Hey man - I understand where you're coming from, but you and the GP are talking about two different problems.
In one case (the issue he's talking about), any point of failure means everything fails (such as leaking data). In that use case, he's right. If you have two Windows boxes (of the same version and service pack), and you only have to hack one machine to win, you'd be better off with one Windows machine and one OpenBSD machine. Sure, OpenBSD is way the hell better security-wise, but in this case it's Windows's vulnerabilities vs Windows's vulnerabilities + OpenBSD's vulnerabilities. Unless OpenBSD has less than zero vulnerabilities (you know... impossible?), you're better off with the 2nd option.
Now, here's where you're right: where assurance of data, not confidentiality or integrity, is the primary concern.
If you have to hack all machines to win, and you have either two identical windows boxen or a windows box and an openBSD box, you have an obvious choice. In the first case you have a single point of failure and in the 2nd you have two. The "single point of failure" thing is only a problem for assurance, not for confidentiality or integrity. For confidentiality or integrity "any point of failure" is a problem, which means you need less options.
You and the GP are both right, but about different problems.
Notwithstanding its actual existing specific meaning, "bricked" is fairly obviously now a slang term for when something electronic is, temporarily or permanently, inoperative. You can't put a CD in a brick, reboot it, and turn it into a functional device. If your device has any more functionality than a brick it isn't bricked.
I was really disappointed. I hope I just got the freak lame interview and most of their interviews are a little more relevant (for Google's sake), but my 2nd phone interview with them was random trivia. No problem solving, no brainstorming, no thought process at all, just information retrieval.
You'd think the company that revolutionized fast information retrieval would understand that "man " or Googling something is almost instant, but creativity and intelligence are priceless. The interviewer asked me what all the Unix signals were, which ones a process could override handlers for, what characters were valid in a filename in Linux, etc. This stuff would literally take an hour (tops) to learn, 5 minutes (tops) to look up. I'd have looked it up, but that was against the terms of the interview.
you are being pretty silly to imply that you will have more trouble with hardware on Windows than on Linux. I don't think it's silly at all. What I'm saying is that full hardware support on my system (as well as my Mac Mini) required me to install zero drivers in Ubuntu. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have to install Ubuntu to get full hardware support in Ubuntu -- even the live CD did it. I inserted zero driver install CD's, visited zero manufacturer websites, downloaded and ran zero driver installers.
I never implied that Windows wasn't compatible with the hardware, just that Ubuntu was even easier - Linux wireless horror is largely mythical anymore.
Of course, if the customer experience is terrible, nobody would bother trying to pirate Windows. Or they could be trying to pirate windows because it's the only platform the software they DO want to use is written for
Which is because everyone uses it.
Which is because it was handed a monopoly on a silver platter by IBM and the companies that subsequently cloned IBM's technology.
I just bought a computer from parts and put it together. It has the following components:
Atheros wireless (which was just the cheapest card I could find, I did no research for compatability)
Nvidia GeForce 8600GTS
onboard Gigabit lan
onboard ac97 sound
Which worked out of the box on XP? The sound. Yay.
All of it worked out of the box during the installer for Ubuntu. I was cruising the net using my wireless while the files copied, checking slashdot or the like. Add to that, everything worked out of the box after install as well.
Boy, that wireless support sure can be a bitch for poor old linux.
Beryl/Compiz (which work with both KDE and Gnome) have been shipping since 2005(or earlier, no idea), and Qt (off which KDE is based) has supported a backing store since at least then (that's when I first started using it, so I can't vouch beyond that -- it started with 4.0).
Just because it's being reported now doesn't mean it's new now. Remember, open source projects don't have billion dollar marketing budgets to trumpet things like composited graphics. They could have it years before Windows (as is the case here) and pretty much nobody would know.
A friend told me about an awesome show that I had to see. I didn't have TV and the first season was already over, and the 2nd wasn't playing for another few months. I found a torrent and downloaded it, and was hooked.
A few months later at my new place I got cable just for that show, and watched the whole 2nd season as it came out. Sure, if I missed an episode torrents would be out within an hour, so I didn't HAVE to get TV for it, but at that point I wanted to.
They're giving away FREE copies It's not *entirely* free - those caveats you mention are pretty valuable. You know all those "get a FREE iPod!!!" sites that only require you sign up for 7 advertisement sites and get 10 friends to do the same? They sell that information for good money to companies that do "industry analysis".
In this case Microsoft must be unhappy with how much their analysis is costing, so they're bypassing the middle man. You still volunteer to help their research by giving away information that is valuable to them - and that they will use for whatever they want.
Example - if they notice too many people using Opera or FireFox (or even IE6), they're going to try to figure out how to push IE7 -- how they do that may cost you indirectly via more incompatibilities, more FUD, whatever. Sure, it may not - maybe they'll just try to make IE7 that much better, but there are no guarantees. By giving them your information you gave them the right to do whatever they want with it, and it may well cost everybody a lot.
But I would take them up on this. I'd set up an old computer I don't use, run Vista Ultimate on it, and point it straight to Goatse in hopes of catching an unwary newbie.
Hrm. Perhaps I wrote my post poorly - the point was not to attempt to validate the parent's idea, but to point out that a simple flaw in their logic is far from trolling. There's nothing trollish about being wrong (or even being stupid, if you're mature about it) - and the GP, while wrong, didn't strike me as particularly inflammatory or malicious.
I'm not saying I agree with the parent that got modded troll (and hey, got modded troll myself! Yay!) -- I'm just saying there's nothing 'trollish' about them just being wrong. Simple logic flaws could easily lead to their position, and there's nothing inflammatory or malicious about it.
For the sake of interop it is necessary to glean the standards as written. I think it's more vital for the sake of interop to use only open standards - Microsoft will just continue to change and break theirs to the detriment of interoperability. Writing to their standards is a short sighted act of desperation.
The parent should not be modded troll. They make a valid point. Those who understand Physics or Chemistry understand that energy is never created in a system, it can only be transferred to it.
So if the system suddenly starts using more energy it must be taking it from somewhere... We take it from the wind in this example. That weakens the wind. This will affect the climate, the wildlife, and the vegetation. We don't know how. I hope someone has actually thought this through.
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Not if the use case demands Windows. Hey, I despise Windows, but there are some situations where, like it or not, you're stuck with it.
You know, the whole monopoly thing.
Hey man - I understand where you're coming from, but you and the GP are talking about two different problems.
In one case (the issue he's talking about), any point of failure means everything fails (such as leaking data). In that use case, he's right. If you have two Windows boxes (of the same version and service pack), and you only have to hack one machine to win, you'd be better off with one Windows machine and one OpenBSD machine. Sure, OpenBSD is way the hell better security-wise, but in this case it's Windows's vulnerabilities vs Windows's vulnerabilities + OpenBSD's vulnerabilities. Unless OpenBSD has less than zero vulnerabilities (you know... impossible?), you're better off with the 2nd option.
Now, here's where you're right: where assurance of data, not confidentiality or integrity, is the primary concern.
If you have to hack all machines to win, and you have either two identical windows boxen or a windows box and an openBSD box, you have an obvious choice. In the first case you have a single point of failure and in the 2nd you have two. The "single point of failure" thing is only a problem for assurance, not for confidentiality or integrity. For confidentiality or integrity "any point of failure" is a problem, which means you need less options.
You and the GP are both right, but about different problems.
Can't speak for other platforms, but I taught myself X86 assembly in Jr. high, so it can't be that bad.
I was really disappointed. I hope I just got the freak lame interview and most of their interviews are a little more relevant (for Google's sake), but my 2nd phone interview with them was random trivia. No problem solving, no brainstorming, no thought process at all, just information retrieval.
You'd think the company that revolutionized fast information retrieval would understand that "man " or Googling something is almost instant, but creativity and intelligence are priceless. The interviewer asked me what all the Unix signals were, which ones a process could override handlers for, what characters were valid in a filename in Linux, etc. This stuff would literally take an hour (tops) to learn, 5 minutes (tops) to look up. I'd have looked it up, but that was against the terms of the interview.
Needless to say I felt extremely cheated.
I never implied that Windows wasn't compatible with the hardware, just that Ubuntu was even easier - Linux wireless horror is largely mythical anymore.
So, like C++?
Which is because everyone uses it.
Which is because it was handed a monopoly on a silver platter by IBM and the companies that subsequently cloned IBM's technology.
I'd say the only lucky thing is that I wasn't using Windows.
by Microsoft
I just bought a computer from parts and put it together. It has the following components:
Atheros wireless (which was just the cheapest card I could find, I did no research for compatability)
Nvidia GeForce 8600GTS
onboard Gigabit lan
onboard ac97 sound
Which worked out of the box on XP? The sound. Yay.
All of it worked out of the box during the installer for Ubuntu. I was cruising the net using my wireless while the files copied, checking slashdot or the like. Add to that, everything worked out of the box after install as well.
Boy, that wireless support sure can be a bitch for poor old linux.
I can boot Damn Small Linux to a full gui with 8 megs of ram put on a nice wallpaper and you're at ~10.
How are those security patches for your NT machine holding up?
Beryl/Compiz (which work with both KDE and Gnome) have been shipping since 2005(or earlier, no idea), and Qt (off which KDE is based) has supported a backing store since at least then (that's when I first started using it, so I can't vouch beyond that -- it started with 4.0).
Just because it's being reported now doesn't mean it's new now. Remember, open source projects don't have billion dollar marketing budgets to trumpet things like composited graphics. They could have it years before Windows (as is the case here) and pretty much nobody would know.
...OSX?
The alternate message is that you need assurance that it'll work with Vista at all. You know, many of your old programs and drivers won't.
You couldn't possibly be insinuating "Point of Sale" could you?!
A friend told me about an awesome show that I had to see. I didn't have TV and the first season was already over, and the 2nd wasn't playing for another few months. I found a torrent and downloaded it, and was hooked.
A few months later at my new place I got cable just for that show, and watched the whole 2nd season as it came out. Sure, if I missed an episode torrents would be out within an hour, so I didn't HAVE to get TV for it, but at that point I wanted to.
In this case Microsoft must be unhappy with how much their analysis is costing, so they're bypassing the middle man. You still volunteer to help their research by giving away information that is valuable to them - and that they will use for whatever they want.
Example - if they notice too many people using Opera or FireFox (or even IE6), they're going to try to figure out how to push IE7 -- how they do that may cost you indirectly via more incompatibilities, more FUD, whatever. Sure, it may not - maybe they'll just try to make IE7 that much better, but there are no guarantees. By giving them your information you gave them the right to do whatever they want with it, and it may well cost everybody a lot.
The cost is always passed on to the consumer.
But I would take them up on this. I'd set up an old computer I don't use, run Vista Ultimate on it, and point it straight to Goatse in hopes of catching an unwary newbie.
Well yeah, that and he didn't specify the plane had to be flying. That's some REALLY old news.
Hrm. Perhaps I wrote my post poorly - the point was not to attempt to validate the parent's idea, but to point out that a simple flaw in their logic is far from trolling. There's nothing trollish about being wrong (or even being stupid, if you're mature about it) - and the GP, while wrong, didn't strike me as particularly inflammatory or malicious.
I'm not saying I agree with the parent that got modded troll (and hey, got modded troll myself! Yay!) -- I'm just saying there's nothing 'trollish' about them just being wrong. Simple logic flaws could easily lead to their position, and there's nothing inflammatory or malicious about it.
Being wrong is very different from trolling.
The parent should not be modded troll. They make a valid point. Those who understand Physics or Chemistry understand that energy is never created in a system, it can only be transferred to it.
So if the system suddenly starts using more energy it must be taking it from somewhere... We take it from the wind in this example. That weakens the wind. This will affect the climate, the wildlife, and the vegetation. We don't know how. I hope someone has actually thought this through.