Unfortunately - yes! Hide the head in the sand, that seems to be the answer nowadays for any- and everything? For a long time, excuse me - started in 60's, I was either responsible of or designing systems and infrastructures for safe and secure, often global environments - can't say that they were perfect, nothing ever is. Time to time (often) the hired security testing groups / companies were able to find some problems, even if documents in wastebaskets - in IT(?) which should have known better, but the main thing was to find the problems, not to hide them!

You look companies / corporations today, they use much, much more money and time to hide the problems, trying to recover from problems, paying to public and/or government the fines, whatever than preventing the problems? Nothing (much) wrong, business as usually, but sometimes wonder why the stockholders / owners are willing to throw good money - and sometimes good reputation, away? Just wondering - LOL!

You are right about "yet" and SELinux. But why against GPL - don't you want get something for "your" money? GPL guarantees that any changes / advancements / etc for a product will come back (if used commercially / distributed) when other (not all!) licenses mean that some company / corporation (Microsoft, Oracle, ??) can take the product which was developed by "your" money, start making money for themselves and you have one product which doesn't get developed anymore? Sometimes I don't understand this thinking - but if you want to give your money away, it's OK, I rather have some back!

Did anyone read the problem before replying, of course not - this is /. after all - so, from Dell ( just the important points ):

3. The W32.Spybot worm was discovered in flash storage on the motherboard during Dell testing. The malware does not reside in the firmware.
4. All industry-standard antivirus programs on the market today have the ability to identify and prevent the code from infecting the customer’s operating system.
5. Systems running non-Microsoft Windows operating systems cannot be affected.

Doesn't seem very serious, of course it's Windows only so, of course, you are running antivirus AND, of course, after motherboard swap don't put it to production without testing - which would catch it?

Anyway, still wondering even without antivirus - home come that people let their systems communicate over network with unauthorized traffic? Just going back 20+ years designing network systems, some even Windows, my systems never allowed any unauthorized traffic in or out - this of course sometimes needed even building your own comm. stacks, traps, hooks, proxies, whatever but also guaranteed that all traffic was legitimate! Saves a lot headache - of course all attempts were logged, alerted and, in case of outbound, the sources were isolated - automatically! So - even Windows can be built that way (with pain!), just wondering why some don't do that?

It's only bad design / coding / development - who cares! It happens all the time and will happen as long as the subpar designs / development / coding is allowed. Mostly I would blame the design of these systems - it's very difficult to (safely) implement anything which is already broken, as most of the systems today! Or - if you don't agree, list the systems that haven't been broken one time or other? Or - which will not be broken in future?

Seriously - after fighting long enough years for safe and secure design, I honestly don't understand these? It has been 100% - really hundred percent - every time a problem with design for no other reason except ignorance, greed, lack of experience, whatever - but anyway something you would have got fired earlier! Now - blame others, blame a product, blame a vendor, blame a hacker, etc - give me a break!

Yes, 2007 -ages ago! And, opiates are a very, very small part of world drug problem. Definitely, makes a lot of money (and power) for some but in global drug problem, a drop in a bucket.

The mineral findings, actually known since 90's, since russians made a lot of research there with help of some, let's say, global companies are something thousands and thousands times more valuable - and, of course, legal in view of world population. Makes you wonder - or?

Well - the pipelines and especially the (rare, largest in the world?) mineral deposits known since 90's - I can see other than heroin coming out of Afghanistan! The strategic position, etc also doesn't hurt? I love red flowers but for each their own - heroin export from Afghanistan is actually very small today, the world has gone by, drug dealing is not what it used to be, all the propaganda aside - LOL!

Sounds good - so, I want everything in EBCDIC, nothing in that octal crap! And definitely nothing in iXXn, UTF whatever codes!

Oh, people mean presentation of data, not the coding of data? Definitely 3D, I love to see my data in 3D - 2D is so 90's and 1D is 80's or how did it go? My Excel and Powerpoint will shine in 3D! But, please, not those smell effects - I have to make some corporate reports and you know, the smell may not be the nicest? Colors, of course, at least the normal 16million! Videos in HD, whatever it means to any manufacturer but I can take that - as long as they look as good as Avatar with 3D glasses! Sound - minimum 16 channels! What else about data - should / could we require some quality / the data to have some contact to reality - no, of course not, it's corporate data!

Sorry, a little off topic but this comment hits me every time "our IT department is reluctant to support them" - then you don't have an IT department - you have bunch of amateurs, whatever useless operators! I'm so tired of these - for real IT it doesn't matter what and how many different OS you are running - none is more or less difficult to support than any other! Yes, there are differences, one might be a little easier for some special purpose than some other but overall - they all are just a bunch of programs to run computer systems!

Back to the subject, I have used / recommended HFS+ or, as someone said, shared filesystems over Infiniband or other fast connection. The problem is really HIPAA and other security / secret / whatever rules, regulations and laws - even today the systems don't have much good standard ways to comply - you often have to develop your own and those skills are scare! And with current education getting even more rare - back to the not so good IT!

Just wondering what Apple was thinking? Or has been thinking? Or? Apple is today the owner of our building where (not far from Apple HQ) we used to have full environment to test these things, actually all kinds of radio "things" - I just hope they haven't taken it down, it was expensive as hell to build!

Heh - maybe they had some engineer from MS hired to design the antenna configuration. Not that MS doesn't have very bright people, they do - they just are trained not to think until told by some manager, something good might even come out and that would be bad! KIN, Pink, Red, Purple, whatever - both Apple and MS are going the way Motorola?

Correct, some problems are serial - at least in current world, another topic! But parallelism is not same as threads - you can run any number of tasks, possible since 60's or 70's depends on who you ask. Unfortunately today, the younger generation has to learn the multi-tasking again, all they know (if they know!) is multi-threading, another way to make parallel processing but not the only. There is much, much more in parallel processing - code is not the only issue but one where more "cores" help. Sometimes wonder - non-locking memory management and queue processing are old, old - see some IBM research from 70's, how many has even heard of those? Very useful when several "cores"!

I think, you don't understand? It's the same as the main costs in a government company are taxes - LOL! Because they pay heavy taxes, they have to ask greater prices from, yes - you guessed right, taxpayers! We can never win this way - heh!

True - kind of. Hulu can't compete with torrents, Hulu is US only! While in US, I actually did like Hulu - now, as most other "services", useless! I even didn't know / understand why the pirating is a big deal until moved out of US! No wonder - the movie, etc companies are not even trying to sell outside US so how else you can watch series, movies, and so on? It's funny (maybe?) how they try to limit even Dish and other satellite service for US only - do they really think that all the money is in US and all the people who like to watch Hollywood series and movies live in US? No wonder - etc!!!

Yes, they are selling half a million videoconferencing rooms, but the government, after latest cuts in budgets, is only paying $3 million of them - LOL! So Cisco needs something else to make money.

It is so true - IT in itself is not stressing, busy sometimes but stressing? How could it be? Except, of course, maybe everyone means the company or the management is stressing - even then it's no different of any other work, every workplace and profession can be stressing if it's for profits for someone who are not up to the work! Or you start taking your job too personally when you can't have no influence how it goes - except to walk away! It happens.

Over 40 years I have been working hard, sometimes means long, sometimes just interesting but hard to solve problems - but only when in younger days took the job personally - got an ulcer, took a couple of years away from my life! After meeting our CEO who told me straight that I'm no use in that condition, better take two months vacation (company paid, real vacation with family!), think hard and not let it happen again. One of the best advices ever - yeah, slipped a couple of times since then but never, ever anymore let it get too bad. The same CEO said if anyone except I is causing the problem, to tell him and they will be gone because they are worse than anything for company - no problem makers allowed. Well, he was an old-fashioned corporate dictator, very successful in very successful (huge) company, so you better believe - LOL!

Maybe misleading summary but what you just said is old, old, old - part of my job when started -71, and old already then! The problem today seems to be - add a couple of words, like WEB or Internet, to some old idea and , voilà, you can have a patent.

Seriously - is the USPO the only government office which, when not skilled on the issue, is supposed and/or allowed to make bad decisions anyway? Doesn't sound good or even very useful?

"Predictive process" has been used in any kind of business forever "to change pricing based upon expected future .. whatever" - especially what I did, combining insurance profits with having, charging and selling computer resources. It's very interesting and much what the patent describes is really out of the textbooks - maybe just too old textbooks, not any more in libraries, even in universities? Will be big again - you have to charge in cloud? Maybe that's why they really did go after a patent. Of course it can't hold - even abstracts as WEB are either defined as "interlinked documents" or not really defined at all, just needs a couple of million $$ to fight the patent and then you are free to do what you / most large sw/hw/cloud/etc service corporations have been doing 40+ years! If you still have any money left to do anything - LOL!

Besides, the mistake often is the load - you have to look much more than bits, bytes, seconds, etc - someone else is charging your resoures, be they hw, electircity, taxes, and so on - so, "It's complicated", sometimes changing daily - think currencies and almost any business today!