My information says that project 42 was disbanded in May 1999, which is when Allard left. But you are correct in that Project 42 is a predecessor to.NET, which was promoted at Forum 2000.
Back in the day, Allard was one of the first guys to champion Microsoft's adoption of TCP/IP. Later, he got pulled into "Project 42", a disastrous attempt to come up with some Windows monstrosity that was supposed to counter thin-client platforms (like Java) but never got off the ground despite its team of fifteen hundred. After that he took a leave of absence, and only agreed to come back if he got to lead the development efforts for the Xbox and do it free of bureaucracy. They call Allard and some of the other guys like him "Baby Bills".
When you're in a consulting firm you have to serve two masters. Sometimes it can really suck, especially if you're the type of person who is client focused. My advice is to become either an employee of their IT department, or better yet, an independent consultant and work directly for the clients you want to work with. Don't let any manager get in your way, you talk to and work directly with the end business client. The client, if high enough in the organization (VP, etc) will protect you even if a dumb manager does try to get in between you and the client. By the way, keep that client's phone number, and the next time you need a job, or want to start contracting on your own, give them a call. The IT industry needs more people like you; you obviously build trust. I think you can see everyone else's "duck and cover" attitude, and extrapolate as to why the industry is in trouble.
It's crystal clear that 95% of the people here have not only not been to Africa, but did not even Read The Freakin' Article. Anyway, I have been to Mauritius (island off the coast of Africa) and no, people weren't batting flies off their heads. Developing countries do have a lot of poor people involved in low-wage agriculture struggling to get by, but they also have the beginnings of a professional class, the people who work in offices and run the governments, banks, etc. They all have computers, if not in their desks then in their offices, and those computers run software. But what, as Microsoft says, they do not have is enough people to maintain those computers, hence the lack of expertise it cites. Which brings up a good point that if you gave computers running Linux to people, they would have a very hard time maintaining it, because if the Microsoft expertise isn't there, then the Linux expertise definitely won't be there, because it's rarer. Scarce expertise may push people away from diverse OSs and towards the market leader (Microsoft).
So there's some interesting stuff worth discussing if people bother to RTFA before they post "Bill Gates doesn't care about African people" or whatever all the junk was I had to wade through while I was trying to spend my last mod point.
So I have two computers on my desk - one junk one for Project, one good one for everything else? If I didn't post in this thread I could have moderated you +1 Funny.
Before "Lost", there were no sci-fi shows on major networks, and with Enterprise on the way out, people thought the genre was dead. Now, I count about six sci-fi shows on major networks, including Lost, Invasion, Threshold, Surface, Supernatural, Night Stalker, and maybe Medium and Ghost Whisperer qualify, for a total of eight, all relatively new. And then you have Sci Fi and USA holding their own with Dead Zone, Battlestar, Stargate, etc. I've never seen so much sci fi on TV, and I have to think it's due to Lost being so successful. -- My only complaint is that I liked most of these shows more the first time when they were X-Files episodes.:-) (Though I guess X-Files came from Night Stalker anyway.)
This is how lawyers "solve problems". They sue people. Another way to solve the problem of kids and uberviolent video games would be to make an online web page with a list for parents so that they can click on a game and see how violent it is, and decide whether they want to buy it for their kids. Then you publicize that web site so that parents know its out there. That's how a reasonable and intelligent person would solve the problem. But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when all you have is a law degree, everything looks like an actionable lawsuit. So he types up a brief in his underwear while he's watching an episode of "Boston Legal", and he thinks he's making a difference.
Microsoft Project is the most widely used project management software that corporations use, and it's only available for one platform: Microsoft Windows. Not OSX, Not Linux, Not BSD, Not Sun, Not Palm, Not Amiga, etc. This means that anybody who manages work in a company *has* to use Windows. And yes, I know that Microsoft Project actually sucks for complex project management, and that there are better Project Management packages out there, but most of them only work for Windows also and they don't have the base or support that Microsoft has. Until that lock is broken, its going to be very hard for companies to switch.
One of the best books I ever read on the Microsoft code culture was "Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled The Future Of Microsoft" by David Bank. From the book, Jim Allchin is the Windows guy who quashed Brad Silverberg and the (relatively) innovative Internet team - although ironically he was an early advocate for getting TCP/IP support in Windows. He believed that all innovation in Microsoft should take place under the Win 2k banner and that the company should just keep making Windows bigger and bigger and bigger. Hmm, maybe it got too big.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743 203151/qid=1127565487/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0616 241-1101748
Google can't pay $90 a CPU for Windows XP Professional Global Oppression Server or whatever. (I'm a Mac guy so I don't know exactly what Windows is calling itself now.) I bet both Microsoft and Sun are kicking themselves for not cutting Google a deal. Imagine the PR Sun could have gotten by using Google as a reference customer.
Google's not the kind of company where investors read financial statements or annual reports or do a valuation. Otherwise, they'd ask themselves why Google trades for 45x forward earnings, when you can pick up just about any oil company, and get a dividend too, for 10x.
I remember when Apple switched from the 68040 to PPC, people were making claims that the emulated stuff ran about as fast as the native apps. Of course, they were all smoking crack - you could spot the difference between a native app and an emulated app a mile away. It would be nice if people told the truth this time - that you can run emulated app if you really need to, but it's basically going to suck, especially once you get used to the performance of native apps. If the developer doesn't care enough about my platform to at least recompile, then I'll take a pass on the app I think.
508 isn't just for static sites. I've delivered a few 508 compliant web applications to the government. You're right that a 508 compliant site is pretty ugly.
I would start with the US government's recommendations for app development for people with disabilities. Most apps written for the Fed have to be section 508 compliant, which helps ensure that they'll work with screen readers. Keep in mind though that from my (limited) experience, 508 compliance is more than an art than a science - you know, you get something that's kinda sorta 508 compliant.
http://www.section508.gov/
Monitoring internal communications is about catching potential dissenters and organizers of course, but is also about promoting self-censorship. When people know their communications are monitored, they're less likely to say anything negative about the government. That's why the govt makes no attempt to hide the monitoring.
I would say that this is just a sign that the government's scared of their own people and the potential for an uprising. (Which makes sense given that they were revolutionaries themselves.)
Okay, but then the virus still has to spread beyond the machine it's on, and spread faster than it can be caught and eliminated, and also spread faster than the patch (which on many linux distros occurs within 24hrs). So, sure, I suppose it's theoretically possible, but in the real world, viruses just aren't a factor on Unix and OSX, and I really have no idea why anybody (other than virus scanner developers) would promote the idea that they are. I've googled plenty of articles on the subject also - check out Bliss, the "original" Linux virus. It was a fraud. And all of the other so-called viruses you see for Linux are worms. The only Linux that's susceptible to viruses is Lindows, and that's because it runs as root as default - which makes it, by my and most definitions, a crappy OS.
So all your executables are world writable? And you run executables from floppies as root and then give those floppies to other people to run? And there's some widespread bug in Linux that noone has ever found that allows executables to modify other executables without the proper permissions? Now who's playing games? Sure, anything can be true if you load up a bunch of special conditions and then say "no doubt about it" at the end. Sheesh. Windows is secure if I unplug the machine and bury it in my back yard. No doubt about that either.
A virus is something specific - a self-replicating executable. Please show me how an application run from a user account can modify an executable owned by bin or root, for example. Then show me how that process would continue to other executables. Then show me how that would spread from machine to machine, over the Internet. Then please show me a case where that's actually happened. I'll be here waiting.
A virus != an exploit. A virus is something specific, a self-replicating piece of software that infects other executables and spreads. If your executables are owned by root or bin or whatever, it's simply not possible for an application run with user permissions to modify them.
Okay - show me a Linux program that can be run as a user that is self-replicating and infects other programs. And not something theoretical, something that's actually infected systems.
Did I say they weren't vulnerable? No. I said that they weren't susceptible to virii. Do you know what a virus is? A self-replicating executable that infects other executables. How exactly would that happen under Unix?
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My information says that project 42 was disbanded in May 1999, which is when Allard left. But you are correct in that Project 42 is a predecessor to .NET, which was promoted at Forum 2000.
Back in the day, Allard was one of the first guys to champion Microsoft's adoption of TCP/IP. Later, he got pulled into "Project 42", a disastrous attempt to come up with some Windows monstrosity that was supposed to counter thin-client platforms (like Java) but never got off the ground despite its team of fifteen hundred. After that he took a leave of absence, and only agreed to come back if he got to lead the development efforts for the Xbox and do it free of bureaucracy. They call Allard and some of the other guys like him "Baby Bills".
When you're in a consulting firm you have to serve two masters. Sometimes it can really suck, especially if you're the type of person who is client focused. My advice is to become either an employee of their IT department, or better yet, an independent consultant and work directly for the clients you want to work with. Don't let any manager get in your way, you talk to and work directly with the end business client. The client, if high enough in the organization (VP, etc) will protect you even if a dumb manager does try to get in between you and the client. By the way, keep that client's phone number, and the next time you need a job, or want to start contracting on your own, give them a call. The IT industry needs more people like you; you obviously build trust. I think you can see everyone else's "duck and cover" attitude, and extrapolate as to why the industry is in trouble.
It's crystal clear that 95% of the people here have not only not been to Africa, but did not even Read The Freakin' Article. Anyway, I have been to Mauritius (island off the coast of Africa) and no, people weren't batting flies off their heads. Developing countries do have a lot of poor people involved in low-wage agriculture struggling to get by, but they also have the beginnings of a professional class, the people who work in offices and run the governments, banks, etc. They all have computers, if not in their desks then in their offices, and those computers run software. But what, as Microsoft says, they do not have is enough people to maintain those computers, hence the lack of expertise it cites. Which brings up a good point that if you gave computers running Linux to people, they would have a very hard time maintaining it, because if the Microsoft expertise isn't there, then the Linux expertise definitely won't be there, because it's rarer. Scarce expertise may push people away from diverse OSs and towards the market leader (Microsoft).
So there's some interesting stuff worth discussing if people bother to RTFA before they post "Bill Gates doesn't care about African people" or whatever all the junk was I had to wade through while I was trying to spend my last mod point.
So I have two computers on my desk - one junk one for Project, one good one for everything else? If I didn't post in this thread I could have moderated you +1 Funny.
Before "Lost", there were no sci-fi shows on major networks, and with Enterprise on the way out, people thought the genre was dead. Now, I count about six sci-fi shows on major networks, including Lost, Invasion, Threshold, Surface, Supernatural, Night Stalker, and maybe Medium and Ghost Whisperer qualify, for a total of eight, all relatively new. And then you have Sci Fi and USA holding their own with Dead Zone, Battlestar, Stargate, etc. I've never seen so much sci fi on TV, and I have to think it's due to Lost being so successful. -- My only complaint is that I liked most of these shows more the first time when they were X-Files episodes. :-) (Though I guess X-Files came from Night Stalker anyway.)
This is how lawyers "solve problems". They sue people. Another way to solve the problem of kids and uberviolent video games would be to make an online web page with a list for parents so that they can click on a game and see how violent it is, and decide whether they want to buy it for their kids. Then you publicize that web site so that parents know its out there. That's how a reasonable and intelligent person would solve the problem. But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when all you have is a law degree, everything looks like an actionable lawsuit. So he types up a brief in his underwear while he's watching an episode of "Boston Legal", and he thinks he's making a difference.
Microsoft Project is the most widely used project management software that corporations use, and it's only available for one platform: Microsoft Windows. Not OSX, Not Linux, Not BSD, Not Sun, Not Palm, Not Amiga, etc. This means that anybody who manages work in a company *has* to use Windows. And yes, I know that Microsoft Project actually sucks for complex project management, and that there are better Project Management packages out there, but most of them only work for Windows also and they don't have the base or support that Microsoft has. Until that lock is broken, its going to be very hard for companies to switch.
One of the best books I ever read on the Microsoft code culture was "Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled The Future Of Microsoft" by David Bank. From the book, Jim Allchin is the Windows guy who quashed Brad Silverberg and the (relatively) innovative Internet team - although ironically he was an early advocate for getting TCP/IP support in Windows. He believed that all innovation in Microsoft should take place under the Win 2k banner and that the company should just keep making Windows bigger and bigger and bigger. Hmm, maybe it got too big.3 203151/qid=1127565487/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0616 241-1101748
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/074
Google can't pay $90 a CPU for Windows XP Professional Global Oppression Server or whatever. (I'm a Mac guy so I don't know exactly what Windows is calling itself now.) I bet both Microsoft and Sun are kicking themselves for not cutting Google a deal. Imagine the PR Sun could have gotten by using Google as a reference customer.
Anyone have another link?
Google's not the kind of company where investors read financial statements or annual reports or do a valuation. Otherwise, they'd ask themselves why Google trades for 45x forward earnings, when you can pick up just about any oil company, and get a dividend too, for 10x.
the FTC said. Jeez, do I really have to say it? Okay, fine, I will. "Thank you, Microsoft." You can go back to suing ex-employees now.
I remember when Apple switched from the 68040 to PPC, people were making claims that the emulated stuff ran about as fast as the native apps. Of course, they were all smoking crack - you could spot the difference between a native app and an emulated app a mile away. It would be nice if people told the truth this time - that you can run emulated app if you really need to, but it's basically going to suck, especially once you get used to the performance of native apps. If the developer doesn't care enough about my platform to at least recompile, then I'll take a pass on the app I think.
508 isn't just for static sites. I've delivered a few 508 compliant web applications to the government. You're right that a 508 compliant site is pretty ugly.
I would start with the US government's recommendations for app development for people with disabilities. Most apps written for the Fed have to be section 508 compliant, which helps ensure that they'll work with screen readers. Keep in mind though that from my (limited) experience, 508 compliance is more than an art than a science - you know, you get something that's kinda sorta 508 compliant.
http://www.section508.gov/
They can't be serious. Who could fund this? Isn't World GDP only around $40-50T?
Monitoring internal communications is about catching potential dissenters and organizers of course, but is also about promoting self-censorship. When people know their communications are monitored, they're less likely to say anything negative about the government. That's why the govt makes no attempt to hide the monitoring.
I would say that this is just a sign that the government's scared of their own people and the potential for an uprising. (Which makes sense given that they were revolutionaries themselves.)
Okay, but then the virus still has to spread beyond the machine it's on, and spread faster than it can be caught and eliminated, and also spread faster than the patch (which on many linux distros occurs within 24hrs). So, sure, I suppose it's theoretically possible, but in the real world, viruses just aren't a factor on Unix and OSX, and I really have no idea why anybody (other than virus scanner developers) would promote the idea that they are. I've googled plenty of articles on the subject also - check out Bliss, the "original" Linux virus. It was a fraud. And all of the other so-called viruses you see for Linux are worms. The only Linux that's susceptible to viruses is Lindows, and that's because it runs as root as default - which makes it, by my and most definitions, a crappy OS.
So all your executables are world writable? And you run executables from floppies as root and then give those floppies to other people to run? And there's some widespread bug in Linux that noone has ever found that allows executables to modify other executables without the proper permissions? Now who's playing games? Sure, anything can be true if you load up a bunch of special conditions and then say "no doubt about it" at the end. Sheesh. Windows is secure if I unplug the machine and bury it in my back yard. No doubt about that either.
These are worms. Do you know the difference between a worm and a virus? Are you knowledgeable on IT?
A virus is something specific - a self-replicating executable. Please show me how an application run from a user account can modify an executable owned by bin or root, for example. Then show me how that process would continue to other executables. Then show me how that would spread from machine to machine, over the Internet. Then please show me a case where that's actually happened. I'll be here waiting.
A virus != an exploit. A virus is something specific, a self-replicating piece of software that infects other executables and spreads. If your executables are owned by root or bin or whatever, it's simply not possible for an application run with user permissions to modify them.
Okay - show me a Linux program that can be run as a user that is self-replicating and infects other programs. And not something theoretical, something that's actually infected systems.
Did I say they weren't vulnerable? No. I said that they weren't susceptible to virii. Do you know what a virus is? A self-replicating executable that infects other executables. How exactly would that happen under Unix?