Microsoft Readies 'A1' Security Subscription Service for its anti-spyware and anti-virus solutions.

MicroSoft Watch ^

[Bush2000]

And every year Linux makes new inroads. Each year hundreds of new drivers written, better installers, bugs and security risks addressed, ironing out standards, and an amazing breadth of available software introduced or upgraded available for the downloading, all under the auspices of a peculiar kind of peer revue that weeds out crap quickly.

Linux desktop market share is negligible at best. It is growing on the server -- and primarily in shops that are moving away from proprietary (aka more expensive) versions of Unix, not Windows.

Each year Microsoft's hegemony on the home computer market is nipped away at by a growing body of computer users and enthusiasts who have had enough of gaping security holes, confusing and restrictive licensing schemes and so forth.

As I said, Linux presence in the home market is almost non-existent. It's just not ready for consumers.

Linux is fun, fast, mature, and highly configurable to ones tastes. It also comes packaged in a highly user friendly way for installation for a variety of specialized uses and intended tasks. Local dead tree libraries are filled with books on Berkeley and AT&T style unix, so there's no shortage of resources to find out more for the curious mind.

Agree. I use Linux on a daily basis for some portions of my work, and I do find it useful. I rarely have to buy books to cover the types of dev topics that I'm interested in -- because the answers are generally readily available on the Web.

Microsoft has its place and will always have it's adherents. Linux just levels the playing field a bit and adds real choice to the equation. This is also true of the fine open source BSD products as well. Competition is a good thing.

Absolutely.

[Bush2000]

I could suggest a number of them...

Name them. I could use a good laugh.

... but the point wasn't an OS that didn't have holes, it was paying a monthly fee to be protected by the same company who made the mistakes in the first place.

When you can point out any publicly available OS that doesn't have any holes, I'll agree. But until then, I'll just have to laugh in your general direction.

[Bush2000]

Q: Who invented the two-button mouse?

Fixed it for you. ;-p

[grwcfl537]

You might be able to go into the registry and edit a date.

[Happy2BMe]

Q: Who invented the two-button mouse?

__________________________________

Wow! B+ Certified are yaz?

[ShadowAce]

Name them. I could use a good laugh.

Hmmm. I haven't heard of or found one in MVS. CPM comes to mind as well. DOS (<=6.22), since it's pretty much a single-user OS.

I assume there are others, but they are probably useless as real OSes. :)

No, I'm not saying MVS is useless--I'm saying the other OSes I can't think of probably are

[Bush2000]

Regarding MVS ...

(NY Times, Jan 15, 1989) Mr. King of Computer Associates, who is perhaps the leading expert on MVS security outside of I.B.M., said he has rarely seen an MVS system that did not have special undocumented commands or trapdoors to evade security, installed by the site’s system programmersto allow them to rapidly deal with anyemergency that might crop up.To Mr. Goldis, these trapdoors are breadand butter.

“Almost everybody does that,” he agreed. “And when they do, it makes my job very easy. ”Three years ago, when he took his first independent “penetration” assignment after making a name for himself doingsystems programming... it took him threeweeks to discover such a piece of code.

“Now, it generally takes me less than half a day,” he said. “I recognize it right away. ”Typically Mr Goldis’s clients challengehim to copy or read a specific file theyhave protected within the computer. Butwhen he can, he likes to use the passwordsof senior management as evidence ofsuccess.

“When you give them a list of all their passwords, they go crazy,” said Mr.Goldis. “Their first impulse is voyeuristic: ‘Gee, so-and-so has a dirty word for hispassword,’ or stuff like that. It’s like entertainment for a half-hour. Then it sinks in.”

The rest are just plain silly ...

[Musket]

Thanks Mark,

I'm gonna have to learn about the Novell products. From what I understand, MS pretty much ripped off Novells directory stategy for AD, but I was under the impression that Novell was losing ground. But now I'm learning they're bouncing back. That's cool.

[Bush2000]

The one thing that Novell has is terrific technology. They one thing they don't have is any sort of decent marketing capabilities. The marketing guys in Provo couldn't figre out how to market ice water in the Sahara!

Novell does have some pretty good technology. I used to write server NLMs back in 1992, I've written a fair amount of software for Novell -- so I have a healthy respect for their technology. However, as you suggested, Novell shot themselves in the foot big time with NDS. They should have given it away for free as a loss leader back before AD was released. But nnnnoooooooo ... they thought they could milk their existing customers and continue to build directory market share. It was a monumental mistake for them. It almost certainly guaranteed that they would lose to AD. And once you lose that race, you can forget about interop. Companies will find ways to replace you.

[Quix]

I have both those and Norton and . . .

and still . . .

get ezstub.exe

mmod.exe

TTIL.exe

all adware.Ezula

I don't know where they come from and have a dickens of a time finding them and getting rid of them. Seems I can't, really. GRRRRR.

Any suggestions?

Using Windows search to find those names finds nothing.

Going to the places Norton says to look finds nothing.

Yet, Norton says they are still there on every search AND MADDENINGLY WILL NOT DELETE THEM. GRRRRR.

[Musket]

Any suggestions?

Turn off System Restore and try scanning in Safe Mode?

[unixfox]

If Micro$oft were not so greedy and sold their OS at a price point that was within reach of the average PC user, they would be ten times larger and 1,000 times more popular than they are now.

It wouldn't matter if the price was $1.00 there would still be millions that would pirate (steal) it.

[BushisTheMan]

Really?

---

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005 9:26 a.m. EST
Gates' P.C. Crashes at Vegas Show

Despite suffering technical glitches that prompted jokes and guffaws, Bill Gates promised Wednesday that Microsoft Corp. would help millions of consumers stay seamlessly plugged into a world of digital music, movies, video games and television shows.

In his seventh annual keynote speech at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft's chairman explained that the proliferation of broadband Internet access and the falling price of data storage are compelling people to put music, photos, movies and other aspects of their life into a digital format.

"We predicted at the beginning of this decade that this would be a decade where the digital approach would be taken for granted," Gates told hundreds of technologists who gathered for his kickoff to the world's largest electronics show. "It's going even faster than we expected."
But while promoting what he calls the "digital lifestyle," Gates showed how vulnerable all consumers - even the world's richest man - are to hardware and software bugs.

During a demonstration of digital photography with a soon-to-be-released Nikon camera, a Windows Media Center PC froze and wouldn't respond to Gates' pushing of the remote control.

Later in the 90-minute presentation, a product manager demonstrated the ostensible user-friendliness of a video game expected to hit retail stores in April, Forza Motor Sport. But instead of configuring a custom-designed race car, the computer monitor displayed the dreaded "blue screen of death" and warned, "out of system memory."

The errors which came during what's usually an ode to Microsoft's dominance of the software industry and its increasing control of consumer electronics - prompted the celebrity host, NBC comedian Conan O'Brien, to quip, "Who's in charge of Microsoft, anyway?"

Gates, who was sitting next to O'Brien on a set staged to look like NBC's Late Night set, smiled dryly and continued with his discussion.

Gates also announced several partnerships with telecommunication companies such as SBC Communications Inc. and television networks.

Microsoft and music network MTV last month inked a deal that will eventually allow people to send cable programs from rock, pop and country music channels and Comedy Central to their laptops, hand-held computers and other devices.

Gates also announced that Korea's LG Electronics SA, the owner of Zenith Electronics, would build a DVD player recorder using Microsoft's digital video recording software. The product, which will be available in the fall, will attach to a television so users can record live shows onto a DVD.

Although he accepted guffaws from audience members in the theater, the technical hiccups didn't prompt Gates to engage in a hard-hitting analysis of computer reliability and security. Power outages, hardware failures and software bugs often inexplicably humble those who strive for a Windows-based digital lifestyle, and world's most popular operating system is also a favorite target of hackers, virus writers, spies and spammers.

"We've had a fair share of success and a fair share of things we've had to do version two and three of," said Gates.

Gates downplaying his company's shortcomings isn't surprising. He founded the company to create software for the budding niche of personal computers in the early '80s.

But now senior executives are eager to get a piece of the $108 billion consumer electronics market in the United States, now dominated by Asian brands such as Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and LG Electronics. It will likely take Microsoft years to understand the consumer electronics market and produce simple, glitch-free products for consumers' living rooms, analysts say.

"Microsoft was founded by programmers and is still run by programmers, and the bias of programmers is that software can do anything," said Paul DeGroot, an analyst at Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft. "While Microsoft's goal is to turn the PC into a superhub that does everything - plays music, works as a cell phone, stores your photos - they're running up against the fact that most people buy discreet components that do particular things."

[Quix]

THANKS

[Bush2000]

Here ... you'll need this if you're running OS X:


Mac OS X Disaster Relief: Troubleshooting Techniques to Help Fix It Yourself

"This troubleshooting guide explains the basics of Mac OS X, including details of its dock, finder, systems preferences, applications and utilities, layers, domains, libraries, and fonts. Landau (contributing editor, Macworld) offers advice for installing the system, preventing and recovering from crashes, using Unix, and handling problems relating to printing, networking, and files."

And let's not forget about troubleshooting Linux crashes ...

Linux Kernel crashes

[MarkL]

Novell does have some pretty good technology. I used to write server NLMs back in 1992, I've written a fair amount of software for Novell -- so I have a healthy respect for their technology. However, as you suggested, Novell shot themselves in the foot big time with NDS. They should have given it away for free as a loss leader back before AD was released. But nnnnoooooooo ... they thought they could milk their existing customers and continue to build directory market share. It was a monumental mistake for them. It almost certainly guaranteed that they would lose to AD. And once you lose that race, you can forget about interop. Companies will find ways to replace you.

No kidding. Wow, writing NLMs back in 1992? Don't get me started on NW3.x memory management! Jeez! But then, their architecture was designed for speed.

If you look at Novell's history, you will see example after example of really disasterous marketing decisions...

When they bought UNIX from AT&T, the hardware really wasn't mature enough for desktop UNIX, but they advertised it as a replacement for DOS and Windows (3.1). Never mind that there weren't many apps that would run on it. And then, the marketing wizards actually positioned the UNIX server product as a competitor to Novell servers.

You know, at one time, Novell OWNED the Intel based server market. To this day, it's hard to find a better file and print server platform than a NetWare server. But their mistakes have destroyed their market share.

Mark

[dennisw]

You have to pay for this stuff?? You can good antispy, anti-adware programs for free and some good ones that are fairy cheap for annual renewals.

[Bush2000]

Yes, there was no memory protection in NW3.x. If you corrupted the heap, you basically trashed the server. But you're right, the architecture was pretty speedy. Back in '92, another dev and I wrote a database server NLM that serviced about a few thousand connections well (It's actually still in use). I never had a problem with Novell's technology. But their marketing decisions were disastrous. UnixWare is a good example. I don't know of a single customer site that actually deployed it.

[BushisTheMan]

You've got to work for Microsoft to defend it.

[NoClones]

"Is this like selling automobiles with "optional" doors and seats? Leave a secuirty hole by intent or sloppyness and then chare extra? Talk about using monopoly power."

Hey, there are other options out there - don't whine about MS which virtually created the consumer computer industry!

If fact, do like some of the linux-enthusiasts out there when it comes to getting your auto fixed or updated...build the thing yourself!