to americans, if the US itself upholds patents like the Eolas patent, (or even the use-laser-pointer-to-entertain-cat patent), other countries are more likely to not respect US patents. Although there is international law about patents, sovereign countries can choose not to hear the legal complaints of US companies claiming some native company is in violation of a US patent. Worse still for the US, as the US debt to other countries grows, the US is less likely to try economic sanctions as a way of enforcing their foolish patents overseas. After all, its not wise to piss off someone you borrowed money from. China, for example, currently owns about 45% of the US foreign debt. Getting into a trade war with someone that you owe so much money to makes it very difficult to borrow from others around the globe.
If country reached the near-inevitable conclusion that US patents are granted without due investigation or without any commen sense thought to things like prior art or whether or not something is obvious and trivial, then they may not respect US patents, if for no other reason than the fact the US patents are granted without just cause.
So, if the US wants its patents to be continued to be respect by other countries, MS needs to win. The current patent problem in the US won't change if MS gets defeated, incidentally. MS just isn't enough of a player on Wall street for them to care, and patent reform won't ever be driven by corporations anyway - at least not until other countries get to the point of not respecting US patents. At that point, when it starts hurting enough corporations, then they might start calling for reform, but not sooner.
"Computational scientists at Sandia, a National Nuclear Security Administration lab, believe a display system of the magnitude proposed by Ross will enhance the ability of its scientists to visualize and gain insight from massively complex data sets that can be understood only through human intuition, ranging from supercomputer-generated physics simulations to high-resolution satellite imagery."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
I think several factors contribute to this kind of problem. First, everybody I have interacted with who has a degree of some kind in business strikes me as uneducated. They clearly lack any kind of background in any kind of discipline, whether logical or physical. People I know who run business who have never had any kind of college business coursework are more intelligent by an easily observable margin. Second, nearly all business are run from 'cubicle farms', that actually make their victims less intelligent, aware, and thoughtfull.
You are comparing a free program with a hardware box that can cost in the thousands easily.
Look like Explorer isn't as free as it looks...
Actually, the support issue is just the opposite of how you portray it. Cisco has many more versions of IOS to support that MS has versions of Explorer. The resources it takes to support all the versions of IOS are going to be much larger that those needed to support Explorer. Cisco likely has hundreds of versions of IOS they support. MS has a handfull of versions of Explorer they must provide support for. Even if you factor in support for Windows itself (they're integrated, right?), MS's supported product profile is quite small in comparison to Cisco's.
In the support game, the number of users factors in less that the number of versions. This is because each version is a codebase that has to be checked, patched, or otherwise fixed and maintained. Once a fix is released, it is distributed. As the music and movie industries have learned, distributing code (or any digital content) is much less work that producing it in the first place.
If you're refering to phone support, its doubtfull that the masses of garden variety questions don't go to MS, and MS marginalizes that support resource as much as they can, probably close to nothing. After all, they do have a monopoly, so OEMs 'donate' support resources to MS. Cisco has no such luxery.
Either way, however you want to cut it, Cisco support trumps MS support like an corvette versus a Yugo. Whatever MS's excuses may be (and I wouldn't give them any), the sheer difference is staggering.
This is support, by the way, that they just provide for their codebases, as opposed to Smartnet and warranty support.
New-hire engineering training, called "Engineering Bootcamp," contained material from the certs, so engineers could set up boxes for dev and test and have a basic understanding of IOS.
So, would it be a forgone conclusion that engineers sent to "Engineering Bootcamp" don't have Cisco certs?
Not at all. How well one company responds to complaints as compared to another, both in the same industrial sector of the economy. Its totally fair, equal, and revealing.
MS has sent people to where I now work also. Cisco has actually has fixed their OS distribution in response to complaints from a customer owning maybe six pieces of equipment, where I used to work.
They support their stuff. On more than on occasion, I've seen them come out with a fix a real problem, after you tell them about it. They actually provide a service of substance to their customers. Try calling Msoft and complaining about explorer bugs.
forgot to mention is that all 80,000 of them had all available Cisco certs
A significant number of the people who go to work for cisco in technical capacities are programmers, and don't necessarily have cisco certs. The Cisco Certs are for people setting up equipment, not coding. The truth is, we don't know either way.
Instead of resorting to name-calling, why not suggest a way to determing whether or not H-1Bs actually deprive US citizens of technical jobs, or at least point to someplace that has.
Slashdot Mirror
Right up there with reading tea leaves and goat entrails.
Aren't those techniques reserved for windows sysadmins?
Sounds like that applies to handwriting analysts as well...
The article refers to another vunet article, Linux Fights Off Hackers by Iain Thomson, which refers a whitepaper published by the Honeynet Project. It really looks as though McGrath is claiming that the Honeynet Project's data has been falsified.
From the Honeynet white paper,
"By combining the data from all of the Linuxsystems deployed, we see a mean life expectancy of 3.0 months for systems that were compromised. For systems still uncompromised, we see a mean of 4.46 months. Finally, for the entire population of machines, we see a mean time of survival,including those still uncompromised: 4.1 months. The longest surviving Linux honeypot was an unpatched Red Hat 7.3 system that was online (and never compromised) for over 9 months. This is a dramatic increase from the life expectancy for default Linux systems of 72 hours seen in 2001/2002.",
as well as
"This life expectancy is all the more surprisingwhen compared to vulnerable Win32 systems.Data from the Symantec Deepsight ThreatManagement System indicates a vulnerableWin32 system has life expectancy notmeasured in months, but merely hours. Thelimited number of Win32 honeypots we havedeployed support this, several beingcompromised in mere minutes. However, wedid have two Win32 honeypots in Brazil onlinefor several months before being compromisedby worms."
and
"Meanwhile, the time to live for unpatchedWin32 systems appears to continues todecrease. Such observations have beenreported by various organizations, includingSymantec [1], Internet Storm Center[2] andeven USAToday[3]. "
"they may descend upon you in the night and drag you off to a dank prison for reeducation"
Is that like re-neducation?
"just sit back an let the hooks do their job...
The optimistic note: Health Care IT can learn from the mistakes of the 90s
Big mistakes like how a monopoly lowers quality in the marketplace?
Big mistakes like picking software based on marketshare rather than quality?
The mistakes of the 90s got us into a situation where one vendor practically dictates what the market can do, can break the law with impunity, can bury anything that they don't like, the worst software products control the desktop, etc., etc..
The mistakes of the 90s are here to stay, it seems.
I give this little chance of actually producing open standards, especially with MS in the mix. After all, they'd have to go back on all the 'open is evil' spin they constantly reguritate.
Would this let me blur the pics the CIA keeps taking of me? Could I select the bodypart being blurred?
I'll patent ranting, and sue you all.
One chief reason I hear people giving for not running linux is that its 'too hard to set up'. For a time, compared to windows, this was true. I think things like this will contribute to closing the 'hard to set up and maintain' gap.
Yes, you can see Bill Gates waking up next to an Apple Powerbook.
But it didn't actually show Gates having sex with the powerbook.
I wonder if he used firewire or USB?
Never show up at an event hosted by a comedian.
Using Windows.
This sounds more like a question to see what kind of mind is running inside the person. If their complaint is something general and whiney, like "its too complicated", "its too hard to learn", or something like that, then they're probably not very smart, and don't like to learn. Thank them for their time.
If their complaint is specific to a type of UNIX, and is technical in its nature, then you at least know what kind of UNIX they are familiar with, and you have some info about how technically savvy they might be. Nit picky though they might be, they are probably thorough. Try to find out out irritating they are before hiring.
If they compare strengths and weakness of several strains of UNIX, they are probably experienced, curious, smart, and like to learn. Hire at once.
If they say how great windows is or how UNIX isn't the 'industry standard', they are brain damaged and likely a threat to society. Push button to open trap door beneath applicant. Listen for cries of horror
Pros: If each car could act as a router, the internet could run in part on highways. (even interstate highways, Mr. Gore :-)
Cons: One broadcast storm or serious vulnerability, and both the internet and the interstate highways could crash.
WestWorld: Where nothing can go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong
A friend of mine has a brother who had a bad case of ADD, and he went on some kind of special ADD diet that is supposed to remove all kinds of substances, both naturally occuring and artificial (like preservatives). It was very successfull. He doesn't need to take ritalin.
Check out Brush with Extinction . We were apparently down to several thousand individuals about 70,000 years ago.
We have low genetic diversity, and no longer need to adapt to extreme changes in our environment (thanks to our 'intelligence').
How long before a disease wipes us out?
Can medical technology ever advance to the point of actually helping a species with such low diversity?
Will spreading to other planets really help?
MS needs to win this one if US patents are going to be respected by the international community in the long run. I say the long run because right now, other countries ostensibly repect US patents because they want to sell their goods and services in the US. I'm not economicist, but I think the US has the largest economy.
However, it won't be that way forever. At some point in the future, its quite concievable that other countries won't care about US patents, and we can cry foul all we want, impose santions all we want, with no or little effect. If for example, MS sues some Chinese or Indian software company for using linux, they can choose to do business in another country.
Although this seems unlikely to americans, if the US itself upholds patents like the Eolas patent, (or even the use-laser-pointer-to-entertain-cat patent), other countries are more likely to not respect US patents. Although there is international law about patents, sovereign countries can choose not to hear the legal complaints of US companies claiming some native company is in violation of a US patent. Worse still for the US, as the US debt to other countries grows, the US is less likely to try economic sanctions as a way of enforcing their foolish patents overseas. After all, its not wise to piss off someone you borrowed money from. China, for example, currently owns about 45% of the US foreign debt. Getting into a trade war with someone that you owe so much money to makes it very difficult to borrow from others around the globe.
If country reached the near-inevitable conclusion that US patents are granted without due investigation or without any commen sense thought to things like prior art or whether or not something is obvious and trivial, then they may not respect US patents, if for no other reason than the fact the US patents are granted without just cause.
So, if the US wants its patents to be continued to be respect by other countries, MS needs to win. The current patent problem in the US won't change if MS gets defeated, incidentally. MS just isn't enough of a player on Wall street for them to care, and patent reform won't ever be driven by corporations anyway - at least not until other countries get to the point of not respecting US patents. At that point, when it starts hurting enough corporations, then they might start calling for reform, but not sooner.
But there is no way to actually verify that "Malware authors" are actually cooperating more now than in the past.
It clearly a "panic and run to us for help" article.
"Computational scientists at Sandia, a National Nuclear Security Administration lab, believe a display system of the magnitude proposed by Ross will enhance the ability of its scientists to visualize and gain insight from massively complex data sets that can be understood only through human intuition, ranging from supercomputer-generated physics simulations to high-resolution satellite imagery."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
Unless one spends a REALLY, REALLY long time with the laptop literally burning their crotch, they will not have a problem.
We are talking about geeks and nerds here, you do realize.
I think several factors contribute to this kind of problem. First, everybody I have interacted with who has a degree of some kind in business strikes me as uneducated. They clearly lack any kind of background in any kind of discipline, whether logical or physical. People I know who run business who have never had any kind of college business coursework are more intelligent by an easily observable margin. Second, nearly all business are run from 'cubicle farms', that actually make their victims less intelligent, aware, and thoughtfull.
Too bad 3M didn't get involved.
Then it would have been the STIM Cell processor.
You are comparing a free program with a hardware box that can cost in the thousands easily.
Look like Explorer isn't as free as it looks...
Actually, the support issue is just the opposite of how you portray it. Cisco has many more versions of IOS to support that MS has versions of Explorer. The resources it takes to support all the versions of IOS are going to be much larger that those needed to support Explorer. Cisco likely has hundreds of versions of IOS they support. MS has a handfull of versions of Explorer they must provide support for. Even if you factor in support for Windows itself (they're integrated, right?), MS's supported product profile is quite small in comparison to Cisco's.
In the support game, the number of users factors in less that the number of versions. This is because each version is a codebase that has to be checked, patched, or otherwise fixed and maintained. Once a fix is released, it is distributed. As the music and movie industries have learned, distributing code (or any digital content) is much less work that producing it in the first place.
If you're refering to phone support, its doubtfull that the masses of garden variety questions don't go to MS, and MS marginalizes that support resource as much as they can, probably close to nothing. After all, they do have a monopoly, so OEMs 'donate' support resources to MS. Cisco has no such luxery.
Either way, however you want to cut it, Cisco support trumps MS support like an corvette versus a Yugo. Whatever MS's excuses may be (and I wouldn't give them any), the sheer difference is staggering.
This is support, by the way, that they just provide for their codebases, as opposed to Smartnet and warranty support.
New-hire engineering training, called "Engineering Bootcamp," contained material from the certs, so engineers could set up boxes for dev and test and have a basic understanding of IOS.
So, would it be a forgone conclusion that engineers sent to "Engineering Bootcamp" don't have Cisco certs?
You are comparing apples to oranges
Not at all. How well one company responds to complaints as compared to another, both in the same industrial sector of the economy. Its totally fair, equal, and revealing.
MS has sent people to where I now work also. Cisco has actually has fixed their OS distribution in response to complaints from a customer owning maybe six pieces of equipment, where I used to work.
They support their stuff. On more than on occasion, I've seen them come out with a fix a real problem, after you tell them about it. They actually provide a service of substance to their customers. Try calling Msoft and complaining about explorer bugs.
forgot to mention is that all 80,000 of them had all available Cisco certs
A significant number of the people who go to work for cisco in technical capacities are programmers, and don't necessarily have cisco certs. The Cisco Certs are for people setting up equipment, not coding. The truth is, we don't know either way.
Instead of resorting to name-calling, why not suggest a way to determing whether or not H-1Bs actually deprive US citizens of technical jobs, or at least point to someplace that has.