In those cases you don't let camera, memory card, etc. manufacturers produce products for 10+ years using that technology THEN demand they cough up the dough. Any company that knowingly does that should lose all protection rights to any patents they hold because it's the civil equivalent of entrapment.
They won't happen in Vista - you'll get the "Red Screen of Death" because when Microsoft finally got sick of the BSOD jokes they had to do something about it.;-)
In all seriousness though (actually the RSOD thing is real, the untrue part above is the rationale for it) WinXP can and does BSOD. It doesn't happen for "Floppy not found" or "reinsert CD" crap, but "IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL" BSOD messages stemming from a damaged (or simply buggy) driver, flaked-out motherboard, bad memory, or even viruses still do occur. Microsoft has made great strides in improving Windows' ability to handle errors but it still has a long way to go (hence the rumors you read online about Microsoft switching to a BSD-like architecture after Vista, I have no idea how true or untrue that is).
Has Bill Gates ever architected or implemented any code at Microsoft? He's known to have bought BASIC and DOS pretty much done and spent his time peddling it, struggling to make deals in the beginning, and when those deals came through he had a heck of a lot more to deal with on the business side of Microsoft. When did he ever have time to implement any code - especially after he scored that deal with IBM? Also by then Microsoft was busy licensing BASIC left and right, and started acquiring other companies to diversify their product offerings as soon as they gained some success. I'm not knocking Gates, but really - how much does he really need to know about the details of writing a class to decide "AJAX good, posting back then reloading the entire page bad?"
Being technically savvy when it comes to decision making at the exective level doesn't mean you have to know how to properly allocate memory and implement proper thread management - it requires a basic knowledge of the benefits and drawbacks to each technology, and quite often you'll be referring to your department members for the nitty-gritty technical details and advice. If you're, say, a VP of development (in a reasonable-sized company) and are spending your time implementing a data abstraction layer, you really ought to either not be a VP, or you need to hire someone else to be the VP and go back to being a coder.
So I think AC has hit the nail on the head with that post. Having execs at Microsoft code would be a colossal waste of time and money. What their execs DO need to do is a) take input from engineers much sooner b) start listening to customers again and c) don't shoot the messenger (the engineers) when they tell you that you're making the wrong decision or that the company needs to change direction with the industry.
The optimal solution to this is a intelligent process and thread scheduling in the Windows kernel.
(the above should also apply to Linux, *BSD, etc.)
Another solution (possibly a better-performing one) is to distribute multiple binaries and the installer would the appropriate one that is optimized for the system's processor, but then the release engineer's life will be hell because in that case the release engineer will have to run multiple builds per project, the installer would be more complex, plus QA's test matrix would be a hell of a lot larger. Of course that would drive the cost of software way up. For some situations it would work and is already being done (e.g., multiple kernels shipping with an OS, multiple HALs shipping with Windows) but for your average $30 to $70 game "it just ain't gonna happen"
When was the last time your sysadmin brokered a $2mil deal with a client? Issued a press release? Went on business luncheons and schmoozed with potential clients?
If you want your IT personnel to wear business suits. etc. YOU fund the clothes, and also don't expect overtime, etc. and of course don't expect your IT people to go crawling under a desk, over ceilings, etc. to fix computer and network issues because doing so will ruin a $500 to $700 suit.
Want IT to be on call around the clock and do dirty work like crawling under desks and in closets, phone rooms, ceilings, etc? Then they WILL dress casual or they'll be giving their notice. The pay may be good, but it's not THAT good.
Then why did I see Windows boxes inside Anniston Army Depot last year (2004)?
They're still running many, many, many Windows boxes and they still have many people developing and maintaing defense-and-security database apps on Windows.
. ..when you know it's a losing proposition when it comes to actually getting hired by Corporate America? Unless you're a scientist lucky enough to score a job with the likes of Raytheon or another defense contractor, you're destined to work for nonprofit organizations squeaking by on grants or working in something other than your chosen field, because Corporate America will hire one scientist and three engineers on H1B or L1 Visas (or simply offshore the job) for the salary you would demand.
Scummy, yes, but it's reality. It's sad when your future looks brighter if you want to become a lawyer and litigate than if you want to become a productive member of society and innovate.
It is a situation similar to that of IT - industry was demanding more IT grads, more IT training programs, etc. and and clamoring for IT personnel. Many answered that demand, only to get stabbed in the back with offshoring. Many left the industry - some went back to school to become attorneys, some sell real estate, some opened restaurants, others started their own tech companies, etc. etc. and won't go back to working in technical departments for other people. Now industry is really hurting for tech help, demanding yet more H1B and L1 visas (and getting them approved) and many very qualified people won't go back to IT because the same cycle would repeat itself. Now college and voc-tech-training students are avoiding IT and going into trades (you'll always need carpenters, welders, electricians, etc.) and industry is going to be facing a severe shortage of IT help in 5 to 15 years. Folks who left IT couldn't give less of a &@%! about the companies who will be hurting, because it's those companies which started the backstabbing cycle.
Why bother with sciences and technical training when you know you don't have a future you can count on? You're better off becoming a plumber and charging $100/hour to fix clogged drains and leaky faucets and choose where and when you want to work rather than be on-call 24 hours a day for a company who pays you only $30/hr to $50/hr (well, more like $15/hr to $25/hr in reality when you figure the hours you ACTUALLY put in vs. the hours you get paid for) and deal with shit from whiny users and pointy-haired bosses.
(Note: this post is not flamebait nor a troll, but merely introspection/mental masturbation. Disagree? Shake your head and move on.)
To compare this to a faulty fuel pump in a Ford or GM product is off-base and not a fair comparison. What Sony did was more akin to a car manufacturer knowingly and intentionally installing, say, an HEI coil inside the fuel pump (I know it's ridiculous, but bear with me) and using faulty wires with non-fuel-resistant insulation to the spark plugs.
Sony knowingly and willfully distributed a rootkit with the intent that it would be impossible to remove, without expressing the purpose (or even existence) of the "Product" to consumers, and so far the only remedy (aside from sector editors or hacking with a Linux 2.4.x kernel, both of which require skills Joe Sixpack doesn't possess) that can remove the rootkit disables Windows' security measures.
I hope this rootkit got installed in some secure government installation - like the Pentagon, Anniston Army Depot, NORAD, or somewhere else where non-writable audio CDs are allowed and security is the highest possible concern - because if that happened you can expect that the government will come down on Sony with something a little stronger than a "tsk, tsk!"
Incidentally, as an aside: a breach like that would also force the military to review Microsoft's compliance with security standards where Windows is concerned, and when it's found that it's not really as secure as Microsoft claims, they'll switch to selinux or *BSD and help promote development of those platforms. While Microsoft isn't to blame at ALL for a rootkit like this, that it's so hard to remove AND the removal tools disable Windows security measures CAN and SHOULD be blamed on Microsoft.
For what it's worth, Sony has been digging their own grave for a long time. They may have a strong OEM market for CMOS and CCD chipsets, trinitron tubes, and LCD panels, but the margins on those items is much thinner than it is for products sold to the end user.
The last Sony product I bought was a 36" (Non-VEGA due to problems with the VEGA line at the time) television, and a $370 DVD Player at the time. Well, it turned out later on that the particular model DVD player I bought was from a bad run of them - many complaints online about the DVD player failing shortly after the (pathetically short) warranty period. Well, mine crapped out after about two years, so I called Sony for a replacement optical sled assembly and they wanted more for that puppy than Toshiba and others wanted for a whole new (and better) DVD player. I was pissed because this was supposedly a high-end unit and Sony is basically raping customers on replacement parts. I held onto the (non-functional) DVD player for a while longer, trying to convince Sony to just sell me the part for what it's worth, not for the price of a whole new DVD player, then I finally chucked it.
A few weeks later from one of the parts catalogs we receive I discovered, much to my dismay, that one of my distributors carries the exact sled I needed for the OEM market - same item, same specs, different part item, for under $20.
So, now I buy NO sony products (embedded components I can't avoid aside).
My point is: they've been treating customers like crap for years; their installing a rootkit for which the removal tools completely disable any security Windows has does not surprise me in the least bit. Once they get your money, they couldn't give less of a crap about the customer, because like most public companies they only look to the end of the current quarter, and don't look 3 to 5 years ahead and consider the long-term ramifications of their quality control, piss-poor support, and even worse customer disservice.
Don't forget your tinfoil hat! Oh wait, that will amplify the signals they're using to search for your porn collection --- or so "they" want you to believe.
But what about downtime due to maintenance, inevitable patches, etc.?
Our web site used to be on asp.net but with the weekly (or more often) security patches which all too often require a reboot and with the slow performance of asp.net we migrated our web sites to php, and although the development environments for php are NOWHERE near as good as Visual Studio, the end result performs better, even on much lower-end machines.
I really like Microsoft Exchange's feature sets and its maintenance tools are excellent, but again, maintenance requires bringing the information store offline, restoring from a backup (e.g., after spam filters go haywire) is a pain when Exchange decides to replay transactions you wanted to recover from, and defragging can take a while.
IIS? Want to tune it? Harden it? Have fun editing the metabase - you have to deal with the equivalent of PEEK and POKE statements for a ton of undocumented (or barely documented) settings, and hope you didn't mis-type anything because the settings are not readibly readable.
Let's not even bring the cost of licensing into the equation yet.
The end result? Windows/Exchange/IIS may be easier/quicker to set up but tuning and maintenance takes a heck of a lot longer, and introduces more downtime. Of course, Microsoft's downtime statistics don't include "scheduled maintenance" (read their analyses carefully).
Total cost of ownership? Combine more complex tuning, "scheduled maintenance" downtime, and now, client access licenses per connection, and you end up spending far more money than a slightly longer up-front implementation of a *nix (e.g., BSD, Solaris Linux, OS/X, foo) would take.
Aren't marketing literature and paid-for-by-vendor studies wonderful? They focus on a limited subset of variables (this goes for both sides, not just Microsoft) in order to tweak the end result however they see fit - and then they can make their claims on the resultant data without lying (based on the data set).
Actually if you use the KDE environment, you have most of the accessibility features that Windows has out of the box, and it works about as well.
However Microsoft Office XP and 2003 provide additional accessibility tools that Windows XP does not offer out of the box, and that is the issue - but where Massachusetts is already providing reasonable accomodations by continuing to offer Microsoft Office to those with physical disabilities, Microsoft is simply raising up a strawman so that they can avoid having to implement OpenDoc and maintain vendor lock in the office suite market. Microsoft (at large) is very, very afraid of open standards because it means that WordPerfect, Star Office, IBM/Lotus Smartsuite, and others may be able to compete on an even keel with Microsoft - and if that happens, where some of the other products are cross-platform, Windows dominance may begin to erode because the very thing locking customers into their marriage with Microsoft will be nonexistent.
No, there really isn't liberalism here in Massachussets - just typical politics. That is, whoever has the largest lobbying budget and pulls the most puppet strings will get their way. This is true at the local level, at the state level, and of course at the Federal level.
No, this is not flamebait, it's just the simple truth regarding politics in general. When was the last time any elected official acted in the best benefit of the common good rather than pander to lobbiests? See DMCA for example, and the broadcast flag, and current efforts to change P2P trading to a felony so that 14-yr-old children can be permanently marked as non-voting felons before they're even of voting age despite record companies' posting great profits in the face of P2P networks.
When Microsoft Office did not offer such accessibility features? Where was the pissing and moaning then?
Let's not forget that People's Republik of Taxachussetts (Sorry, I live in Mass, I get disgusted by the rampant tax-and-spend mentality that has reigned here for years) is doing this to cut back on spending as well as to make documents accessible for as long as technology exists without dealing with vendor lock - and yet, for those folks who have handicaps which prevent their working with the current version of OOo/Star Office, they are going to make reasonable accomodations by giving those users Microsoft Office (they've been up-front about this from the very beginning) and others will convert documents as-needed for those employees.
This whole "Accessibility issue" is merely a strawman Microsoft is trying to raise, because they are intent on not supporting OpenDoc because if they were forced to support the OpenDoc spec, then vendor lock is a thing of the past and the office suite market will once again be competitive. Who knows? Maybe IBM will bring back Lotus Smartsuite (AMI Pro was great in its prime) and maybe Corel will fix WordPerfect and make it into a viable product again, because if competition is introduced, there will be incentive for others to put R&D into their office suites, and then products can be chosen by both technical merit and cost, and not due to vendor lock due to purchase decisions made 10+ years ago.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts already has plans for reasonable accomodations. The law doesn't require that EVERYTHING be accessible, but that accomodations be made for those who need the accessibility, and by offering Microsoft Office to those dealing with physical handicaps, they have fulfilled that legal AND ethical requirement.
By that logic: shame on Microsoft for allowing users logged in as Administer to have the ability to delete system files, change the video driver to run at resolutions the monitor can't sync to, allow to change their password and forget it, or to remove devices in Device Manager. I mean, after all, it's Microsoft's OS, so they should be blamed when third-parties develop malicious programs that Joe Sixpack installs while logged in as Administrator, right? Microsoft should be blamed for every trojan horse out there, as well as every buggy driver as well, by that logic!
They have their faults, most of which lie in maintaining backwards-compatibility with Win3x, DOS, and Win9x, all of which featured NO security, but to blame "reputable" companies' (Sony being reputable is very debatable at this point) developing rootkits and distributing them as part of supposedly-legitimate commodity products is definitely not the fault of MSFT.
I'm definitely no Microsoft fan with their current anti-customer policies, but come on - they are definitely not to blame for this issue.
FWIW, I'd bet that those files can be removed either by using Recovery Console or a Linux 2.4-based live CD.
I was going to post "It's not better if it's not full resolution" - but I'd be wrong, and here's why:
A lower-resolution video allowing for Fair Use (which is 100% legal) is a usable product, where a crippled high-resolution video that won't even PLAY on a still-new HDTV set is not a product that would pass even as-is sale laws (e.g., warranty for merchantability; must perform advertised purpose/function). So: You're right! Even if the pirated version is theoretically inferior but in daily use actually allows for the intended use the legit product should have allowed in the first place, then the "illegal" "pirated" version is actually far superior.
Re:Criminal charges against Microsoft too.
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 1
Shouldn't public policy (e.g., removing an obvious security exploit) win out over any potential DMCA 'violation' - that is not even taking into account the copyright violations present in Sony's unwanted/unordered/defective 'product' not to mention the bad name Microsoft will take for Windows' allowing such an exploit to be installed in the first place (warranted rep or not - in this case not, IMHO).
re: I don't understand why people are given moderation points who don't know how to use it.
No kidding. I got marked a troll the other day because I made a funny about Microsoft Windows - which is obviously a mortal sin on a site filled with fanboys of both extremes. Funny thing is I know who did it because that nice user marked me as a foe. *shrug*
Here's a hint to moderators-of-the-day: if a post can be taken one of two ways (trolling or funny) assume that you have no sense of humor, learn to chuckle, and move on past. Everyone but you got the joke and laughed. Or, do n00bs require a disclaimer like "This is a funny, not a troll" with every tongue-in-cheek or otherwise-satirical (e.g., sarcastic) post?
back on topic
ANYWAY, on Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD: With Tivo suddenly deciding to delete recorded television shows, or refusing to record certain broadcasts, and with the explosion of PDAs, smartphones, and now the Video iPod, even Joe-Sixpack consumers are becoming more sophisticated, and while they may not know about Fair Use is, they'll understand that they're getting ripped off when HD:DVD refuses to play in Hi-Def on their component or DVI plasma-screen HDTVs they just spent $4,500 on, or when they can't convert their DVDs they legally purchased for use on mobile devices - then Microsoft, et. al will get plagued with complaints and eventually class-action lawsuits and boycotts (it'll be worse than Divx was) and the media producers will be forced to fight fires, put spin on the situation and eventually give up and relent and allow for fair use.
Meanwhile, professional pirates in downtown New York and China will not be hindered in the least and will still be raking in the dough.
Isn't it great that our wonderful attorney general is worrying about dealing with truly serious issues such as p2p enabling easy Fair Use despite DRM, instead of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars cracking down on burglars who actually steal tangible goods like cars and jewelry from homes and stores? Isn't it wonderful that they're focusing on P2P rather than crack houses and meth-amphetamine(-sp?) labs? Good thing that they are seeking to turn copyright infringement into a criminal offense; I don't want dangerous 14-yr-old file sharers walking down the street. It's a damn good thing they're cracking down on dangerous MP3 traders rather than serial rapists, pedophiles, and the like.
Copyright was definitely a wonderful law - when it was first put into place. Now with unlimited extensions it has long ago outlived its usefulness. Copyright was intended to allow the transfer of works to public domain after it was first protected against copying to promote continued creation of useful arts and other works. Thanks to our glorious politicians listening to the almighty dollar rather than our founding fathers' intent, goodwill to citizens, and of course common sense, they're selling us out for soft money campaign contributions. Unfortunately because most of us mis-use (or don't even exercise at all) the right to vote that our Founding Fathers guaranteed for us with their blood, we now have an extremely corrupt system where the right of the people can be damned so long as incumbants can count on those corporate campaign donations.
It's a great idea. I hope it works - if it doesn't, then they trash not just one, but two Very Expensive(tm) communications satellites. I know testing rockets like this is expensive, but in the face of destroying expensive satellites, I think the cost of test launches with dummy payloads is well worth it. Based on the article, it looks like the test launch is a real mission with real Very Expensive(tm) payloads, an insurance claim waiting to happen. I'm sure that being a private company handling expensive payloads they're listening to their engineers, but wouldn't it still be use for the test launch to not carry clients' payloads?
I've been forced to run Windows 2000 at previous jobs, along with Dev Studio and Microsoft Office. I've also been forced to use SQA Robot rather than Silk for developing automated test suites until management FINALLY realized that resorting to (X,Y) addressing of GUI elements is NOT a good and portable way to test applications with custom controls. It wasn't until SQA messed up at a Big Corporation(tm)/Major Client(tm) and aforementioned Major Client(tm) told them to dump SQA Robot/BASIC for Silk and the virtues of Segue's extension kit that they FINALLY realized I was telling them the truth and not simply trying to spend money on geek toys. Uh, hullo, I was making do on a 166Mhz Pentium laptop and not begging for a new one, why the hell were they thinking I was trying to spend money for the sake of spending money? It was after that they started to actually take my recommendations (heck, they had IT run major purchases by me for my opinion after that)
So, to force my brother to use OpenOffice when 75% of the computers here are now running Linux (I am hoping to get that up to 95% by the end of the year - can't upgrade the last PC due to our need for Adobe CS2) and it's Just Easier(tm) to save everything to OpenDocument format is perfectly reasonable - and I'm saving my brother $400 on his next PC upgrade to boot, because now he's not going to buy Microsoft Office for his next PC. Instead he can use that money toward the high end NVidia gaming card and dual-core processors he's been drooling over.
Slashdot Mirror
In those cases you don't let camera, memory card, etc. manufacturers produce products for 10+ years using that technology THEN demand they cough up the dough. Any company that knowingly does that should lose all protection rights to any patents they hold because it's the civil equivalent of entrapment.
They won't happen in Vista - you'll get the "Red Screen of Death" because when Microsoft finally got sick of the BSOD jokes they had to do something about it. ;-)
In all seriousness though (actually the RSOD thing is real, the untrue part above is the rationale for it) WinXP can and does BSOD. It doesn't happen for "Floppy not found" or "reinsert CD" crap, but "IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL" BSOD messages stemming from a damaged (or simply buggy) driver, flaked-out motherboard, bad memory, or even viruses still do occur. Microsoft has made great strides in improving Windows' ability to handle errors but it still has a long way to go (hence the rumors you read online about Microsoft switching to a BSD-like architecture after Vista, I have no idea how true or untrue that is).
Has Bill Gates ever architected or implemented any code at Microsoft? He's known to have bought BASIC and DOS pretty much done and spent his time peddling it, struggling to make deals in the beginning, and when those deals came through he had a heck of a lot more to deal with on the business side of Microsoft. When did he ever have time to implement any code - especially after he scored that deal with IBM? Also by then Microsoft was busy licensing BASIC left and right, and started acquiring other companies to diversify their product offerings as soon as they gained some success. I'm not knocking Gates, but really - how much does he really need to know about the details of writing a class to decide "AJAX good, posting back then reloading the entire page bad?"
Being technically savvy when it comes to decision making at the exective level doesn't mean you have to know how to properly allocate memory and implement proper thread management - it requires a basic knowledge of the benefits and drawbacks to each technology, and quite often you'll be referring to your department members for the nitty-gritty technical details and advice. If you're, say, a VP of development (in a reasonable-sized company) and are spending your time implementing a data abstraction layer, you really ought to either not be a VP, or you need to hire someone else to be the VP and go back to being a coder.
So I think AC has hit the nail on the head with that post. Having execs at Microsoft code would be a colossal waste of time and money. What their execs DO need to do is a) take input from engineers much sooner b) start listening to customers again and c) don't shoot the messenger (the engineers) when they tell you that you're making the wrong decision or that the company needs to change direction with the industry.
The optimal solution to this is a intelligent process and thread scheduling in the Windows kernel.
(the above should also apply to Linux, *BSD, etc.)
Another solution (possibly a better-performing one) is to distribute multiple binaries and the installer would the appropriate one that is optimized for the system's processor, but then the release engineer's life will be hell because in that case the release engineer will have to run multiple builds per project, the installer would be more complex, plus QA's test matrix would be a hell of a lot larger. Of course that would drive the cost of software way up. For some situations it would work and is already being done (e.g., multiple kernels shipping with an OS, multiple HALs shipping with Windows) but for your average $30 to $70 game "it just ain't gonna happen"
Is what exactly?
When was the last time your sysadmin brokered a $2mil deal with a client?
Issued a press release?
Went on business luncheons and schmoozed with potential clients?
If you want your IT personnel to wear business suits. etc. YOU fund the clothes, and also don't expect overtime, etc. and of course don't expect your IT people to go crawling under a desk, over ceilings, etc. to fix computer and network issues because doing so will ruin a $500 to $700 suit.
Want IT to be on call around the clock and do dirty work like crawling under desks and in closets, phone rooms, ceilings, etc? Then they WILL dress casual or they'll be giving their notice. The pay may be good, but it's not THAT good.
Oh and furthermore: I don't recall seeing a single Mac when I was there (2004).
Then why did I see Windows boxes inside Anniston Army Depot last year (2004)?
They're still running many, many, many Windows boxes and they still have many people developing and maintaing defense-and-security database apps on Windows.
. . .when you know it's a losing proposition when it comes to actually getting hired by Corporate America? Unless you're a scientist lucky enough to score a job with the likes of Raytheon or another defense contractor, you're destined to work for nonprofit organizations squeaking by on grants or working in something other than your chosen field, because Corporate America will hire one scientist and three engineers on H1B or L1 Visas (or simply offshore the job) for the salary you would demand.
Scummy, yes, but it's reality. It's sad when your future looks brighter if you want to become a lawyer and litigate than if you want to become a productive member of society and innovate.
It is a situation similar to that of IT - industry was demanding more IT grads, more IT training programs, etc. and and clamoring for IT personnel. Many answered that demand, only to get stabbed in the back with offshoring. Many left the industry - some went back to school to become attorneys, some sell real estate, some opened restaurants, others started their own tech companies, etc. etc. and won't go back to working in technical departments for other people. Now industry is really hurting for tech help, demanding yet more H1B and L1 visas (and getting them approved) and many very qualified people won't go back to IT because the same cycle would repeat itself. Now college and voc-tech-training students are avoiding IT and going into trades (you'll always need carpenters, welders, electricians, etc.) and industry is going to be facing a severe shortage of IT help in 5 to 15 years. Folks who left IT couldn't give less of a &@%! about the companies who will be hurting, because it's those companies which started the backstabbing cycle.
Why bother with sciences and technical training when you know you don't have a future you can count on? You're better off becoming a plumber and charging $100/hour to fix clogged drains and leaky faucets and choose where and when you want to work rather than be on-call 24 hours a day for a company who pays you only $30/hr to $50/hr (well, more like $15/hr to $25/hr in reality when you figure the hours you ACTUALLY put in vs. the hours you get paid for) and deal with shit from whiny users and pointy-haired bosses.
(Note: this post is not flamebait nor a troll, but merely introspection/mental masturbation. Disagree? Shake your head and move on.)
To compare this to a faulty fuel pump in a Ford or GM product is off-base and not a fair comparison. What Sony did was more akin to a car manufacturer knowingly and intentionally installing, say, an HEI coil inside the fuel pump (I know it's ridiculous, but bear with me) and using faulty wires with non-fuel-resistant insulation to the spark plugs.
Sony knowingly and willfully distributed a rootkit with the intent that it would be impossible to remove, without expressing the purpose (or even existence) of the "Product" to consumers, and so far the only remedy (aside from sector editors or hacking with a Linux 2.4.x kernel, both of which require skills Joe Sixpack doesn't possess) that can remove the rootkit disables Windows' security measures.
I hope this rootkit got installed in some secure government installation - like the Pentagon, Anniston Army Depot, NORAD, or somewhere else where non-writable audio CDs are allowed and security is the highest possible concern - because if that happened you can expect that the government will come down on Sony with something a little stronger than a "tsk, tsk!"
Incidentally, as an aside: a breach like that would also force the military to review Microsoft's compliance with security standards where Windows is concerned, and when it's found that it's not really as secure as Microsoft claims, they'll switch to selinux or *BSD and help promote development of those platforms. While Microsoft isn't to blame at ALL for a rootkit like this, that it's so hard to remove AND the removal tools disable Windows security measures CAN and SHOULD be blamed on Microsoft.
For what it's worth, Sony has been digging their own grave for a long time. They may have a strong OEM market for CMOS and CCD chipsets, trinitron tubes, and LCD panels, but the margins on those items is much thinner than it is for products sold to the end user.
The last Sony product I bought was a 36" (Non-VEGA due to problems with the VEGA line at the time) television, and a $370 DVD Player at the time. Well, it turned out later on that the particular model DVD player I bought was from a bad run of them - many complaints online about the DVD player failing shortly after the (pathetically short) warranty period. Well, mine crapped out after about two years, so I called Sony for a replacement optical sled assembly and they wanted more for that puppy than Toshiba and others wanted for a whole new (and better) DVD player. I was pissed because this was supposedly a high-end unit and Sony is basically raping customers on replacement parts. I held onto the (non-functional) DVD player for a while longer, trying to convince Sony to just sell me the part for what it's worth, not for the price of a whole new DVD player, then I finally chucked it.
A few weeks later from one of the parts catalogs we receive I discovered, much to my dismay, that one of my distributors carries the exact sled I needed for the OEM market - same item, same specs, different part item, for under $20.
So, now I buy NO sony products (embedded components I can't avoid aside).
My point is: they've been treating customers like crap for years; their installing a rootkit for which the removal tools completely disable any security Windows has does not surprise me in the least bit. Once they get your money, they couldn't give less of a crap about the customer, because like most public companies they only look to the end of the current quarter, and don't look 3 to 5 years ahead and consider the long-term ramifications of their quality control, piss-poor support, and even worse customer disservice.
Don't forget your tinfoil hat! Oh wait, that will amplify the signals they're using to search for your porn collection --- or so "they" want you to believe.
Wow, that is just incredible! Hmm, this gives me ideas for the Commodore-One system if it ever comes to market.
But what about downtime due to maintenance, inevitable patches, etc.?
Our web site used to be on asp.net but with the weekly (or more often) security patches which all too often require a reboot and with the slow performance of asp.net we migrated our web sites to php, and although the development environments for php are NOWHERE near as good as Visual Studio, the end result performs better, even on much lower-end machines.
I really like Microsoft Exchange's feature sets and its maintenance tools are excellent, but again, maintenance requires bringing the information store offline, restoring from a backup (e.g., after spam filters go haywire) is a pain when Exchange decides to replay transactions you wanted to recover from, and defragging can take a while.
IIS? Want to tune it? Harden it? Have fun editing the metabase - you have to deal with the equivalent of PEEK and POKE statements for a ton of undocumented (or barely documented) settings, and hope you didn't mis-type anything because the settings are not readibly readable.
Let's not even bring the cost of licensing into the equation yet.
The end result? Windows/Exchange/IIS may be easier/quicker to set up but tuning and maintenance takes a heck of a lot longer, and introduces more downtime. Of course, Microsoft's downtime statistics don't include "scheduled maintenance" (read their analyses carefully).
Total cost of ownership? Combine more complex tuning, "scheduled maintenance" downtime, and now, client access licenses per connection, and you end up spending far more money than a slightly longer up-front implementation of a *nix (e.g., BSD, Solaris Linux, OS/X, foo) would take.
Aren't marketing literature and paid-for-by-vendor studies wonderful? They focus on a limited subset of variables (this goes for both sides, not just Microsoft) in order to tweak the end result however they see fit - and then they can make their claims on the resultant data without lying (based on the data set).
Actually if you use the KDE environment, you have most of the accessibility features that Windows has out of the box, and it works about as well.
However Microsoft Office XP and 2003 provide additional accessibility tools that Windows XP does not offer out of the box, and that is the issue - but where Massachusetts is already providing reasonable accomodations by continuing to offer Microsoft Office to those with physical disabilities, Microsoft is simply raising up a strawman so that they can avoid having to implement OpenDoc and maintain vendor lock in the office suite market. Microsoft (at large) is very, very afraid of open standards because it means that WordPerfect, Star Office, IBM/Lotus Smartsuite, and others may be able to compete on an even keel with Microsoft - and if that happens, where some of the other products are cross-platform, Windows dominance may begin to erode because the very thing locking customers into their marriage with Microsoft will be nonexistent.
No, there really isn't liberalism here in Massachussets - just typical politics. That is, whoever has the largest lobbying budget and pulls the most puppet strings will get their way. This is true at the local level, at the state level, and of course at the Federal level.
No, this is not flamebait, it's just the simple truth regarding politics in general. When was the last time any elected official acted in the best benefit of the common good rather than pander to lobbiests? See DMCA for example, and the broadcast flag, and current efforts to change P2P trading to a felony so that 14-yr-old children can be permanently marked as non-voting felons before they're even of voting age despite record companies' posting great profits in the face of P2P networks.
When Microsoft Office did not offer such accessibility features? Where was the pissing and moaning then?
Let's not forget that People's Republik of Taxachussetts (Sorry, I live in Mass, I get disgusted by the rampant tax-and-spend mentality that has reigned here for years) is doing this to cut back on spending as well as to make documents accessible for as long as technology exists without dealing with vendor lock - and yet, for those folks who have handicaps which prevent their working with the current version of OOo/Star Office, they are going to make reasonable accomodations by giving those users Microsoft Office (they've been up-front about this from the very beginning) and others will convert documents as-needed for those employees.
This whole "Accessibility issue" is merely a strawman Microsoft is trying to raise, because they are intent on not supporting OpenDoc because if they were forced to support the OpenDoc spec, then vendor lock is a thing of the past and the office suite market will once again be competitive. Who knows? Maybe IBM will bring back Lotus Smartsuite (AMI Pro was great in its prime) and maybe Corel will fix WordPerfect and make it into a viable product again, because if competition is introduced, there will be incentive for others to put R&D into their office suites, and then products can be chosen by both technical merit and cost, and not due to vendor lock due to purchase decisions made 10+ years ago.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts already has plans for reasonable accomodations. The law doesn't require that EVERYTHING be accessible, but that accomodations be made for those who need the accessibility, and by offering Microsoft Office to those dealing with physical handicaps, they have fulfilled that legal AND ethical requirement.
By that standard, so can Windows' own install CD. I made the foolish assumption that users actually want to salvage their data. ;)
By that logic: shame on Microsoft for allowing users logged in as Administer to have the ability to delete system files, change the video driver to run at resolutions the monitor can't sync to, allow to change their password and forget it, or to remove devices in Device Manager. I mean, after all, it's Microsoft's OS, so they should be blamed when third-parties develop malicious programs that Joe Sixpack installs while logged in as Administrator, right? Microsoft should be blamed for every trojan horse out there, as well as every buggy driver as well, by that logic!
They have their faults, most of which lie in maintaining backwards-compatibility with Win3x, DOS, and Win9x, all of which featured NO security, but to blame "reputable" companies' (Sony being reputable is very debatable at this point) developing rootkits and distributing them as part of supposedly-legitimate commodity products is definitely not the fault of MSFT.
I'm definitely no Microsoft fan with their current anti-customer policies, but come on - they are definitely not to blame for this issue.
FWIW, I'd bet that those files can be removed either by using Recovery Console or a Linux 2.4-based live CD.
I was going to post "It's not better if it's not full resolution" - but I'd be wrong, and here's why:
A lower-resolution video allowing for Fair Use (which is 100% legal) is a usable product, where a crippled high-resolution video that won't even PLAY on a still-new HDTV set is not a product that would pass even as-is sale laws (e.g., warranty for merchantability; must perform advertised purpose/function). So: You're right! Even if the pirated version is theoretically inferior but in daily use actually allows for the intended use the legit product should have allowed in the first place, then the "illegal" "pirated" version is actually far superior.
Shouldn't public policy (e.g., removing an obvious security exploit) win out over any potential DMCA 'violation' - that is not even taking into account the copyright violations present in Sony's unwanted/unordered/defective 'product' not to mention the bad name Microsoft will take for Windows' allowing such an exploit to be installed in the first place (warranted rep or not - in this case not, IMHO).
Is that rootkit "free as in speech", "free as in beer", or both? ;-)
No kidding. I got marked a troll the other day because I made a funny about Microsoft Windows - which is obviously a mortal sin on a site filled with fanboys of both extremes. Funny thing is I know who did it because that nice user marked me as a foe. *shrug*
Here's a hint to moderators-of-the-day: if a post can be taken one of two ways (trolling or funny) assume that you have no sense of humor, learn to chuckle, and move on past. Everyone but you got the joke and laughed. Or, do n00bs require a disclaimer like "This is a funny, not a troll" with every tongue-in-cheek or otherwise-satirical (e.g., sarcastic) post?
back on topicANYWAY, on Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD: With Tivo suddenly deciding to delete recorded television shows, or refusing to record certain broadcasts, and with the explosion of PDAs, smartphones, and now the Video iPod, even Joe-Sixpack consumers are becoming more sophisticated, and while they may not know about Fair Use is, they'll understand that they're getting ripped off when HD:DVD refuses to play in Hi-Def on their component or DVI plasma-screen HDTVs they just spent $4,500 on, or when they can't convert their DVDs they legally purchased for use on mobile devices - then Microsoft, et. al will get plagued with complaints and eventually class-action lawsuits and boycotts (it'll be worse than Divx was) and the media producers will be forced to fight fires, put spin on the situation and eventually give up and relent and allow for fair use.
Meanwhile, professional pirates in downtown New York and China will not be hindered in the least and will still be raking in the dough.
Isn't it great that our wonderful attorney general is worrying about dealing with truly serious issues such as p2p enabling easy Fair Use despite DRM, instead of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars cracking down on burglars who actually steal tangible goods like cars and jewelry from homes and stores? Isn't it wonderful that they're focusing on P2P rather than crack houses and meth-amphetamine(-sp?) labs? Good thing that they are seeking to turn copyright infringement into a criminal offense; I don't want dangerous 14-yr-old file sharers walking down the street. It's a damn good thing they're cracking down on dangerous MP3 traders rather than serial rapists, pedophiles, and the like.
Copyright was definitely a wonderful law - when it was first put into place. Now with unlimited extensions it has long ago outlived its usefulness. Copyright was intended to allow the transfer of works to public domain after it was first protected against copying to promote continued creation of useful arts and other works. Thanks to our glorious politicians listening to the almighty dollar rather than our founding fathers' intent, goodwill to citizens, and of course common sense, they're selling us out for soft money campaign contributions. Unfortunately because most of us mis-use (or don't even exercise at all) the right to vote that our Founding Fathers guaranteed for us with their blood, we now have an extremely corrupt system where the right of the people can be damned so long as incumbants can count on those corporate campaign donations.
It's a great idea. I hope it works - if it doesn't, then they trash not just one, but two Very Expensive(tm) communications satellites. I know testing rockets like this is expensive, but in the face of destroying expensive satellites, I think the cost of test launches with dummy payloads is well worth it. Based on the article, it looks like the test launch is a real mission with real Very Expensive(tm) payloads, an insurance claim waiting to happen. I'm sure that being a private company handling expensive payloads they're listening to their engineers, but wouldn't it still be use for the test launch to not carry clients' payloads?
No kidding, bmo.
I've been forced to run Windows 2000 at previous jobs, along with Dev Studio and Microsoft Office. I've also been forced to use SQA Robot rather than Silk for developing automated test suites until management FINALLY realized that resorting to (X,Y) addressing of GUI elements is NOT a good and portable way to test applications with custom controls. It wasn't until SQA messed up at a Big Corporation(tm)/Major Client(tm) and aforementioned Major Client(tm) told them to dump SQA Robot/BASIC for Silk and the virtues of Segue's extension kit that they FINALLY realized I was telling them the truth and not simply trying to spend money on geek toys. Uh, hullo, I was making do on a 166Mhz Pentium laptop and not begging for a new one, why the hell were they thinking I was trying to spend money for the sake of spending money? It was after that they started to actually take my recommendations (heck, they had IT run major purchases by me for my opinion after that)
So, to force my brother to use OpenOffice when 75% of the computers here are now running Linux (I am hoping to get that up to 95% by the end of the year - can't upgrade the last PC due to our need for Adobe CS2) and it's Just Easier(tm) to save everything to OpenDocument format is perfectly reasonable - and I'm saving my brother $400 on his next PC upgrade to boot, because now he's not going to buy Microsoft Office for his next PC. Instead he can use that money toward the high end NVidia gaming card and dual-core processors he's been drooling over.