Most users will always equate "faster" with "better", and "more secure" will come in a distant third.
I dunno. A lot of IE users complain about their Windows systems "getting slow" (as a result of adware/spyware) and are being educated that this is a result of "less secure".
But what about the 12th commandment, you know, right after "Premature optimization is the root of all evil", where I heard that applications should "Fail gracefully"?
how IBM is determined to move to an open desktop based on Linux and OpenOffice within about a year.
IIRC, initiatives like this are occurring at other businesses, like Sun and Novell.
I'd be curious to know how things are going. While things are constantly getting better and better, my memory was that interoperability for Microsoft indoctrinated office workers was enough of hurdle that roll-outs tended to be mostly voluntary, mostly within the ranks of technical staff like programmers, or for dedicated applications (eg, phone banks) where the underlying OS makes little difference.
I'd be interested to see when managers and secretaries can start using Linux with a minimal acceptable transition, i.e., comparable in magnitude to the transitions inherent in Windows OS and Office upgrades.
Browsers have a wallet-like feature which fills it in on demand.
Excellent points, all.
My pet peeve is that "form filling out" information disclosure should really be kept to the minimum required for the transaction.
If you go into a doctor's office for an ingrown toenail, there's no reason you should have to dump down 57 pieces of data on a form. If I put down that I'm a 27 year old male with no allergies and I can digitally sign that I'm able to pay up to $500 for any services, that should be enough.
Likewise for getting an account at the video rental store, getting an airline ticket [cf John Gilmore's battles], etc.
Problem is, businesses and governments are addicted to the increasing TIA and decreasing the anonymity that was an artifact of older technology. People living the "free world" tolerate encroachment of their privacy without much thought. It won't be until a totalitarian regime (eg, China) starts using technology in new ways to suppress dissent and control the populace that people will become aware of the implications of putting so much information in the hands of the authorities.
Which reminds me - if you're a U.S. citizen, contact your Congressional Representative to eliminate the more egregious parts of the so-called Patriot Act.
I had to design and implement some pretty hardcore software in a matter of weeks. This is the kind of case where any/all help that my tools can provide is welcome, as I tended to be more focused on design. However, if the proper implementation tools are not redily available
[I'll probably sound like a crusty old SOB, but here it is:], one of the reasons that turbocharged software development tools get a bad rap is because they are used too quickly by novice programmers (I'm not implying you or anyone else here is a novice).
For two reasons:
The tool design has to place its priority on being optimized for novice users who might not really even be up to speed in the underlying programming language (C++, Java, etc.).
The novice is shielded from the fundamentals and will never learn anything but that to which the RAD environment exposes him.
Programmers that have to learn from ground up by typing in every piece of punctuation in creating their C++ classes in a basic text editor learn more. Later, after that experience, they'll be in much better position to evaluate programming productivity enhancement tools and to appreciate what they have to offer and to be critical of the underlying assumptions built-in to the tools.
And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
One could also argue that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from todays academic orthodoxy is a reflection of another long-standing tradition in America (and other countries, too, BTW) of anti-intellectualism.
In fact, if you look closely at recent culture in three of the greatest superpowers: America, Russia and China you can see threads of this same movement, in some cases actually used by the government as a propaganda ploy.
In China, cf The Cultural Revolution.
In Russia, consider the crackdown on the intelligentsia and, now, on independent media.
In America, corporate media is inundated with right-wing pundits putting on a show of ridiculing and reviling intellectuals in academia and the "liberal media elite". The "elite" woudl be "them" while "we" are "folks with common sense".
Academics have come out with many propositions and some of them are silly; but the debate and the discourse has degenerated away from logic into some kind of entertaining spectacle designed to draw in listeners and viewers just as much as "professional" wrestling.
And here we see a basic problem. Trying to earn more than a fair return because you have monopoly power in a certain situation.
This is true in spades if you've ever had occassion to use the landline in a hotel room lately.
The exhorbitant charges are motivating guests to bring their cell phones, especially as roaming charges are fading away.
The insidious part is that some hotels have been accused of running cell phone jammers on their premises to drum up business for their landline scam.
And that's all apart from the practice of using weird 3rd party long distance providers that charge an arm and a leg, give some back to the hotel, etc.
so I could quote the example given there: the 1932 platform
There's a year to remember.
A few more years of the current environment of cutting taxes, increasing spending, cheap borrowing and there will be a few more reminders of that era.
The 2004 data showing CPI about 1% higher than the growth in wages is indicative of what's to come as the Asian central bankers are willing to pay for $80/bbl oil using $ 1.5 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds.
I couldnt' say for sure in this particular case, but if it were me I'd ask other PowerBook owners about their troubles to get an idea of the reliability, how often the logic board dies, etc.
Estimate the risk (let's say for the sake of argument that the probability is 0.05 it will go out between year 3 to year 7 which is when you'll probably buy a new G6 laptop and sell your current PowerBook on eBay) and that the cost of replacing the logic board if you had the work done at an Apple-authorized service center is, say, $1000. Again, I'm making these figures up.
Then look at the self-insurance cost to you:
$1000 x 0.05 = $50
in this contrived hypothetical case. Then compare that number with the cost of Apple Care for that time period. That's all there is to it. I'm betting Apple makes money from Apple Care, so that a cost to self-insure is less than what they're charging for it.
Recently, Microsoft security specialist David Keppelmeyer implied that businesses that adopt the Firefox browser and migrate away from using Microsoft Internet Explorer cause the fewer remaining IE users to bear a heavier brunt of attacks (fixed number attacks/number of IE users). That is, migrating away from IE is a selfish and callous measure towards the community of IE users.
Keppelmeyer also implied that black hat writers of exploits for IE deliberately used open source browsers to protect themselves from IE exploits. In the mind of readers, Keppelmeyer's qualification that "not all open source users are necessarily creating malicious software" does leave open the possibility that perhaps only 90% of open source users create malicious software.
For things like car collision insurance, product warranties, etc., if it is within your means it is always less expensive to self-insure for loss and damages.
I read once where those lucrative extended warranties that get hawked at consumer electronics stores, the ones that bring in great commission to the sales person, to the store and to the insurer, typically have to pay out about US$1 in claim settlements for every US$11 that is collected. I'm not even sure if the salesperson commission or store commission is included in that figure. Either way, it should tell you something about the risks and probabilities that are involved.
Exhibit A: about 3 years ago my S.O. wanted to pay $4/month for insurance on our cell phone and when she brought it in to be replaced about 2 years later because the antenna had predictably gotten bent, wouldn't stay extended, etc. (insert joke) she was informed that that particular malady was not covered. So we'd paid about $100 for peace of mind that was a delusion.
Exhibit B: When I recently purchased an expensive LCD flat screen TV and I reluctantly agreed to look into the extended warranty because of the infamous "dead pixel" issue, I asked the store for a clear statement of exactly what the extended warranty covered since I'd heard of disreputable places that would exempt dead pixels in the outer third of the screen from coverage, up to 10-12 pixels, etc. Despite their enthusiasm for selling the extended warranty, they never did get me a copy of the policy, we didn't get the extended warranty, saved $1000, and been happy as clams with the TV.
My President warned of the The Axis of Evil that included three players: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
We've invaded Iraq and found no WMD there, but it is looking more and more likely that WMD are located in the other 2 countries. This should not be surprising to anyone.
The 3rd country (Iraq) was irrelevant; my geometry teacher would say that an axis needs only 2 points to be described.
Practically, I can see where the horned devil might make certain religious people uncomfortable.
But if you're going down that road, then you might as well steer clear of offending other religions world-wide. That's right, no pigs, camels, or graven image idols, etc.
Consider how many Jews and Muslims have avoided learning Perl because of the offensive beast on the cover of the O'Reilly book!
They have never competed on the quality of their product
Not quite.
Only when MS has to compete on quality do they. Much of the time they're not constrainted to do so. Otherwise, there are other agendas to pursue, such as market domination and extending the customer in "Solutions" that are entirely MS.
[Likewise, only when they have to provide open interoperability, do they. Marketing programs saying nice-sounding buzzwords are usually more their style.]
I rail against MS all the time for their many faults, but they have produced quality products at least a few times:
Word, way back when it was truly competing against Wordperfect. Since then, not much.
Win 2K, when it was clear that early versions of NT were no match in stability for any flavor of UNIX on a server.
Outlook, people use it, like it, curse it less frequently.
What's innovative about that ? It's a browser. People have done browsers
for a long time, and firefox didn't invent the web, nothing new.
Innovation impact tends to be misjudged, but historical gauges can be more accurate.
[Back in 1992] "Feh! What's this port 80 service people are talking about? It's just another TCP/IP application ferchrissakes! I've developed GUI applications for years that are a lot more useful than this Mosaic!"
I'm certain that some of the incremental improvements I enjoy today will turn out to be significant when viewed from 2010.
Number portability across telco service providers is a great thing, extending that portability to the area code is better.
But it shows just how dated the whole "telephone number" mapping between integers to phones is getting.
What I'd like to see is the whole number thing get completely submerged in the same way that IP addresses were submerged by hostnames and DNS. This is already happening at the personal level, as I speed dial "3" or select a name in my phone's memory. If I could key in "Fred's Restaurant, Sydney" and get a directory lookup returned to my phone that would be nice. Unfortunately, my cell phone company likes the status quo of charging me for voice based directory lookups.
The other thing: something like TLS based authentication for CallerID, with inverse directory lookups in my favorite RBL on "Citizens for Responsible Exploitation", etc.
The Economist, based in the U.K., but with a larger readership in the U.S. than the U.K., will surprise Americans with being off the left-right one-dimensional continuum that dominates U.S. politics. They might be characterized most closely as libertarian.
For instance, their free market views have led them to put forth the idea that illicit drugs ought to be legalized.
They advocate economic policies which generally coincide with those of U.S. Republicans, but by a slim anguished margin endorsed Kerry over Bush for the 2004 election.
Their views on the Israeli Palestinian issue are not so firmly in Sharon's camp as GWB's views are, either.
But many leftists would be dismayed at The Economist's call for privatization of state-owned enterprises in the developing world and clamping down on what they view as fiscally irresponsible generous state pensions.
As much as I or others on/. rail against MS for various practices that end up costing users money, causing vendor lock-in and upgrade treadmills, the company did not get where it is today by acting foolishly.
All of their recent actions and behavior is consistent with maximizing shareholder return.
If conditions change, either regulatory (EU, DOJ monitoring, broadcast flags), technical (TCPA) or marketplace (Linux, Oracle, IBM) I would count on them adjusting their strategy to continue to maximize long-term revenue, pure and simple.
Let's put 8 different versions of OpenOffice Writer on millions of machines (10% of which have defective hardware, viruses, etc), and see how well works.
Good point; although OpenOffice has been handicapped ahead of time by the requirements that:
it interoperate with MS Office and that
its UI resemble Office's sufficiently to reduce the learning curve for migrating users.
Arguably, both features artificially diminish the quality of OpenOffice compared to what it could be without them. But neither feature should be sacrificed given the current realities in the productivity software landscape.
On another note, my 2 decade old LaTeX files still work just fine on my current computer with the latest releases of the software.
Microsoft could sell their own hardware bundled with their software - just like Apple.
In which case there is no issue of Microsoft coercing the hardware vendor (except they'd have even more incredible leverage upstream on CPU and peripheral manufacturers).
Slashdot Mirror
This way the spammer knows that their spam is actually being viewed by a user, and not just wasting space in an inbox.
*sniffle* I didn't know they cared!
Most users will always equate "faster" with "better", and "more secure" will come in a distant third.
I dunno. A lot of IE users complain about their Windows systems "getting slow" (as a result of adware/spyware) and are being educated that this is a result of "less secure".
I believe you.
But what about the 12th commandment, you know, right after "Premature optimization is the root of all evil", where I heard that applications should "Fail gracefully"?
how IBM is determined to move to an open desktop based on Linux and OpenOffice within about a year.
IIRC, initiatives like this are occurring at other businesses, like Sun and Novell.
I'd be curious to know how things are going. While things are constantly getting better and better, my memory was that interoperability for Microsoft indoctrinated office workers was enough of hurdle that roll-outs tended to be mostly voluntary, mostly within the ranks of technical staff like programmers, or for dedicated applications (eg, phone banks) where the underlying OS makes little difference.
I'd be interested to see when managers and secretaries can start using Linux with a minimal acceptable transition, i.e., comparable in magnitude to the transitions inherent in Windows OS and Office upgrades.
Browsers have a wallet-like feature which fills it in on demand.
Excellent points, all.
My pet peeve is that "form filling out" information disclosure should really be kept to the minimum required for the transaction.
If you go into a doctor's office for an ingrown toenail, there's no reason you should have to dump down 57 pieces of data on a form. If I put down that I'm a 27 year old male with no allergies and I can digitally sign that I'm able to pay up to $500 for any services, that should be enough.
Likewise for getting an account at the video rental store, getting an airline ticket [cf John Gilmore's battles], etc.
Problem is, businesses and governments are addicted to the increasing TIA and decreasing the anonymity that was an artifact of older technology. People living the "free world" tolerate encroachment of their privacy without much thought. It won't be until a totalitarian regime (eg, China) starts using technology in new ways to suppress dissent and control the populace that people will become aware of the implications of putting so much information in the hands of the authorities.
Which reminds me - if you're a U.S. citizen, contact your Congressional Representative to eliminate the more egregious parts of the so-called Patriot Act.
SuSE has in its favor [?] the confusion to be made with System Update Service for Windows.
Adding to the confusion, SuSE is in some camps a reasonable way to update Windows:)
I had to design and implement some pretty hardcore software in a matter of weeks. This is the kind of case where any/all help that my tools can provide is welcome, as I tended to be more focused on design. However, if the proper implementation tools are not redily available
[I'll probably sound like a crusty old SOB, but here it is:], one of the reasons that turbocharged software development tools get a bad rap is because they are used too quickly by novice programmers (I'm not implying you or anyone else here is a novice).
For two reasons:
- The tool design has to place its priority on being optimized for novice users who might not really even be up to speed in the underlying programming language (C++, Java, etc.).
- The novice is shielded from the fundamentals and will never learn anything but that to which the RAD environment exposes him.
Programmers that have to learn from ground up by typing in every piece of punctuation in creating their C++ classes in a basic text editor learn more. Later, after that experience, they'll be in much better position to evaluate programming productivity enhancement tools and to appreciate what they have to offer and to be critical of the underlying assumptions built-in to the tools.And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
One could also argue that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from todays academic orthodoxy is a reflection of another long-standing tradition in America (and other countries, too, BTW) of anti-intellectualism.
In fact, if you look closely at recent culture in three of the greatest superpowers: America, Russia and China you can see threads of this same movement, in some cases actually used by the government as a propaganda ploy.
In China, cf The Cultural Revolution.
In Russia, consider the crackdown on the intelligentsia and, now, on independent media.
In America, corporate media is inundated with right-wing pundits putting on a show of ridiculing and reviling intellectuals in academia and the "liberal media elite". The "elite" woudl be "them" while "we" are "folks with common sense".
Academics have come out with many propositions and some of them are silly; but the debate and the discourse has degenerated away from logic into some kind of entertaining spectacle designed to draw in listeners and viewers just as much as "professional" wrestling.
And here we see a basic problem. Trying to earn more than a fair return because you have monopoly power in a certain situation.
This is true in spades if you've ever had occassion to use the landline in a hotel room lately.
The exhorbitant charges are motivating guests to bring their cell phones, especially as roaming charges are fading away.
The insidious part is that some hotels have been accused of running cell phone jammers on their premises to drum up business for their landline scam.
And that's all apart from the practice of using weird 3rd party long distance providers that charge an arm and a leg, give some back to the hotel, etc.
Given the recent theft of the IOS source code, I certainly hope they get their shit together first.
Genuine security built into IOS would mean that public release of the source code would have almost no impact.
But you are correct that it shows slipshod corporate practices if a release occurred when it wasn't supposed to.
as the terms of our implicit contract unambigously state are now mine.
Forgot a step. You need to purchase legislation, call it, say, the Henry V. 009 Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Then you'll be good to go.
so I could quote the example given there: the 1932 platform
There's a year to remember.
A few more years of the current environment of cutting taxes, increasing spending, cheap borrowing and there will be a few more reminders of that era.
The 2004 data showing CPI about 1% higher than the growth in wages is indicative of what's to come as the Asian central bankers are willing to pay for $80/bbl oil using $ 1.5 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds.
AppleCare will be worth it on my PowerBook
I couldnt' say for sure in this particular case, but if it were me I'd ask other PowerBook owners about their troubles to get an idea of the reliability, how often the logic board dies, etc.
Estimate the risk (let's say for the sake of argument that the probability is 0.05 it will go out between year 3 to year 7 which is when you'll probably buy a new G6 laptop and sell your current PowerBook on eBay) and that the cost of replacing the logic board if you had the work done at an Apple-authorized service center is, say, $1000. Again, I'm making these figures up.
Then look at the self-insurance cost to you:
in this contrived hypothetical case. Then compare that number with the cost of Apple Care for that time period. That's all there is to it. I'm betting Apple makes money from Apple Care, so that a cost to self-insure is less than what they're charging for it.Recently, Microsoft security specialist David Keppelmeyer implied that businesses that adopt the Firefox browser and migrate away from using Microsoft Internet Explorer cause the fewer remaining IE users to bear a heavier brunt of attacks (fixed number attacks/number of IE users). That is, migrating away from IE is a selfish and callous measure towards the community of IE users.
Keppelmeyer also implied that black hat writers of exploits for IE deliberately used open source browsers to protect themselves from IE exploits. In the mind of readers, Keppelmeyer's qualification that "not all open source users are necessarily creating malicious software" does leave open the possibility that perhaps only 90% of open source users create malicious software.
Do you agree with Keppelmeyer's assessment?
Re: insurance
For things like car collision insurance, product warranties, etc., if it is within your means it is always less expensive to self-insure for loss and damages.
I read once where those lucrative extended warranties that get hawked at consumer electronics stores, the ones that bring in great commission to the sales person, to the store and to the insurer, typically have to pay out about US$1 in claim settlements for every US$11 that is collected. I'm not even sure if the salesperson commission or store commission is included in that figure. Either way, it should tell you something about the risks and probabilities that are involved.
Exhibit A: about 3 years ago my S.O. wanted to pay $4/month for insurance on our cell phone and when she brought it in to be replaced about 2 years later because the antenna had predictably gotten bent, wouldn't stay extended, etc. (insert joke) she was informed that that particular malady was not covered. So we'd paid about $100 for peace of mind that was a delusion.
Exhibit B: When I recently purchased an expensive LCD flat screen TV and I reluctantly agreed to look into the extended warranty because of the infamous "dead pixel" issue, I asked the store for a clear statement of exactly what the extended warranty covered since I'd heard of disreputable places that would exempt dead pixels in the outer third of the screen from coverage, up to 10-12 pixels, etc. Despite their enthusiasm for selling the extended warranty, they never did get me a copy of the policy, we didn't get the extended warranty, saved $1000, and been happy as clams with the TV.
Well, it's happened.
My President warned of the The Axis of Evil that included three players: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
We've invaded Iraq and found no WMD there, but it is looking more and more likely that WMD are located in the other 2 countries. This should not be surprising to anyone.
The 3rd country (Iraq) was irrelevant; my geometry teacher would say that an axis needs only 2 points to be described.
Practically, I can see where the horned devil might make certain religious people uncomfortable.
But if you're going down that road, then you might as well steer clear of offending other religions world-wide. That's right, no pigs, camels, or graven image idols, etc.
Consider how many Jews and Muslims have avoided learning Perl because of the offensive beast on the cover of the O'Reilly book!
They have never competed on the quality of their product
Not quite.
Only when MS has to compete on quality do they. Much of the time they're not constrainted to do so. Otherwise, there are other agendas to pursue, such as market domination and extending the customer in "Solutions" that are entirely MS.
[Likewise, only when they have to provide open interoperability, do they. Marketing programs saying nice-sounding buzzwords are usually more their style.]
I rail against MS all the time for their many faults, but they have produced quality products at least a few times:
What's innovative about that ? It's a browser. People have done browsers for a long time, and firefox didn't invent the web, nothing new.
Innovation impact tends to be misjudged, but historical gauges can be more accurate.
[Back in 1992] "Feh! What's this port 80 service people are talking about? It's just another TCP/IP application ferchrissakes! I've developed GUI applications for years that are a lot more useful than this Mosaic!"
I'm certain that some of the incremental improvements I enjoy today will turn out to be significant when viewed from 2010.
Number portability across telco service providers is a great thing, extending that portability to the area code is better.
But it shows just how dated the whole "telephone number" mapping between integers to phones is getting.
What I'd like to see is the whole number thing get completely submerged in the same way that IP addresses were submerged by hostnames and DNS. This is already happening at the personal level, as I speed dial "3" or select a name in my phone's memory. If I could key in "Fred's Restaurant, Sydney" and get a directory lookup returned to my phone that would be nice. Unfortunately, my cell phone company likes the status quo of charging me for voice based directory lookups.
The other thing: something like TLS based authentication for CallerID, with inverse directory lookups in my favorite RBL on "Citizens for Responsible Exploitation", etc.
The Economist, based in the U.K., but with a larger readership in the U.S. than the U.K., will surprise Americans with being off the left-right one-dimensional continuum that dominates U.S. politics. They might be characterized most closely as libertarian.
For instance, their free market views have led them to put forth the idea that illicit drugs ought to be legalized.
They advocate economic policies which generally coincide with those of U.S. Republicans, but by a slim anguished margin endorsed Kerry over Bush for the 2004 election.
Their views on the Israeli Palestinian issue are not so firmly in Sharon's camp as GWB's views are, either.
But many leftists would be dismayed at The Economist's call for privatization of state-owned enterprises in the developing world and clamping down on what they view as fiscally irresponsible generous state pensions.
As much as I or others on /. rail against MS for various practices that end up costing users money, causing vendor lock-in and upgrade treadmills, the company did not get where it is today by acting foolishly.
All of their recent actions and behavior is consistent with maximizing shareholder return.
If conditions change, either regulatory (EU, DOJ monitoring, broadcast flags), technical (TCPA) or marketplace (Linux, Oracle, IBM) I would count on them adjusting their strategy to continue to maximize long-term revenue, pure and simple.
Let's put 8 different versions of OpenOffice Writer on millions of machines (10% of which have defective hardware, viruses, etc), and see how well works.
Good point; although OpenOffice has been handicapped ahead of time by the requirements that:
- it interoperate with MS Office and that
- its UI resemble Office's sufficiently to reduce the learning curve for migrating users.
Arguably, both features artificially diminish the quality of OpenOffice compared to what it could be without them. But neither feature should be sacrificed given the current realities in the productivity software landscape.On another note, my 2 decade old LaTeX files still work just fine on my current computer with the latest releases of the software.
Oh, my bad... it's only bad is Microsoft does it.
Good point.
Microsoft could sell their own hardware bundled with their software - just like Apple.
In which case there is no issue of Microsoft coercing the hardware vendor (except they'd have even more incredible leverage upstream on CPU and peripheral manufacturers).
Yes, I think MS gets more abuse than their software deserves on /.
Your points are all good except that last one:
Consider market penetration of MS IIS vs Apache and consider the number of exploits each has seen.