So, pathetic *nix losers, forget about it. Life is always going to be what it is supposed to be: MSFT execs flying big silver private jets, driving bentleys, owning big mansions with pools filled with hundreds of naked hookers, and you will still be living at your mama basement, impersonating little girls at web chats, telling your old uncle John how big of a h4ck0rz you are, and inhabiting the pathetic loser oblivion of WoW. You sir, are a troll.
One their own though none of those products can stand by themselves. xbox is only just starting to pay for itself, it does have the most to gain and is well on it's way. This is debatable. Visual Studio is the only product on that list that is inextricably tied to windows.
Yahoo has less strategy than MSFT. they are floundering and fumbling. They definitely have more users, ad clicks, and have a better online brand than MS.
If your spending $40 billion dollars just for customers you need a better strategy, or better products. This is an overgeneralization. Customers, brands, people, and a bigger share of online ad-revenue (which are projected to continue growing for the forseeable future -- the very reason google keeps having one blockbuster quarter after the other). There's so much more to this, but we've already discussed it to death when the offers were first announced.
anaconda, crocodile,... ??
So you think it is unfair to actually enforce legal penalties.. I think the EU decisions have been absolute nonsense. The law is always years behind technology. If the EU thinks that the lack of interoperability is a problem, the remedy would be to legislate on openness/availability of protocols/file-formats/APIs, and apply those rules equally to all companies.
In the absense of such laws, the the EU has taken actions against MS that get no promise of interoperability from the rest of the industry. They have saddled MS with regulatory oversight, fines, and forced them to sell IP at rates below what their competitors would charge. In the long run this solves nothing -- it just makes it likely that in the future we'll face the exact same problem, but from some company other than MS.
..instead of letting them dump unsellable stock and call that paying their due? No, I thought the fines were altogether unreasonable. In any case, whether you agree or not, the point is that the EU vs. MS has been a very significant hurdle during Ballmer's tenure as CEO. The EU can't break up the company the way the US DOJ threatened to, but it does add to the list of adversity the company has had to deal with since 2000.
MSFT doesn't have any profitable division except for windows and Office. SQL server, active directory, exchange, visual studio, share point, biztalk, windows mobile, MSN, live search to name a few. Even the xbox dudes have been making profits -- they're just a while away from recovering the initial investment. And the zune team isn't doing too badly either. Ultimately all these businesses are growing and need people. The acquisitions (danger, aquantive, viridian, bungie, ensemble and many more) add to the head count as well. (bungie is an independant studio again, but you get the point). These are real products with real customers. They're just not as visible as office and windows. There's also the research division which is also growing and the live mesh team etc.
.... is the day MSFT crashes hard. It will get torn to shreds by investors, leaving nothing left. It will be spectacular. Feel free to not conceal your glee if/when it happens:P
MSFT can survive it if and only if they can get more than a handful of products that actually make money. As you see from the list above, they understand this pretty well. Well enough to make an offer to buy Yahoo because they're not satisfied with the progress they're making there (and rightly so). And that brings us back to Ballmer -- he's got the gumption to admit that MS hasn't got the right online strategy/brands/customer-base/mindshare, and that they need some help in this area. It takes guts to do something like this -- something along the lines of Google buying youtube when they already had a competing but much less successful solution (google video).
Headcount has increased from 35,000 to 80,000 This is actually a very bad sign, particularly in a software company. In the sense of the mythical man month, that would be true. In the sense of a more diverse products portfolio (and hence more product groups, which means more people), its a good thing.
Personally, I have no opinion as to whether Balmer stays on or not.. The topic of this thread and my post was Ballmer.
you:
- For every Twitter, there are several Microsoft Astroturfers and a Genuine Believer here or there.
- There are so many different Twitter accounts, maybe you're confused.
- there is nothing Microsoft "sells" that I find compelling to lease on a computer
- I find their system ugly and non-productive
- Microsoft has set back innovation in computer software by decades
*sigh* Are you claiming to be any different from twitter?
Ah yes, the inevitable 'MS is doomed' straw man rebuttal... It's not a straw man if I actually backed it up myself in the very same post. Read the part about their business model. I didn't go into detail because the discussion is about Ballmer, but I can if you wish.
Ballmer took over in 2000... Ballmer took over after (or around) the US DOJ ruling on MSFT. Under Ballmer, MS has been functioning under very heavy regulatory oversight, running scared from lawsuits (alcatel-lucent, the big antivirus vendors, adobe, google, just about everyone has sued or threatened to sue), been treated like an ATM machine by the EU, and much more.
Your point about the stock price is still valid, but there is the dot com bubble burst that affected MSFT as much as everybody else that you need to factor in.
A more accurate assessment would be:
- Net income has gone up from 8 billion to 14 billion per year
- Headcount has increased from 35,000 to 80,000
- Revenue has increased from 25 billions dollars to 51 billion dollars per year
From what you read about MS on this site, you'd think it's demise is pretty imminent. The numbers tell a different tale, and they don't make Ballmer look too bad either.
The 'demise being imminent' part isn't too far fetched of course -- MS is under threat from all directions (linux, apple, google, adobe, sony, ibm,...). But most importantly it isn't clear how much longer their current business model is viable. That's what the yahoo offer was about. Most companies would be in denial about it, if they were able to continuously generate the sort of numbers MS does. Upper management would be full of back-slapping, and big bonuses. MSFT is very aware of the problems facing them, and the credit needs to go to the top dog -- Ballmer.
The menu used to work well. But then Microsoft decided to "improve" it by making it dynamic. Old familiar menu items were gone, replaced by items that would be in different positions everytime the software would run. That's not what happens. The icons don't change position, and certainly not when you launch the app.
Half of usability is familiarity, and Microsoft damaged familiarity with constantly changing menus. How did they fix the problem? By introducing the Ribbon, a cluttered mass of ever-shifting buttons and controls. Like I said, nothing shifts. You don't seem to have ever used the ribbon. It drastically reduces the clutter of menus and icons from previous versions of office. The familiarity issue exists with all software. Familiarity is a good reason to avoid change for its own sake. Its not a good reason to stifle innovation. The ribbon is true UI innovation.
It's an insult to users. It enables users (makes it easier to use the apps full functionality). And it boosts efficiency.
And yet... the users hate the ribbon. I doubt you have any data to back that up. Even anecdotally speaking, your post makes it very clear you have never used the ribbon and you have no idea what you're talking about.
what is the problem with menus?... unambiguous communication of options... Menu's have their purpose and their limitations. As apps get more functionality, the choice-lists get longer and longer, you get more nesting of menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-menus, until finding stuff becomes hard. Cases in point: Photoshop (and cousins), and MS Office (and cousins). Another side-effect: most feature requests MS gets for Office, are for things that already exist - users just don't know they're there.
The ribbon is not a new paradigm but it is a significant evolution. Menus do exist in Office 2k7 but the ribbon works so well, you rarely use the menus (in my case, practically never), even for advanced functionality.
The grouping of functions is very obvious - your eye can pick out options faster. Icon sizes are dramatically larger (when necessary), and are designed to form a visual association with the picture and the action (this is always the idea - but it's embraced completely in the ribbon). Scrolling takes you back/forward through different sections of the ribbon -- so the entire UI is accessible without any clicks/sub-menus, and without taking over the whole screen.
Template icons are dynamic, making it easier to associate a choice with the effect it has on your doc. Depending on your template, the icons change to reflect the styles - so no guessing what a particular style looks like (this might sound confusing - but when you use it, it even passes the grandma test). When you hover over one of the styles, the active line in the doc changes to that style (just a preview - the change doesn't take effect until you click) - so its super-simple to see what different styles will look like by just moving your mouse over a few icons.
The idea is to enhance the visual association as much as possible, and to make the options as accessible as possible. Not so different from normal menu design, but (at least) I still experienced a very significant bump in efficiency, and reduction in menu item clicks and searching.
It's not really as bad as the ars screenshot would have you believe. For instance, look at this one instead. And remember how easy it is to apply themes to any linux desktop - there are some really slick themes out there.
But your point is still valid. The one thing I've never been able to get to grips with about the linux desktops are the fonts. Unfortunately between MS, Apple, Adobe all the font rendering IP is locked up pretty tight so it doesn't look like we're gonna get better fonts on the Linux desktop anytime soon. At least not out of the box that is.
...and this is precisely the self-laudatory flag-waving we-can-do-no-wrong nationalism that makes you dangerous. This makes Indians dangerous? Being proud of a track record of non-aggression?
What about the US attacking Iraq without provocation, killing 100,000s of them, displacing them by the millions, and reducing their country to rubble? And then Clinton and McCain beating their chests with self-laudatory flag-waving we-can-do-no-wrong nationalism saying "we have given the Iraqis the wonderful gift of freedom, and now it's time for them to play a bigger role in securing their country?" Get off your high horse dude!
During the cold war, the US and USSR were busy trying to divide the world into "us" vs. "them" (NATO vs. Warsaw and so on). Instead of getting involved, India was one of the founder members of the non-aligned movement - the idea being to live and let live instead of being part of the never ending cycle of escalating tensions. If Indians are proud of that, I'd say they have a right to be.
One of OP's comments was: "I still remember seeing the news on TV when they had built their first nuke, and the general euphoria. It was waay back, while they were even poorer than today. Arguably that money could have been better invested in industrializing a little faster." I don't know if OP was referring to the nuke tests of 1972 or 1998. The '98 tests drew very sharp international criticism (at which point I started following this issue). Most notable critics were the US (which has enough nukes to destroy the world many times over), and countries like New Zealand and Australia that come under US "nuclear umbrella" protection. Rather hypocritical don't you think? Japan and any country without any nuclear ambitions are the only ones here who have a right to criticize. The rest of us need to just shut up, or destroy our own nukes first if we want to have a say.
Please don't interpret this as an anti-US/New Zealand/Australia/Pakistan/China rant or anything like that. People are just people everywhere in the world. It's the regimes that make a country "aggressive" or "passive" or somewhere in the middle, and it's human nature to be patriotic about your country. My point is that the US and other "aggressive" countries could adopt a foreign policy or two from India. Or rather, people the world over should press their governments to do so. We shouldn't get into conversations like this with the frame of mind of "I'm an Indian/American and I'm gonna defend India/US and win this thread at all costs".
And lastly, from my comments you may have inferred my nationality incorrectly. For the purpose of this thread I'd prefer not to state what it is -- hopefully the anonymity will prevent people from assuming some sort of jingoistic intent in my comments.
India's guided missile program (Agni) is known to borrow heavily from it's civilian space program - this is true.
However, it's important to note India's proven track record as a non-agressor, which is especially remarkable when you consider that its surrounded by hostile parties in one way or the other.
India's first nuke test was in 1972. That's 36 years of indigenous nuke capability. In that time, they have been in a constant state of tension with Pakistan (and gone to war once - Kargil), had a prime minister (Rajiv Gandhi) asassinated by the LTTE (Sri Lankan militants), have parts of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh (another state of India) occupied by China, have ULFA seperatists operating in Assam (a north east state of India), and have constant tensions at their border with Burma and Bangladesh.
Not once in this time has India used it's military in anything other than a defensive role. If India's neighbours (and indeed the rest of the world, and especially the US) showed that much restraint, the world would be a much better place.
But the design is flawed. The idea was that user interaction shouldn't be able to autostart a program which is able to modify system functions. That's not accurate. I don't know what gives you the idea that this was MS's intention. From everything I've read, UAC is not intended to block this scenario -- just to force the architecture to be split in this way, compelling the developer to use an installer that will prompt for elevation when installing the service.
1. OP said Homeland Security and TSA -- your link refers to NSA. There's a distinction there. NSA are security experts. DHS and TSA policies cause nothing but confusion and meaningless threat level colors.
2. The part in your link that nicely sums up NSA's contributions:
The NSA also declined to be specific but said it used two groups -- a "red team" and a "blue team" -- to test Vista's security. The red team, for instance, posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary" to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. "They pretend to be bad guys," Sager said. The blue team helped Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration.
Sounds like it was written by Homeland Security and the TSA. That's BS and so is TFA. The part you quoted (which was in bold in TFA) is just an anti-UAC rant thrown in to get attention, and clearly it worked.
The so-called work-around described in TFA:
- Split iReboot in two parts, a background service and a userspace client
- Background service runs as SYSTEM or LOCAL SERVICE
- Userspace client runs unprivileged
- Installing iReboot now requires an installer
- The installer requires admin privileges (i.e. you will see a UAC prompt when installing)
Gee, sounds to me like UAC is working exactly the way it should!
Some jackass moded you -1 offtopic. It's pretty clear nobody bothered to read BillG's speech and understand the context. But then, this is slashdot.
The relevant parts:
He also pointed to one specific problem that he'd like to take a shot at: getting pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for the infectious diseases that plague billions of people in the developing world. The track record is horrible, and familiar. While billions of dollars have yielded treatments for baldness and erectile dysfunction, Gates said, there's comparatively little on the shelf for malaria, tuberculosis or HIV.
Even the treatments that do pop up are more dumb luck than dedication. The anti-worm treatments that have proven so effective for humans against Guinea worm, for instance, were only developed because Americans and other first-worlders wanted a way to keep their dogs worm-free. "Luckily it worked for humans", too, Gates noted
The core problem seemed to intrigue Gates, who offered it as "a paradox": If a drug company ever invents a treatment for something like malaria, it'd be immediately beset by calls to give the drug away. "So they choose never to work in those areas," he noted sympathetically. "The current incentive system isn't doing it."
In other words, his point is, companies need to be profitable to exists. They need to be able to charge for their products, their IP, etc. They might want to do the right thing, but they can't do it at the expense of profits. Somebody needs to figure out how to bridge the disconnect between "doing the right thing/goodwill" and profitability.
And no, open source doesn't solve this problem. It has it's place, but this isn't it. Specifically, BillG was asked if he would consider open source uses in health research. It goes directly against his point that profit-making is the primary incentive for any company. If a company wants to provide healthcare solutions, and charge for the software, and keep their IP to themselves there's nothing wrong with that. Their whole incentive to be in the space is profits. They just need to figure out how to be profitable and do the right thing.
Of course, there are many companies with open source models that are profitable - but that still doesn't necessarily apply to the healthcare segment. For example, if you need to spend millions of dollars to create s/w to model protein folding, you want to be able to recover the investment. If you can't monetize the investment, your incentive to do the R&D is drastically reduced!
You didn't read what I wrote. As I said, NT is portable. The current code isn't all based on NT -- much of it is new, and they didn't bother with portability the way Dave Cutler did for NT. What you're operating on here is very outdated knowledge -- there's a very good reason why the Early XBOX 360 kits were running NT 4 and not 2000 or XP. Actually, the current code is just NT's latest incarnation. Think of Win2k as NT 5, XP as NT 5.1, and Vista and Win Server 2008 as NT 6.0. For more information, I recommend reading the various editions of Windows Internals.
(BTW--My knoweldge comes from individuals inside Microsoft, so I know it's accurate.) So much for that..
As somebody else rightly pointed out, I was not referring to isolation in terms of the physical location of the school. Rather, isolation refers to the people you will study with/compete against in the duration of your degree. If you are competing with quality talent you have to keep your standards high.
If you are competing with lower quality talent (fine arts school scenario, for computer science) you won't get a true measure of how good you are, even if you ace your class. You might get lulled into a false sense of how good you are. i.e. maintaining high standards when you are isolated from the competition is difficult. Most of the competition is in the big schools.
I'd say the 'where' is very important - but not for the usual reasons. Its possible to be just as successful either way -- but there's a reason you hear of more success stories from the big-name schools.
What it comes down to is standards. Its very difficult to maintain high standards in isolation. In a recognized/sought-after school you will usually face much more competition, more motivated and focused classmates. They are your competition for good grades (especially when graded on a curve) and at job fairs on campus. The result is that you get pushed harder (and you in turn are one of the people pushing your classmates to excell as well). Bottom line: if you want an A in Compilers in the big tech school you'll have to really know your shit inside out. If you want to get an A in the Liberal Arts school its a lot easier. At the end of it, you'll have much more airtight concepts if you've gone through the grind at the big school.
A long-term perk of the big school is that you'll make close friends from among this pool of competitors -- they help you keep your standards high even after school (as will your colleagues at work, etc. etc.)
Of course, all this advice is based on certain assumptions about your goals and career ambitions, and might not apply if the assumptions are invalid.
I don't think that is what he really meant. What MS is trying to do is actually the right thing. You're dead right.
I attended RSA and I was present at David Cross's talk today. His intent seemed more to grab the attention of a group of people with high-level to detailed security concepts, and it got the desired result. Unfortunately for him, some reporter/blogger blew it out of context and out of proportion, writes a sensational headline, and the result is this thread. What I got from the talk was "we knew UAC would bug users, but it was still the right thing to do -- we had to fix this bad habit of developing apps to require admin privs when they don't need them -- and this was the only way to achieve that."
Poor dude will probably get his head bitten off for this little sound bite he worked into his speech.
Slashdot Mirror
IP is licensed when required for implementing protocols, APIs, or competing products. IP does not refer to the sale of a copy of windows.
In the absense of such laws, the the EU has taken actions against MS that get no promise of interoperability from the rest of the industry. They have saddled MS with regulatory oversight, fines, and forced them to sell IP at rates below what their competitors would charge. In the long run this solves nothing -- it just makes it likely that in the future we'll face the exact same problem, but from some company other than MS.
..instead of letting them dump unsellable stock and call that paying their due? No, I thought the fines were altogether unreasonable. In any case, whether you agree or not, the point is that the EU vs. MS has been a very significant hurdle during Ballmer's tenure as CEO. The EU can't break up the company the way the US DOJ threatened to, but it does add to the list of adversity the company has had to deal with since 2000.
.... is the day MSFT crashes hard. It will get torn to shreds by investors, leaving nothing left. It will be spectacular. Feel free to not conceal your glee if/when it happensyou:
- For every Twitter, there are several Microsoft Astroturfers and a Genuine Believer here or there.
- There are so many different Twitter accounts, maybe you're confused.
- there is nothing Microsoft "sells" that I find compelling to lease on a computer
- I find their system ugly and non-productive
- Microsoft has set back innovation in computer software by decades
*sigh*
Are you claiming to be any different from twitter?
Your point about the stock price is still valid, but there is the dot com bubble burst that affected MSFT as much as everybody else that you need to factor in.
A more accurate assessment would be:
- Net income has gone up from 8 billion to 14 billion per year
- Headcount has increased from 35,000 to 80,000
- Revenue has increased from 25 billions dollars to 51 billion dollars per year
From what you read about MS on this site, you'd think it's demise is pretty imminent. The numbers tell a different tale, and they don't make Ballmer look too bad either.
The 'demise being imminent' part isn't too far fetched of course -- MS is under threat from all directions (linux, apple, google, adobe, sony, ibm, ...). But most importantly it isn't clear how much longer their current business model is viable. That's what the yahoo offer was about. Most companies would be in denial about it, if they were able to continuously generate the sort of numbers MS does. Upper management would be full of back-slapping, and big bonuses. MSFT is very aware of the problems facing them, and the credit needs to go to the top dog -- Ballmer.
Half of usability is familiarity, and Microsoft damaged familiarity with constantly changing menus. How did they fix the problem? By introducing the Ribbon, a cluttered mass of ever-shifting buttons and controls. Like I said, nothing shifts. You don't seem to have ever used the ribbon. It drastically reduces the clutter of menus and icons from previous versions of office. The familiarity issue exists with all software. Familiarity is a good reason to avoid change for its own sake. Its not a good reason to stifle innovation. The ribbon is true UI innovation.
It's an insult to users. It enables users (makes it easier to use the apps full functionality). And it boosts efficiency.
And yet... the users hate the ribbon. I doubt you have any data to back that up. Even anecdotally speaking, your post makes it very clear you have never used the ribbon and you have no idea what you're talking about.
The ribbon is not a new paradigm but it is a significant evolution. Menus do exist in Office 2k7 but the ribbon works so well, you rarely use the menus (in my case, practically never), even for advanced functionality.
The grouping of functions is very obvious - your eye can pick out options faster. Icon sizes are dramatically larger (when necessary), and are designed to form a visual association with the picture and the action (this is always the idea - but it's embraced completely in the ribbon). Scrolling takes you back/forward through different sections of the ribbon -- so the entire UI is accessible without any clicks/sub-menus, and without taking over the whole screen.
Template icons are dynamic, making it easier to associate a choice with the effect it has on your doc. Depending on your template, the icons change to reflect the styles - so no guessing what a particular style looks like (this might sound confusing - but when you use it, it even passes the grandma test). When you hover over one of the styles, the active line in the doc changes to that style (just a preview - the change doesn't take effect until you click) - so its super-simple to see what different styles will look like by just moving your mouse over a few icons.
The idea is to enhance the visual association as much as possible, and to make the options as accessible as possible. Not so different from normal menu design, but (at least) I still experienced a very significant bump in efficiency, and reduction in menu item clicks and searching.
Thanks for the insightful post. I wanted to reply along the same lines but you covered it pretty well.
It's not really as bad as the ars screenshot would have you believe. For instance, look at this one instead. And remember how easy it is to apply themes to any linux desktop - there are some really slick themes out there.
But your point is still valid. The one thing I've never been able to get to grips with about the linux desktops are the fonts. Unfortunately between MS, Apple, Adobe all the font rendering IP is locked up pretty tight so it doesn't look like we're gonna get better fonts on the Linux desktop anytime soon. At least not out of the box that is.
...and this is precisely the self-laudatory flag-waving we-can-do-no-wrong nationalism that makes you dangerous. This makes Indians dangerous? Being proud of a track record of non-aggression?What about the US attacking Iraq without provocation, killing 100,000s of them, displacing them by the millions, and reducing their country to rubble? And then Clinton and McCain beating their chests with self-laudatory flag-waving we-can-do-no-wrong nationalism saying "we have given the Iraqis the wonderful gift of freedom, and now it's time for them to play a bigger role in securing their country?" Get off your high horse dude!
During the cold war, the US and USSR were busy trying to divide the world into "us" vs. "them" (NATO vs. Warsaw and so on). Instead of getting involved, India was one of the founder members of the non-aligned movement - the idea being to live and let live instead of being part of the never ending cycle of escalating tensions. If Indians are proud of that, I'd say they have a right to be.
One of OP's comments was: "I still remember seeing the news on TV when they had built their first nuke, and the general euphoria. It was waay back, while they were even poorer than today. Arguably that money could have been better invested in industrializing a little faster."
I don't know if OP was referring to the nuke tests of 1972 or 1998. The '98 tests drew very sharp international criticism (at which point I started following this issue). Most notable critics were the US (which has enough nukes to destroy the world many times over), and countries like New Zealand and Australia that come under US "nuclear umbrella" protection. Rather hypocritical don't you think? Japan and any country without any nuclear ambitions are the only ones here who have a right to criticize. The rest of us need to just shut up, or destroy our own nukes first if we want to have a say.
Please don't interpret this as an anti-US/New Zealand/Australia/Pakistan/China rant or anything like that. People are just people everywhere in the world. It's the regimes that make a country "aggressive" or "passive" or somewhere in the middle, and it's human nature to be patriotic about your country. My point is that the US and other "aggressive" countries could adopt a foreign policy or two from India. Or rather, people the world over should press their governments to do so. We shouldn't get into conversations like this with the frame of mind of "I'm an Indian/American and I'm gonna defend India/US and win this thread at all costs".
And lastly, from my comments you may have inferred my nationality incorrectly. For the purpose of this thread I'd prefer not to state what it is -- hopefully the anonymity will prevent people from assuming some sort of jingoistic intent in my comments.
India's guided missile program (Agni) is known to borrow heavily from it's civilian space program - this is true.
However, it's important to note India's proven track record as a non-agressor, which is especially remarkable when you consider that its surrounded by hostile parties in one way or the other.
India's first nuke test was in 1972. That's 36 years of indigenous nuke capability. In that time, they have been in a constant state of tension with Pakistan (and gone to war once - Kargil), had a prime minister (Rajiv Gandhi) asassinated by the LTTE (Sri Lankan militants), have parts of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh (another state of India) occupied by China, have ULFA seperatists operating in Assam (a north east state of India), and have constant tensions at their border with Burma and Bangladesh.
Not once in this time has India used it's military in anything other than a defensive role. If India's neighbours (and indeed the rest of the world, and especially the US) showed that much restraint, the world would be a much better place.
Maybe if you RTFA you'll realize that isn't the gist of the article :)
2. The part in your link that nicely sums up NSA's contributions:
The NSA also declined to be specific but said it used two groups -- a "red team" and a "blue team" -- to test Vista's security. The red team, for instance, posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary" to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. "They pretend to be bad guys," Sager said. The blue team helped Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration.
I can't see anything wrong with that...
The so-called work-around described in TFA:
Gee, sounds to me like UAC is working exactly the way it should!
Some jackass moded you -1 offtopic. It's pretty clear nobody bothered to read BillG's speech and understand the context. But then, this is slashdot.
The relevant parts:
He also pointed to one specific problem that he'd like to take a shot at: getting pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for the infectious diseases that plague billions of people in the developing world. The track record is horrible, and familiar. While billions of dollars have yielded treatments for baldness and erectile dysfunction, Gates said, there's comparatively little on the shelf for malaria, tuberculosis or HIV.
Even the treatments that do pop up are more dumb luck than dedication. The anti-worm treatments that have proven so effective for humans against Guinea worm, for instance, were only developed because Americans and other first-worlders wanted a way to keep their dogs worm-free. "Luckily it worked for humans", too, Gates noted
The core problem seemed to intrigue Gates, who offered it as "a paradox": If a drug company ever invents a treatment for something like malaria, it'd be immediately beset by calls to give the drug away. "So they choose never to work in those areas," he noted sympathetically. "The current incentive system isn't doing it."
In other words, his point is, companies need to be profitable to exists. They need to be able to charge for their products, their IP, etc. They might want to do the right thing, but they can't do it at the expense of profits. Somebody needs to figure out how to bridge the disconnect between "doing the right thing/goodwill" and profitability.
And no, open source doesn't solve this problem. It has it's place, but this isn't it. Specifically, BillG was asked if he would consider open source uses in health research. It goes directly against his point that profit-making is the primary incentive for any company. If a company wants to provide healthcare solutions, and charge for the software, and keep their IP to themselves there's nothing wrong with that. Their whole incentive to be in the space is profits. They just need to figure out how to be profitable and do the right thing.
Of course, there are many companies with open source models that are profitable - but that still doesn't necessarily apply to the healthcare segment. For example, if you need to spend millions of dollars to create s/w to model protein folding, you want to be able to recover the investment. If you can't monetize the investment, your incentive to do the R&D is drastically reduced!
As somebody else rightly pointed out, I was not referring to isolation in terms of the physical location of the school. Rather, isolation refers to the people you will study with/compete against in the duration of your degree. If you are competing with quality talent you have to keep your standards high.
If you are competing with lower quality talent (fine arts school scenario, for computer science) you won't get a true measure of how good you are, even if you ace your class. You might get lulled into a false sense of how good you are. i.e. maintaining high standards when you are isolated from the competition is difficult. Most of the competition is in the big schools.
I'd say the 'where' is very important - but not for the usual reasons. Its possible to be just as successful either way -- but there's a reason you hear of more success stories from the big-name schools.
What it comes down to is standards. Its very difficult to maintain high standards in isolation. In a recognized/sought-after school you will usually face much more competition, more motivated and focused classmates. They are your competition for good grades (especially when graded on a curve) and at job fairs on campus. The result is that you get pushed harder (and you in turn are one of the people pushing your classmates to excell as well). Bottom line: if you want an A in Compilers in the big tech school you'll have to really know your shit inside out. If you want to get an A in the Liberal Arts school its a lot easier. At the end of it, you'll have much more airtight concepts if you've gone through the grind at the big school.
A long-term perk of the big school is that you'll make close friends from among this pool of competitors -- they help you keep your standards high even after school (as will your colleagues at work, etc. etc.)
Of course, all this advice is based on certain assumptions about your goals and career ambitions, and might not apply if the assumptions are invalid.
I attended RSA and I was present at David Cross's talk today. His intent seemed more to grab the attention of a group of people with high-level to detailed security concepts, and it got the desired result. Unfortunately for him, some reporter/blogger blew it out of context and out of proportion, writes a sensational headline, and the result is this thread. What I got from the talk was "we knew UAC would bug users, but it was still the right thing to do -- we had to fix this bad habit of developing apps to require admin privs when they don't need them -- and this was the only way to achieve that."
Poor dude will probably get his head bitten off for this little sound bite he worked into his speech.
Witty.