He pretty much covers most of it. IPv6 is dead on the public Internet long before it started. I knew this as soon as I called up MCI/WorldCom last year to ask if they had any IPv6 address space to add to our few class-C's and they laughed at me. If the folks who run half the Internet aren't ready for it, why would we be?
AOL has implemented a lot of such software in their client software and do more and more scanning inline on opening connections and traffic patterns. I'd guess that helps them out a wee bit.
AOLs goal has always been to provide a good experience to novice users... they do serve that target market fairly well in terms of providing information and services to those customers.
PS: Not trying to start a AOL bad-experience thread here. The first paragraph is the important one. The second is just what their objective is stated and seems to be... and they do a reasonable job moving to their target market... hence why they've had a lot of success with novices.
When I was in my late teens for the Simpsons, I found it hilarious. My mother at the time loved it. My sister a few years older loved it. My neices and cousins adored the show despite having an age range from 5 to 25. You find very few people who don't enjoy at least the occasional episode of the Simpsons and find it entertaining. Some people are more interested than others, and I agree with that, but rarely do you see someone outright hate it.
It really fits all age groups. It's nice satirical humour that has something for everyone. It offers TONS of political and pop-culture episodes. The references to the 60's aren't making fun of them, but there so that the 40-somethings get a laugh as well. The political references are all there. The pop-culture references (think as obvious as ringo-starr and as simple as Wolfcastle's character being 'Arnold').
There is something for everyone. It had lasting appeal. I _still_ find the old episodes great to watch, and so do younger kids. I'm partially fearing what they'll do with the 'full length feature film' that they're promising a year or two after the show ends, because since they know everyone will see it anyway, I see them doing a half-@$$ed job.
A great line that you can tell to ANY age group and find funny... This being from a later episode, but nonetheless, this is what they've lost:
"What kind of milage does it get?"
"One highway, zero city"
-OR- of course the whole 'canyonaro' episode:)
Great one-liners! You have people who quote the Simpsons constantly, but do you ever have people quoting modern episodes. Lines like 'take out your safety pencils and a circle of paper', 'marge, do you have any elbow macarroni and glue on sparkles' and so on can be used in day to day life. Maybe not in the same context, but I bet you could find a place to use lines like this within the next week if you had them on the mind. Same thing with the 'one highway, zero city' when talking about some big SUV.
Now try doing that with the new stuff they have.
PS: Anyone get the feeling they were winding down mid-way anyway?
Lines in season 12 like:
Marge: I can't believe it! We won another contest! Homer: The Simpsons are going to Delaware! Lisa: I want to see Wilmington! Bart: I want to visit a screen door factory! Homer whispering to the camera 'this will be the last season'
Or in season 8 (i cut/pasted these from SNPP)
McClure:
[McClure pushes a button on the remote, and we see a still
shot of Homer turning Lisa into a frog]
[mock-spooky] Magic powers!
[McClure cycles through three pictures of Selma marrying
Apu, the Bee Guy, and Itchy]
Wedding after wedding after wedding.
[McClure pushes the button again, and we see Bart
confronting two thinly disguised variations of himself]
And did someone say, "long-lost triplets?"
[cut to a shot of the Simpsons] So join America's favorite
TV family, [an alien appears, floating above the family]
and a tiny green space alien named Ozmodiar that only Homer
can see, on Fox this fall. It'll be out of this world!
They're not even original, let alone clever and satirical. I don't know if it's just writer fatigue, something behind the scenes that changed, or what - but The Simpsons today just isn't The Simpsons of yesteryear.
The problem is actually fairly simple and you got that one right there. There was a writers change mid-way. In the beginning *hehe* the writers were _mostly_ Irish and Jewish. It included such names as Conan O'Brien (one of the more famous- his most notable episode is of course the Monorail episode) for a few seasons around #4-5. There was a certain dry satirical sense of humour.
Around season 10 or so, the show was a sure hit, and the voice actors started getting more money and perks. The writers got nothing. So the writers asked for more, considering (lets face it), they were the lifeblood of the show. The response was to go jump in a lake, and they jumped ship.
The attitude was not to get them back, but to find new writers because, (or so they thought) any grade-A idiot can write for a cartoon show. You see a huge jump around season 11 and onward and another around season 13 where they swapped in some new 'talent'. The result? Dumb episodes like going to South America, Homer being placed on 'Frame-Up' in the electric chair, etc. There were A FEW good ones in there, and yes they are bound to happen, but just a different sense of humour.
Let this be a lesson- writers are important. People do notice when you change them.
they don't deal with the serious issues that the Simpsons in their prime did. Though I think Hank Azaria is great, that comment just highlights this.
Whoa! The first three seasons were all about serious issues. Bart steals a video game, Bart becomes gifted, Bart defends his sister, Homer gets caught on spy camera with a dancer, bad babysitter happends to be wanted, Bart isn't doing well in school and needs Martin's help.
These episodes, while indeed showing off where the Simpsons came from, and indeed were fun to watch, lacked a certain hilarity that the Simpsons acheived later in the game where they just got funny. They were trying to teach lessons and whatnot at the beginning and make everyone feel good in the end.
Bring along seasons 4-6 or so, where the shows are still about Bart (as the show was) with the occasional Homer and/or Lisa episode. As this range went on, and even going into seasons 7 and 8, they became more about Homer. These were some of the funniest in its prime. Who shot Mr Burns, Lisa the Vegitarian, Homer goes to College, Cat Burgler, Homer as a marriage therapist, etc. They were really exploring what Homer could add to the show rather than just being around.
Bring in seasons 7,8-11 and they're hit and miss. Many fun and exciting episodes, but you can tell that they're reaching maximums of some of the possibilities. They've realized their fans want 'out there' actions and find Homer's stupidity funny. SOmetimes they'll hit it right on and other times they'll go so far to the extreme that it's boring as anything.
Seasons 12,13 are very hit and miss. An episode here and there that's funny (Trillogy of Error anyone? Where they split Bart, Homer, and Lisa's day was hilarious). In these seasons they've realized people aren't tuning in as much. They promoted such bands as REM (season13), The Who (season12), NSync (season12) and guest stars like Pierce Brosman, Judge Judy, Reese Witherspoon. Group in 'Britney Spears' from season 11 (which was awful) and you add to that. They've realized people aren't finding it funny, so they need some media hype to get people watching. of course, their inclusion sucks.
We all remember probably one of the simpsons' 'worst episodes ever' where they went to Toronto in February 2002 for season 13 chasing Wolfcastle's daughter (Reese Witherspoon). They actually wanted the mayor of Toronto to declare 'simpsons day' and got angry at the policy to not declare special days for corporate events. We all remember the 60-90 seconds actually spent in Toronto, of which they played really poor jokes that both Canadian's and Americans alike didn't find funny. I should have gone out that night.
Bring in Season 14+ where I've seen one or two watchable episodes, and the remainder I will sit and stare forward blankly when I do catch it.
I no longer rush home to watch it. I no longer plan my weekend around looking forward to it. I no longer Tivo every episode. I just don't care. I watch older ones on Comedy from time to time, but the new ones I rarely even catch. They've essentially lost touch with their viewer base or are well past the prime of the show. The episodes become extreme and unbelievable and are purposely going for a laugh, rather than 'seemingly' accidentally stumbling on it.
The first thing I thought of when you said that was the headline: Outraged parents demand parental controls. Think about this for a second? You are taking a gaming machine that you can trust your kids to drive around and jump on evil snails to kill them and opening up the potential for anything- porn, news, viruses, scripting, java, etc. Why would you do that as Nintendo? It's a parental control nightmare and a security nightmare.
The second argument is why would you go outside its intended purpose? It's a gaming handheld machine with a few buttons and a touch-screen. You'd have be bring in typing (keyboard) for URLs, viewing of various image formats, scripting, and other joyous necessities (ever tried turning off javascript and surfing... you won't get far). If someone wants the web, they have a cell phone and a computer.
If I recall correctly, isn't chat built in though?
A patch posted a couple weeks ago stopped IE from loading gif images from select sites. They show up as invalid (X) images. Strange isn't it? A 'security' patch should never break functionality.
-M
Who cares? - You should never know its there.
on
The Boot Loader Showdown
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm really not trying to be a troll here, but a boot loader is such a small part of the OS. Nothing is saying you can't use LILO, GRUB, or any of the other smaller boot loaders out there (or bigger ones from former companies such as PowerQuest that also supported Linux). Each has their plusses and their minuses and they're all nicely documented in countless comparisons. Each distro has its own preference, but often gives you the option.
So the answer is to use what you're comfortable with. It's not like we're comparing Zeus/Apache, Linux/Windows, Vim/Joe- this is a boot loader. It runs for fractions of a second and then you never see it again. If it does its job, you should never even know that its there.
You adjusted the clocks in your house for the second? Wow- I'd be surprised if they didn't drift by that in a week anyway, as I'm sure the clock on your oven/microwave/vcr isn't as accurate as you might imagine... not to mention the lack of accuracy of you setting it from a wrist-watch/phone/etc.
That of course is not a problem with Microsoft or yourself, but a problem with regioning content... A useless tactic. If I can get DVDs cheaper in Asian markets, why shouldn't I? -M
Yes actually, We almost daily, do a large application demo with a series of laptops showing a real network environment. Often this is done with VMWare and one laptop as well, showing various user-level views. We indeed do it on todays modern laptops but started once on a P133 and P233 laptop.
What cable/DSL providers give you a service level agreement (SLA) where they guarentee and back financially their uptime/availability, let alone the speed of your connection. They all provide no remedy for downtime, no guarentees of bandwidth as it depends on your area and usage. Why would they guarentee latency that has so many additional factors including line quality, distance, and the routing equipment used.
You won't find an SLA on anything less than a ISDN/T1+ connection. Maybe some sort of corporate broadband does, but in my experience even $75-$150/mo 'business' broadband has no guarentees either.
Tell me this:
If you were to pull into a parking lot of a mall and swap plates with a car of the same make/model (shouldn't be hard to find), how many days/weeks would it take your average person to notice that their plates have changed? Okay, so then someone has your plates, but create a chain of swapping plates on 5 cars and they'll never quite find it in time... giving you a few days to do your damage. Find someone on vacation, go into an underground garage of an apartment and find a covered car or car where someone looks like they've been in Florida all winter.
Just go into work and type =rand(25,25) on a blank line and press enter. My error rate is next to nill, but my content is just a lot of gibberish about foxes.
At her house:
- one in the kitchen
- one in an office/study At work:
- one at work
That's three. Add a child into that household and you're up to four. Give her a second job and we're up to 5. Add a linux router their neighbour may ahve set up and you're up to 6.
It really doesn't specify who's computers or where they were located. It's very reasonable to have many computers these days. Often a laptop for working abroad is not uncommon.
An idiot who knows only how to use outlook can still use it on 4PCs just the same.
It ___CLEARLY___ states that it has been released for Linux/BSD at this time. I'd imagine Solaris, AIX, Windows, and other platforms will follow, but for the time being, they set a release date for Linux/BSD- a large market. Give it time. Let them test Linux/BSD releases and then go from there. -M
Yeah- just call it FUD- fear uncertainty and doubt. "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM"- or in this case, sticking with the same model they've always had.
This is the Internet Excuse. Before the Internet and broadband, patches were most costly to release. You had to ship CDs or floppies to all of your customers. Plus there were no automatic updates. In turn you could say the Internet brings many of these security issues, but before that there were modems and physical security issues.
This is exactly the problem with today's programmers. It doesn't matter what you throw at it really, the system should be able to take it. It's about saving a few dollars and making a release schedule versus producing a quality product. It passes the buck to the sysadmins and people who have to support the issues and who have to clean the worms out of your system. They aren't getting away with this for free, but rather letting someone else see the effects. I'd rather have Windows 2000 show up in 2005, but be stable, bug free, and security-issue free.
It is of course impossible to get everything, but M$ (and many developers actually) leave holes in the places they shouldn't. Race conditions often can't be seen until they happen- fine. 'Local exploits' are also reasonable, as they tend to be areas where those inside are trusted. Microsoft is building a browser for G-d sakes! It accepts input from random untrusted parties (and they know this judging by their 'Internet Zone') and should not have the ability to be exploited to execute code, overcome security, and so on. Only recently have IE versions received the joy of simple bounds checking on links and input.
These are areas where M$ _SHOULD_ pay attention. The security holes in NetBIOS are another great example back a few years ago. This should have been so well thought out that nothing could slip through it and won't do anything other than what it's supposed to.
I know bug-free code is impossible, but Microsoft is supposed to have the best teams out there (we sure as hell pay for them to have the best teams out there) who should be able to get some of the basics right.
A few days ago I wrote a post ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169325&cid=141 14454 ) to someone thinking that PHP should magically protect him from himself when sending mail. Same idea- if you're getting untrusted information, you damn-well better make sure it's what you expect it to be.
Since when is office _suite_ $200? (USD I imagine was implied):
I show: office 2003 standard (word, excel, outlook, powerpoint): $461.99CDN ($289.99CDN Upgrade) Small Business (+Outlook business manager, +publisher): $523.99CDN ($325.99CDN Upgrade) Professional (standard +publisher +access): $583.99CDN ($379.99CDN Upgrade).
Heavily OEM'd maybe?
At current exchange rates the cheapest is $384 USD.
1. It's better to release a last-minute patch, so when it breaks something, you can claim it was an urgent fix rather than a poor design choice from the start (aka: skip costly regression testing)
2. Perception of fear: how can they get you to upgrade to Longhorn if there are no security issues with Windows XP? How can their spyware and other partners suceed if they close all of the holes? How can all those consultants fill their days if they're not applying patches to every workstation? They're doing you a favour and letting you keep your job. *smirk*
3. Nobody wants to download several megabytes when they can download a single patched DLL. Bandwidth is still expensive!
[/sarcasm]
The even bigger question is, why with the power, size, and focus on security (as well as play with hardware vendors) they have, why didn't they get it right the first time? Most importantly, why wasn't the utmost care taken on anything that takes foreign input (browser parsers, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
I'll just point everyone to DJB:
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
He pretty much covers most of it. IPv6 is dead on the public Internet long before it started. I knew this as soon as I called up MCI/WorldCom last year to ask if they had any IPv6 address space to add to our few class-C's and they laughed at me. If the folks who run half the Internet aren't ready for it, why would we be?
-M
AOL has implemented a lot of such software in their client software and do more and more scanning inline on opening connections and traffic patterns. I'd guess that helps them out a wee bit.
AOLs goal has always been to provide a good experience to novice users... they do serve that target market fairly well in terms of providing information and services to those customers.
PS: Not trying to start a AOL bad-experience thread here. The first paragraph is the important one. The second is just what their objective is stated and seems to be... and they do a reasonable job moving to their target market... hence why they've had a lot of success with novices.
-M
It really fits all age groups. It's nice satirical humour that has something for everyone. It offers TONS of political and pop-culture episodes. The references to the 60's aren't making fun of them, but there so that the 40-somethings get a laugh as well. The political references are all there. The pop-culture references (think as obvious as ringo-starr and as simple as Wolfcastle's character being 'Arnold').
There is something for everyone. It had lasting appeal. I _still_ find the old episodes great to watch, and so do younger kids. I'm partially fearing what they'll do with the 'full length feature film' that they're promising a year or two after the show ends, because since they know everyone will see it anyway, I see them doing a half-@$$ed job.
A great line that you can tell to ANY age group and find funny... This being from a later episode, but nonetheless, this is what they've lost:
"What kind of milage does it get?"
"One highway, zero city"
-OR- of course the whole 'canyonaro' episode
Great one-liners! You have people who quote the Simpsons constantly, but do you ever have people quoting modern episodes. Lines like 'take out your safety pencils and a circle of paper', 'marge, do you have any elbow macarroni and glue on sparkles' and so on can be used in day to day life. Maybe not in the same context, but I bet you could find a place to use lines like this within the next week if you had them on the mind. Same thing with the 'one highway, zero city' when talking about some big SUV.
Now try doing that with the new stuff they have.
PS: Anyone get the feeling they were winding down mid-way anyway?
Lines in season 12 like:
Or in season 8 (i cut/pasted these from SNPP)
The problem is actually fairly simple and you got that one right there. There was a writers change mid-way. In the beginning *hehe* the writers were _mostly_ Irish and Jewish. It included such names as Conan O'Brien (one of the more famous- his most notable episode is of course the Monorail episode) for a few seasons around #4-5. There was a certain dry satirical sense of humour.
Around season 10 or so, the show was a sure hit, and the voice actors started getting more money and perks. The writers got nothing. So the writers asked for more, considering (lets face it), they were the lifeblood of the show. The response was to go jump in a lake, and they jumped ship.
The attitude was not to get them back, but to find new writers because, (or so they thought) any grade-A idiot can write for a cartoon show. You see a huge jump around season 11 and onward and another around season 13 where they swapped in some new 'talent'. The result? Dumb episodes like going to South America, Homer being placed on 'Frame-Up' in the electric chair, etc. There were A FEW good ones in there, and yes they are bound to happen, but just a different sense of humour.
Let this be a lesson- writers are important. People do notice when you change them.
-M
Whoa! The first three seasons were all about serious issues. Bart steals a video game, Bart becomes gifted, Bart defends his sister, Homer gets caught on spy camera with a dancer, bad babysitter happends to be wanted, Bart isn't doing well in school and needs Martin's help.
These episodes, while indeed showing off where the Simpsons came from, and indeed were fun to watch, lacked a certain hilarity that the Simpsons acheived later in the game where they just got funny. They were trying to teach lessons and whatnot at the beginning and make everyone feel good in the end.
Bring along seasons 4-6 or so, where the shows are still about Bart (as the show was) with the occasional Homer and/or Lisa episode. As this range went on, and even going into seasons 7 and 8, they became more about Homer. These were some of the funniest in its prime. Who shot Mr Burns, Lisa the Vegitarian, Homer goes to College, Cat Burgler, Homer as a marriage therapist, etc. They were really exploring what Homer could add to the show rather than just being around.
Bring in seasons 7,8-11 and they're hit and miss. Many fun and exciting episodes, but you can tell that they're reaching maximums of some of the possibilities. They've realized their fans want 'out there' actions and find Homer's stupidity funny. SOmetimes they'll hit it right on and other times they'll go so far to the extreme that it's boring as anything.
Seasons 12,13 are very hit and miss. An episode here and there that's funny (Trillogy of Error anyone? Where they split Bart, Homer, and Lisa's day was hilarious). In these seasons they've realized people aren't tuning in as much. They promoted such bands as REM (season13), The Who (season12), NSync (season12) and guest stars like Pierce Brosman, Judge Judy, Reese Witherspoon. Group in 'Britney Spears' from season 11 (which was awful) and you add to that. They've realized people aren't finding it funny, so they need some media hype to get people watching. of course, their inclusion sucks.
We all remember probably one of the simpsons' 'worst episodes ever' where they went to Toronto in February 2002 for season 13 chasing Wolfcastle's daughter (Reese Witherspoon). They actually wanted the mayor of Toronto to declare 'simpsons day' and got angry at the policy to not declare special days for corporate events. We all remember the 60-90 seconds actually spent in Toronto, of which they played really poor jokes that both Canadian's and Americans alike didn't find funny. I should have gone out that night.
Bring in Season 14+ where I've seen one or two watchable episodes, and the remainder I will sit and stare forward blankly when I do catch it.
I no longer rush home to watch it. I no longer plan my weekend around looking forward to it. I no longer Tivo every episode. I just don't care. I watch older ones on Comedy from time to time, but the new ones I rarely even catch. They've essentially lost touch with their viewer base or are well past the prime of the show. The episodes become extreme and unbelievable and are purposely going for a laugh, rather than 'seemingly' accidentally stumbling on it.
-M
Can we combine this with lightscribe and make spinning designs (swirls anybody?) on the platters?
-M
The first thing I thought of when you said that was the headline: Outraged parents demand parental controls. Think about this for a second? You are taking a gaming machine that you can trust your kids to drive around and jump on evil snails to kill them and opening up the potential for anything- porn, news, viruses, scripting, java, etc. Why would you do that as Nintendo? It's a parental control nightmare and a security nightmare.
The second argument is why would you go outside its intended purpose? It's a gaming handheld machine with a few buttons and a touch-screen. You'd have be bring in typing (keyboard) for URLs, viewing of various image formats, scripting, and other joyous necessities (ever tried turning off javascript and surfing... you won't get far). If someone wants the web, they have a cell phone and a computer.
If I recall correctly, isn't chat built in though?
-M
A patch posted a couple weeks ago stopped IE from loading gif images from select sites. They show up as invalid (X) images. Strange isn't it? A 'security' patch should never break functionality.
-M
I'm really not trying to be a troll here, but a boot loader is such a small part of the OS. Nothing is saying you can't use LILO, GRUB, or any of the other smaller boot loaders out there (or bigger ones from former companies such as PowerQuest that also supported Linux). Each has their plusses and their minuses and they're all nicely documented in countless comparisons. Each distro has its own preference, but often gives you the option.
So the answer is to use what you're comfortable with. It's not like we're comparing Zeus/Apache, Linux/Windows, Vim/Joe- this is a boot loader. It runs for fractions of a second and then you never see it again. If it does its job, you should never even know that its there.
-M
You adjusted the clocks in your house for the second? Wow- I'd be surprised if they didn't drift by that in a week anyway, as I'm sure the clock on your oven/microwave/vcr isn't as accurate as you might imagine... not to mention the lack of accuracy of you setting it from a wrist-watch/phone/etc.
-M
That of course is not a problem with Microsoft or yourself, but a problem with regioning content... A useless tactic. If I can get DVDs cheaper in Asian markets, why shouldn't I?
-M
Yes actually, We almost daily, do a large application demo with a series of laptops showing a real network environment. Often this is done with VMWare and one laptop as well, showing various user-level views. We indeed do it on todays modern laptops but started once on a P133 and P233 laptop.
-M
Quit whining and go have some coffee? tea? Sega?!?
-M
SLA?!? What are you smoking for $40 broadband?
What cable/DSL providers give you a service level agreement (SLA) where they guarentee and back financially their uptime/availability, let alone the speed of your connection. They all provide no remedy for downtime, no guarentees of bandwidth as it depends on your area and usage. Why would they guarentee latency that has so many additional factors including line quality, distance, and the routing equipment used.
You won't find an SLA on anything less than a ISDN/T1+ connection. Maybe some sort of corporate broadband does, but in my experience even $75-$150/mo 'business' broadband has no guarentees either.
-M
Tell me this:
If you were to pull into a parking lot of a mall and swap plates with a car of the same make/model (shouldn't be hard to find), how many days/weeks would it take your average person to notice that their plates have changed? Okay, so then someone has your plates, but create a chain of swapping plates on 5 cars and they'll never quite find it in time... giving you a few days to do your damage. Find someone on vacation, go into an underground garage of an apartment and find a covered car or car where someone looks like they've been in Florida all winter.
-M
work = Microsoft Word.
Wow- And on a post about error rates too...
Just go into work and type =rand(25,25) on a blank line and press enter. My error rate is next to nill, but my content is just a lot of gibberish about foxes.
-M
Take my Mother for example.
At her house:
- one in the kitchen
- one in an office/study
At work:
- one at work
That's three. Add a child into that household and you're up to four. Give her a second job and we're up to 5. Add a linux router their neighbour may ahve set up and you're up to 6.
It really doesn't specify who's computers or where they were located. It's very reasonable to have many computers these days. Often a laptop for working abroad is not uncommon.
An idiot who knows only how to use outlook can still use it on 4PCs just the same.
-M
The following platforms will be supported in early 2006 :
* Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4
* Microsoft Windows 2000/XP Pro/2003
* Solaris 9 and 10
It ___CLEARLY___ states that it has been released for Linux/BSD at this time. I'd imagine Solaris, AIX, Windows, and other platforms will follow, but for the time being, they set a release date for Linux/BSD- a large market. Give it time. Let them test Linux/BSD releases and then go from there.
-M
Yeah- just call it FUD- fear uncertainty and doubt. "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM"- or in this case, sticking with the same model they've always had.
-M
This is the Internet Excuse. Before the Internet and broadband, patches were most costly to release. You had to ship CDs or floppies to all of your customers. Plus there were no automatic updates. In turn you could say the Internet brings many of these security issues, but before that there were modems and physical security issues.
1 14454 ) to someone thinking that PHP should magically protect him from himself when sending mail. Same idea- if you're getting untrusted information, you damn-well better make sure it's what you expect it to be.
This is exactly the problem with today's programmers. It doesn't matter what you throw at it really, the system should be able to take it. It's about saving a few dollars and making a release schedule versus producing a quality product. It passes the buck to the sysadmins and people who have to support the issues and who have to clean the worms out of your system. They aren't getting away with this for free, but rather letting someone else see the effects. I'd rather have Windows 2000 show up in 2005, but be stable, bug free, and security-issue free.
It is of course impossible to get everything, but M$ (and many developers actually) leave holes in the places they shouldn't. Race conditions often can't be seen until they happen- fine. 'Local exploits' are also reasonable, as they tend to be areas where those inside are trusted. Microsoft is building a browser for G-d sakes! It accepts input from random untrusted parties (and they know this judging by their 'Internet Zone') and should not have the ability to be exploited to execute code, overcome security, and so on. Only recently have IE versions received the joy of simple bounds checking on links and input.
These are areas where M$ _SHOULD_ pay attention. The security holes in NetBIOS are another great example back a few years ago. This should have been so well thought out that nothing could slip through it and won't do anything other than what it's supposed to.
I know bug-free code is impossible, but Microsoft is supposed to have the best teams out there (we sure as hell pay for them to have the best teams out there) who should be able to get some of the basics right.
A few days ago I wrote a post ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169325&cid=14
-M
Since when is office _suite_ $200? (USD I imagine was implied):
I show:
office 2003 standard (word, excel, outlook, powerpoint): $461.99CDN ($289.99CDN Upgrade)
Small Business (+Outlook business manager, +publisher): $523.99CDN ($325.99CDN Upgrade)
Professional (standard +publisher +access): $583.99CDN ($379.99CDN Upgrade).
Heavily OEM'd maybe?
At current exchange rates the cheapest is $384 USD.
-M
1. It's better to release a last-minute patch, so when it breaks something, you can claim it was an urgent fix rather than a poor design choice from the start (aka: skip costly regression testing)
2. Perception of fear: how can they get you to upgrade to Longhorn if there are no security issues with Windows XP? How can their spyware and other partners suceed if they close all of the holes? How can all those consultants fill their days if they're not applying patches to every workstation? They're doing you a favour and letting you keep your job. *smirk*
3. Nobody wants to download several megabytes when they can download a single patched DLL. Bandwidth is still expensive!
[/sarcasm]
The even bigger question is, why with the power, size, and focus on security (as well as play with hardware vendors) they have, why didn't they get it right the first time? Most importantly, why wasn't the utmost care taken on anything that takes foreign input (browser parsers, etc).
-M
Need I say more: Dial P for pr0n?
I realize that's not what the article means, but hey!