OT: Microsoft patents "timed button presses"

[Fairlight]

In the relative spacial/temporal region of
Mon, May 03, 2004 at 06:51:52PM -0400, Bill Vermillion achieved the spontaneous
generation of the following:
> > >checkout http://www.techweb.com/winadvantage
> 
[snip]

I didn't download the little pocket guide thing.  I did read the antivirus
article.  That's kind of amusing, as that's actually a vendor issue, not a
platform issue.  I'd bet any *nix is susceptible, provided those platforms
are supported by the vendor's software.  What they think they're protecting
themselves from by putting AV on *nix is curious.  There've been two "proof
of concept"-only viruses, one of which was a dual win32/linux that depended
on a particular binary format on the linux side, no less.  The other either
didn't have a destructive payload, or it wasn't even a real virus, if I
remember correctly.  So unless people are centralising their AV to protect
a bunch of helpless Windows boxen, I fail to see the point of running it at
all.  You'll note that you rarely see, say...AV software for Solaris.  I
suppose it depends on how you use *nix, but using -decent- software on it,
you really don't need AV.  I'd be more worried about buffer overruns,
honestly, but those get patched quite quickly.

I did follow a little flashy cost of ownership ad on the side that was
designed with a timer SO poorly written that it flashed too fast to fully
read on a lowly P166, which usually crawls with such things in abundance.
But the MS page it took me to was hilarious.

Staffing and training probably costs less in many cases because 1) there
are tens of thousands of MCSE's out there with nothing better to do but
soak up jobs because there's a flood of these useless certifications
on the market--more than anyone needs, and 2) you don't really have to
-know- much to run 'doze, because Redmond expects you to simply apply its
patches (whenever -those- become available...you know, say, next month
even though a critical flaw was discovered today), and you're supposedly
done.  How hard is it to train people to download and double-click?

There are configuration issues in *nix that just aren't there in 'doze,
because it has the versatility to let you actuallyg get things done at
the system level.  IOW, it's a platform for the educated, rather than
the trained-by-rote.  Many of the 'doze admins (I use the term loosely)
that I've talked to over the years are people I wouldn't want -near- my
machines.

The performance benchmark figures are pretty funny too.  I wonder if those
speed and cost ratings actually mean anything when your system is down 30%
of the day due to attacks for things that won't have patches released for
weeks yet.  Hmmmm.  Okay, so it runs a little faster, and therefore can
be attacked and crash a little faster.  I suppose the upside is that it
reboots and runs scandisk a little faster?

I don't even see how they can compare .NET with J2EE.  Further, I fail to
see why they're even linking J2EE with linux, since it's certainly not
exclusive.  That fact points to my original confusion, as Java is an open
standard (more or less...parts of the JVM are proprietary assembly that
must be licensed, but the platforms that count have it or can run it under
emulation), and .NET is proprietary.  Try running .NET on Solaris--you
know, on -REAL- servers.  The last figures I saw for running .asp on *nix
servers were actually more expensive than running it on 'doze--something
I'm sure is no coincidence.  It helps when you can skew the cost of
ownership for using the same technology on two platforms because you
control the entire technology and the relative costs on both.

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp

And I wish you could put "[sic]" in URLs, right after the word "facts".

mark->
-- 
Bring the web-enabling power of OneGate to -your- filePro applications today!

Try the live filePro-based, OneGate-enabled demo at the following URL:
               http://www2.onnik.com/~fairlite/flfssindex.html