Microsoft agreed to use Windows Update to provide a browser choice screen to Windows users in Europe who are running Internet Explorer as their default browser.
Who wants to bet we are going to see posts here after this feature is rolled out from users who don't have IE configured as their default browser? They will be complaining about not being presented with a choice of alternate browsers, even though they have already selected one.
Furthermore, the article states that the top browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, IE) are going to be presented in random order. I can't wait for the whines from people who happen to see IE as the random first choice.
Here, I'll come up with one for you guys.
"Whaaaa!! IE was first on the SO CALLED RANDOM browser choice list. Obviously Microsoft weighted their algorithm to give preference to IE. My mom and third cousin also both had IE show up first. It's a conspiracy!"
Like I said in another post, I bought a PS3 to play the game (and GTA, and Metal Gear, and a few other titles). Cheaters have killed PC based FPS gaming.
Cheating is what finally moved me onto the console. I've been playing FPS games either on a LAN or across the internet since Quake. I have never once loaded up an aimbot, wallhack or anything of the sort. I was competitive against the best of the best in Quake3 and frequently owned cheater filled CounterStrike servers back in the days of CS 1.3 and 1.4.
When MW2 was coming out I was faced with the choice of coughing up the cash to upgrade my PC, or spending that same money on a console. I was really hesitant to give up the familiar (and IMHO superior) keyboard and mouse interface for a controller. I caved and bought a PS3. It took about a month to get used to the controls. I'm no where nearly as good as I would be with a keyboard and mouse. I rarely get top score. Despite all of that, I'm happy because I don't have to deal with cheaters (yet).
I think that the Valve rep quoted in the article is right on target with his comment about how serious of a problem cheating is. It's to the point where you either join them, or you can't even play the game. FPS games simply aren't any fun when the second you break from cover, you get dropped by a head shot from some guy you can't even see. I have to imagine that MW2 is probably as bad as the old CS was. So much of the terrain in MW2 doesn't stop bullets so there are very few places that a aimbot and wallhack won't get you. I stopped playing CS and started playing Americas Army because even though there were still some cheaters, at least the walls were solid and you had to be out in the open to get shot.
And how is that going work? They're going to ship out their patches on DVDs that you have to boot the machine from? People already bitch about having to reboot their servers once a month. Can you imagine having to physically visit every server with a DVD / USB stick? Give me a break.
I ran into a SSN problem with Charter the other day when I wanted to make changes to my account. When I originally setup my account they asked my for my SSN and I refused to give it. They were okay with that. I wanted to remove some services from my account but I was at work and didn't have my bill with me. They absolutely refused to make the changes because they "couldn't" identify me. I gave them my name, service address and even provided them with the exact amount of the last three bills that I paid (I had access to it via my online banking account). I even gave them the last four digits of my account number (my online banking only displays the last four digits for security reasons). Their only validation was to have me provide them with the last four digits of my SSN or my account number. I didn't have my account number, and they didn't have my SSN. It was a cluster fuck.
Design decisions must still be thought about, developed, reviewed, revised. All of the documents must still be created and edited. All of them still need to be reviewed and re-edited. All of them still need to be relooked at and revised when the client makes "small" changes. For any decent-sized job, the people involved must be kept informed, given tasks, those tasks must be organized and coordinated, e-mails must be read and answered, comments and suggestions responded to, decisions made and defended, and so on.
Your imagination is right. Everything that you mention needs to be done. The thing that SharePoint did was provide a central repository. It took the information out of various "silos" (I hate that term but it fits the scenario) and centralized it. It provided a single reference point to documents that were previously spread across file shares, locked into AutoCAD, sitting in Exchange, etc. Instead of bringing all of the documentation together at the end of the project, or having chunks of it sitting in various departments that then needed to be tracked down, the information was all in one place. The entire process of "giving people tasks" and "keeping them informed" is the purpose of SharePoint.
Efficient document management could cut a couple of percent off of the time for a project, but only if the technology follows the business practices, rather than the business practices fitting into the technology. Saying that that can reduce the number of project managers is just some vice president's unrealistic BS (IMHO).
The whole point of technological innovations is to enable new and better ways of doing things. The analogy isn't quite the same, but I read your statement and it seems like the equivalent of saying a word processor doesn't make people any more efficient than a good type writer because people still need to pound away on a keyboard. It completely misses the concept of document templates, auto-filling database forms, and all the other conveniences that come along with a word processor.
You started your post with the statement, "I imagine..." Imagine this. Imagine one of the scenes you see in old movies, where there is a whole room full of secretaries pounding away on typewriters to create the same letter. In my mind, I see the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the secretary by some stroke of luck realizes she has typed up the death letters for too many boys in the same family. With a scene like that in mind, imagine a Xerox machine sitting in the middle of that same room, except all of the secretaries and typewriters are gone because the machine does it all and does it more accurately.
Now imagine an architectural firm that works on some of the largest commercial real estate productions in this country. I'm talking about the kind of large scale, "town center" like commercial monstrosities there were all the rage in the last decade. Imagine project managers having to send emails and call around, sometimes getting people, sometimes having to leave a voice mail as they're looking for status updates and tracking down various pieces of client packages. Remove a good chunk of those phone calls and emails because the project manager can just log into SharePoint. Expand your imagination beyond the project manager to the team that doesn't have to have as many status update meetings to see where everyone is because its all right there in SharePoint. Look at the IT staff who doesn't have to put shortcuts on everyone's desktops to the various file shares that contain all the document templates and various files they need because... that's right, it's all right there in SharePoint. It's all there in one big SQL database with a pretty web front end. All there in an app with it's greedy little hooks into Office. One big, scary, proprietary information warehouse.
You "imagine" things one way. I've seen the reality of them in production.
Has Google public transit gotten any better? The last time I tried to use it get from Long Beach to Los Angeles, it suggested that I take a bus all the way there. It completely missed the trains.
All of the products are closely tied together. Most recently Office has been tied into SharePoint. SharePoint obviously has a lot of good ideas built into it. If it didn't Google wouldn't be trying to offer up similar functionality. From my brief experience with SharePoint I've seen it leveraged as a groupware and project management tool. At one architectural firm they are using it to tie all of the reams of documentation together (blue prints, materials samples, project documentation (based on Word templates), cost figures (based on Excel spreadsheets), marketing documents (the architecture firm does a lot of commercial property, movie theaters, etc.) I've also seen it used by a clothing manufacturer to streamline their processes. Like the architecture firm, they were already using Microsoft Office applications (primarily Excel) for their processes but SharePoint gave them a central repository. Specifically there was a feature that allowed a document to be checked out into an Office application, worked on by the person responsible for a particular step of the overall process, and then uploaded back into the repository. The upload function would sent a message via Outlook to the next person in the chain of responsibility.
All of the functionality that Microsoft is using "just" expands upon the ideas that have been forwarded elsewhere like a wiki, a repository (a la Subversion, etc), a groupware client (Google, et al). There are SharePoint specific tools for Visual Studio. The thing is that Microsoft makes it a one stop shop. Now, nobody is going to say that is an inexpensive one stop shop. Fewer people would say that is a secure shop. But it is technology that delivers value to businesses, and things like security and expense can be mitigated. In the example of the architectural firm, they don't need as many project managers and their projects take less time because what used to be a manual process has been shifted over to SharePoint. With the clothing firm it reduced their time to market on new designs because their internal processes were sped up.
Technologies like SharePoint used to take multiple servers (SQL, IIS (web), backup). Five years ago each one of those roles was a separate physical box. With the advances in processing power and virtualization, each one of those servers can be hosted on a single physical box.
I realize that I probably sound like a Microsoft shill. I'm just an IT guy who has been employed for fifteen years. That's significantly less than a lot of people on/. but it is long enough to develop a first hand perspective on how businesses are using the technology. I see a lot of companies that are challenging parts of Microsoft's overall business. I haven't seen anyone offer the entire solution. Google is coming close, but they still have a ways to go. One big benefit they have is that they will host the solutions for people. That is the market shift that Microsoft might miss. If they continue to expect their customers to eat the cost of onsite hardware, they are going to get clobbered once Google (or someone else) offers the same functionality.
I hope that you can take this as constructive criticism when I tell you that your inability to follow simple directions is only going to hinder you in your professional career. It may seem stupid that the TA can't deal with your text file, but that is just a small sampling of life in the real world. You're going to constantly be faced with people who expect things done in a certain way. Just as you think the TA is stupid for not being able to deal with a text file, he probably thinks you're stupid for not being able to give him a Word compatible file.
The world is full of "process people". More than likely you will end up dealing with a few of them. There isn't any point in fighting against the processes that other people have put in place. Once you get enough seniority in whatever organization that you're in, and you are assigned with coming up with the "right way" to do things... THEN you design things the way you want them to be. Until that time, a bad attitude is only going to hinder you and you're going to find yourself getting passed up by less competent people who can follow directions and not throw a temper tantrum about it.
The above advice I've given you is a lesson that I am still learning. I constantly find my boss recommending stupid "solutions" to the IT challenges faced by the organization. He is a CFO with a Harvard MBA. Although he does have some good ideas, most of them involve buzzword laden diatribes about "cloud" this and "SaaS" that. His real world IT experience is limited to offering criticisms to the people who actually implement the technology. I can either continue to butt heads with the guy, or I can play along. At the end of the day, he's the guy paying me, not the other way around. He's the one who has the responsibility for his decisions. I just document my suggestions, act as a resource to him to help him think about some things that he might not have considered, and at the end of the day, I do what I'm told. One way or another I'm getting job experience. It might not be the experience that I think I should be getting, but if I don't like it I can certainly put my resume my out and start looking for another job.
What are you talking about, sending your son to college? That's great and all, and if you can afford it, more power to you. There are people who manage to get through college without their parents paying for it. Some people might even say that it builds character when your parents aren't handing everything to you on a silver platter.
The corporations that finance the government benefit from the offshoring. It isn't that hard to figure out. It's the same issue that came up the other day during the discussion of Sun executives getting millions of dollars for themselves even when their company went bankrupt and thousands of people lost their jobs. The people at the top don't care about everyone else. So long as they and their associates are able to continue living high on the hog, they will make decisions that only benefit themselves.
Having said that, I'm not for socialism and communism or any other sort of forced wealth redistribution. I just wish that people would really inform themselves about the power structures that are running the world. That way when these discussions come up, people aren't left wondering what is really going on.
It would be great to have some sort of mechanism added to an already implemented standard, like vCard for contact information. It would be great to be able to send someone contact information as an email attachment and have that person's email client automatically parse out the public key file. There could be an option in the mail client itself to automatically encrypt if the person's encryption key is on the file.
Of course even if that functionality gets introduced, then there are potential problems for checking email. Do you have to have your laptop/desktop with your mail client with you when you want to check your email? What if you use webmail? Do you just upload your private key to your webmail provider so that they can perform the decryption for you? Maybe you have to carry your key around on a USB stick all the time, but will you trust some random internet kiosk or public computer to decrypt your mail without snarfing your key?
How is your implementation going? Did you integrate user creation with any sort of LDAP? How is Google on handling your support requests? Can you give some examples of issues that you've had to elevate to support and how support worked with you to resolve them?
If it's a plain text ASCII file then what is stopping you from simply using OpenOffice and saving it as a compatible.doc file? At least everyone and their mom seems to tell me that OpenOffice can produce Word compatible output.
However it is easy to blame Microsoft for not testing on real-world (i.e. exploited) systems
You're kidding me, right? What do you suggest? Should Microsoft work with malware coders to ensure that their exploit code continues to function after patching? Maybe they should code in a prompt. "Your computer is infected with a virus. Applying this patch will prevent your computer from functioning. Nothing short of a complete reinstall is going to fix your computer even if we don't BSOD it right now, but do you want to continue using it anyway?" I mean come on. I doubt they could even do such a thing if they wanted to. If they intentionally coded around exploit code so that a system would continue to function with known malicious code on it, they'd be raked over the coals not only in the press but also in the courtroom.
Now granted, having your computer go down after an auto update because it was compromised is a pretty crappy thing to have happen. On the other hand, I'm glad that there are that many fewer compromised boxes on the net for the next couple of days.
Given what you've said, it tends to lend some credence to the statement that only modified kernels are having problems. From the little I remember about writing virii code in the days of DOS, we were always looking to grab interrupts (primarily INT13 to get at the drive). If Microsoft changed the interrupt handling behavior of the kernel then any malware code that attempts to execute will probably bork the system.
On the other hand, admins who know what they are doing aren't having any problems. I rolled the patch out to 200+ workstations and didn't get a single blue screen. Of course "knowing what you're doing" also unfortunately equates to "spending lots of money on 'security products'". Not everyone can have an IDS and a Websense box integrated with their firewall, plus up to date AV on their desktop. Not that AV is even worth anything these days. Wasn't there just an article on here in the last day or two that mentioned only 24% of recently discovered exploit code was even detected by anti-virus software?
The Event Logging service is only as useful as the programmer writing the logging events. On my Proliant servers I find that it does a great job of reporting on hardware faults before they become failures. On the other hand with numerous applications I find myself having to dig through log files when I'd much rather they just wrote their errors into the Application log, so I feel your pain. A tool is only useful if it used correctly.
An MVP poster in the thread claims that KB977165 causes the problem, and that the problem only occurs on computers that have been compromised by exploit code. The patch in question patches the NT kernel executable files.
If it is true that only compromised computers blue screen then it's hard to fault Microsoft for their patch code choking when it stumbles across the exploit code.
I wonder if they are going to push out an updated patch that at least performs some sort of sanity checking before attempting to modify the files. I doubt it. They'll just pass the buck and tell users that their computers were already hosed and that the BSOD is a "feature" and that they should have re-installed the OS anyway (because we all know that once your Windows box is pwnt, the only way to deal with it is full format and re-install).
Being treated like a criminal sucks, but what is the alternative? It is human nature to share. If you have a product that you like, and you can share it with your friends for free, you're going to share it. If your friends see that you have a product that they like, and it doesn't cost you anything to share it, they're going to look at you weird if you refuse to share it with them. I really don't understand the gripe with WGA. I've done disaster recovery on failed file servers that required mainboard, disk controller and CPU replacement and after that, not been prompted to reactivate via WGA. On the other hand, I've done work on some desktops and been prompted by WGA for re-verification. In EVERY SINGLE ONE of those cases, I've called the phone number and gotten a new activation code.
It could be worse. I've worked with software that required hardware dongles to function properly. Imagine if you had to wait for Microsoft to ship you a new hardware dongle via next day air. Or even worse, the parallel port that the dongle connects to goes wonky and you have to replace the whole mainboard.
I find the perception of "being treated like a criminal" an interesting mentality. Every day I see police on the street, and sometimes they might even drive behind me and run my license plate. I don't consider myself as being treated like a criminal when that happens.
It would be interesting to see some numbers about what percentage of Windows installs actually fail WGA. It would be further enlightening to know what percentage of those failures are true failures due to piracy, and what percentage are given a new activation code (due to hardware failure, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft agreed to use Windows Update to provide a browser choice screen to Windows users in Europe who are running Internet Explorer as their default browser.
Who wants to bet we are going to see posts here after this feature is rolled out from users who don't have IE configured as their default browser? They will be complaining about not being presented with a choice of alternate browsers, even though they have already selected one.
Furthermore, the article states that the top browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, IE) are going to be presented in random order. I can't wait for the whines from people who happen to see IE as the random first choice.
Here, I'll come up with one for you guys.
"Whaaaa!! IE was first on the SO CALLED RANDOM browser choice list. Obviously Microsoft weighted their algorithm to give preference to IE. My mom and third cousin also both had IE show up first. It's a conspiracy!"
Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent.
That takes me back. Thanks for the laugh.
Like I said in another post, I bought a PS3 to play the game (and GTA, and Metal Gear, and a few other titles). Cheaters have killed PC based FPS gaming.
Cheating is what finally moved me onto the console. I've been playing FPS games either on a LAN or across the internet since Quake. I have never once loaded up an aimbot, wallhack or anything of the sort. I was competitive against the best of the best in Quake3 and frequently owned cheater filled CounterStrike servers back in the days of CS 1.3 and 1.4.
When MW2 was coming out I was faced with the choice of coughing up the cash to upgrade my PC, or spending that same money on a console. I was really hesitant to give up the familiar (and IMHO superior) keyboard and mouse interface for a controller. I caved and bought a PS3. It took about a month to get used to the controls. I'm no where nearly as good as I would be with a keyboard and mouse. I rarely get top score. Despite all of that, I'm happy because I don't have to deal with cheaters (yet).
I think that the Valve rep quoted in the article is right on target with his comment about how serious of a problem cheating is. It's to the point where you either join them, or you can't even play the game. FPS games simply aren't any fun when the second you break from cover, you get dropped by a head shot from some guy you can't even see. I have to imagine that MW2 is probably as bad as the old CS was. So much of the terrain in MW2 doesn't stop bullets so there are very few places that a aimbot and wallhack won't get you. I stopped playing CS and started playing Americas Army because even though there were still some cheaters, at least the walls were solid and you had to be out in the open to get shot.
And how is that going work? They're going to ship out their patches on DVDs that you have to boot the machine from? People already bitch about having to reboot their servers once a month. Can you imagine having to physically visit every server with a DVD / USB stick? Give me a break.
I ran into a SSN problem with Charter the other day when I wanted to make changes to my account. When I originally setup my account they asked my for my SSN and I refused to give it. They were okay with that. I wanted to remove some services from my account but I was at work and didn't have my bill with me. They absolutely refused to make the changes because they "couldn't" identify me. I gave them my name, service address and even provided them with the exact amount of the last three bills that I paid (I had access to it via my online banking account). I even gave them the last four digits of my account number (my online banking only displays the last four digits for security reasons). Their only validation was to have me provide them with the last four digits of my SSN or my account number. I didn't have my account number, and they didn't have my SSN. It was a cluster fuck.
Design decisions must still be thought about, developed, reviewed, revised. All of the documents must still be created and edited. All of them still need to be reviewed and re-edited. All of them still need to be relooked at and revised when the client makes "small" changes. For any decent-sized job, the people involved must be kept informed, given tasks, those tasks must be organized and coordinated, e-mails must be read and answered, comments and suggestions responded to, decisions made and defended, and so on.
Your imagination is right. Everything that you mention needs to be done. The thing that SharePoint did was provide a central repository. It took the information out of various "silos" (I hate that term but it fits the scenario) and centralized it. It provided a single reference point to documents that were previously spread across file shares, locked into AutoCAD, sitting in Exchange, etc. Instead of bringing all of the documentation together at the end of the project, or having chunks of it sitting in various departments that then needed to be tracked down, the information was all in one place. The entire process of "giving people tasks" and "keeping them informed" is the purpose of SharePoint.
Efficient document management could cut a couple of percent off of the time for a project, but only if the technology follows the business practices, rather than the business practices fitting into the technology. Saying that that can reduce the number of project managers is just some vice president's unrealistic BS (IMHO).
The whole point of technological innovations is to enable new and better ways of doing things. The analogy isn't quite the same, but I read your statement and it seems like the equivalent of saying a word processor doesn't make people any more efficient than a good type writer because people still need to pound away on a keyboard. It completely misses the concept of document templates, auto-filling database forms, and all the other conveniences that come along with a word processor.
You started your post with the statement, "I imagine..." Imagine this. Imagine one of the scenes you see in old movies, where there is a whole room full of secretaries pounding away on typewriters to create the same letter. In my mind, I see the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the secretary by some stroke of luck realizes she has typed up the death letters for too many boys in the same family. With a scene like that in mind, imagine a Xerox machine sitting in the middle of that same room, except all of the secretaries and typewriters are gone because the machine does it all and does it more accurately.
Now imagine an architectural firm that works on some of the largest commercial real estate productions in this country. I'm talking about the kind of large scale, "town center" like commercial monstrosities there were all the rage in the last decade. Imagine project managers having to send emails and call around, sometimes getting people, sometimes having to leave a voice mail as they're looking for status updates and tracking down various pieces of client packages. Remove a good chunk of those phone calls and emails because the project manager can just log into SharePoint. Expand your imagination beyond the project manager to the team that doesn't have to have as many status update meetings to see where everyone is because its all right there in SharePoint. Look at the IT staff who doesn't have to put shortcuts on everyone's desktops to the various file shares that contain all the document templates and various files they need because... that's right, it's all right there in SharePoint. It's all there in one big SQL database with a pretty web front end. All there in an app with it's greedy little hooks into Office. One big, scary, proprietary information warehouse.
You "imagine" things one way. I've seen the reality of them in production.
Has Google public transit gotten any better? The last time I tried to use it get from Long Beach to Los Angeles, it suggested that I take a bus all the way there. It completely missed the trains.
All of the products are closely tied together. Most recently Office has been tied into SharePoint. SharePoint obviously has a lot of good ideas built into it. If it didn't Google wouldn't be trying to offer up similar functionality. From my brief experience with SharePoint I've seen it leveraged as a groupware and project management tool. At one architectural firm they are using it to tie all of the reams of documentation together (blue prints, materials samples, project documentation (based on Word templates), cost figures (based on Excel spreadsheets), marketing documents (the architecture firm does a lot of commercial property, movie theaters, etc.) I've also seen it used by a clothing manufacturer to streamline their processes. Like the architecture firm, they were already using Microsoft Office applications (primarily Excel) for their processes but SharePoint gave them a central repository. Specifically there was a feature that allowed a document to be checked out into an Office application, worked on by the person responsible for a particular step of the overall process, and then uploaded back into the repository. The upload function would sent a message via Outlook to the next person in the chain of responsibility.
All of the functionality that Microsoft is using "just" expands upon the ideas that have been forwarded elsewhere like a wiki, a repository (a la Subversion, etc), a groupware client (Google, et al). There are SharePoint specific tools for Visual Studio. The thing is that Microsoft makes it a one stop shop. Now, nobody is going to say that is an inexpensive one stop shop. Fewer people would say that is a secure shop. But it is technology that delivers value to businesses, and things like security and expense can be mitigated. In the example of the architectural firm, they don't need as many project managers and their projects take less time because what used to be a manual process has been shifted over to SharePoint. With the clothing firm it reduced their time to market on new designs because their internal processes were sped up.
Technologies like SharePoint used to take multiple servers (SQL, IIS (web), backup). Five years ago each one of those roles was a separate physical box. With the advances in processing power and virtualization, each one of those servers can be hosted on a single physical box.
I realize that I probably sound like a Microsoft shill. I'm just an IT guy who has been employed for fifteen years. That's significantly less than a lot of people on /. but it is long enough to develop a first hand perspective on how businesses are using the technology. I see a lot of companies that are challenging parts of Microsoft's overall business. I haven't seen anyone offer the entire solution. Google is coming close, but they still have a ways to go. One big benefit they have is that they will host the solutions for people. That is the market shift that Microsoft might miss. If they continue to expect their customers to eat the cost of onsite hardware, they are going to get clobbered once Google (or someone else) offers the same functionality.
I hope that you can take this as constructive criticism when I tell you that your inability to follow simple directions is only going to hinder you in your professional career. It may seem stupid that the TA can't deal with your text file, but that is just a small sampling of life in the real world. You're going to constantly be faced with people who expect things done in a certain way. Just as you think the TA is stupid for not being able to deal with a text file, he probably thinks you're stupid for not being able to give him a Word compatible file.
The world is full of "process people". More than likely you will end up dealing with a few of them. There isn't any point in fighting against the processes that other people have put in place. Once you get enough seniority in whatever organization that you're in, and you are assigned with coming up with the "right way" to do things... THEN you design things the way you want them to be. Until that time, a bad attitude is only going to hinder you and you're going to find yourself getting passed up by less competent people who can follow directions and not throw a temper tantrum about it.
The above advice I've given you is a lesson that I am still learning. I constantly find my boss recommending stupid "solutions" to the IT challenges faced by the organization. He is a CFO with a Harvard MBA. Although he does have some good ideas, most of them involve buzzword laden diatribes about "cloud" this and "SaaS" that. His real world IT experience is limited to offering criticisms to the people who actually implement the technology. I can either continue to butt heads with the guy, or I can play along. At the end of the day, he's the guy paying me, not the other way around. He's the one who has the responsibility for his decisions. I just document my suggestions, act as a resource to him to help him think about some things that he might not have considered, and at the end of the day, I do what I'm told. One way or another I'm getting job experience. It might not be the experience that I think I should be getting, but if I don't like it I can certainly put my resume my out and start looking for another job.
What are you talking about, sending your son to college? That's great and all, and if you can afford it, more power to you. There are people who manage to get through college without their parents paying for it. Some people might even say that it builds character when your parents aren't handing everything to you on a silver platter.
The corporations that finance the government benefit from the offshoring. It isn't that hard to figure out. It's the same issue that came up the other day during the discussion of Sun executives getting millions of dollars for themselves even when their company went bankrupt and thousands of people lost their jobs. The people at the top don't care about everyone else. So long as they and their associates are able to continue living high on the hog, they will make decisions that only benefit themselves.
Having said that, I'm not for socialism and communism or any other sort of forced wealth redistribution. I just wish that people would really inform themselves about the power structures that are running the world. That way when these discussions come up, people aren't left wondering what is really going on.
It would be great to have some sort of mechanism added to an already implemented standard, like vCard for contact information. It would be great to be able to send someone contact information as an email attachment and have that person's email client automatically parse out the public key file. There could be an option in the mail client itself to automatically encrypt if the person's encryption key is on the file.
Of course even if that functionality gets introduced, then there are potential problems for checking email. Do you have to have your laptop/desktop with your mail client with you when you want to check your email? What if you use webmail? Do you just upload your private key to your webmail provider so that they can perform the decryption for you? Maybe you have to carry your key around on a USB stick all the time, but will you trust some random internet kiosk or public computer to decrypt your mail without snarfing your key?
How is your implementation going? Did you integrate user creation with any sort of LDAP? How is Google on handling your support requests? Can you give some examples of issues that you've had to elevate to support and how support worked with you to resolve them?
If it's a plain text ASCII file then what is stopping you from simply using OpenOffice and saving it as a compatible .doc file? At least everyone and their mom seems to tell me that OpenOffice can produce Word compatible output.
If they put half as much effort into their anti-malware activities as they do into their DRM regime, the world would be a better place.
Like developing a FREE anti-virus / anti-malware tool and giving it away?
Some people manage to play games AND do what you've done, or similar things.
People use it because it still gets the job done, and if you know what you're doing it, you can manage to use it without screwing it up.
However it is easy to blame Microsoft for not testing on real-world (i.e. exploited) systems
You're kidding me, right? What do you suggest? Should Microsoft work with malware coders to ensure that their exploit code continues to function after patching? Maybe they should code in a prompt. "Your computer is infected with a virus. Applying this patch will prevent your computer from functioning. Nothing short of a complete reinstall is going to fix your computer even if we don't BSOD it right now, but do you want to continue using it anyway?" I mean come on. I doubt they could even do such a thing if they wanted to. If they intentionally coded around exploit code so that a system would continue to function with known malicious code on it, they'd be raked over the coals not only in the press but also in the courtroom.
Now granted, having your computer go down after an auto update because it was compromised is a pretty crappy thing to have happen. On the other hand, I'm glad that there are that many fewer compromised boxes on the net for the next couple of days.
Given what you've said, it tends to lend some credence to the statement that only modified kernels are having problems. From the little I remember about writing virii code in the days of DOS, we were always looking to grab interrupts (primarily INT13 to get at the drive). If Microsoft changed the interrupt handling behavior of the kernel then any malware code that attempts to execute will probably bork the system.
what ever happened to the operating system logging abnormalities?
Oh come on now, you know how this works! It isn't a bug, it's a feature. After all, if nothing is being logged, obviously there isn't anything wrong!
On the other hand, admins who know what they are doing aren't having any problems. I rolled the patch out to 200+ workstations and didn't get a single blue screen. Of course "knowing what you're doing" also unfortunately equates to "spending lots of money on 'security products'". Not everyone can have an IDS and a Websense box integrated with their firewall, plus up to date AV on their desktop. Not that AV is even worth anything these days. Wasn't there just an article on here in the last day or two that mentioned only 24% of recently discovered exploit code was even detected by anti-virus software?
The Event Logging service is only as useful as the programmer writing the logging events. On my Proliant servers I find that it does a great job of reporting on hardware faults before they become failures. On the other hand with numerous applications I find myself having to dig through log files when I'd much rather they just wrote their errors into the Application log, so I feel your pain. A tool is only useful if it used correctly.
An MVP poster in the thread claims that KB977165 causes the problem, and that the problem only occurs on computers that have been compromised by exploit code. The patch in question patches the NT kernel executable files.
If it is true that only compromised computers blue screen then it's hard to fault Microsoft for their patch code choking when it stumbles across the exploit code.
I wonder if they are going to push out an updated patch that at least performs some sort of sanity checking before attempting to modify the files. I doubt it. They'll just pass the buck and tell users that their computers were already hosed and that the BSOD is a "feature" and that they should have re-installed the OS anyway (because we all know that once your Windows box is pwnt, the only way to deal with it is full format and re-install).
Being treated like a criminal sucks, but what is the alternative? It is human nature to share. If you have a product that you like, and you can share it with your friends for free, you're going to share it. If your friends see that you have a product that they like, and it doesn't cost you anything to share it, they're going to look at you weird if you refuse to share it with them. I really don't understand the gripe with WGA. I've done disaster recovery on failed file servers that required mainboard, disk controller and CPU replacement and after that, not been prompted to reactivate via WGA. On the other hand, I've done work on some desktops and been prompted by WGA for re-verification. In EVERY SINGLE ONE of those cases, I've called the phone number and gotten a new activation code.
It could be worse. I've worked with software that required hardware dongles to function properly. Imagine if you had to wait for Microsoft to ship you a new hardware dongle via next day air. Or even worse, the parallel port that the dongle connects to goes wonky and you have to replace the whole mainboard.
I find the perception of "being treated like a criminal" an interesting mentality. Every day I see police on the street, and sometimes they might even drive behind me and run my license plate. I don't consider myself as being treated like a criminal when that happens.
It would be interesting to see some numbers about what percentage of Windows installs actually fail WGA. It would be further enlightening to know what percentage of those failures are true failures due to piracy, and what percentage are given a new activation code (due to hardware failure, etc).