It makes no comments as to why Microsoft stuff is any better or worse than anything else. There's no mention, let alone a comparison between Microsoft and Linux, Apple, or anything else beyond just a mere fluff sentence.
But beyond that, my biggest issue is there are no FACTS in the damn piece. Everything is anecdotal. How are Microsoft product's better/worse? Why? By what measurement?
All this article does is pick on Microsoft because it's the biggest and easiest target, so any flaws make the news. It's like saying Wal-Mart still offers only low wages and busts up unions. Duh - so do a lot of other companies, but Wal-Mart gets the attention because they are the biggest.
Explain how they are better/worse/the same as the mean, or average, or some kind of realistic comparison. This is just a rant, nothing more.
This comment is so stupid I don't even know where to begin. If you think the fact that MSFT OS is pre-installed is what is preventing people from installing other OS on their desktops, you have no clear how to sell/market a product.
Insert Alternate Reality here
Joe FatBoy is looking for a meal to eat for dinner. Since he is forbidden from law from purchasing a fully assembled, already cooked meal at his local restaurant, he is instead forced to select the raw materials from the aisle, based on perceived quality and price, and then assemble said ingredients into a fully functional "meal" that he can then use, rather than taking the ready-to-eat pre-cooked, pre-assembled meal that used to be available until outlawed in the name of "competition".
The core assumption in all of arguments saying "no harm was done" is that the status of the letters were final. Until the letter was signed, stamped, and dropped in the mail - there was no legal requirement for harvard to accept those students, and they could change their mind for any reason.
The same thing occurs in the business world all the time. Let's say I have a person working for me, and I put them in for a promotion. Their promotion letter goes onto a (supposedly) restricted server until approved by the VP for budget, etc. Persons logs on and sees their promotion ahead of time. Do they have the promotion? No. Maybe the VP needs to make budget cuts, and so no one gets a promotion. Now what? Is that person going to feel shafted? Probably. But they never should have known in the first place.
Now let's say you're a Harvard B-school applicant, and you find out (ahead of time) that you're accepted. Might you have a leg up on other applicants for things like housing close to campus? How about barganing with other b-schools for better financial aid? These may seem ridiculous examples, but the point is that a person's has confidential information that other people may not and should not have access to.
There are perfectly valid reasons for an organization to hold onto formal documents until ready to release, and any one who looked at them early is getting information they shouldn't have. And so I applaud Harvard for making a point of business ethics for the "cream of the crop" of our future business leaders (assuming they can accurately say that those who viewed the letter was the same as the applicant).
I'm surprised no one's picked up on this, but most of the examples that the article points out are very old (Windows 95?).
Microsoft has grown up a lot since then, and clearly realizes that in order to maintain growth they have to be increasingly aware of international norms/customs.
I know that all MSFT software has to go through several international reviews before they can be released to catch issues like these ahead of time.
I don't think this article is really that relevant to today.
You're going to base your conclusion based on your experience from a university (read: academic) hospital?! (read: healthcare)
That's two industries who are renowned for moving at a snail's pace at joining the rest of the business world when it comes to technology or business practices. Hell, when you look at the amount of data still recorded on paper in a hospital, and how many mistakes get made with small things like what medication your doctor just prescribed, I think your data set is way skewed.
In a university setting, individual departments or professors might be using advanced technology, but from an IT perspective I have never seen any group produce such shitty code so slowly (and this is having worked in the IT department of a major "engineering" university for 4 years.)
This is just stupid. There is plenty of data that perhaps you don't want other applications the ability to munge with. Just because it's government data necessarily means you want it transparent.
Does this mean that welfare data should be transparent? How about social security numbers? Criminal records? Police files?
Information open to all is not a good thing - it destroys the ability for you (or whomever is entrusted with information about you) to maintain some control over who has access to that data.
I think it was mentioned in the article that actually there are separate smaller "war teams" for each of the individual teams (like IIS) - that review bugs first, and then after they have a fix it gets bumped up to the main war room.
If you consider how late in the cycle the article was written (weeks away from going gold) this would make sense. You wouldn't want to waster a lot of time on process for what are relatively a small number of bugs - you'd just punt everything up to the top, since you want to be changing as little as possible. I'm sure earlier all kinds of bugs are being reviewed at smaller team levels without requiring some kind of executive approval at the "Wanke" level.
Dear God, I was just itching to put that in somewhere...:-)
Obviously the best way to do this is to just include in your e-mail: your full name mailing address zip code
I'd put it at the top of the message. That way a staffer reading the message can tell quickly it's from an actual constitutent and file it for future reading.
OK, first Sun and RealNetworks and everyone else was mad at Microsoft because they kept on bundling technology into Windows at the expense of competitors.
NOW Sun is suing MS because MS isn't including their particular little technology into Windows?
Stop the circle, I want to get off.
Really, where else does this go? Can any company sue MS because they decided to not include something in their OS? I don't see any complaints that you can't install Java on your own, so any enterprise company that wants a Java solution on MS platforms can do it, it's just not bundled.
This is a load of horse-shit IMHO. If you want to accuse MS of abusing its monopoly power by bundling technology in, then fine. But don't tell me that their competitors can dictate what non-MS technologies have to be included in an MS product! That's the exact opposite of a market system!
because it depends on blanket statements that are stated as fact when they are, in fact, assumptions based upon prejudice. Statements such as:
The school using Unix can reasonably expect to achieve nearly perfect system reliability while maintaining a relative immunity to student attacks.
I suppose that issues such as the BIND root exploit (to name one), are "relative immunity to student attacks".
But putting the prejudice asside, the major issue in any computing purchasing decision are almost never detemined by the factors of the OS, but rather the applications that are required.
Example: I used to be the Windows admin for the student labs for a relatively large private university with a strong CS department, but also strong science/humanities. Issues such as what applications professors wanted to use were the primary motivation in determining future hardware/OS purchasing decisions. This is why when I started we had fewer than 20 NT workstations, but by the time I left we had more than 100, eating up over 50 former DECstation UNIX terminals, which (depsite the article's position to the contrary), managed to become obsolete in 4 short years.
Another large determiner is student/parent requests. If the majority of incoming students are not UNIX savvy, but are Windows experienced, the university will incure a large training cost every year to teach new students basic UNIX operations. (same for the business) There will always be a need for UNIX systems in a university setting for certain curriculums.
On the business side, the single most important determination in IT purchasing decisions is LOB applications (Line of Business). Most companies have one or more applications that they absolutely depend on; it runs their business. If this applications only runs on UNIX, they are a UNIX shop. If it only runs on Windows, they are a Windows shop. Nothing you can do will change that.
This article is FUD. Just because it didn't come out of Redmond doesn't mean it doesn't stink just as bad.
Carmakers are pushing their monopoly on consumers!
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Dan Gillmor on WinXP
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The "Big 3" automakers continue to flaunt their monopoly of the auto market by adding new features to lock customers into their products. For example:
Ford recently announced that all their new cars will have "turn signals". These turn signals will indicate which direction the customer is planning to turn their car, and will even shut off without user intervention, restricting the ability for the customer to keep it running!
GM recently announced they will only maintain warranties for repairs that use "approved" GM parts and are done by "approved" GM mechanics.
Every automobile will come with a pre-existing placeholder for a "license plate". This plate can be used, ostensibly by governments, to track vehicle ownership.
Plus now every vehicle will have its own unique Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). This nefarious tool is supposedly being used to prevent fraud for "customer's protection".
Vehicles will come "bundled" with feature "packages", such as fancier radios, bigger speakers, and other advanced features such as theft protection. Customers have the option of buying these components themselves, but do we really think anyone will go through the hassle of adding these items themselves if GM provides it for them?
It's time to force these automakers to allow customers to do what they want. An immediate injunction halting all new car sales is required until customers get the choices they deserve!
FYI - Your math is slightly skewed. Microsoft offers a small business solution highly similiar, that's priced signifigantly lower.
It also offers signifigantly more than the IBM Linux distro: e-mail, firewall, SQL. Apparently you can go up to 50 clients, but then you hit a hard block. But the pricing is much different than outlined above:
$1,499 for server and 5 CALs
then $299 for 5 more CALs or $999 for 20 more CALs
So, figure for a business of 50 employees, you're talking about $3,800 total for the software.
Mind you, this isn't including hardware, support, etc., but it's signifigantly lower than the $8000+ mentioned earlier. And the IBM Linux offering doesn't offer an e-mail or firewall solution that I could tell (at least not from the review.)
All constitutional issues aside, A sales tax imposed upon internet purchases would be unfair to web merchants.
Web merchants are already struggling to keep pace with brick and mortar stores in the sense that all web orders must include shipping to the customers home. This additional burden places additional pressure on Internet retailers and forces them to cut margins even further to maintain competitive pricing with local shops.
That's the most ridiculous idea I've heard yet. Some items don't sell well on the Internet because the idea of selling them on the Internet doesn't make any sense.
This helps explain the demise of shops such as furniture.com, pets.com, etc. Some goods are just better sold locally. Bulky items especially, because of the high shipping costs. Not all retail goods need to be, or even should be, done on the web.
Taxation should not be used as a way to level the playing field. It should be used as a method of earning revenue based on goods sold to provide services to the community in which the transaction takes place. Should that be the point of sale of the business, or the consumer? I don't know. But I agree it should occur.
In Washington state, despite record budget levels, there is a shortfall in revenue as taxpayers are issuing a tax-revolt through the intiative process because of the perceived high burden of taxes. (This in a state with no income tax!) If the state can recoup some of these problems in Internet sales taxes, and reduce property taxes or something else as a result, I have no problem with that!
This one really peeved me. I use Notify CD Player, a wonderful little Windows app that hasn't rev'd in 2 years but still works fine on Win2K. It's well designed, unobtrusive, and requires minimal resources.
Today when I get this licensing error, I check the list of "approved" CDDB 1 readers for Windows, and Notify CD Player is listed! So then I send e-mail to their listed contact.
I get a polite but firm "fuck you". When I go to reply to them that they still have it listed as a "supported" application, surprise!, it's been removed.
Since I can't seem to contact the orignial developer, I guess I'll switch to the other database, but this is really fucking annoying.
As a ECE graduate, I have some experience in different areas.
My univ. happened to combine both Electrical and Computer Engineering in one degree, although there were "concentrations" in 5 different areas (ranging from pure physics to pure EE to CE to almost pure CS/programming)
By far, it differs according to your school. Each defines their degrees slightly differently. The best thing you can do is avoid concentrating until you absolutely know what you want to do. I was fairly fortunate that my school required me to take different classes in different concentrations to earn my degree. I ended up with a lot of broad knowledge because I was interested in a little bit of everything!
From my experience, a "pure" CE student will focus on: state machines, instruction set architecture (assembly and lower), and processor/chip design. My CS friends tended to take more mathematics (algorithims, set theory, etc.) and deal with issues such as how to write drivers, graphics, OS, etc.
From an employment standpoint, it makes extremely little difference. I graduated having realized that while I could program, it wasn't my favorite activity in the world. Unless you're applying for a very specific role (chip design at Intel, c++ developer, etc.), your major will play very little role. Employers are looking for your experience. What classes did you take? What projects did you do? What employment opportunties did you take? What do you do for fun that fits their field/profession? As long as you have the basic skills required, your degree signifies that you have the knowledge needed, and the ability to work in an environment to accomplish goals. They'll teach you the rest. If you don't find yourself learning in your new job, then it's time to move somewhere else, you're not being utilized.
If the GPL is so great, and all software should be free, and free software is inherently better, why isn't there a desktop OS that is better than Windows?
By "better", I don't mean from a technical or clean coding perspective, I'll concede that in a heartbeat. I mean one that provides all the features that allow people like your grandmother and your uncle Tom from Jasper, Indiana to use their computer easily and without hassle.
The answer is: because there's no money in it. You'll be hard pressed to convince me that a group of coders out there will just one day want to get together and write a new OS to do all the things that people want Windows to do. Why not? Because they have to eat.
Microsoft can make and improve Windows for what all the "other" people out there want because those people are willing to pay for it. Therefore, Microsoft is willing to invest time, money, and people in it. I don't think most Microsoft programmers would be sitting figuring out how to code OLE unless Microsoft was paying them a lot of money to do it. It certainly isn't my idea of a sexy, fun coding project. But because customers wanted to do it, Microsoft put time and money into it.
I think arguments that all software should be free are very, very naive. Who's going to code the application that does payroll accounting for restaurants? I don't think most people here find that an interesting project, and most restaurant owners ideas of computers is the shiny screen with that "rat" thing attached. But there is a commercial demand for it, so someone will make it to make money off of it. What is wrong with that? (Other than an anti-market mentality, I'm not interested in the philosophy debate, thank you)
The GPL is a great idea. For people that want to make sure their work is available to everyone (and that's a wonderful ethic to have), and that future renditions of their work will also be available to everyone, the GPL works well. But the argument that "all" software should fall under the GPL is ridiculous. There are some products that will only get created by people that have a financial incentive to build them.
Sent to the "General Comments" link.
I'm sure it'll get a good laugh.
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I must protest the Commission's decision to exclude Ralph Nader and other third party candidates from the debate process. While it is understandable that the Commission must exclude candidates who have no viable opportunity to be elected in order to facilitate a discussion, the Commission's criteria were grossly prejudiced.
The federal government has already established criteria to determine whether or not a particular party or candidate is "viable" in order to qualify for matching federal funds. The Reform Party matched those criteria in the 1992 and 1996 elections, yet their platform was not represented in the debates. While I personally disagree with the Reform party's position and candidate(s) (pick one), by excluding a candidate and party that has already proven itself to be interesting to a signifigant percentage of the American electorate, the Commission only confirms the suspicion of a growing number of Americans that the two-party system has "rigged" the election process to exclude any differing opinions.
For that matter, simply because the Commission describes itself as bipartisan does not mean it is non-partisan. In fact, the exclusion of the Reform and Green party candidates actually amplifies the suspicion that the Commission's true goal was to capitulate to the wishes of the two major political parties to exclude the views of a signifigant number of Americans who wish to support a third candidate, or at least get the issues represented by those parties discussed in the debates.
The exclusion of Ralph Nader from the debate in Boston was shameful and disgusting. The very idea that an "open" electoral debate can be excluded to any one American citizen based upon their political party affiliation is a disgusting and revolting show of partisanship and censorship. Mr. Nader was not disruptive, nor did he wish to speak, but merely to attend, with a ticket in hand. The exclusionary practice exhibited by the Commission has merely solidified the opinion of this person that the Commission has failed in its primary duty to represent the interests of the American people. This is exactly the reasons why the League of Women Voters declined to sponsor further presidential debates after the 1992 election: the requirements of the two primary parties to engineer a show rather than a debate of issues among a wide spectrum of viewpoints.
In the future, if the Commission truly wishes to be viewed as a non-partisan representative of the American people's wish to here candidates discuss issues that matter to Americans, it needs to stand up to the pedantic demands of the Democratic and Republican parties to engineer rules that inheriently restrict the free expression of ideas and issues in a public forum. The Commission also needs to adopt the rules of the FEC in determining "viable" candidates, matching those candidates who qualify for federal matching funds to invited attendees. And finally, the Commission needs to cease excluding attendees who cause no disruptions, or else step aside as a sponsor of the American election process.
Long time reader, infrequent poster - but this one goes way over the top.
Jon - If you want to be considered a serious journalist, why not start by behaving as a serious journalist; such as stating facts instead of emotion-wrenching keywords to get your readers incensed? What public service do you think you're providing by simply becoming the Matt Drudge of/.?
But the unleashing of lawyers on more than 330,000 Napster users -- many of them kids
Exactly what basis do you have for this argument? Do you have a breakdown of Napster users by age group? And since when does a person's age determine whether or not they are guilty of a crime? (Remind me to stay away from 12 year olds lest they shoot me and then we become outraged that we charge them with a crime!)
It invades privacy...
Excuse me? I don't remember anyone holding a gun to my head and forcing me to use Napster? I distincly remember agreeing to a licensing agreement with Napster that I would not commit copyright fraud and then providing identifying information. (Yes, IP address counts)
Psst... here's an idea. Don't want to be tracked? Don't break the law!
is a blatant act at intimidating mostly younger Net users...
At least you got the intimidation part right. I believe the point here is to intimidate people to stop stealing other people's intellectual property. How old they are is immaterial. I think as a 16 year old you're better off learning that stealing is wrong by being shut out of a website than it is by going to prison. Also, remember the users are not being charged with a crime, they are simply being held to the agreement they signed on to with Napster. Steal copyrighted material, get shut out.
and sets a dreadful precedent for resolving the many issues raised by the Net concerning who can own, control and disseminate intellectual property.
At the risk of repeating myself... just because you can do a thing, doesn't make it right. I can go to my local library, take a Metallica music sheet book, photocopy all the pages, and then take it home and never actually pay for the book. I don't see anyone here arguing for the freedom from being harassed of making large-scale photocopies of copyrighted material. Why? Because a.) making that many photocopies is a pain in the butt, leading to b.) the general acceptance that such behavior is wrong.
Just because computers has made some things easier doesn't make it right. While the non-techie portion of society has been slow to wake up to the changes that technology has brought to entire industries, the rest of us seem to have gotten this idea that their continued pressure to apply "real world" standards to "virtual world" problems is out-dated. In some cases it is. Certainly copyright and patent law won't be able to survive as is, and any attempt to do so will just make public faith in copyright diminish to the point of non-existence; which I believe will actually intimidate new creative works. (Why should I work on a new novel if I can't enforce my rights to make money off of it? While the idea of public accolades on the merit of my work is nice, it won't put food on the table.)
One of the miraculous things about the Net is that it has opened up all kinds of information to people who were previously denied access. Metallica seeks to reverse this liberation in the interest of more royalties.
Man, you have the most twisted circular logic. People are free to still access information. But information is not free of its own right. The New York Times publishes information; but if you want to be able to read it in printed form you have to pay. Currently you can also get it online for free. What if they decide to charge? Using your argument, this is a restriction of free information. Bullshit. It takes money to make information. I have no problem with the creators of information deciding to charge for its usage if they want to.
I could go on, but it would become pointless. To the moderators of/., Matt Drudge was a big name for a while, and now his own ridiculous ideas of journalism have lost him most of his fans, and his own TV show. I think you need to seriously consider the same natural evolution of Jon Katz out of this forum.
This is disturbing, I clicked the link and got taken to an error page from a web hosting service that the site was no longer available. Perhaps they felt the message was a little too subversive?
Right Issue, Wrong Messenger
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Database Nation
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I had the opportunity to attend a seminar that Garfinkel gave at Microsoft a few weeks ago. While I know that M$ has the reputation of being completely uncaring about privacy issues (the Office document ID fiasco comes to mind), the seminar was fairly well attended, with many participants asking very directed questions about how to incorporate data privacy concerns when designing software.
Unfortunately, S.G. seemed to flounder in how to approach this subject. He had plenty of examples of abuses of data collection and dissemination through TRW and credit bureaus, drivers license info, automatic toll collection systems, and numerous other examples; but he never applied this to a systematic concept of how to design software or systems with privacy as a feature requirement.
Many of the participants, including myself, kept on prodding him for ideas on how they could incorporate personal data protection when designing software; but each time he fell back on examples of poor implementation, rather than methods of good implementation. I ended up leaving when it became clear that he had not thought his message through beyond simply shouting "You are losing your privacy!"
I completely agree that protections need to be incorporated into what data we allow to be collected about ourselves and how it will be used. This is at both a legal level and in how we design the databases and systems of the future. Myself, I always ask why certain pieces of information about myself is being collected by whatever agency/organzation, and if I am not satisfied with the answer, I don't provide it. But unless we can get more information than simply "X is bad", I think many legislators and product designers will not take this issue seriously, and we will continue down this path of trying to cram the Pandora's box of our personal information back in after it's been released by a malicious or accidental data collection service.
Fallows does provide a great vision of how Microsoft software gets made; but his article deals mainly with the foot soldiers: Program Managers, Developers, and Testers who collectively design, code and test the software. The vision for MS products are done at the sort of "lieutenant" levels; known in product teams as Group Program Managers (GPMs) and Product Unit Managers (PUMs).
GPMs oversee the Program Managers as they design and develop the feature specifications. This is mainly an organizational task, but involves helping to make decisions about feature tradeoffs, especially as schedule impacts near.
PUMs are responsible for a product in its entirety. This includes design, development, testing, marketing, support, and all the other aspects that involve creating a software product.
When its time to begin thinking about the next version of a product (or 1.0 of a new product), it is up to the PUM and the level below him (GPM, Group Development Manager, etc.) to provide that vision. But even there the individual devs, PMs, testers, everyone has a say in what should become a priority. (product support provides feedback on customer complaints and comments, usability engineers work on improving UI, visual designers work on the next type of visual interface, PMs go out on customer site visits and get feedback 1 on 1 with customers, developers investigate new technologies with PMs, and testers go through unsolved problems from the last release.) All of this feedback is assembled and the PUM develops a "product vision" for the next version of the product.
From this point, the Program Mangers take over. Taking all the feedback from the other members of the product team, the PMs work on a feature wish list. This includes required features to maintain parity with the last release, items that didn't make it last time for various reasons, and requests from the different parts of the group. Anything goes into the list. Next, each of the features is compared to the product vision. How will this feature fit into the vision? Does it make sense given what it is we want to do with this product?
If a feature meets the vision, it's schedule impact is now scoped. What will it take to do this? Features which don't meet with the vision are scrapped, but always archived for the next version.
While all of this is going on, the PMs are talking with the GPM about their decisions. The GPM and PUM make sure that the decisions that are being made about the feature trade-offs are meeting with the product vision.
After the feature impacts are scheduled, they are next lined up with the overall schedule for the product. When do we want to ship? What will it take to get there? How much of this can we do? Now the prioritization comes in, and again the vision is applied to the features. Features which are core to the vision are maintained, those which are not are scrapped.
From this a schedule is created, the teams line up, development begins. This continues until the product is ready to ship, and the cycle begins again.
So there is some sort of hierarchial control to providing a vision, but at very few times is any sort of top-down requirement placed upon groups at Microsoft. The main reason for this is that Microsoft assumes, for the most part correctly, that their employees are smart, dedicated, and want to do the best possible job, so why impose artifical restrictions on them? Once the group agrees that a vision matches what they want to do, they'll do the feature pruning for you. Examples of times when a top-down radical change has been imposed at MS include when Bill Gates realized the Internet had up and left MS behind. Now it's the idea of "software as a service" and "Next Generation Windows Services". But again, once the decision is made, it's up to the individual teams and members to implement the change in Microsoft strategy.
I'm sorry, but this is too much. I understand why Jon Katz gets such polarized responses the majority of the time, but at least most of the time his posts are on-topic and interesting.
But if I want movie news, I'll go to IMDB. If I want news news, I go to CNN.com or MSNBC.com. And if I want to know the latest cool news in science or tech, I go to/. I do not come to/. to read a semi-literate technical person try to pretent they should be Roger Ebert's latest sidekick in an effort to score free movie tix.
This is really too much./. needs to enforce its identity, before it loses it in an effort to be everything to everyone. I suggest you go read your own tagline again before posting trivel like this.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes no comments as to why Microsoft stuff is any better or worse than anything else. There's no mention, let alone a comparison between Microsoft and Linux, Apple, or anything else beyond just a mere fluff sentence.
But beyond that, my biggest issue is there are no FACTS in the damn piece. Everything is anecdotal. How are Microsoft product's better/worse? Why? By what measurement?
All this article does is pick on Microsoft because it's the biggest and easiest target, so any flaws make the news. It's like saying Wal-Mart still offers only low wages and busts up unions. Duh - so do a lot of other companies, but Wal-Mart gets the attention because they are the biggest.
Explain how they are better/worse/the same as the mean, or average, or some kind of realistic comparison. This is just a rant, nothing more.
Insert Alternate Reality here
Joe FatBoy is looking for a meal to eat for dinner. Since he is forbidden from law from purchasing a fully assembled, already cooked meal at his local restaurant, he is instead forced to select the raw materials from the aisle, based on perceived quality and price, and then assemble said ingredients into a fully functional "meal" that he can then use, rather than taking the ready-to-eat pre-cooked, pre-assembled meal that used to be available until outlawed in the name of "competition".
The same thing occurs in the business world all the time. Let's say I have a person working for me, and I put them in for a promotion. Their promotion letter goes onto a (supposedly) restricted server until approved by the VP for budget, etc. Persons logs on and sees their promotion ahead of time. Do they have the promotion? No. Maybe the VP needs to make budget cuts, and so no one gets a promotion. Now what? Is that person going to feel shafted? Probably. But they never should have known in the first place.
Now let's say you're a Harvard B-school applicant, and you find out (ahead of time) that you're accepted. Might you have a leg up on other applicants for things like housing close to campus? How about barganing with other b-schools for better financial aid? These may seem ridiculous examples, but the point is that a person's has confidential information that other people may not and should not have access to.
There are perfectly valid reasons for an organization to hold onto formal documents until ready to release, and any one who looked at them early is getting information they shouldn't have. And so I applaud Harvard for making a point of business ethics for the "cream of the crop" of our future business leaders (assuming they can accurately say that those who viewed the letter was the same as the applicant).
I'm surprised no one's picked up on this, but most of the examples that the article points out are very old (Windows 95?).
Microsoft has grown up a lot since then, and clearly realizes that in order to maintain growth they have to be increasingly aware of international norms/customs.
I know that all MSFT software has to go through several international reviews before they can be released to catch issues like these ahead of time.
I don't think this article is really that relevant to today.
That's two industries who are renowned for moving at a snail's pace at joining the rest of the business world when it comes to technology or business practices. Hell, when you look at the amount of data still recorded on paper in a hospital, and how many mistakes get made with small things like what medication your doctor just prescribed, I think your data set is way skewed.
In a university setting, individual departments or professors might be using advanced technology, but from an IT perspective I have never seen any group produce such shitty code so slowly (and this is having worked in the IT department of a major "engineering" university for 4 years.)
OK, a few more keystrokes: /as /ah /b /s
/? command.
dir
Shows system and hidden files in bare format, across all sub directories.
Took me 8.3 seconds with a dir
Does this mean that welfare data should be transparent? How about social security numbers? Criminal records? Police files?
Information open to all is not a good thing - it destroys the ability for you (or whomever is entrusted with information about you) to maintain some control over who has access to that data.
If you consider how late in the cycle the article was written (weeks away from going gold) this would make sense. You wouldn't want to waster a lot of time on process for what are relatively a small number of bugs - you'd just punt everything up to the top, since you want to be changing as little as possible. I'm sure earlier all kinds of bugs are being reviewed at smaller team levels without requiring some kind of executive approval at the "Wanke" level.
Dear God, I was just itching to put that in somewhere... :-)
Obviously the best way to do this is to just include in your e-mail:
your full name
mailing address
zip code
I'd put it at the top of the message. That way a staffer reading the message can tell quickly it's from an actual constitutent and file it for future reading.
NOW Sun is suing MS because MS isn't including their particular little technology into Windows?
Stop the circle, I want to get off.
Really, where else does this go? Can any company sue MS because they decided to not include something in their OS? I don't see any complaints that you can't install Java on your own, so any enterprise company that wants a Java solution on MS platforms can do it, it's just not bundled.
This is a load of horse-shit IMHO. If you want to accuse MS of abusing its monopoly power by bundling technology in, then fine. But don't tell me that their competitors can dictate what non-MS technologies have to be included in an MS product! That's the exact opposite of a market system!
I suppose that issues such as the BIND root exploit (to name one), are "relative immunity to student attacks".
But putting the prejudice asside, the major issue in any computing purchasing decision are almost never detemined by the factors of the OS, but rather the applications that are required.
Example: I used to be the Windows admin for the student labs for a relatively large private university with a strong CS department, but also strong science/humanities. Issues such as what applications professors wanted to use were the primary motivation in determining future hardware/OS purchasing decisions. This is why when I started we had fewer than 20 NT workstations, but by the time I left we had more than 100, eating up over 50 former DECstation UNIX terminals, which (depsite the article's position to the contrary), managed to become obsolete in 4 short years.
Another large determiner is student/parent requests. If the majority of incoming students are not UNIX savvy, but are Windows experienced, the university will incure a large training cost every year to teach new students basic UNIX operations. (same for the business) There will always be a need for UNIX systems in a university setting for certain curriculums.
On the business side, the single most important determination in IT purchasing decisions is LOB applications (Line of Business). Most companies have one or more applications that they absolutely depend on; it runs their business. If this applications only runs on UNIX, they are a UNIX shop. If it only runs on Windows, they are a Windows shop. Nothing you can do will change that.
This article is FUD. Just because it didn't come out of Redmond doesn't mean it doesn't stink just as bad.
Ford recently announced that all their new cars will have "turn signals". These turn signals will indicate which direction the customer is planning to turn their car, and will even shut off without user intervention, restricting the ability for the customer to keep it running!
GM recently announced they will only maintain warranties for repairs that use "approved" GM parts and are done by "approved" GM mechanics.
Vehicles will come "bundled" with feature "packages", such as fancier radios, bigger speakers, and other advanced features such as theft protection. Customers have the option of buying these components themselves, but do we really think anyone will go through the hassle of adding these items themselves if GM provides it for them?
It's time to force these automakers to allow customers to do what they want. An immediate injunction halting all new car sales is required until customers get the choices they deserve!
Hmmm - buy this type of reader and I can watch movies I buy as many times I want.
Buy this other type and I have to pay each time?!
I think even Joe User can figure out the math on this one....
Unless, of course, you ignore Notes for e-mail.
Sigh.... I need to think faster than I can click "submit".
It also offers signifigantly more than the IBM Linux distro: e-mail, firewall, SQL. Apparently you can go up to 50 clients, but then you hit a hard block. But the pricing is much different than outlined above:
$1,499 for server and 5 CALs then $299 for 5 more CALs or $999 for 20 more CALs
So, figure for a business of 50 employees, you're talking about $3,800 total for the software.
Mind you, this isn't including hardware, support, etc., but it's signifigantly lower than the $8000+ mentioned earlier. And the IBM Linux offering doesn't offer an e-mail or firewall solution that I could tell (at least not from the review.)
Food for thought...
This helps explain the demise of shops such as furniture.com, pets.com, etc. Some goods are just better sold locally. Bulky items especially, because of the high shipping costs. Not all retail goods need to be, or even should be, done on the web.
Taxation should not be used as a way to level the playing field. It should be used as a method of earning revenue based on goods sold to provide services to the community in which the transaction takes place. Should that be the point of sale of the business, or the consumer? I don't know. But I agree it should occur.
In Washington state, despite record budget levels, there is a shortfall in revenue as taxpayers are issuing a tax-revolt through the intiative process because of the perceived high burden of taxes. (This in a state with no income tax!) If the state can recoup some of these problems in Internet sales taxes, and reduce property taxes or something else as a result, I have no problem with that!
Today when I get this licensing error, I check the list of "approved" CDDB 1 readers for Windows, and Notify CD Player is listed! So then I send e-mail to their listed contact.
I get a polite but firm "fuck you". When I go to reply to them that they still have it listed as a "supported" application, surprise!, it's been removed.
Since I can't seem to contact the orignial developer, I guess I'll switch to the other database, but this is really fucking annoying.
My univ. happened to combine both Electrical and Computer Engineering in one degree, although there were "concentrations" in 5 different areas (ranging from pure physics to pure EE to CE to almost pure CS/programming)
By far, it differs according to your school. Each defines their degrees slightly differently. The best thing you can do is avoid concentrating until you absolutely know what you want to do. I was fairly fortunate that my school required me to take different classes in different concentrations to earn my degree. I ended up with a lot of broad knowledge because I was interested in a little bit of everything!
From my experience, a "pure" CE student will focus on: state machines, instruction set architecture (assembly and lower), and processor/chip design. My CS friends tended to take more mathematics (algorithims, set theory, etc.) and deal with issues such as how to write drivers, graphics, OS, etc.
From an employment standpoint, it makes extremely little difference. I graduated having realized that while I could program, it wasn't my favorite activity in the world. Unless you're applying for a very specific role (chip design at Intel, c++ developer, etc.), your major will play very little role. Employers are looking for your experience. What classes did you take? What projects did you do? What employment opportunties did you take? What do you do for fun that fits their field/profession? As long as you have the basic skills required, your degree signifies that you have the knowledge needed, and the ability to work in an environment to accomplish goals. They'll teach you the rest. If you don't find yourself learning in your new job, then it's time to move somewhere else, you're not being utilized.
Hope this helps. :)
If the GPL is so great, and all software should be free, and free software is inherently better, why isn't there a desktop OS that is better than Windows?
By "better", I don't mean from a technical or clean coding perspective, I'll concede that in a heartbeat. I mean one that provides all the features that allow people like your grandmother and your uncle Tom from Jasper, Indiana to use their computer easily and without hassle.
The answer is: because there's no money in it. You'll be hard pressed to convince me that a group of coders out there will just one day want to get together and write a new OS to do all the things that people want Windows to do. Why not? Because they have to eat.
Microsoft can make and improve Windows for what all the "other" people out there want because those people are willing to pay for it. Therefore, Microsoft is willing to invest time, money, and people in it. I don't think most Microsoft programmers would be sitting figuring out how to code OLE unless Microsoft was paying them a lot of money to do it. It certainly isn't my idea of a sexy, fun coding project. But because customers wanted to do it, Microsoft put time and money into it.
I think arguments that all software should be free are very, very naive. Who's going to code the application that does payroll accounting for restaurants? I don't think most people here find that an interesting project, and most restaurant owners ideas of computers is the shiny screen with that "rat" thing attached. But there is a commercial demand for it, so someone will make it to make money off of it. What is wrong with that? (Other than an anti-market mentality, I'm not interested in the philosophy debate, thank you)
The GPL is a great idea. For people that want to make sure their work is available to everyone (and that's a wonderful ethic to have), and that future renditions of their work will also be available to everyone, the GPL works well. But the argument that "all" software should fall under the GPL is ridiculous. There are some products that will only get created by people that have a financial incentive to build them.
I'm sure it'll get a good laugh.
***
I must protest the Commission's decision to exclude Ralph Nader and other third party candidates from the debate process. While it is understandable that the Commission must exclude candidates who have no viable opportunity to be elected in order to facilitate a discussion, the Commission's criteria were grossly prejudiced.
The federal government has already established criteria to determine whether or not a particular party or candidate is "viable" in order to qualify for matching federal funds. The Reform Party matched those criteria in the 1992 and 1996 elections, yet their platform was not represented in the debates. While I personally disagree with the Reform party's position and candidate(s) (pick one), by excluding a candidate and party that has already proven itself to be interesting to a signifigant percentage of the American electorate, the Commission only confirms the suspicion of a growing number of Americans that the two-party system has "rigged" the election process to exclude any differing opinions.
For that matter, simply because the Commission describes itself as bipartisan does not mean it is non-partisan. In fact, the exclusion of the Reform and Green party candidates actually amplifies the suspicion that the Commission's true goal was to capitulate to the wishes of the two major political parties to exclude the views of a signifigant number of Americans who wish to support a third candidate, or at least get the issues represented by those parties discussed in the debates.
The exclusion of Ralph Nader from the debate in Boston was shameful and disgusting. The very idea that an "open" electoral debate can be excluded to any one American citizen based upon their political party affiliation is a disgusting and revolting show of partisanship and censorship. Mr. Nader was not disruptive, nor did he wish to speak, but merely to attend, with a ticket in hand. The exclusionary practice exhibited by the Commission has merely solidified the opinion of this person that the Commission has failed in its primary duty to represent the interests of the American people. This is exactly the reasons why the League of Women Voters declined to sponsor further presidential debates after the 1992 election: the requirements of the two primary parties to engineer a show rather than a debate of issues among a wide spectrum of viewpoints.
In the future, if the Commission truly wishes to be viewed as a non-partisan representative of the American people's wish to here candidates discuss issues that matter to Americans, it needs to stand up to the pedantic demands of the Democratic and Republican parties to engineer rules that inheriently restrict the free expression of ideas and issues in a public forum. The Commission also needs to adopt the rules of the FEC in determining "viable" candidates, matching those candidates who qualify for federal matching funds to invited attendees. And finally, the Commission needs to cease excluding attendees who cause no disruptions, or else step aside as a sponsor of the American election process.
Thank you.
Charles Anthe
Jon - If you want to be considered a serious journalist, why not start by behaving as a serious journalist; such as stating facts instead of emotion-wrenching keywords to get your readers incensed? What public service do you think you're providing by simply becoming the Matt Drudge of /.?
But the unleashing of lawyers on more than 330,000 Napster users -- many of them kids
Exactly what basis do you have for this argument? Do you have a breakdown of Napster users by age group? And since when does a person's age determine whether or not they are guilty of a crime? (Remind me to stay away from 12 year olds lest they shoot me and then we become outraged that we charge them with a crime!)
It invades privacy...
Excuse me? I don't remember anyone holding a gun to my head and forcing me to use Napster? I distincly remember agreeing to a licensing agreement with Napster that I would not commit copyright fraud and then providing identifying information. (Yes, IP address counts)
Psst... here's an idea. Don't want to be tracked? Don't break the law!
is a blatant act at intimidating mostly younger Net users...
At least you got the intimidation part right. I believe the point here is to intimidate people to stop stealing other people's intellectual property. How old they are is immaterial. I think as a 16 year old you're better off learning that stealing is wrong by being shut out of a website than it is by going to prison. Also, remember the users are not being charged with a crime, they are simply being held to the agreement they signed on to with Napster. Steal copyrighted material, get shut out.
and sets a dreadful precedent for resolving the many issues raised by the Net concerning who can own, control and disseminate intellectual property.
At the risk of repeating myself... just because you can do a thing, doesn't make it right. I can go to my local library, take a Metallica music sheet book, photocopy all the pages, and then take it home and never actually pay for the book. I don't see anyone here arguing for the freedom from being harassed of making large-scale photocopies of copyrighted material. Why? Because a.) making that many photocopies is a pain in the butt, leading to b.) the general acceptance that such behavior is wrong.
Just because computers has made some things easier doesn't make it right. While the non-techie portion of society has been slow to wake up to the changes that technology has brought to entire industries, the rest of us seem to have gotten this idea that their continued pressure to apply "real world" standards to "virtual world" problems is out-dated. In some cases it is. Certainly copyright and patent law won't be able to survive as is, and any attempt to do so will just make public faith in copyright diminish to the point of non-existence; which I believe will actually intimidate new creative works. (Why should I work on a new novel if I can't enforce my rights to make money off of it? While the idea of public accolades on the merit of my work is nice, it won't put food on the table.)
One of the miraculous things about the Net is that it has opened up all kinds of information to people who were previously denied access. Metallica seeks to reverse this liberation in the interest of more royalties.
Man, you have the most twisted circular logic. People are free to still access information. But information is not free of its own right. The New York Times publishes information; but if you want to be able to read it in printed form you have to pay. Currently you can also get it online for free. What if they decide to charge? Using your argument, this is a restriction of free information. Bullshit. It takes money to make information. I have no problem with the creators of information deciding to charge for its usage if they want to.
I could go on, but it would become pointless. To the moderators of /., Matt Drudge was a big name for a while, and now his own ridiculous ideas of journalism have lost him most of his fans, and his own TV show. I think you need to seriously consider the same natural evolution of Jon Katz out of this forum.
This is disturbing, I clicked the link and got taken to an error page from a web hosting service that the site was no longer available. Perhaps they felt the message was a little too subversive?
Unfortunately, S.G. seemed to flounder in how to approach this subject. He had plenty of examples of abuses of data collection and dissemination through TRW and credit bureaus, drivers license info, automatic toll collection systems, and numerous other examples; but he never applied this to a systematic concept of how to design software or systems with privacy as a feature requirement.
Many of the participants, including myself, kept on prodding him for ideas on how they could incorporate personal data protection when designing software; but each time he fell back on examples of poor implementation, rather than methods of good implementation. I ended up leaving when it became clear that he had not thought his message through beyond simply shouting "You are losing your privacy!"
I completely agree that protections need to be incorporated into what data we allow to be collected about ourselves and how it will be used. This is at both a legal level and in how we design the databases and systems of the future. Myself, I always ask why certain pieces of information about myself is being collected by whatever agency/organzation, and if I am not satisfied with the answer, I don't provide it. But unless we can get more information than simply "X is bad", I think many legislators and product designers will not take this issue seriously, and we will continue down this path of trying to cram the Pandora's box of our personal information back in after it's been released by a malicious or accidental data collection service.
GPMs oversee the Program Managers as they design and develop the feature specifications. This is mainly an organizational task, but involves helping to make decisions about feature tradeoffs, especially as schedule impacts near.
PUMs are responsible for a product in its entirety. This includes design, development, testing, marketing, support, and all the other aspects that involve creating a software product.
When its time to begin thinking about the next version of a product (or 1.0 of a new product), it is up to the PUM and the level below him (GPM, Group Development Manager, etc.) to provide that vision. But even there the individual devs, PMs, testers, everyone has a say in what should become a priority. (product support provides feedback on customer complaints and comments, usability engineers work on improving UI, visual designers work on the next type of visual interface, PMs go out on customer site visits and get feedback 1 on 1 with customers, developers investigate new technologies with PMs, and testers go through unsolved problems from the last release.) All of this feedback is assembled and the PUM develops a "product vision" for the next version of the product.
From this point, the Program Mangers take over. Taking all the feedback from the other members of the product team, the PMs work on a feature wish list. This includes required features to maintain parity with the last release, items that didn't make it last time for various reasons, and requests from the different parts of the group. Anything goes into the list. Next, each of the features is compared to the product vision. How will this feature fit into the vision? Does it make sense given what it is we want to do with this product?
If a feature meets the vision, it's schedule impact is now scoped. What will it take to do this? Features which don't meet with the vision are scrapped, but always archived for the next version.
While all of this is going on, the PMs are talking with the GPM about their decisions. The GPM and PUM make sure that the decisions that are being made about the feature trade-offs are meeting with the product vision.
After the feature impacts are scheduled, they are next lined up with the overall schedule for the product. When do we want to ship? What will it take to get there? How much of this can we do? Now the prioritization comes in, and again the vision is applied to the features. Features which are core to the vision are maintained, those which are not are scrapped.
From this a schedule is created, the teams line up, development begins. This continues until the product is ready to ship, and the cycle begins again.
So there is some sort of hierarchial control to providing a vision, but at very few times is any sort of top-down requirement placed upon groups at Microsoft. The main reason for this is that Microsoft assumes, for the most part correctly, that their employees are smart, dedicated, and want to do the best possible job, so why impose artifical restrictions on them? Once the group agrees that a vision matches what they want to do, they'll do the feature pruning for you. Examples of times when a top-down radical change has been imposed at MS include when Bill Gates realized the Internet had up and left MS behind. Now it's the idea of "software as a service" and "Next Generation Windows Services". But again, once the decision is made, it's up to the individual teams and members to implement the change in Microsoft strategy.
But if I want movie news, I'll go to IMDB. If I want news news, I go to CNN.com or MSNBC.com. And if I want to know the latest cool news in science or tech, I go to /. I do not come to /. to read a semi-literate technical person try to pretent they should be Roger Ebert's latest sidekick in an effort to score free movie tix.
This is really too much. /. needs to enforce its identity, before it loses it in an effort to be everything to everyone. I suggest you go read your own tagline again before posting trivel like this.