'Lazy' Americans bite back, fess up

Is Michaela Stephens American? Regardless, I'd say she's got us pretty well pegged.

James Stemler

Subject: 'Lazy' Americans may come unstuck in China

Michaela is a prat. first of all she whines on that Chinese are stereotyped as being "smart" because they work hard. Actually, that sounds like an excuse, I've read a study that shows that on average Orientals have a higher IQ than westerners so maybe that's the reason, or maybe not but she's jumping to conclusions. Also, what is her "this would happen in less than a decade" crap about? That is pure conjecture.

One thing that she's correct in is that Chinese will smile and nod and then do what they like and that is true of Japanese to (or so my friend in automotive engineering says), but if I found that a client or partner had effectively lied to me I wouldn't be too sympathetic, lying to clients is not a way to conduct business or to earn a good reputation.

Where is she getting her information or stats from? Well I think that she's just jumping to conclusions based on recent media coverage. Typically self-important know-it-alls like Michaela prefer to criticise because that automatically infers that you know better, whereas agreeing with someone is a neutral act, which doesn't explicitly single out a party as being more knowledgeable.

China is a cruel sickening parody of a country, run by despots and madmen preaching hypocritical communist yet capitalist-when-it-suits views.

Mark Petty

Subject: 'Lazy' Americans may come unstuck in China

This letter really pissed me off! Unfortunately because your 100% correct!

Richard

Subject: 'Lazy' Americans may come unstuck in China

Using the term lazy Americans is too strong. I have seen enough of Chinese culture to know that they work very hard, but when comparing America to the rest of the world, Americans are not lazy at all. Take a trip to central America, Europe or any Arab nation to see lazy. America lies someplace in the middle.

JB

Subject: 'Lazy' Americans may come unstuck in China

I'm thinking that your lazy

Dwarthan

Subject: Pay for Microsoft *cough* security?

Hi Egan, A couple of brief points about your Inq article...

You forgot to mention OpenVMS as a secure operating system. It's had something less than 10 security alerts in 25 years unlike MS who could have that many in a few weeks. In fact most OpenVMS security problems were caused when interfacing to IP was added in a way to make it look like Unix.

Second point is that in the last few months MS talked about getting a security classification from the US government (or maybe just DefenSe) for Windows. I recall it was something like "Gold" classification. Never have I seen gold being so devalued !

Finally, if you add the estimated cost to business of the various virii and worms that get through Windows, you would find that it was enormous. (Probably something over $20 billion if my memory is not failing me.) Pity about consumer law not (apparently) being applicable to software !!

cheers

John

Subject: Pay for Microsoft *cough* security?

Egan Orion,

Your type or writing is what gives the security industry a bad name. http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=5773

It is TECHNICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to create secure software (or hardware). How hard is that simple fact for you to believe?

OpenBSD was designed with security as the primary objective. Yet in the last few months there have been multiple major security holes found.

Ready for a shock? There will continue to be multiple major security holes found in OpenBSD as long as people are motivated by the publicity from finding them.

Because it's technically impossible to create secure software.

Get over yourself and your senseless Microsoft bashing, you are clueless.

-GH

Subject: Pay for Microsoft *cough* security?

Errr,

This may be "within hours" :-)

Anyway, you forgot the most secure operating system of them all VMS (formerly DEC, then CompaQ and now HP).

There are reasons that this OS is the backbane of large parts of the world's financial infrastructure, and security is one of them. These machines are unhackable (the hacking community have tried) because the OS was designed by real software engineers, not overpaid hordes of twinkie &coke schoolkids.

This may come as a surprise to people outside the real computing world, but those of us in the VMS (and MVS ad certain niX environments) world realise that most of the computer security industry exists for only one reason - the defective software supplied to the market by Microsoft and others, and the dubious networking standards adopted by the marketplace. A sad state of affairs.

There are alternatives, they cost more money, are proprietary and BillG did not create them. They have an advantage - they work.

ciao
p.

Subject: Pay for Microsoft *cough* security?

Microsoft is finally beginning to reap what they've sown. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The more they try to tighten their grip on world software domination, the more potential end users are slipping through their fingers. Funny that this announcement comes at the same time as MS's possible decision to charge end users for security measures. I wonder if MS has even noticed the connection yet, or if they're still oblivious...

Byron

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