So the W32.Blaster worm is finally being linked to the August blackout. When exactly is Microsoft going to be held accountable for selling such crappy software?

Blaster worm linked to severity of blackout:

I LOVE this quote:

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"Scott Charney, chief security strategist at Microsoft Corp., said that Blaster raised a security and network performance issue for all Microsoft customers and that there was nothing unique about the electric power industry."

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That's like saying:

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"Scott Charney, chief safety designer at Ford Motors., said that airbags raised injury and fatality issues for all Ford customers and that there was nothing unique about babies."

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Soooo...paraphrasing: "All our customers have blaster, not just the power companies."

Nice. How comforting. And quite the retort.

The joke at my office was that Microsoft remotely shut down the grid to prevent blaster from speading. That might be less fiction than we intended.

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On the day of the blackout, Blaster degraded the performance of several communications lines linking key data centers used by utility companies to manage the power grid, the sources confirmed.

"It didn't affect the [control] systems internally, but it most certainly affected the timeliness of the data they were receiving from other networks,"

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So I take it that they weren't running the power grid on Windows Server. No doubt that if they had been using OS X the power would have stayed on – except in a few counties that had lost their permissions (rim shot). Or maybe they would have all stayed on but the lights would have been blue. Hey, we're living in a world that is becoming more and more dependent on computers. In the realm of critical communications these type of things need to be fixed. And as brother thalo would no doubt say, in the field of graphics and publishing there are some major worms in OS X that need to be fixed before we all black out from excessive eye rolling. (Awaiting my segue score.)

I certainly want the market to hold Microsoft responsible so that they are driven to ever-greater security measures, but can we really hold them legally and morally responsible? That certainly opens a can of worms. Name a computer system that hasn't been cracked. How many different specialized configurations of computer systems running Windows are out there? Who's responsible if one of those lets through a virus or worm? And what are the IT people doing? They're paid to do something, aren't they? Don't those power grids use any kind of redundancy? Do they have cell phones?

Sure, because Windows is in the dominant position, and because we all rely on it so much we should be tough on them, particularly in terms of security in this age of terrorism. But how about stiffer penalties for those bastards who create the worms? Next it will be the steel company's fault if someone blows up a major power line tower. "Oh, the legs on those towers shouldn't be made of such thin steel!"

I think the real lesson is all of this is, just what constitutes an effective computer assault? And time and again the answer comes back: CLOG UP THE FRIGGIN' SYSTEM.

Give operating systems TOO MUCH TO DO.

Lookit your firewall today. You'd think you were under a sustained DOS attack. People out to cause mayhem, do so by choking systems. By giving them useless, meaningless, unimportant things to do. And what happens, they crap out.

Do I have to even drop the hammer on this segue? Yes, yes I do. The more crap you load, the more crap you eventually have to shovel. Sure, computers can HANDLE an awful lot of that repetitive and redundant stuff. But there comes a time when you have to ask wouldn't it be great if we could MAXIMIZE cpu potential, by keeping the brains of the machine on the stuff that really matters, and just friggin' CHUCK the stuff that don't?

Can we, right now, look at OS X and lighten its load? I say yes indeedie do. I think a lot of what it's doing right now is happy horseshit. It might as WELL have been attacked by a worm. It's working overtime on stupid dumb ass shit, when it needs to be working FOR a stupid dumb ass shit, namely me. Eye candy is an attack on me. It's choking my computer with stuff I really don't care one way or the other about.

The Mac OS has become wasteful. It's taken economy (both visual and systemic) and just tossed it in the crapper. It's wasting time. Burning cycles. All on stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with my creative efforts. The time it's spending at the water cooler, is on my nickel.

It's gotta stop.

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Do I have to even drop the hammer on this segue? Yes, yes I do.

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No, no you didn't. Bravo. 9.7.

You bring up an interesting point:

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Give operating systems TOO MUCH TO DO.

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I wonder if those multi-terabyte computers on Picard's Enterprise are made up of clusters of small, relatively dumb but fast, computers and/or chunks of code. I wonder, just wonder, if in the future – and given the almost unimaginable complexity that we're approaching today – that we don't in fact take a "less is more" approach. It would be sort of analogous to what Motorola (or whoever invented the concept) did with the RISC chip as opposed to the CISC ship. Quit trying to do more. Do less and do it simpler and therefore faster.

OpenDoc may have been WAY ahead of its time – certainly way ahead of its commercial time as it still seems a necessity to sell whole software packages and operating systems rather than small components. But I wonder. I wonder again if Apple had it right, just like with the Newton, and then lost their nerve.

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I wonder if those multi-terabyte computers on Picard's Enterprise are made up of clusters of small, relatively dumb but fast, computers and/or chunks of code. I wonder, just wonder, if in the future – and given the almost unimaginable complexity that we're approaching today – that we don't in fact take a "less is more" approach.

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Wow, that's really interesting. Never quite thought of that. I guess what I meant was giving operating systems too much DUMB stuff to do. Too much useless shit. WASTING their efforts, using their power as an excuse to show off instead of advance mankind.

The think I always loved about Star Trek NG was that bright future, smart people with smart tools. Computer capacity measured in GIGAQUADS whatever the hell that is... but you never get the sense that it's gigaquads of nonsense. Sure, you have entertainment (holodeck) but it's done WELL. You can immerse yourself in a novel, or landscape. There's an aspect of cultural excellence, where YOUR personal experience, enrichment, and advancement is the aim. Ideas are shared for their own sake, not bought and sold as commodities. They are valued for their impact on us, not for the advantage or leverage they can afford.

I don't know that I meant to say 'quit trying to do more'... but maybe Apple needs to quit trying to do crap that DOESN'T MATTER.

I want all the code to be there because it's the best way for me to do my work. Right now it's not. It's the best way for Apple to save money while trying to attract a new and dumber audience. The legacy seems elegant and mature and sophisticated next to OS X which seems vain and glib and dishonest. Form and function have gone on divergent paths. The meaning that is being added to the UI is insulting and degrading. The worst of our culture instead of the best. I want Apple to be pushing the envelope. Making us all smarter. Not playing to how dumb they think we are.

RCIS, Reduced Crap-Intensive Systems, is an emerging technology which empowers users to customize the computing environment to their strict requirements.

Using XC--, the Ex-Crap minus minus programming language, programmers develop modular operating system components that allow the use to dynamically modify their operating systems on the fly, in real time, rather than needing to install everything beforehand or later via cumbersome installers. Users can turn on and off services such as web or printing depending on their needs. Language kits can be loaded dynamically based on user identification.

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The symbol for our religion:

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The think I always loved about Star Trek NG was that bright future, smart people with smart tools. Computer capacity measured in GIGAQUADS whatever the hell that is... but you never get the sense that it's gigaquads of nonsense.

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Yeah, but I could never figure out that interface. The buttons and dials of Spock's console I could understand; the large swooshes and stripes of The Next Generation's computers I couldn't. They seemed like big space wasters. One thing that always amazed me (and I don't remember if this was true of TNG or not) was that the doors of the Enterprise were automatic but the friggin' shields were not. I might have had it the other way around if forced into a choice.

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Sure, you have entertainment (holodeck) but it's done WELL.

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I liked the episode where Riker (another skirt-chaser) falls in love with Mim?, a holographic projection. Heck, it it's warm, soft to the touch, and real in other ways too, then I could see this happening. And imagine that – an off button tuh boot!

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You can immerse yourself in a novel, or landscape.

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Oh, sure. That's what we'd do. More people must have walked out the holodeck holding a tricorder in front of them than you can count. One of the interface elements I appreciated most was that long rail behind and above Picard's chair. Remember in the old episodes when Kirk and the rest of the bridge crew were tossed helter-skelter all over the bridge when in a battle? Now they had something to hold onto. Smart.

I need a physicist to help me with this next question. Kirk's Enterprise shot it's phasers out in a wide "V" pattern, perhaps as wide as 80 degrees, but the next shot would show the two beams converging even after having been shot quite a distance onto the target vessel. Hmmm? These questions can not be left unanswered. And if they were so friggin' advanced in the 23rd century, how come Spock's viewfinder for his scanner at his bridge station wasn't padded like a camera viewfinder or pair of binoculars? He'd have had his green blood covering his station at the slightest jolt of the ship – and they had plenty of those.

I never understood what happened in the Star Trek future that brought about the return to 4:3 aspect ratio monitors??????

It's 2003 and we have 16:9! So what happens? Does someone claim a patent for 16:9 aspect ratio, like Compuserve did with GIFs?

I can see the original series and Enterprise (set prior to the original series) since it never occurred to the producers that TV might change shape. But what's the excuse for the rest of the shows, all of which should have been able to foresee 16:9 approaching the standard in our real universe. But by then they should have holograms everywhere or retinal implants.

Now, to me, I think it's all crap. I'm a proponent of 1:1. 4:3 is a remnant of fitting 8.5 x 11 onscreen and 16:9 is remnant of various film sizes. I want IMAX. Hell, give me half dome screens for depth.

I want adjustable aspect ratio screens. If the movie wasn't filmed in the ratio that you desire then the computer sends a time distorter bubble (patent pending) through a miniature worm hole back in time causing the movie to have been filmed in the desired ratio. At the moment it's a bit experimental and sometimes you find yourself viewing your luscious 16:5 movie while suddenly sitting in a prison cell. In those instances the time distorter unit's warning message (similar to the Surgeon General's warning on a pack of cigarettes) suitably changes to reflect the circumstances thus avoiding any lawsuits.

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Considering all those times McCoy and others made fun of Spock, wouldn't you agree that Spock could have filed a harrassment suit charging that the Enterprise bridge was "an uncomfortable work environment"?

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McCoy: "Compassion? That's the one thing no machine ever had. Maybe it's the one thing that keeps men ahead of them. Care to debate that, Spock?"

"No, doctor, I simply maintain that computers are more efficient than human beings, not better. It would be most interesting to impress your memory engrams on a computer, doctor. The resulting torrential flood of illogic would be most entertaining."

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Remember the episode of Star Trek where they fit the Enterprise with Dr. Daystrom's M5 Multitronic Unit? It's the computer that is so smart that it can potentially replace almost all of the crew. Of course it turns out that the M5 is just another work-in-progress, another piece of betaware. During a simulated battle with other Federation ships, the M5 forgets that it's just a simulation (no doubt a forgotten preference) and starts firing for real and causing heavy damage. Kirk finds that he's unable to turn off the M5. He finds there's no way to boot back into "Classic" mode where things worked better and *he* was in control. The over-zealous creator of the M5, Richard Daystrom, is of no help. He's so full of himself and his belief in the perfection of his creation that he refuses at first to believe that anything has gone wrong with his baby. He refuses to help find a way to turn it off and insists that the problem of the smoking hulks of Federation vessels on the viewscreen is just a minor glitch to be worked out.

Eventually Kirk does to the M5 what I would pay BIG money to see thalo do with OS X: He talks it into its own suicide. He gets the M5 to scan the smoking Federation vessels outside and to realize that it had committed murder.

Kirk: "Daystrom felt that such an act was an offense against the laws of God and man, and the computer that carried his engrams also believed it."

Could OS X be shown the AHIGs and be talked into suicide? Could it be convinced that it was responsible for killing off so many innocent guidelines? I don't know, but I'd be willing to try.

good one brad

<< Considering all those times McCoy and others made fun of Spock, wouldn't you agree that Spock could have filed a harrassment suit charging that the Enterprise bridge was "an uncomfortable work environment"? >>

Not only that, but there was only one Vulcan aboard the Enterprise. Clearly a case of discrimination, Vulcans being unconscionably underrepresented in executive positions on Starfleet vessels. Affirmative action now! And in "STar Trek, The Motion Picture," when the first science officer is killed in the transporter accident, Kirk says, "I'd still like a Vulcan in there." Clearly another case of discrimination, the position not being posted without reference to ethnicity and open to all applicants, including Denebrians and Andorians.

"No, doctor, I simply maintain that computers are more efficient than human beings, not better. Except in the case of that ancient joke OS called X, which was worse."

Markle

Markle said:

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And in "STar Trek, The Motion Picture," when the first science officer is killed in the transporter accident, Kirk says, "I'd still like a Vulcan in there." Clearly another case of discrimination, the position not being posted without reference to ethnicity and open to all applicants, including Denebrians and Andorians.

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Absolutely shocking. How could he get away with that? Oh, that's right. Kirk is a male - worse yet - a white male. They get all the brakes, except for the time he was stranded outside the space ship and was running out of air; except for the time his mind was forcibly switched with the that of a woman, Janice Lester (that's not how Kirk envisions being inside a woman); except for the time he was split into two halves - his good and evil ones; except for the time he couldn't even go to the can without running into Tribbles; except for the time...

I love the fact that, although Roddenberry was what you'd call a "progressive" thinker, he never progressed to the point where women were not feminine and men were not masculine (a critical flaw of Voyager). Again, this dude was WAY ahead of his time. I loved when Yeoman Rand, in her high skirt and long legs, brought her clipboard for Kirk to sign. Who said life in deep space had to be bland and boring? But she, and Uhura, were more than able to kick the shit out of you as I believe they both showed on one landing party or another.

Sex has to be dealt with. There's no denying it. If we don't then I think we'll end up like Spock. Every seven years we'll go stark raving mad and go on a huge sex binge.