Apple cash hits $110 Billion

2 hours ago, cbae wrote

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Except that I don't have an orgasm because Microsoft reported earnings and made $x billion in a quarter. For me, using Microsoft products is a business decision. Call me crazy, but I consider computers and phones as tools and not as a way of life. When there comes a time when Microsoft products don't make business sense, then I'll move on.

That is rapidly becoming an archaic view, that all Apple users are religious about their products. I have (female) friends that are forever telling to "get an iPhone", and are perplexed that I have an android phone (that I am paying more for than their iPhone) that fall into this bracket, but my nephew takes one to school, and the guy that works in my local shop has one, as do most of the taxi drivers where I live, and they ain't posh.

Apples success has negated the exclusivity that the typical Apple worshiper consumes conspicuously, people hardly bat an eyelid if you have an iPhone or an iPad nowadays.

Don't get me wrong, fanbois still exist, but Microsoft and Google have them as well in equal measure, they just aren't as pompous and ostentatious, that's all.

2 hours ago, SteveRichter wrote

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Can windows be made completely secure against malware? Where an app has to go thru a UAC before it can do anything outside the silo it is running in.  also, I wonder if legacy requirements drag an OS down in any important ways.

Nothing can, ultimately there has to be something like a "Virus Scanner" that steps in and fundamentally blocks a known issue. Anything else you do is just putting hurdles in the way that the end user will happily (well actually probably moaning about stupid computers being too hard) dance through just to get to what the malicious content is promising - aka The Dancing Bunnies problem.

44 minutes ago, AndyC wrote

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Nothing can, ultimately there has to be something like a "Virus Scanner" that steps in and fundamentally blocks a known issue. Anything else you do is just putting hurdles in the way that the end user will happily (well actually probably moaning about stupid computers being too hard) dance through just to get to what the malicious content is promising - aka The Dancing Bunnies problem.

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More than 50% of Zeus installations are from people double clicking on an EXE and clicking "Yes" on the UAC prompt.

Microsoft can't really invent software that prevents users pwning themselves.

4 hours ago, cbae wrote

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They could do that now.

They always could. 

2 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

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They always could. 

So, since they haven't there's probably more to it than simply not being able to use a tablet made by one particular vendor, especially when there are going to countless tablet models by multiple vendors that have an OS that gives them license to use any of their desktop computers remotely. So the answer to your question is: "they'll most likely buy into Windows RT".

2 hours ago, evildictaitor wrote

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More than 50% of Zeus installations are from people double clicking on an EXE and clicking "Yes" on the UAC prompt.

Microsoft can't really invent software that prevents users pwning themselves.

It's an interesting arms race though, this virus vs anti-virus, measure vs counter-measure game.

I find this research with possible applications in this game pretty cool: "Where did this code come from?" 

Where did this binary come from? How was it compiled? What language did the programmer choose? Who wrote this code? These questions rarely occur to most computer users, but for analysts working in forensics, reverse engineering, and software theft, they are of paramount importance. The provenance of a program binary --- the specific process through which an idea is transformed into executable code --- can provide valuable insight, yet it is in the very domains where such information would be most useful that it is least likely to be available.

At the University of Wisconsin, we have investigated techniques to recover these provenance details from program binaries, filling in the gaps in the production process. Provenance recovery occupies the intersection of program analysis, security, and statistical machine learning research; in this talk, I will describe probabilistic models of provenance in the context of compiler toolchain identification and both closed- and open-world solutions to the difficult task of program authorship attribution: picking out stylistic characteristics of executable code that reveal the identity of the programmer. Our work integrates a range of machine learning techniques, from support vector machines to conditional random fields to metric learning and large-margin clustering. I will discuss how we leverage large-scale computing resources to solve scaling problems in model training and inference, and how our work on provenance recovery creates opportunities for research into the social structures of the underground malware economy. 

3 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

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That is rapidly becoming an archaic view, that all Apple users are religious about their products.

That's the problem with hanging around the internet all day: you can't hear properly for the echoes.

:-/

I have (female) friends that are forever telling to "get an iPhone", and are perplexed that I have an android phone (that I am paying more for than their iPhone) that fall into this bracket, but my nephew takes one to school, and the guy that works in my local shop has one, as do most of the taxi drivers where I live, and they ain't posh.

So true. Definitely not just for the flash rich anymore. Apple seems to have managed the drop from exclusivity extremely well.

Apples success has negated the exclusivity that the typical Apple worshiper consumes conspicuously, people hardly bat an eyelid if you have an iPhone or an iPad nowadays.

Still roll my eyes if I see someone out shopping with one though. 

Don't get me wrong, fanbois still exist, but Microsoft and Google have them as well in equal measure, they just aren't as pompous and ostentatious, that's all.

Oh, I'm the worst of the lot. I refused to be seen dead with an iPhone because they were so overhyped. Went for a WP7 and now find that I only seem use it as an internet share for my iPod Touch. Kind of proves that reverse snobbery is just as bad as the regular kind.

19 minutes ago, cbae wrote

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So, since they haven't there's probably more to it than simply not being able to use a tablet made by one particular vendor, especially when there are going to countless tablet models by multiple vendors that have an OS that gives them license to use any of their desktop computers remotely. So the answer to your question is: "they'll most likely buy into Windows RT".

 

Yes, just like they bought into Windows tablets bef ... oh, hang on.

Multiple vendors is actually the problem.

8 minutes ago, exoteric wrote

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It's an interesting arms race though, this virus vs anti-virus, measure vs counter-measure game. 

And will probably end with machines locked down so tight that technical folk will go back to the abacus ...

I wish the virus writers would get proper jobs.

11 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

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Yes, just like they bought into Windows tablets bef ... oh, hang on.

Was it a business necessity to have tablets in the workforce then?

1 minute ago, cbae wrote

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Was it a business necessity to have tablets in the workforce then?

So Microsoft would have had us believe, yes. Turns out they were right, they just needed someone to show them how to do it.

29 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

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So Microsoft would have had us believe, yes. Turns out they were right, they just needed someone to show them how to do it.

How so? They did nothing back then except for adding *some* touch support. Since capacitive touch screens really didn't exist back then, there was no need for finger-friendly interfaces, so who can blame them?

Regardless, I really don't know what you're arguing now. Are you really trying to make the case that businesses are already so convinced that it's the iPad or the highway in terms of tablets and that it's such a business necessity to have this one particular tablet that they'd trash all their existing desktops in favor of some other desktop operating system that can be accessible remotely through the iPad without paying an additional licensing fee? Seriously?

6 hours ago, cbae wrote

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How so? They did nothing back then except for adding *some* touch support. Since capacitive touch screens really didn't exist back then, there was no need for finger-friendly interfaces, so who can blame them?

Oh, I think it's more than that. Origami was finger-friendly and that bombed too. Now we have the incredibly finger-friendly WP7 and that's not doing so good either. They're missing something that Apple and Google have hit upon (from different directions).

Regardless, I really don't know what you're arguing now. Are you really trying to make the case that businesses are already so convinced that it's the iPad or the highway in terms of tablets and that it's such a business necessity to have this one particular tablet that they'd trash all their existing desktops in favor of some other desktop operating system that can be accessible remotely through the iPad without paying an additional licensing fee? Seriously?

Nope.

What I think is that they don't really want to run ill-fitting apps at all. 

Microsoft is hoping they can leverage their monopoly to make the WinPads a seller. I'm just not so sure that folk really want to run warned-over desktop applications on tablets. They never have in the past. I think they'll carry on running them on laptops and PCs and will run new fit-for-purpose stuff on tablets. The problem MS has here is the notion of 'new' and 'fit for purpose'.

2 hours ago, Ray7 wrote

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Oh, I think it's more than that. Origami was finger-friendly and that bombed too. Now we have the incredibly finger-friendly WP7 and that's not doing so good either. They're missing something that Apple and Google have hit upon (from different directions).

*snip*

Nope.

What I think is that they don't really want to run ill-fitting apps at all. 

Microsoft is hoping they can leverage their monopoly to make the WinPads a seller. I'm just not so sure that folk really want to run warned-over desktop applications on tablets. They never have in the past. I think they'll carry on running them on laptops and PCs and will run new fit-for-purpose stuff on tablets. The problem MS has here is the notion of 'new' and 'fit for purpose'.

Sure, but you asked if they'd dump Windows altogether. In what scenario does it make economic sense to dump Windows altogether, including existing Windows 7 or XP machines to avoid paying the companion licensing fee for Windows 8 machines to be accessed from the iPad? Why wouldn't companies simply replace Windows 7 machines with more Windows 7 machines?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?_r=1

3 hours ago, Proton2 wrote

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?_r=1

Apple benefits heavily by having ready access to a workforce educated at some of the finest public universities in the country located right here in Northern California. It seems rather short-sighted that they'd do this to avoid paying taxes to its home state. There's no other sector that benefits so greatly by its geographic location than technology's proximity to Silicon Valley, and Apple, the new face of Silicon Valley technology, is trying screw over the very state that fostered its existence. I say * Apple.