Microsoft has 'educated' an entire generation of users that you have to run with full root privileges to get anything useful done at all. This is completely independent from how they respond to security issues raised by third parties. The damage is so pervasive that it can't be undone. MS stands as the village idiot of software companies for such a stupid design paradigm, and the single biggest problem on the Internet, as well as the single biggest problem in the IT industry for so completely dumbing down so many people. I wouldn't look to vista to cure the ill either. The more MS talks about security, the more evident it is that they can't pull their head out of their ass, and they'll keep dumbing down their 'customers'.
Once people start thinking of making the Internet ready for VOIP 911 calls and other emergency traffic, without 'net neutrality' safeguards in place, the government will have to take on the task of architecting and enforcing standards to make sure that emergency traffic is tagged and treated right. If the telcos are uncomfortable with net neutrality legislation, I wonder how they feel about having the government telling them exactly how to do QOS/diffserv. The sheer size of such a regulatory task would easily dwarf any kind of net neutrality bill. They're actually asking to be regulated even more than under net neutrality.
Worse still, in the end, if the telcos end up selling prioritization to content providers, those content providers, once they measure what they get, will find it poor and inconsistent anyway. QOS/diffserv pretty much needs end-to-end compliance to really make a consistent difference, especially at the ends (local ISP) where traffic loads are more variable and fanned out. Backbone setups won't matter nearly as much as last mile setups because the loads are static.
Caller: "Help! Help! Someone's using my wireless access point without my permission!" Operator: "Are you in danger?" Caller: "No, but I think they might be downloading music...!" Operater: "We'll get a swat team there right away."
From the quoted article:"To be fair, the commitment of Bill Gates (at least) to education is sincere"
Apparently, that is, up until now. Maybe this is the one of the reasons he's leaving as CIO (well that and to get out of the way of Vista, since there's no Dave Culter to tell him to stop pestering the project this time). Maybe he just doesn't want to be seen as a corporate dirtbag any longer, or at least, further legitimatize real philanthropic pursuits. Then, maybe not.
"That whole "fix on a schedule" idea seems like a great idea until it is put into practice"
It never seemed like a good idea from the start to anyone who's setup and used any linux distro. Release fixes when problem is fixed, not a month later.
This problem is nothing to do with MS's pervasiveness, and everything to do with plain old-fashioned incompetence.
Can you point to a reference for that assertion? I ask because I've seen the phrase 'act of god' used in legal briefs and insurance policies when refering to things like lightning and natural other catastrophes.
Aren't things like hurricanes, lightning, and tornados all called 'acts of god', at least by courts and insurance companies?
Should we not study electricity? My god, what have we done? Maybe we should have asked the great spider queen for permission before all this studying of gods natural phenomenon...
Large media conglomerates going for the throats of providers.
Why? Because a large media provider will pay extra so their video and other content will get faster downloads. Like for example Disney paying TimeWarner. Then, however, to Disney's surprise, the speed of their media on the Internet only improves a little - very little.
Why? Because in order for the so-called 'toll lanes' or 'fast lanes' to actually make any real difference, each and every piece of equipment in between the provider and the consumer will have to have a compatible configuration - each and every switch, firewall, and router. Ultimately the end ISP has the most ability to impact how much prioritization will improve performance. So, Disney shells out millions to TW, only to find out they got snake oil. Large contracts like that don't get negotiated without SLAs, all of which have rebate clauses. Which will inevitably get enforced. In court.
Each time a packet crosses to another providers network, the treatment of prioritization setting in the packet will change, if respected at all. Who could possibly believe that AT&T will treat Verizon's IP priority settings exactly the same as their own. So, the likelyhood that telcos will be at eachother's throats is a possibility as well. Run a traceroute and see how many providers the takes to get to google, apple, or Disney. Then think about how well those providers will be at deploying effective prioritization amongst themselves. Not very well will be the answer.
Its kind of like locking a bunch of cannibals together in a room with no food. All the better.
The undead should start demanding representation. After all, this kind of thing gets them landed in court. Now it will be easier, and more of them will be wrongly persecuted.
The more they mix computer science with other areas, the more watered down computer science seems to get. What they should be doing is making computer science more like a science. Teaching computer skills is fine, but this sounds like trying to make people outside of the computer science field think they know as much as people inside the computer science field.
From TFA: "One reason, perhaps, is because if toll roads are to be allowed on the internet, then someone has to build them, and that means jobs for the hardware boys."
Possibly the biggest problem with the 'net neutrality' debate is a mass lack of understanding of how prioritized services would be implemented. It has little to do with hardware. One can forgive mere journalists for such a network faux paus.
The thing about prioritized traffic is that the last mile makes the biggest difference. So, if come big media company pays its ISP to prioritize its video traffic, it won't amount to very much unless each and every last-mile provider on the Internet everywhere configures their equipment to treat that traffic with the same priority.
In fact, even on the backbone, its the same story. As soon as a packet crosses onto another provider's network, it may no longer be routed with any priority at all.
The only thing that can be know for sure about the effect of prioritizing IP traffic is that other traffic will slow down. Like VOIP 911 calls, for example.
The most, and possibly only, practical way to improve the performance would be for the telcos to make good on promises made 10 years ago to run high capacity to every home. Promises used to get lots of money from the government, which they never delivered on.
Perhaps the best thing would be to support "fail fast" for telcos. Never bail them out - the sooner a telco goes under, the better. Artificially keeping them in business supports investment in outmoded technology and outdated business models and managment structures. The 'dumber' a network is, the better it works. By allowing telcos to go under, investment in newer, faster technology is naturally encouraged.
From the article: "On a technical level, creating this so-called Internet fast lane is easy. In the current system, network devices called differentiated service routers prioritize data, assigning more bandwidth to, for example, an Internet telephone call or streaming video than to an e-mail message."
Easy did they say? What planet are they on? Every time a packet crosses a carrier, the priority may or may not be paid equal attention to. I wouldn't think for even a second that AT&T will treat Verizon's prioritized packets with as high a priority as their own customer's prioritized packets.
Even more misunderstood is that the last mile makes much more of a difference than the backbones. If your local ISP doesn't care about the differenciated services settings, all the money Google, Yahoo, and Disney shell out for better streaming video performance won't add up to much. The Disneys of the scene will eventually figure out that they paid for the privilege of slowing everybody down, not speeding themselves up. That should be an interesting fight.
"But if it *is* built like this, it is absolutely impossible that any radiation of any kind managed to get through that roof to the people below. Unless you want to prove Faraday wrong. I know I don't."
The RF in that case goes through the walls, not the roof.
You'd be shielded only if you huddled close enough to the roof, and didn't catch any reflections from below.
Actually, the president has repeatly claimed that laws don't apply to him if he doesn't want them to. And, he also claims unitary executive authority, which means that he posseses authority to control all parts and people of the executive branch directly (micromanage, if you will). Of course, now that parts of the executive branch ('scooter' libby) have been caught leaking info to the press (IDs of active undercover agents are never 'declassified'), one would think that unitary executive would place responsibility squarely on the president's shoulders.
No matter who justified Bush Administration leaks in what way, no undercover operative can be safe ever again, given the capricious way in which the Bush administration claims immunity from the laws and legislation, especially with such an obviously politically motivated classified leak. So in the end, if you're a CIA undercover operative, this would be a really good time to resign. Especially if you find data that doesn't fit the Bush admin world views and policies.
Is it illegal then? Even if its just to get back at political rivals? Even if the white house says "go ahead and leak to the press"? That's not illegal, but non-white house leaks are? Can you spell "corruption"?
"Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?"
While the government doesn't really say what exactly to charge for gas, they do insist that prices are at least fair , just as net access should be. Besides, didn't the federal government give huge amounts to cable companies when they pledged to "build fiber optic to the home" back in the nineties? Or was that the telcos? I didn't get a reference to that, but I remember reading about it.
Is it just me, or does the title 'CEO' these days somehow imply criminal in addition to stupid?
Microsoft must have many people covering slashdot who have somehow gotton moderator points, for this the parent's comment to get modded 'troll' and 'offtopic'. I just ran into an obvious microsoft shill over on bugtraq. I suppose if I had as much cash as they did, I'd do the same thing. I wonder what the job title is?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft has 'educated' an entire generation of users that you have to run with full root privileges to get anything useful done at all. This is completely independent from how they respond to security issues raised by third parties. The damage is so pervasive that it can't be undone. MS stands as the village idiot of software companies for such a stupid design paradigm, and the single biggest problem on the Internet, as well as the single biggest problem in the IT industry for so completely dumbing down so many people. I wouldn't look to vista to cure the ill either. The more MS talks about security, the more evident it is that they can't pull their head out of their ass, and they'll keep dumbing down their 'customers'.
Once people start thinking of making the Internet ready for VOIP 911 calls and other emergency traffic, without 'net neutrality' safeguards in place, the government will have to take on the task of architecting and enforcing standards to make sure that emergency traffic is tagged and treated right. If the telcos are uncomfortable with net neutrality legislation, I wonder how they feel about having the government telling them exactly how to do QOS/diffserv. The sheer size of such a regulatory task would easily dwarf any kind of net neutrality bill. They're actually asking to be regulated even more than under net neutrality.
Some groups are already raising the issue of whether or not the Internet should be capable of providing prioritization for emergencies
Worse still, in the end, if the telcos end up selling prioritization to content providers, those content providers, once they measure what they get, will find it poor and inconsistent anyway. QOS/diffserv pretty much needs end-to-end compliance to really make a consistent difference, especially at the ends (local ISP) where traffic loads are more variable and fanned out. Backbone setups won't matter nearly as much as last mile setups because the loads are static.
"I'll be back..."
Its more like:
Professional Standards Microsoft Standards
I'd like to hear the transcript of that call.
Caller: "Help! Help! Someone's using my wireless access point without my permission!"
Operator: "Are you in danger?"
Caller: "No, but I think they might be downloading music...!"
Operater: "We'll get a swat team there right away."
From the quoted article:"To be fair, the commitment of Bill Gates (at least) to education is sincere"
Apparently, that is, up until now. Maybe this is the one of the reasons he's leaving as CIO (well that and to get out of the way of Vista, since there's no Dave Culter to tell him to stop pestering the project this time). Maybe he just doesn't want to be seen as a corporate dirtbag any longer, or at least, further legitimatize real philanthropic pursuits. Then, maybe not.
T1000?
"That whole "fix on a schedule" idea seems like a great idea until it is put into practice"
It never seemed like a good idea from the start to anyone who's setup and used any linux distro. Release fixes when problem is fixed, not a month later.
This problem is nothing to do with MS's pervasiveness, and everything to do with plain old-fashioned incompetence.
Can you point to a reference for that assertion? I ask because I've seen the phrase 'act of god' used in legal briefs and insurance policies when refering to things like lightning and natural other catastrophes.
Aren't things like hurricanes, lightning, and tornados all called 'acts of god', at least by courts and insurance companies?
Should we not study electricity? My god, what have we done? Maybe we should have asked the great spider queen for permission before all this studying of gods natural phenomenon...
McCarthyism
Large media conglomerates going for the throats of providers.
Why? Because a large media provider will pay extra so their video and other content will get faster downloads. Like for example Disney paying TimeWarner. Then, however, to Disney's surprise, the speed of their media on the Internet only improves a little - very little.
Why? Because in order for the so-called 'toll lanes' or 'fast lanes' to actually make any real difference, each and every piece of equipment in between the provider and the consumer will have to have a compatible configuration - each and every switch, firewall, and router. Ultimately the end ISP has the most ability to impact how much prioritization will improve performance. So, Disney shells out millions to TW, only to find out they got snake oil. Large contracts like that don't get negotiated without SLAs, all of which have rebate clauses. Which will inevitably get enforced. In court.
Each time a packet crosses to another providers network, the treatment of prioritization setting in the packet will change, if respected at all. Who could possibly believe that AT&T will treat Verizon's IP priority settings exactly the same as their own. So, the likelyhood that telcos will be at eachother's throats is a possibility as well. Run a traceroute and see how many providers the takes to get to google, apple, or Disney. Then think about how well those providers will be at deploying effective prioritization amongst themselves. Not very well will be the answer.
Its kind of like locking a bunch of cannibals together in a room with no food. All the better.
The undead should start demanding representation. After all, this kind of thing gets them landed in court. Now it will be easier, and more of them will be wrongly persecuted.
Would you be the geek satan?
The more they mix computer science with other areas, the more watered down computer science seems to get. What they should be doing is making computer science more like a science. Teaching computer skills is fine, but this sounds like trying to make people outside of the computer science field think they know as much as people inside the computer science field.
Oooo Sorry. President George Bush the Second.
Any bets on what percentage of total entries will contain characterizations of George Bush Jr.?
From TFA: "One reason, perhaps, is because if toll roads are to be allowed on the internet, then someone has to build them, and that means jobs for the hardware boys."
Possibly the biggest problem with the 'net neutrality' debate is a mass lack of understanding of how prioritized services would be implemented. It has little to do with hardware. One can forgive mere journalists for such a network faux paus.
The thing about prioritized traffic is that the last mile makes the biggest difference. So, if come big media company pays its ISP to prioritize its video traffic, it won't amount to very much unless each and every last-mile provider on the Internet everywhere configures their equipment to treat that traffic with the same priority.
In fact, even on the backbone, its the same story. As soon as a packet crosses onto another provider's network, it may no longer be routed with any priority at all.
The only thing that can be know for sure about the effect of prioritizing IP traffic is that other traffic will slow down. Like VOIP 911 calls, for example.
The most, and possibly only, practical way to improve the performance would be for the telcos to make good on promises made 10 years ago to run high capacity to every home. Promises used to get lots of money from the government, which they never delivered on.
Perhaps the best thing would be to support "fail fast" for telcos. Never bail them out - the sooner a telco goes under, the better. Artificially keeping them in business supports investment in outmoded technology and outdated business models and managment structures. The 'dumber' a network is, the better it works. By allowing telcos to go under, investment in newer, faster technology is naturally encouraged.
From the article: "On a technical level, creating this so-called Internet fast lane is easy. In the current system, network devices called differentiated service routers prioritize data, assigning more bandwidth to, for example, an Internet telephone call or streaming video than to an e-mail message."
Easy did they say? What planet are they on? Every time a packet crosses a carrier, the priority may or may not be paid equal attention to. I wouldn't think for even a second that AT&T will treat Verizon's prioritized packets with as high a priority as their own customer's prioritized packets.
Even more misunderstood is that the last mile makes much more of a difference than the backbones. If your local ISP doesn't care about the differenciated services settings, all the money Google, Yahoo, and Disney shell out for better streaming video performance won't add up to much. The Disneys of the scene will eventually figure out that they paid for the privilege of slowing everybody down, not speeding themselves up. That should be an interesting fight.
Easy...
"But if it *is* built like this, it is absolutely impossible that any radiation of any kind managed to get through that roof to the people below. Unless you want to prove Faraday wrong. I know I don't."
The RF in that case goes through the walls, not the roof.
You'd be shielded only if you huddled close enough to the roof, and didn't catch any reflections from below.
Actually, the president has repeatly claimed that laws don't apply to him if he doesn't want them to. And, he also claims unitary executive authority, which means that he posseses authority to control all parts and people of the executive branch directly (micromanage, if you will). Of course, now that parts of the executive branch ('scooter' libby) have been caught leaking info to the press (IDs of active undercover agents are never 'declassified'), one would think that unitary executive would place responsibility squarely on the president's shoulders.
No matter who justified Bush Administration leaks in what way, no undercover operative can be safe ever again, given the capricious way in which the Bush administration claims immunity from the laws and legislation, especially with such an obviously politically motivated classified leak. So in the end, if you're a CIA undercover operative, this would be a really good time to resign. Especially if you find data that doesn't fit the Bush admin world views and policies.
Really good time to resign.
Is it illegal then? Even if its just to get back at political rivals? Even if the white house says "go ahead and leak to the press"? That's not illegal, but non-white house leaks are? Can you spell "corruption"?
I knew you could...
"Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?"
While the government doesn't really say what exactly to charge for gas, they do insist that prices are at least fair , just as net access should be. Besides, didn't the federal government give huge amounts to cable companies when they pledged to "build fiber optic to the home" back in the nineties? Or was that the telcos? I didn't get a reference to that, but I remember reading about it.
Is it just me, or does the title 'CEO' these days somehow imply criminal in addition to stupid?
Never moderate while drunk...
Microsoft must have many people covering slashdot who have somehow gotton moderator points, for this the parent's comment to get modded 'troll' and 'offtopic'. I just ran into an obvious microsoft shill over on bugtraq. I suppose if I had as much cash as they did, I'd do the same thing. I wonder what the job title is?
I guess the parent must have struck a nerve...