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Thanks for that Max. I had heard rumours about this but this is the first time I've seen it in print. Errare humanum est; even if you're a Microsoft software developer!
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> Errare humanum est; even if you're a Microsoft software developer!
"Even if" - surely you mean "especially if", gaping security holes being the only thing M$ is any good at making.
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I was going to add 'especially?' in brackets, but decided to go for the ironic statement! But where would we be without them? Please consider that question rhetorical, the possibilities are staggering. Still, if anyone *wants to explore them...
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Actually, what bugs me about this is not the flaw, every OS has those, it's M$'s decision not to tell anyone about it for 6 months, hoping that no black hat hacker would discover for themselves in the meantime. OpenSource OSes have just as many security holes, but they get patched within days or weeks, not hidden for months.
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Well, as you know I'm no M$ supporter or booster, but stop and think about it for a minute. The flaw is deep in the NT kernel, and it apparently wasn't a five-minute job to repair it. If the knowledge of the hole in M$ security was widely advertised, hackers would have had six months in which to generate attacks and cause grief to lots of people. As things stand, people were no worse off, and in fact were probably safer.
For once, after doing the inevitable wrong thing by writing rubbish code, I think they took the right approach to fixing it. If, of course, they have. Fixed it, I mean.
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I was tempted to give this sentence from the linked "critical flaw" article an odd post(ing):
"...could let hackers quietly break into their computers to steal files, delete data or eavesdrop on sensitive information."
But what I really wanted to know was whether anyone was aware of an earlier instance of the word "microsoft" than that in "Neuromancer." Or did they even "innovate" their company name from third-party developers?
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You think maybe Microsoft has a time machine hidden away and they stole their name from a book written nine years in the future?
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Neuromancer was published in '83 or '84, IIRC, (and written on a manual typewriter). Microsloth was incorporated in New Mexico in the mid '70s. Their first software, a BASIC interpretor for the Altair 8800, alleged borrowed heavily from the Dartmouth implementation.
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I read the thread title and my first thought was, "Installation?"
(Warning - I have "a very small amount of" stock in MS.)
I agree with Pfranz. They did the right thing. Had we known of it, what could we have done? Some few of us could have disconnected from the net, but most of us are irretrievably linked.
It's not a clear one way or the other for me. I think Gates is a smart guy and I think he has some extremely smart guys working for him. The problem is that even a huge team of smart guys don't always get it right. You need diversity in the gene pool. (I don't mean this in the idiotic pseudointellectual way that it's used by HR departments. I'm very serious. Diversity is critical to long term survival.) Most of the following is problem old hat to most of you, but here's my take.
Some time back, there was this tension between the centralist, everything by the same book, monster IBM mainframe supporters and the people who tossed the book in the trash, did their own thing, and not only supported, but embodied individualism. A key turning point was the advent of the PC (the general term used to apply to ANY microcomputer that was a personal computer, so PETS, apples, all per PC's ... then by simply by calling their product a PC, IBM coopts the term) and in particular the IBM PC which came with the BASIC programming language on a ROM. This opened up the doors of programming housewives wanting to track recipes, kids wanting to play games, teachers wanting to track grades, plumbers needing ways to estimate costs, and so on. Since then there has been a steady, enormous pool of programmers feeding into the collective. (I include some web page designers, database administrators, and graphical artists, in this group of "programmers." Sample justification: HTML is a kind of programming in itself, but more to the point, most web page designers - even the ones who are not programmers in some strict sense, have to learn a little java or javascript.)
This influx of "new blood" augmented the programming genome. No longer were the sole contributors selected from the ethereal heights of the mathematicians, nor even the college educated. The theoretical work is still being done by mathematicians and those officially labeled "computer scienists," but people from all backgrounds have made contributions to applications, techniques, and coding idioms. I've known guys who started out as electrical engineers, but became programmers - BUT I've also known people who started out as housewives, economists, and English majors.
Over the years we have collectively migrated towards the microsoft platform. This is done for a number of reasons, but mostly I think because there is a strong argument of simplicity when everyone is doing the same thing the same way. I was at a conference a while back and there was a guy who chose not to use powerpoint for a presentation. He had a crazy time getting things working and the general feeling of the attendees that this was a completely inappropriate and unnecessary waste of time.
While PCs and The Net are permitting people to expand to the edges, the corporations and society in general are pushing towards centralization. I have two PCs at work, one with linux the other with W2K. I checked with microsoft and I was behind on more than 40 CRITICAL UPDATES. But the sysadmins here didn't want to install because they weren't all tested to be sure they would work on all the systems here. I attempted the updates myself and screwed it up (it turned out to be a heretofor unnoticed hardware problem, but even I believed it was my fault at the time). Needless to say I was chastised, but within a month or so we discovered that foreign agents had broken into our systems and downloaded all sorts of sensitive files. Suddenly, the kook who's making a big stink over nothing and pushing for getting at least the critical updates doesn't look so kooky. There are others besides me who have run into corporate bureaucracy. Other people here, and many, many other people at other companies.
Additionally, people want to work together seamlessly. This is easiest done with the widest possible base when people are using the same tools. Strong social motivation to go with one thing and screw diversity.
Additionally, I note that whenever I have a problem with linux, there's almost noone around to help me. It inevitably takes much more time than it should. I've only recently (in the last few years) gotten out of the habit of trying to fix my own crap and disciplined myself to rely on the computer services people who get paid to do it. (The episode with critical updates was an anomaly.) There are a few outstandingly good technicians who are willing to learn linux and support you any way they can, but the vast majority seem to be devoted to the one size fits all solution - and it's the thing they know best - Microsoft.
Being a VB programmer about 50% of the time for the last few years, I've got my own investment in MS. This is personal investment, but of course companies have 10s of billions invested in training, equipment, software, etc.
I'm trying to think of this objectively, though I find MS an intensely annoying OS. It's hard to explain to a non-programmer or someone who has never known anything else. It's intrusive. I mean downright, absolutely rude. An example of this that anyone can understand was that completely idiotic clippy thing. When it first came out, the obvious methods of turning it off, failed to do so. This seriously wrankled me. Nowadays, it's simple, but the default installation has that ignorance piece of crap turned on.
There are other issues I have with MS, only some of which are technical. (Resource management is a reasonably well-understood thing, so how come my PC can't handle more processes GRACEFULLY than I have available processors? Back when I had single processors systems, I had to reboot almost every day.)
Despite these annoyances, the immediate benefit of using MS PC is overwhelming for some of us, but the corresponding lack of diversity leaves us staggeringly unprepared for the inevitable attack. (Well, I have my linux box, but most of the people I need to work with are on PCs and some of my critical apps only run on MS systems.)
I'm ignoring the ethics of the lowlifes who make these worms, viruses, etc. We clearly need severe penalties for these morons. But there will always be morons and there will almost certainly always be bugs in complex systems that lowlife morons can exploit. The situation is roughly analogous to replanting a clear-cut forest with only 2 or 3 types of tree. (There's an outbreak of bug X to which pine species X is virtually unsusceptible. Unfortunately, we replanted with A, B, and C which are highly susceptible.)
Anyway, that's my rather obvious take.
k
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The thing I dislike about MS (as well as other near-monopolies) is their tactic of destroying all competition, sometimes without acquiring the innovations that brought around the destruction. Without competitors their "innovations" grind to a halt. And the consumer ends up with whatever they deliver. Think about products that MS has innovated: Bob (the OS), MS Money, MSN (the first iteration). All failed miserably. How to fix? Acquire other companies and rebrand their products as MS ones. This approach doesn't so much take brains as money.
MS consistently touts their product as the best, denying any security flaws in the software for upwards of half a year (as in the case under discussion). As was already pointed out on this thread, their "innovation" tends to be either "ripping off" or "buying out" a true innovator. Ask anybody who's been borged by either MS or any other large software company, how their intellectual property (as well as human resources, i.e., employees) is treated after the assimilation. The sad truth is, it's usually squandered. The defense for MS that I see a lot is that Bill Gates is a smart guy. I don't deny it, but he's also an unethical and ruthless guy. That's the part I dislike.
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The defense for MS that I see a lot is that Bill Gates is a smart guy.
I agree with everything you said. MS is ruthless. Bill Gates is ruthless.
But let me be very clear. I don't offer Bill's intelligence as a defense. There is a tendency when people are against somebody or something to think that somehow any claim that anybody cares to make against the person or thing is true. There's a lot of people who say BG is stupid or Microsoft is stupid. That's just not true. There are a lot of smart people working for MS (unfortunately, too many of them are lawyers) and Bill Gates is among them.
Also, there are a lot of reasons why MS is dominant, and ruthless, shady business practices are only part of it.
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...time machine...
Oh, what's time, anyway?
;)
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As Saint Austin once quipped: quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quærat, scio; si quærenti explicare velim, nescio. (Therefore, what is time? If nobody asks me, I know what it is, but as soon as somebody asks me, I don't.)
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si quærenti explicare velim, nescio.sorta Heisenbergish, eh? 
formerly known as etaoin...
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What's Heisenberg got to do with Schrodinger's moggy? And, anyway, you may or may not have killed it.
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I try to keep a perspective on M$, but it's difficult when every day, at least ONCE a day, I'm faced with their basic incompetence. I work in an M$-orient(at)ed shop, so much so, in fact, that we have a very close relationship with The Redmond Raiders. We're joined at the wallet, quite literally. Half our architecture team spend a good deal of their time in WA praying at the M$ Holy Billy Gates Tabernacle's altar. It's .NET this, .NET that and we keep getting briefings on the latest incarnation of M$'s NEXT operating system currently codenamed Longhorn. This new OS is all-singing and all-dancing but the one thing I know for certain about it is that it will crash regularly and spectacularly. That's kinda comforting, because I would be horrified if M$ did a competent job on something. My whole world view would be changed overnight and I would have to do penance. But I'm certain I'm safe from having to light candles and say "Hail Billys".
In fact, I've just been interrupted by 'er indoors, who's had Windoze Exploder crash on her leaving her unable to do anything except CTRL-ALT-DEL her W2K machine. And W2K is by far the most stable of the current crop of M$ OSs, which is why I chose it over XP, which means "eXPerimental", I'm sure. I have this abortive attempt at an OS on my work laptop and it gives me grief every day. I've also had Word fail to open two files (with no explanation) and Excel crash catastrophically in the past 10 hours.
I'm right up to date on all the security patches. I clean up my registry religiously. But the OSs churned out by all those "bright" people are unfinished works, and will forever remain so. I hope I can get to the end of the night without having to reboot MY machine ...
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MS has sent me two updates for WindowsXP in less than a month. So far my only problem with it is that because of
poor vision it is hard to read the manual. And I cannot
open the text tutorial, and the audio is useless to me because of my deafness. And just about everybody who bitches
about MS earns money implementing it.
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What's Heisenberg got to do with Schrodinger's moggy?
I'm uncertain.
formerly known as etaoin...
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mono cultures, (for the irish with potatoes, or the french with grapes, or modern offices with MS) arise all the time.
there are advantages to mono cultures. You know exactly what your going to get, how to work with it, etc.. the disadvantages, with soft ware OS and with botanicals are the same.. you leave your self open to pests.. most are just irritating, some are fatal.
so far, most of the viruses for MS have just been pests. there are 'anti virus' software to deal with them. but eventually, there will be a catostrophic failure. and a new hybrid (or several new hybrids)OS's will evolve.
apples are increadibly genetical diverse. plant 100 seeds, you'll get 100 different type of apples from the trees--and some of the trees will be giants, and some minuture.
but go into your local green grocer, and you'll be lucky to find 20 different apples over the course of year.
we like mono culture. we like those big shiny, symetrical red delicous apples, the smooth dense crunch granny smiths, the tart juicy Mac's. we like knowing when we bite into an apple, what we are going to get.
for all the complaints, for all the expense the companies go to, (to have an IS department, a helpdesk, etc) they like MS. that is way we humans are.
you might as well join king Cunet on the shore an rail agaist the rising tide! he knew it was a futile effort aren't you at least as smart?
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Mac's. we like knowing when we bite into an apple, what we are going to getyup.
formerly known as etaoin...
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What, rotten to the core? 
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to the coreouch, ouch...  ya don't see me with none of them virii on my computer...
formerly known as etaoin...
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Then there's the older programmer's lament to his sweetheart:
Don't sit under the Apple IIE
With anyone else but me.
TEd
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"...you might as well join king Cunet on the shore an rail agaist the rising tide!..."
That tide has already risen as far as it can go. Working with, for, on, around, etc computers was suddenly "cool" because they were dumbed down enough for the people who worry about "cool" to use them. MS made sure the "us" and "them" culture of computer *use continued, but that's another story. The fad is over and now it's starting to look like that 'avacado' colored refrigerator did in 1980... for those who need to stay *cool, anyway.
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refrigerator ... for those who need to stay *cool, anyway. Groannnnnn!
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dumbed down enough
I'm not sure I agree with your overall point, but I do think this is a mischaracterization. Computers have gotten easier to build, program, and use. This allows dumbing down, but it's not dumbing down in itself.
Example:
Back in engineering school, we actually had to build a microcomputer from scratch and write a simple monitor program in assembler. When I say "from scratch," I mean "from the chip up" including putting capacitors across a 555 chip to get the internal timing correct, laying down the wiring, addressing the interface chips, polling, interrupts, the whole thing. Nowadays, I hear people talk about building their PCs and I know they mean something completely different. They buy a motherboard here, a chassis there, plunk, plunk, plunk and they're done. But the equipment is not dumbed down, per se. At about the time I was making my own microcomputer, one could purchase a Radio Shack computer called a TRS-80 running TRSDOS. It was a great computer really - very reasonably priced, but still far beyond anything I could afford. You crack open the case and it looked pretty interesting. My friends had all made mods to theirs - adding capacitors to the keyboard to reduce keybounce, jumpers all over the place for reasons I've long since forgotten, homemade "paddleboards."
When I look at the computers now, though, I'm continually amazed. The layouts are so neat, the designs (even of the mediocre boards) are clean. It's so obvious that they've got this fabrication thing down and they're using some very good software for design and control. It's like someone who's built a log cabin walking into the World Trade Center (well, when there was a WTC).
Is there a dumbing down effect? Well, in the sense that it allows people who otherwise would not have been computer users to make productive use of the computers. It adds something to their lives: entertainment, livelihood, whatever.
In some sense, I can follow the "cool" argument. Having access to computer games could be like having cell-phones. I see 8 and 9 year olds with cell phones. I have one myself (although I'm an ardent critic of the way they are misused). Even my 14 yo has one. Interesting, though, there's a kid in her school who got one and was harassing her for not having having one. (She had one, she just didn't wave it around.) There's always a group of people who think because they have the best tennis shoes or the newest DVD that they are somehow superior. Would that this were limited to adolescents. I suppose I agree with the general argument.
(OTOH, I think there's "really cool" and there's "cool for the sake of appearances." )
It's the specific comment on "dumbing down" I'm choking on. There's just this general trend in technologies - to remove possibilities for error, to make things simpler. From clocks to cars to network routers, when new technologies arise, they initially require people with modest specialized skills to look after them, but eventually the technology improves to where any bonehead can use it.
Look at it from the other way: imagine that using the net required one to make one's own computer - really make one's own computer, write your own OS, build your own modem, and so on. Could you do it? I know I'd have to do some serious review to start something like that. I've never actually written an entire OS. I've never built a modem. In any case it would be a lot of work - huge investment of time. Figure what percentage of people now on the net would remain if there were this sort of initiation rite?
Early on in my job, I used to do my own upgrades, fix my own problems - in fact, people were often asking me to fix stuff for them instead of calling the tech guys. Then I realized I was spending way too much time on this mundane stuff. First, I wasn't doing what I was get paid to do. Second, I wasn't making these other guys do what they were getting paid to do. Third, and probably most important, I was denying these guys the opportunity to learn by solving different kinds of problems. It's a REALLY hard thing not to get irritated and do things myself. Generally I've disciplined myself to call on the computer services people to do most things. This is a lot easier now that I have a certain group of people I know who are actually good at what they do. This is another thing - these really good guys have certainly benefited from the trend of technological improvement (the "dumbing down"). These guys can actually use oscilloscopes, voltmeters, etc. - correctly. They don't have a lot of need for that - BUT they also have strong logical skills and a strong experiential base. So they aren't resigned to the usual method of computer repair - replace every component, almost randomly, until the thing works. Not only can they solve problems better than the lesser techs, they can solve them 5 to 100 times faster than I can (literally).
On the other hand, there's way too much work for this elite group to do on their own. They help lay out the general plan, they take care of some of the harder problems, and they let the novices do the simple stuff like OS installs, replacing keyboards, ghosting drives, and the like.
One might argue - and I have heard people argue - that MS is a step backward. You could argue it several ways, but the initial install procedure for MS, imo, is really good. Also this PNP stuff (did they steal this idea from apple?) - I just get a memory stick and plug it in - it works with no hassle. Is it "dumbed down"? Well, yea, but it's saving me time. I don't want to spend an afternoon looking for drivers, talking to people on the phone, only to discover it doesn't work.
When I was much younger and the door-to-door religion salespeople would come to my door, I would very often talk to them for hours and hours. I don't do it any more. I just don't have that kind of time. I'm extremely grateful that technology has gotten easier to use. If that's dumbed down, I'm all for it. Give me more of it. If I gotta listen to some inconsiderate imbecile yell loudly into his cell phone while I'm trying to eat dinner or read a book, well, it's not a huge price to pay for getting back some time.
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I'll happily stick with my Mac, she signed, dumbly.
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First time I got a Mac at work, I was horrified. The Mac Shuffle (if you've been a Mac owner for a long time, you know what I mean) was a continual annoyance. When cheap hard drives became available at the 40 MB level and above, that problem was eliminated.
The other annoying thing was the appearance of that stupid bomb icon for reasons only those who had been initiated into the mysteries could fathom. It's the Mac equivalent of the PC's Blue Screen of Death. I no longer hate Macs. Also, I hear their OS is based on unix now, which is great. Before I got my dual processor PC, my machine used to crash several times a week - sometimes every day for a week. PC's seem to handle resource management very poorly. I got into the habit of rebooting every morning whether I needed it or not. The fellow in the adjoining office, oth, has had the same Mac for nearly two years - running almost 24/7. He's only rebooted the thing about 4 or 5 times ever - and just last Thursday he was telling me he had his first system crash - in nearly two years. There's a difference between us, though. He was using a Mac for administrative purposes (email, writing papers, briefing slides, etc) and an SGI for his substantive work. I was using a single processor PC (NT) for both things simultaneously. In my view, NT was a real operating system which distinguished it from it's predecessors which were almost monitor programs. OTOH, the things which distinguished NT as what I would call a real operating system (like resource management and process level security) didn't seem to be implemented very well.
Anyway, the Mac is a great computer. It's different than what I'm currently accustomed to, though. And it's very difficult for me (and probably most other people) to wrap my mind around new ways of thinking and behaving. I get into a rhythm and I don't like changing. (Hey, I refused to use full screen editors for about a decade after I first saw them. I stuck not with a line editor, but a character editor called TECO.) Part of it is stubbornness, but part of it is just being tired of learning a new thing every couple months.
k
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