"and it's comical how Apple users always bring up GUI design issues" it's because Apple fan boys only have to GUI to talk about. But I guess thats all you can rave about when the companies core products are all front end.
The article also fails to cover other development environments such as SQL. Half baked indeed.
"If a company has some business-critical custom application written in Visual Basic 6, that company isn't going to roll out Linux to its desktops; it's trapped on Windows."
Actually they could host it within citrix or similiar and rollout to the desktops. They are not locked into windows on the desktop.
"They're too demanding anyway. They're the ones who care about their tools and get upset when an API is badly designed. They're the ones who notice the inconsistencies and omissions and gripe about them."
Or maybe they accept that there is no such thing as the perfect piece of software. Maybe they understand that the software in question a lot of the time is there to support business and sometimes business requirements out weigh technical 'perfection'. I accept it as a fact of life... like taxes blogging about it won't change a thing.
"For example, there's a function called OpenFile. OpenFile was a Win16 function. It opens files, obviously enough. In Win32 it was deprecated--kept in, to allow 16-bit apps to be ported to Win32 more easily, but deprecated all the same."
And as a good developer you won't use it. Maybe a bad developer will but a bad developer will write bad code regardless of how many things you put in place to stop them. A developer should be able to use his discretion as to using this or not, taking into account his particular circumstances. Maybe it should be used for a quick dirty port while version '2.0' is under development. 'Get it in, get it running, minimise the business impact and we'll address these issues next major release' is something that commonly gets thrown around in enterprise by management... you know they guys that are paying for your services.
But if you use the same API in 64-bit Windows, it still gives you the pair of numbers, rather than just a nice simple 64-bit number. While this made some kind of sense on 32-bit Windows, it makes no sense at all on 64-bit Windows, since 64-bit Windows can, by definition, use 64-bit numbers.
This and other points in the article are such small non issues and are just gripes. Would it be nice to get 1x64 number? Yes. Does it make no sense? No. Looking deeper at things like reducing time to port 32bit to 64bit and associated costs in developer time/money it makes sense. I can happily live with it.
In 32-bit Windows, it was called system32. In 64-bit Windows it's called, er, system32 again. Because although there's an API call that programs can make to find out the name of the folder, there are enough programs that don't bother using it and just blindly assume that it's called system32.
Again... you can't stop bad programmers (a lot being 3rd parties) from making dumb mistakes... but you can try and reduce the impact. You can bet there are those purists just like the article author inside MS that hate this as well. But in the interest of having this work a decision was made, and i suspect not for MS's benefit. Again just live with it.
For example, dialog boxes in Windows have traditionally been poorly designed, because their buttons are given generic labels like "Yes" and "No," or "OK" and "Cancel,"
If you take the ranting and raving out of the article it has very little of value. If Mac or *nix had greater market share then we would see more bad software and API's in those environments as well. As it is some of the open source code I have seen is terrible. There is no way to prevent these issues economically, good programmers just accept them, code around them and move forward.
The point is that anything related to national security should have an associated security clearance process. That if they don't turn up anything in that process where they have access to magnitudes of information what do they hope to find in some emails? That anyone intent on taking down infrastructure will not use corporate email and thus your best chance is via the established clearances process, not more legislation open to abuse. I'll make this even easier for you to understand Russell... ferret out threats via background checks pre employment, not through email post employment.
...the minimum is a police check to get a job. After that you have security clearances from Protected through to Top Secret and then breifings start eg. Alpha, Bravo etc. the higher level clearances pass through ASIO and they do background checks. If they didn't turn up anything about you being a terrorist going through the past 10+ years of your life, which you give them permission to do I don't know what they hope to find in your email. They look at club memberships, financial records, people you talk too and more. A dedicated, intelligent hacker is not going to try email a trojan and then give up, and you don't need to pour through emails to find binary attachments... and all this under a *labour* goverment! So much for the rights and protection of workers.
Talks cheap... post a picture and show everyone just how hot she is... bonus points if she is holding a D20.
Till then I acknowledge that you find her hot but refuse to accept that makes her universally seen as hot.
Anything less is a cop out.
Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer. This question should never have been given airtime for a number of reasons. A lot of the time the advice is asked for because the person is lazy and wants everyone else to do the leg work they should be doing. If thats not the case then there is a good chance that what the person is asking is obviously above their skill level and any solution given no matter how correct and informative at the end of the day will not be implemented. Those that can do... those that can't ask slashdot. It would be a different matter if someone came out as said "I have done this, this and this and am having trouble / can't find..." but when you come out as say "...i haven't done anything to help myself tell me what to do people..." you are gonna get told that... no effort on your part = no effort on anyone elses part.
"Let's not pile on this company in undue haste." your obviously new around here. Jokes aside (and this isn't directed to Sontas) what do all the soap boxers propose? We drag Burmese officials into a US court? That we drag a US company into a US court about software used in Burma? That we take Burmese officials into a Burma court? Please... this is one of those things that can't be policed, and if it could wouldn't be. Push comes to shove Burma will just shutdown all communications, the power switch is a fantastic censorship device.
I think if we are going to talk about ultimate responsibility it is with the developers and vendor of the software. They failed to write secure software for a mission critical system. Their failure was a lack of foresight, testing or both. Personally I am surprised that on slashdot where ripping vedors security seems to be a hobby that the fingers weren't pointed in this direction first post. It was the brains at the start of the process that failed, not the brawn at the end of it.
"I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naïve. We're not that stupid up here" implies that Duluth juries are stupid... just not *that* stupid.
How does an organisation seperate the "pretenders from crowding out the contenders" ? All they generally have to go on during the hiring process is a resume and interview. If a role requires 'some skills' but isn't suited to 'no skills', minor certification(s) provide a good, quick, recognisable baseline to filter through the applicants.
Anyone with no skills will be found out pretty quickly regardless of their certification(s).
The only real alternatives are time consuming... either calling references (which for a minor role would be a waste of time, and not workable for the initial filtering of candidates) or setting up a 'labl' situation for people (bigger waste of time).
Further I would not want to work for a company that thought it was fine to have ten people work through a 'lab' scenario to hire one, thus wasting the time of 9 others.
Your obviously one of those morons that shoots their mouth off, has no extended business knowledge and can easy criticise but finds suggesting alternatives more difficult. Maybe you could put NFI after your name to fill in the gap where letters could be, but aren't because well... "Either you have the necessary skills, or you don't." and as such you you are to l33t to pursue certification because you have skillz.
"Is there an abundance of Office 2007 licenses in Australia that is causing this price drop or is demand so low that Microsoft has to practically give its products away there to move them off the shelves?" Ummm... Linux is free and still most people do not install it.
Oh and they don't 'fuck' you over, you choose to be fucked over, your not forced to buy or use their products. Maybe your being played, and based on the intelligence factor of your post I can see why. Do you just bag MS to impress girls? I expect they play you as well. Ahhh... critisism... fun for the whole family.
Microsoft planted it themselves to discredit Apple and to get them to shut their pie hole over how superior the are security wise. Apple found this out when they shook down the spy (gestapo style) and the best they can do is have a small dig in a PR release.
Microsoft wins this round. Then again maybe they have the same QA company as MacDonalds do for thier 'peripherals'.
I know exactly what slashdot is... it's news for nerds... although I am still searching for the news. My ignorance can be expressed as a percentage equal to the number of girls I pick up after telling them about my aforementioned, and dare i say rather large slashdot number, they go crazy. How do I know they go crazy? Because they start laughing with their friends and pointing at me, strike back for the nerds I say! I would never call you an asshat... I am to hardcore for that... I would call you an @55h47. I am uber cool because I spelt that with 83.33% numbers, thoze kinda skillz most script kiddies woudl kill for. But I digress from my argument, which is that there is no way that Bill Gates could be funding the middle east war on terror as Microsoft has invested all their money into DRM technology in an effort to circumvent Adobe from taking market share by releasing their products under GPL and intergrating it into FreeBSD (because Linux sucks and is for people who aren't smart enough to use UNIX). I know because my friends cousin works for Microsoft in the office next to Steve. Then again "I, for one, welcome our new Iranian overlords" (that get funnier everytime I hear it!). Anyway I have to go because my mum said dinner is ready.
Like I said if the shoe fits wear it, which in your case if it doesn't fit *don't wear it*. My comment wasn't targeted at you directly, it was general. No I am not a microsoft support kind of guy, if you must know I am a developer (.Net and Java). Maybe your comment wasn't a rant but thats just splitting hairs. The crux of my point is that any company that encourages choice shouldn't be slagged off. Fact is in any other context/.ers scream loud and proud for freedom of choice (think music media) or freedom of expression and are all pro choice. However put MS in the picture and suddenly choice is an evil word. If ford encouraged people to drive more fuel efficient cars would they be slagged of for trying to sell more cars?
P.S. I like run on sentences, sometimes I swear and sometimes I use words that aren't in the dictionary whats your point?
"Microsoft, for their part, insists that adoption of the kit is completely optional, and is merely offered as a suggestion to help boost PC sales once Vista is released."
Its clearly states that it is to sell more PC's not about making 'good' computers, the tie between the OS and case was a rant brought up independant of the article. Now given how much money people spend on large wheels, jewlery, makeup etc. obviously design plays into a large number of purchasing decisions. The article made no suggestion that the look of the computer would make it 'a good computer'. Regarding the basement comment if the shoe fits wear it, I'm a bit over socially inept/.ers taking narrow minded stances simply because of a need to validate their supposed intelligence and peeer bond through critisism of a 'created enemy' that at the end of the day will influence more people than they will, and get their cash in the mean time, oh and brace yourself, a large number of those people will be content with their purchase, sorry to burst your bubble.
Newsflash. Not everyone in the world is a nerd, geek or tech minded, if someone wants a personal PC that is attractive then thats their choice and its just as valid as what ever criteria you select your PC by. Maybe people would prefer to differentiate themselves by look as opposed to pissing contest rights about how large their RAID array is. I have four Antec cases and am happy to pay more for them than a shitty beige box. I'll give all you/.'ers a clue, looks matter. I'll put big money on all you guys sitting in your mums basement aren't grabbing and hoarding pr0n of ugly unattrative women, why? Because you value a certain look, you have a preference and the same applies to people selecting what case they want, and I applaude any company (not just MS) that encourages more choices to be available.
"Then I thought about this... for those of you who use less reliable OSes like Windows, do you remember how much of a pain it was to restore back to the EXACT state you were in before a hard drive crash?"
I never ceases to amaze me where/.ers manage to have a dig. A windows dig in a doomsday article, 10 points for trying. Second its not to much drama to restore to an exact state with RAID or a backup tape. Third doing things the second, or third time around often results in improvments, look at the discovery of the light bulb, or let me see a raise of hands of the coders who look at code and see a better way to do it the second or third time around.
"At the very least, know how to get yourself out of a sticky situation using bleach, aluminum foil, paper towels or napkins, baking soda, a simple container and lots of copper wire..."
Ummm... yeah... world destroyed, dying of cancer, rampaging mob coming for hydro, no bullets left... *wait a second* I know how I'll get out of this sticky situation...
Slashdot Mirror
The article also fails to cover other development environments such as SQL. Half baked indeed.
Actually they could host it within citrix or similiar and rollout to the desktops. They are not locked into windows on the desktop.
"They're too demanding anyway. They're the ones who care about their tools and get upset when an API is badly designed. They're the ones who notice the inconsistencies and omissions and gripe about them."
Or maybe they accept that there is no such thing as the perfect piece of software. Maybe they understand that the software in question a lot of the time is there to support business and sometimes business requirements out weigh technical 'perfection'. I accept it as a fact of life... like taxes blogging about it won't change a thing.
"For example, there's a function called OpenFile. OpenFile was a Win16 function. It opens files, obviously enough. In Win32 it was deprecated--kept in, to allow 16-bit apps to be ported to Win32 more easily, but deprecated all the same."
And as a good developer you won't use it. Maybe a bad developer will but a bad developer will write bad code regardless of how many things you put in place to stop them. A developer should be able to use his discretion as to using this or not, taking into account his particular circumstances. Maybe it should be used for a quick dirty port while version '2.0' is under development. 'Get it in, get it running, minimise the business impact and we'll address these issues next major release' is something that commonly gets thrown around in enterprise by management... you know they guys that are paying for your services.
But if you use the same API in 64-bit Windows, it still gives you the pair of numbers, rather than just a nice simple 64-bit number. While this made some kind of sense on 32-bit Windows, it makes no sense at all on 64-bit Windows, since 64-bit Windows can, by definition, use 64-bit numbers.
This and other points in the article are such small non issues and are just gripes. Would it be nice to get 1x64 number? Yes. Does it make no sense? No. Looking deeper at things like reducing time to port 32bit to 64bit and associated costs in developer time/money it makes sense. I can happily live with it.
In 32-bit Windows, it was called system32. In 64-bit Windows it's called, er, system32 again. Because although there's an API call that programs can make to find out the name of the folder, there are enough programs that don't bother using it and just blindly assume that it's called system32.
Again... you can't stop bad programmers (a lot being 3rd parties) from making dumb mistakes... but you can try and reduce the impact. You can bet there are those purists just like the article author inside MS that hate this as well. But in the interest of having this work a decision was made, and i suspect not for MS's benefit. Again just live with it.
For example, dialog boxes in Windows have traditionally been poorly designed, because their buttons are given generic labels like "Yes" and "No," or "OK" and "Cancel,"
Microsoft have been going on about this for ages since 2001 actually. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997506.aspx
If you take the ranting and raving out of the article it has very little of value. If Mac or *nix had greater market share then we would see more bad software and API's in those environments as well. As it is some of the open source code I have seen is terrible. There is no way to prevent these issues economically, good programmers just accept them, code around them and move forward.
The point is that anything related to national security should have an associated security clearance process. That if they don't turn up anything in that process where they have access to magnitudes of information what do they hope to find in some emails? That anyone intent on taking down infrastructure will not use corporate email and thus your best chance is via the established clearances process, not more legislation open to abuse. I'll make this even easier for you to understand Russell... ferret out threats via background checks pre employment, not through email post employment.
...the minimum is a police check to get a job. After that you have security clearances from Protected through to Top Secret and then breifings start eg. Alpha, Bravo etc. the higher level clearances pass through ASIO and they do background checks. If they didn't turn up anything about you being a terrorist going through the past 10+ years of your life, which you give them permission to do I don't know what they hope to find in your email. They look at club memberships, financial records, people you talk too and more. A dedicated, intelligent hacker is not going to try email a trojan and then give up, and you don't need to pour through emails to find binary attachments... and all this under a *labour* goverment! So much for the rights and protection of workers.
I understand what your implying... do I care? No.
I guess if I install this on a RAM drive then I violate TOS. What if I install it on a solid state disk?
Blizzard deserve to loose on grounds of stupidity.
This is not the internet that Al Gore had in mind when he invented it!
Talks cheap... post a picture and show everyone just how hot she is... bonus points if she is holding a D20. Till then I acknowledge that you find her hot but refuse to accept that makes her universally seen as hot. Anything less is a cop out.
Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer. This question should never have been given airtime for a number of reasons. A lot of the time the advice is asked for because the person is lazy and wants everyone else to do the leg work they should be doing. If thats not the case then there is a good chance that what the person is asking is obviously above their skill level and any solution given no matter how correct and informative at the end of the day will not be implemented. Those that can do... those that can't ask slashdot. It would be a different matter if someone came out as said "I have done this, this and this and am having trouble / can't find..." but when you come out as say "...i haven't done anything to help myself tell me what to do people..." you are gonna get told that... no effort on your part = no effort on anyone elses part.
"Let's not pile on this company in undue haste." your obviously new around here. Jokes aside (and this isn't directed to Sontas) what do all the soap boxers propose? We drag Burmese officials into a US court? That we drag a US company into a US court about software used in Burma? That we take Burmese officials into a Burma court? Please... this is one of those things that can't be policed, and if it could wouldn't be. Push comes to shove Burma will just shutdown all communications, the power switch is a fantastic censorship device.
I think if we are going to talk about ultimate responsibility it is with the developers and vendor of the software. They failed to write secure software for a mission critical system. Their failure was a lack of foresight, testing or both. Personally I am surprised that on slashdot where ripping vedors security seems to be a hobby that the fingers weren't pointed in this direction first post. It was the brains at the start of the process that failed, not the brawn at the end of it.
"I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naïve. We're not that stupid up here" implies that Duluth juries are stupid... just not *that* stupid.
How does an organisation seperate the "pretenders from crowding out the contenders" ? All they generally have to go on during the hiring process is a resume and interview. If a role requires 'some skills' but isn't suited to 'no skills', minor certification(s) provide a good, quick, recognisable baseline to filter through the applicants.
Anyone with no skills will be found out pretty quickly regardless of their certification(s).
The only real alternatives are time consuming... either calling references (which for a minor role would be a waste of time, and not workable for the initial filtering of candidates) or setting up a 'labl' situation for people (bigger waste of time).
Further I would not want to work for a company that thought it was fine to have ten people work through a 'lab' scenario to hire one, thus wasting the time of 9 others.
Your obviously one of those morons that shoots their mouth off, has no extended business knowledge and can easy criticise but finds suggesting alternatives more difficult. Maybe you could put NFI after your name to fill in the gap where letters could be, but aren't because well... "Either you have the necessary skills, or you don't." and as such you you are to l33t to pursue certification because you have skillz.
Oh and they don't 'fuck' you over, you choose to be fucked over, your not forced to buy or use their products. Maybe your being played, and based on the intelligence factor of your post I can see why. Do you just bag MS to impress girls? I expect they play you as well. Ahhh... critisism... fun for the whole family.
Actually take enough LSD and not only do you know there is a god, but you get to sit down and talk to the dude.
Microsoft planted it themselves to discredit Apple and to get them to shut their pie hole over how superior the are security wise. Apple found this out when they shook down the spy (gestapo style) and the best they can do is have a small dig in a PR release.
Microsoft wins this round. Then again maybe they have the same QA company as MacDonalds do for thier 'peripherals'.
Dear 'Soon to be foe' ingolke,
I know exactly what slashdot is... it's news for nerds... although I am still searching for the news. My ignorance can be expressed as a percentage equal to the number of girls I pick up after telling them about my aforementioned, and dare i say rather large slashdot number, they go crazy. How do I know they go crazy? Because they start laughing with their friends and pointing at me, strike back for the nerds I say! I would never call you an asshat... I am to hardcore for that... I would call you an @55h47. I am uber cool because I spelt that with 83.33% numbers, thoze kinda skillz most script kiddies woudl kill for. But I digress from my argument, which is that there is no way that Bill Gates could be funding the middle east war on terror as Microsoft has invested all their money into DRM technology in an effort to circumvent Adobe from taking market share by releasing their products under GPL and intergrating it into FreeBSD (because Linux sucks and is for people who aren't smart enough to use UNIX). I know because my friends cousin works for Microsoft in the office next to Steve. Then again "I, for one, welcome our new Iranian overlords" (that get funnier everytime I hear it!). Anyway I have to go because my mum said dinner is ready.
Warmest Regards,
Overbaud
P.S. Your spelling sucks.
"After 1000 posts I've learned that language is quite possibly the most horrible invention known to man."
Yeah stupid old language, who needs it, never contributed anything to anyone. I have some advice for you before your next post...
"shut up, it is statisically likely that you will save yourself from looking like a complete ass."
...this chicks prozac was destroyed by the hurricane as well. *sigh*
Like I said if the shoe fits wear it, which in your case if it doesn't fit *don't wear it*. My comment wasn't targeted at you directly, it was general. No I am not a microsoft support kind of guy, if you must know I am a developer (.Net and Java). Maybe your comment wasn't a rant but thats just splitting hairs. The crux of my point is that any company that encourages choice shouldn't be slagged off. Fact is in any other context /.ers scream loud and proud for freedom of choice (think music media) or freedom of expression and are all pro choice. However put MS in the picture and suddenly choice is an evil word. If ford encouraged people to drive more fuel efficient cars would they be slagged of for trying to sell more cars?
P.S. I like run on sentences, sometimes I swear and sometimes I use words that aren't in the dictionary whats your point?
Its clearly states that it is to sell more PC's not about making 'good' computers, the tie between the OS and case was a rant brought up independant of the article. Now given how much money people spend on large wheels, jewlery, makeup etc. obviously design plays into a large number of purchasing decisions. The article made no suggestion that the look of the computer would make it 'a good computer'. Regarding the basement comment if the shoe fits wear it, I'm a bit over socially inept
Newsflash. Not everyone in the world is a nerd, geek or tech minded, if someone wants a personal PC that is attractive then thats their choice and its just as valid as what ever criteria you select your PC by. Maybe people would prefer to differentiate themselves by look as opposed to pissing contest rights about how large their RAID array is. I have four Antec cases and am happy to pay more for them than a shitty beige box. I'll give all you /.'ers a clue, looks matter. I'll put big money on all you guys sitting in your mums basement aren't grabbing and hoarding pr0n of ugly unattrative women, why? Because you value a certain look, you have a preference and the same applies to people selecting what case they want, and I applaude any company (not just MS) that encourages more choices to be available.
"Then I thought about this... for those of you who use less reliable OSes like Windows, do you remember how much of a pain it was to restore back to the EXACT state you were in before a hard drive crash?"
/.ers manage to have a dig. A windows dig in a doomsday article, 10 points for trying. Second its not to much drama to restore to an exact state with RAID or a backup tape. Third doing things the second, or third time around often results in improvments, look at the discovery of the light bulb, or let me see a raise of hands of the coders who look at code and see a better way to do it the second or third time around.
I never ceases to amaze me where
"At the very least, know how to get yourself out of a sticky situation using bleach, aluminum foil, paper towels or napkins, baking soda, a simple container and lots of copper wire..."
Ummm... yeah... world destroyed, dying of cancer, rampaging mob coming for hydro, no bullets left... *wait a second* I know how I'll get out of this sticky situation...
Because of all the sites they tried thats the one they could get into. Once small step above script kiddies.
I saw a move like that once... i don't know about the offsrping but the trying looked fun...