Re: Dell has updated its Windows 8 tablet line

It's not cheap to ANYONE.

Re: SysAdmins versus Ops versus Sec

@the-it-slayer - "It's not exactly rocket science"

And that's what the project managers think. We can save money by getting a Sys Admin to do it. But, for one reason or another, something goes wrong. The author of the article explained it well. Laziness. Overwork, etc. It's Murphy's law.

If you hire a security guy, he will make damned sure that there are no cock-ups like this. Guys who work in security are paranoid types and take pride in their ability to do a good job. He owns the responsibility, and he will be far more reliable than a Windows wizard clicking mouse monkey.

Re: What went wrong?

@RyokuMas - but they didn't hire me, and now they can't keep their wobbly clouds up for more than a few days at a time.

Re: @Eaton -> Just stop it.

@404 I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt as I'm in a good mood. Nevertheless your conclusion does not follow from your surmise.

Also - "The majority of Windows users/admins know how to update"

I would aver that I should bloody well hope the majority of windows sys admins know how to update :-)

I very much doubt your average windows user knows how to update, however. Have you met the average windows user? Thick as a bog brush. (Windows Admins are slightly higher up the food chain - some of them have opposable thumbs.

Naturally Linux / UNIX admins are the top predators - the elite.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL

@mmeier - everything I say is correct, it's not FUD. However, let's take a look at your own dodgy comments.

"The WORST person for security is one that assumes "my OS is perfect". Because they are blind!" - Did I ever say an OS was perfect? No I did not. So your argument is the Strawman Attack Fallacy.

Having said that, remote exploits for Linux are rare, but they are quite common for Windows. But the OS is irrelevant for other kinds of attack, such as social engineering attacks.

"Besides: Not renewing a SSL certificate is a major FAIL in management/procedures but at least with Azure it is NOT a security problem"

You don't understand security very well. Security is about letting people ACCESS data (it is also about other things, but permitting access is one of them). If your system does not let people access their data, then your system has FAILED in terms of security.

"And once you get exposed to the real world you will see stuff that is forgotten a lot"

- In the real world people get murdered a lot too. So what? Your argument is ridiculous. I have noticed that in general your comments are spectacularly clueless and this is a typical example. You are one of those guys with just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Re: @Eaton -> Just stop it.

@404 - Yes, let's discuss your issue.

You say, "and found the vulnerability, a known issue with Joomla 1.5 that the host never updated."

There you have it! It wasn't Linux that was hacked. It wasn't even Apache that was hacked. It was an old, unpatched Joomla that was hacked. And, given that Joomla was configured with emails and database access, no doubt the hackers were able to access those systems to send spam etc.

Why are you blaming Linux and Apache for dodgy Joomla install?

@404 - you are officially a MUPPET!

Re: @Eadon @ShelLuser

Well put @ShelLuser - there is a charm about the old star wars movies. Another example is the Luke's home planet - there is a scene in Mos Eisley or some such. And in the originals there was something haunting about it's spartan emptiness. Then Lucas came along armed with a SGI computer and added all these comedy camel things and destroyed the soulful ambiance there and then.

I don't mind CGI being used to clean up some unwanted artefacts but it's a real disappointment in modern movies.

It can be done right though. In Terminator II CGI was extraordinary. But even then, it was much more hand crafted in those days. These days people use tools to animate the pictures and, again, there's something missing.

The "uncanny valley" is there - the brain can tell it is not looking at Nature.

The Daleks are so obviously fake, as are all the monsters in, say, the Tom Baker era, but there was a real charm to them. As a kid you don't care.

That's what modern movies and production miss. Charm.

Compare the Arnie Total Recall - where the effects were all manual apart from one or two - with the recent remake. The latter was jaded, presumably to make life easier for the CGI artists. On so many levels the original masterpiece was superior to the remake. And a lot of it was down the little touches that the computer guys don't bother with, as they're working to a budget.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL @Phoenix50

"I've seen a few people with runaway egos " -

The Wintard AC's (AC because they don't believe - or are ashamed of - their own bullshit) have no technical knowledge so they attempt character assassinations on their technical superiors. Even if I use the odd tongue-in-cheek stylistic quirks - my engineering and operational and market analysis is bang on and you know it.

Unless can contribute, still your tongues, AC's. Listen and learn from a master. (There are those here who know more than me, but they're not AC's.)

Re: The Microsoft Secure Professional PowerCloud XP Enterprise 3000 ...

"has encountered an unexpected error and must now close"

Surely "Abort. Retry. FAIL"

Re: The big intro text on their website homepage says...

"When the cloud drops like a rock, there's nothing left overhead but empty. blue skies"

And on the ground are the remains of the suckers that paid for the cloud and got splattered when it crashed on their heads.

Re: Act 1, Scene 1

"throws a Surface Pro against the wall" - a hefty brick would do a lot of damage to the wall.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL

@Don Mitchell, Actually it is connected with the OS - People that use Windows know or care relatively little about security and therefore it's unsurprising that such people let certs expire. It's not the coincidence it seems, methinks. Eadon sees deeper.

"Amazon are experts at dealing with emergencies because they use Linux?" Sounds like bullshit to me. London Stock Exchange - they switched to Windows and the system crashed. They couldn't bring it up and a Trillion was lost in Trades. They quickly reverted to Linux and have been fine ever since.

FYI Dynamics CRM is Microsofts photocopy of Amazon's AWS and Salesforce CRM. BTW Microsoft were caught astroturfing (again), with an actor posing as a businessman pretending to prefer Dynamics.

"Dave Cutler doesn't know how to design an operating system" - Cutler copied VMS to make the NT kernel. Granted that kernel was OK. But the crap on top of that kernel sucks. The Win 32 API, the bloat that subsequent engineers added to it, the layer-upon layer of crap - apparently there are 50 complex, interwoven layers and a serious engineer can master only about 3 of these.

"if you think Linux never fails without a lot of tweeking and patching," - FUD

"then I gotta wonder why you feel so passionate about a subject you don't actually know much about" - My friend, it seems it is you who is the one who is ignorant of both operating systems and operations. Your entire tirade of clueless PHB bullshit is hereby repudiated.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL

@Spoddyhalfwit - yes, it's a cert issue - but, you know what? Windows systems seem to be chosen by the types of people that do not understand security very well. And such people are more likely to overlook even basic tasks, like ensuring the PKI certs don't expire.

So it's not a Windows issue, yet somehow it IS a windows issue.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL

@ElNumbre - there have been at least 3 - THREE - MAJOR Azure embarassments in the space of a year - there was another one only two weeks ago, that has Microsoft's finest spending a week recovering users' data after Azure crashed.

To be pedantic, only Microsoft fails like this, other megacorps put in place sensible engineering processes.

Amazon and Google and even Salesforece have cloud systems that handle exponentially more data than Microsoft's mickey mouse Azure system. Those megacorps use Linux server systems to do the job.

Re: Data Utilities

@mmeier - so? Without the "application layer" of the stack working correctly on the servers then the internet is useless.

Fortunately for us all, however, the internet does "route" around damage, it can avoid servers running MS Azure. Though admittedly that's not coded into TCP/IP. Yet.

Re: @plrndl

@AC 16:10 ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hehehe ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha :-)

Re: This doesn't kill "the cloud" for me

@AC 17:54 - I'm not here to win a BEAUTY contest, I am here to tell the TRUTH! And THEY CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH

Re: This doesn't kill "the cloud" for me

@mmeier - the argument, "nothing is perfect" is a meaningless argument. Why are you guys so forgiving towards such a dereliction of duty?

Some organisations are more competent than others. Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Apple etc. do not let their Cloud certs expire. I mean, it's such a fundamental aspect of security. Only Microsoft, with their casual attitude to security, could operate a cloud system that could FAIL in this way. It hardly garners confidence in Microsoft's motivation or capabilities to manage data securely.

If MS were running a hospital, everyone would be dying in the winter because they forgot to pay the heating bills. Would you trust such a hospital? Oh sure, they can operate on me, I'm sure they know what they're doing!

If you were an engineer, you would understand.

Re: .. and nothing of value was lost.

@AC 15:36 "You can pretty much be assured that they will engineer a way to prevent this happening again"

Hahahah they said that about security too, but Windows STILL needs a virus checker and it's 2013!

MS write software that is low quality and they have dysfunctional management. Yes, they will put in place some process where some droid checks the PKI certs get renewed before going tits up, but, you wait and see - there will be more disasters. It's in Microsoft's nature to make something "Good enough" but not Excellent. But "Good Enough" does not cut it with clouds.

You can't make your beta software a "Version 1.0" in the Cloud because Beta testing in the Cloud gets embarrassing - your bugs cause world wide outages, as happened here.

Re: This doesn't kill "the cloud" for me

@cpreston - you seem to be apologising for Microsoft's incompetence. If this was a one-off occurrence, then, sure, we can say, it was just a freak mistake, it can happen to anybody.

However, you seem to be turning a blind eye to the litany of dumb F**K UPS by MS. Everything they do is dumb these days, from a legion of security fails, to customer data loss on an unprecedented scale (Danger) to the very recent Azure screw up of a crash followed by a week trying to recover the data.

If you trust MS to have the competence in security, reliability, resilience to manage your data, then you must be a PHB.

Re: .. and nothing of value was lost.

@cpreston - WTF? You come out with some real crap. You think that Microsoft have mended their ways since the Danger debacle? That was caused by a clueless MS exec. She ordered the engineers NOT to back up prior to an upgrade, despite their strong warnings. And *wham* - the users of Dangers phones lost their data.

The point is this: Microsoft are project-manager - not engineer - driven. So you will always end up with Microsoft screwing things up due to poor management decisions, PHB style.

You cannot trust Microsoft to be competent, and ergo, you cannot trust Azure.

What did we just see? A world wide outage of the Azure cloud. Caused by what seems an error that a fool would avoid making.

If MS can't manager their PKI keys, what hope is there that they can keep your data safe, or keep your data secure? As I say, only Microsoft makes these amateurish mistakes due to it's "f*ck it, just deliver" project management led culture.

EPIC FAIL!

Re: Just what you need

@Lars "Just what you need"

Bullshit! Why do people say that we can't do science whilst there is inequality? The amount spent on space is hardly a rounding error on the US budget. Spending less on astronomy will do nothing to fix the "divide".

Muppet!

Re: History will...

There is a US law that does categorise this. It's not a conspiracy, the US gov actually wrote it down! Even Stalin didn't do that.

Re: In Redmond Microsoft fire the photo copiers up.

@vishal vashisht - Apple take pre-invented concepts and improve on them. They have a knack for creating new markets based on style and they excel at execution.

Re: Willy Gates Melinda

@W.O.Frobozz - in MS they attempt to preserve their female staff as there is a relative dearth of them. It's all about "affirmative action hires" where less qualified people from a perceived minority group are promoted over the heads of those who are more qualified.

Re: @SuccessCase

@Trevor_Pott - even if what you say is correct, let's assume for the sake of argument that it is, even so, the price of the machine to run Windows 7 "Starter" was way too high. If you price your machines out of the market then you FAIL, which is what the original poster was pointing out, I think.

The entire point of netbooks was that they were really cheap to buy and ran a fast OS (Linux). That's not how MS does business so they successfully sabotaged the game.

It was easy for MS to kill Linux netbook systems, but they won't find it so easy to attack Google.

Re: @SuccessCase

@AC 13:08 "I just inadvertently echoed Eadon! Someone take me out back and shoot me :("

If you dare tell the truth then prepare to get shot down whether you like it or not....

Re: @SuccessCase

@Trevor_Pott - I am afraid that it you who are "full of shit" as you quaintly put it.

Netbooks running linux were cheap and ran Linux, which runs fast on very affordable kit. MS then ported XP to netbooks and strong-armed the OEM's to stop selling Linux netbooks. Because of Windows bloat, Netbooks need to be twice as powerful with trice the memory and the price shot up.

Plus windows ran dog slow on these things.

THAT is why netbooks died. MS killed the market. But in doing so, they have left a niche open for Google. BIG MISTAKE!

Re: This is worth a patent?

Patent trolls and megacorps look at the logical next steps for computing, brainstorm ideas around it and patent the ideas, hence locking out the smaller players and start ups from the game.

EVIL!

Re: "...with 3x the capailities"

@Katie Saucey - "Those aren't bugs they're capabilities" -

+1 - that's the funniest comment I've read today (apart from mine of course)

Re: Windows can deliver clouds, but it takes a week to recover your data

@the-it-slayer "MS don't make billions of dollars for nothing. "

So you think that MS make money from writing high-quality software? How quaint :-) Now hand in your geek badge.

Re: Buzzwords

@Philip Lewis The truth is out there....