What, We Worry? by Robert Gore
The legions of speculators, investors, and commentators who look for exogenous causes of stock market movements will perhaps say that WannaCry was dismissed because the damage was limited. However, the reported number of computers that have been affected rose all day, and there were news stories that at least one variation of the ransomware had no kill switch, which means it could proliferate unchecked. So during the trading day, nobody really knew how bad the damage was or how bad it would get. Also, while all the implications for computer and network security are not fully known, this incident, the worst of its kind so far, is a loud and clear warning of proliferating risks. Those risks are especially worrisome for companies whose business models depend on computers and the internet.
Switch to Ubuntu as I did, and don't worry about either type of ransomware racket any more.
"Upgrade" has a perverted definition when used to describe OS software.
Thats why I didn't "upgrade" to W7 until 2014, and still dislike some parts of the user interface that can't be made to work properly as it did in XP. Every change that supposedly makes it easier, makes it less usable for me. I like to organize my own files in my own way, and I can find things easily. Today MSFT doesn't know what I want or how I work most efficiently. Apple is even farther off the target than MSFT for me. Eventually I will take the time to deal with learning
how to make Linux work as I want it to work, but for now my time is better spent producing. I have been trying Linux off and on since 1995 and have installed many different Penguins. Every time I have tried it, I have decided to return to Windows again. At present it would require that I recompile the kernel in order to use the sound hardware I prefer (and to recompile with every new kernel release.) For now, windows is convenient for many people including me.
I've wasted untold hours and days eternally trying to stop Windoze from running my life. I figure they OWE me (good luck with that!).
2. They likely have a higher number of disgruntled technically competent employees than you do
3. They have large technically competent competitors with a vested interest in hacking their servers
After the transition to Windows, the contracts for security audits and protection against hacking, viruses, and malware exploded to a cost much higher than the price difference between PCs and Macs. It's routine for security patches for Windows to arrive twice a week or more often. Those get rolled up into bigger modifications for less frequent delivery to commercial and private Windows users.
I would strongly advise people to wean themselves off of Windows, and on to Linux, or ditch the PC altogether and move to a Mac. The Linux move can be a little intimidating for the less technically skilled, but the improved security environment is worth it. Going from Windows to the Apple environment is actually easy, even for the technically unskilled, thanks to the excellent Apple support team and built in transition features.
Corporate America would buy any computer with those letters attached even if it was junk.
I just tossed out my Amiga. Broke my heart but it was just taking up space.
Companies like Tandy, Commodore, Apple, et al were hardware manufacturers on their own and never would have had the magic letters on their nameplates, leaving them "out in the cold". Hey, the chips fell where they fell.
Whether or not the IBM MSDOS and later early Windows systems were "junk" or not is open for opinion and debate. I had been writing code in a corporate research and manufacturing environment for a decade by the time the first ones showed up and had exposure to various OS and viewed these single-tasking systems as "junk". However, they were cheap junk and served a purpose. As I said above, the rest is history.
IBM gave Bill Gates his start by paying to use his operating system, which he had bought and modified for the purpose. His retention of the rights to the operating system to sell on other compatible PCs with open standards available to everyone, not IBM "nameplate magic", was the basis of Microsoft's subsequent success.
DOS was not "cheap junk". It was necessarily limited because of the early miniaturized hardware it ran on, and could work because it did not have to support multiple users and memory management, or the more intensive computing that was still only possible on larger systems. Low-cost innovation with simpler systems making computing available to everyone does not mean "junk" except in the eyes of the snob out of date large scale competitors who quickly lost to it as they continued to look down their noses.
I cut my teeth programming a CDC 1704 core memory mini computer. Follow that with a CDC Cyber18, DEC PDP8, DEC 10, PDP11, Vax systems, Data General Eclipse, and HP 1000 and 3000 series. [Side note: when they scrapped the CDC 1704 in '75 I rescued an 8kb core module from the heap and I still have it in my library.] These systems were of the genre "mini computer" and were not "mainframes" like an IBM 360 at the time. The rapid growth of the micro-computer in the mid '70s to the mid '80s certainly was the death knell for the mini-computer and those that couldn't adjust in some way found themselves (as you say snobs looking down their noses) relegated to the trash can of history.
By the time the IBM PC came out in '81 I had already written thousands of lines of code for Motorola and Mostek chips and was well aware of multi-tasking capabilities of some operating systems. By '81 you'd think Big Blue would debut with something better than MSDOS, but what you see is what you get and it didn't seem like much to my colleagues and I at the time, hence IMHO "cheap junk". MSDOS didn't have to be "necessarily limited" as you say in '81, but it was. In any case, it served a purpose, management of the multi-national I worked for swooned over this little "IBM" and opened the checkbook along with thousands of other companies. That's all that was important to get the ball really rolling. We all benefited in the end and the story is still being written.
In 1981 and for years after, the early PCs were far too small and slow to do anything remotely like what Vaxes or the IBM or CDC mainframes could do, or other business machines or other mini-computers like Prime, or the more serious real time control systems like DEC PDPs. Throughout the 1980s, the competition for serious engineering and scientific computing was in micro-vaxes and graphics workstation networks like Apollo and Sun, not IBM and not the still too slow and small PCs of any kind. Lower cost PCs were by then obviously the promise of the future, but still far from adequate.
The "money" flowed into the PC-DOS market not because of IBM's name as magic to corporations, but from a whole new market of those who found the innovations in the early days of PCs useful despite the limitations and who couldn't afford the traditionally much higher prices for earlier and more advanced computers (and who didn't care what else sophisticated programmers could do for themselves). Even unix graphics workstations (with a "free" sophisticated OS), which were far cheaper than mini-computers, were still too costly for most people. But private individuals could have their own little PC computer, which was Gates' original dream and strategy. Microsoft's success came from the practical software it produced for a new market with inexpensive hardware from multiple sources with industry-adopted standard interfaces, all easily out-competing other attempts from Apple (with its corporate-controlled and limited peripherals and software) and hobbyist machines like the Trash-80.
DOS and the software that ran under it were not "junk". It was more elementary in many ways, but cleverly implemented to run on slow processors in small computers with little memory and disk storage, doing what it needed to do in the early stage for those who found it useful. It included compilers and interpreters like Fortran and C with development and debugging environments, and even a version of emacs, which at least allowed some "real" program development. That it was otherwise less sophisticated software for a single dedicated user on the PC didn't make it "junk". Its further development was, ironically, held back by its own success: DOS had to continue to support the huge volume of programs from multiple sources using different methods that already ran on earlier versions of DOS. There were a few marginally improved DOS-like versions from other sources, and there was a much improved 4-DOS command processor (still being enhanced by JP Software as its renamed and greatly expanded "Take Command", where you can see the history), but the whole idea of DOS was becoming obsolete. It wasn't until Microsoft's NT in the 1990s that a more sophisticated OS (based on the architecture of VMS) and graphics interface was practical on a PC with its improving but still limited processing power, memory, and diskspace.
IBM's "nameplate" didn't do any of this. If anything, IBM botched it all, quickly eliminating itself from the PC market for both hardware and software. It knew enough in the early days to realize that PCs would be important, but farmed out the OS to one of the few sources who could quickly supply a basic OS (Gates, who modified what he bought from someone else) rather than develop its own, and strategically gave away the whole game when it let Gates keep ownership of the OS because IBM thought that only the hardware mattered to the business. The industry standard hardware interfaces and portability of DOS enhanced competition and IBM lost the hardware battle, too.
The early versions of Windows running on top of DOS proved so popular, despite its limitations, that Microsoft decided to go for NT rather than continue collaborating with IBM on the more primitive OS2. It was too late for IBM, which though furious towards Microsoft tried to keep going with OS2 but was quickly buried. So much for the notion that corporate success with a near "monopoly" magically guarantees its own future. NT completely replaced DOS and the early Windows, ultimately through 95 and ME, that ran on top of it, and evolved to become the now widely used XP, 7, and 10 today. But Microsoft's future isn't guaranteed either, something Gates tried to tell the regulators when they went after him for daring to use his own private technical advantages for his own development. Success in the market does not come from magic nameplates.
"Success in the market does not come from magic nameplates." Ahh, but it very well can. Check the fashion industry for one. A successful brand name can open doors (and wallets) and is a main reason successful companies guard their logos and names.
We're not likely to agree on everything because our paths through this history are slightly different (assuming we're close in age - the younger generations wouldn't know much about DEC or CDC), but it's been a good off topic discussion. Have a great day, ewv, and I'll give you last word.
If Bill Gates had never been born, stayed at Harvard, or some other equivalent, the PC industry would been developed by someone. We will never know for certain how it would have worked out without the support Gates was able to get from IBM. But Gates did it (contrary to Obama's and Elizabeth Warren's obscene "you didn't build that"), and probably would have gone on to succeed in another way for the same ends with or without IBM because he had an ambition, a vision and a strategy that IBM and almost everyone else did not.
The market he created was much different than IBM's and was not instantaneous. The PC market grew into a mass market over many years with multiple suppliers and innovators who left IBM in the dust, and that would have happened in some form. But every innovator, including Gates in a big way, not IBM's nameplate, made possible what we have. IBM did in fact do what it did in its early role, but that was only a small part of it.
As we know from our own direct experiences, the computer industry was a result of innovation and production for useful ends, not fads in fashion -- which is also why IBM blew it in the PC industry. Trademarks are defended to protect the identity of earned reputation and success, which does not last indefinitely once the cause of it disappears. IBM went on to create many other successes, including creating and running one of the top private research labs in the world -- along side a few others like Bell Labs -- but reputation has a specific identity and lifespan, and it didn't help IBM in the PC industry.
Despite the parasites in the likes of the fashion industry who depend on whims and fads, no economy was ever built without practical and useful production and the intellectual property rights that make it possible. Without an industrial economy, the whims of luxury in the fashion "industry" would not exist, and neither would a a whole host of other wheeler-dealers who have nothing to offer but their own hot air and exploitation of ignorance -- including many parasites in the computer industry that we have also seen in our own direct experiences.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...
This one is also available for XP, but that isn't being advertised. You have to know to look at the custom updates. You can get the update directly from http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.c... Of course there are many more security bugs in XP for which Microsoft is not making its patches available to the general public.
If I had more reserve funds I would be buying more shares of stock for my portfolio.
To paraphrase Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: "Politicians (actually- lawyers) will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes."
I agree that some software companies do not do adequate debugging of their software. Being late to the market is often worse for a company than having a less than pristine product. We, the end users, let them do it and continue to buy their products. Doing that with the companies who write the operating systems is almost unavoidable for most people because the computers come with the OS already installed and included in the price. Installing another OS is beyond the capability of most computer users, and paying three times as much for an Apple computer does not seem to be a good decision when you are standing in Best Buy and your child is anxiously waiting. (I can't really speak for most computer buyers since I have always been better than average at using computers.)
Most programs now include networking, even if only to communicate availability of an update, or marketing surveillance. Programmers are well aware of the need for security, whatever side they are on.
An NSA official spoke out a few years ago, after the Snowden leaks, licking his chops over applications. He boasted that they see every application as another vulnerability for a point of entry. This includes security programs such as anti-virus, browsers, email, and routers. If they can get into a pc or smart phone at all, or can connect to an application, they exploit application vulnerabilities to get access to much more.
The larger importance of this latest ransomwear, beyond what it is doing to those attacked, is the policy of NSA to find, hide, and exploit vulnerabilities for its own use rather notify the manufacturer. If NSA can find them then so can others, and this has been a major battle over government policy for years. In this case NSA policy was a direct cause due to its own malicious software being leaked or stolen. Microsoft has publicly stated this.