Microsoft Security Makes "Worst Jobs" List

Stony Stevenson asks, rhetorically, "What do whale-feces researchers, hazmat divers, and employees of Microsoft's Security Response Center have in common? They all made Popular Science magazine's 2007 list of the absolute worst jobs in science." Quoting: "The MSRC ranked near the middle as the sixth-worst job in this year's list.. 'We did rate the Microsoft security researcher as less-bad than the people who prepare the carcasses for dissection in biology laboratories,' Moyer said. Moyer didn't have to think long when asked whether he'd rather have the number 10-ranked whale research job. 'Whale feces or working at Microsoft? I would probably be the whale feces researcher,' he said. 'Salt air and whale flatulence; what could go wrong?'" Here's the Popular Mechanics list all on one page.

Time to rethink OS's

[Tablizer]

When staff is short I am sometimes stuck with help-desk duties of late. I am appauled by the lack of transparency when trying to troubleshoot Windows. There is no easy way to "X-ray the pipes" to see what is going in and out and where it is getting stuck. Thus, one ends up having to play Sherlock Holmes to figure out the crime based on random clues scattered here and there. One cannot open the blackbox, but rather has to tweak the front knobs, trying a Cartesion Join of all possible combos, or at least a random sample as an approximation.

It does not have to be this way. The OS should be broken up into fairly independent services and the protocol of each service known, shown, and loggable. One could thus isolate oddities. If a peice of software I build constantly has problems (or confusion) with certain processes or steps, I make trace modes and special reports that can echo and document the process as it is taking place. OS's don't seem to be built this way, you have to randomly tweak stuff until the problem (hopefully) goes away. It is like banging the Mellenium Falcon when it stalls. In the digital age I am stuck with analog-like troubleshooting techniques.
   

Juvenile and unfunny

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm starting to wonder if Mike Judge's 'Idiocracy' may have been a serious film. The articles that make it to the front page on this site have gotten progressively worse over the years.

I fully expect a 'Microsoft = Ass' article by 2010.

Re:I call whaleshit

[butlerdi]

How about Proctologist or as they are currently known (in the PC world) colorectal surgeons.

Re:I call whaleshit

[jomama717]

That struck me as odd too...according to the article it's due to the amount of "bad news" that oceanographers have to deal with (overfishing, pollution, etc.):

With so much going on, there's plenty of work for oceangoing scientists--if they can stomach bad news.

That's a stretch in my book, *everybody* has to deal with that bad news, the oceanographers just deliver it - while cruising the world's oceans on state of the art research vessels...

Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

somebody mod the parent troll +5. the article is actually a pretty interesting read with neat pictures, and i'd much rather see a discussion on the benefits of elephant vasectomies instead of another M$ bashing thread. Yes... we get it... it's insecure... now scurry back to your *nixes.

Uh....

[mark-t]

Number 3: Elephant Vasectomist

Last time I checked, Elephants were endangered.

So why on earth would anyone be sterilizing an endangered species? How to make a situation worse, or what?

Re:Time to rethink OS's

[jimicus]

So your solution to any random problem is "run it under a debugger"?

Would it really be so hard for the software writers to, oh, I don't know, USE THE LOGGING FACILITIES THAT ARE BUILT INTO THE OPERATING SYSTEM??. Windows has a perfectly good Event Viewer and APIs for writing to it, so how come hardly any software ever logs what it's doing?

Re:I call whaleshit

[ozmanjusri]

That's a stretch in my book, *everybody* has to deal with that bad news, the oceanographers just deliver it

Some people put their hearts into their jobs.

Misnomer

[DynaSoar]

I know science. I do science. Microsoft security response is not science. It's the intelligent design contingent of the IT world. It can call itself science all it wants but it can't act like science. Sooner or later they'll tell you that you just have to believe them, while they're busily cooking up the next, more complicated batch of the same old same old and collecting more people with impressive credentials to preach it at you.

The reason I'd say it is worse

[Sycraft-fu]

Is threefold:

1) Because Windows is so prevalent it gets hit with more attacks than anything else.

2) Along those lines, it always makes the news, at least tech news, when there's a Windows bug. If you read security focus or the like you discover there's really quite a bit discovered in all OSes, including MacOS, Linux, Solaris and so on. However it rarely hits tech news and almost never mainstream. No such luck for MS.

3) People like to blame all their problems on MS. You get hacked because your password was "password"? MS's fault. A program you install have a security hole? MS's fault. Someone send you a virus "In order to have your advise"? MS's fault.

Basically, because Windows is so prominent, everything is magnified. You are under a much bigger spotlight, and much more gets attributed to you than normal.

Re:Humm.

[acidosmosis]

You have to realize that Slashdot is filled to the brim with users that follow stereotypes. There are no leaders here. Only followers. They don't know about the concept of thinking for themselves.

Microsoft on your resume, yes, that would be one of the best possible things you could ever have on an IT resume as previous job experience. Anyone in IT with common sense would kill for that job, if only to have it on his or her resume.

If anyone doesn't agree with that, they lose all credibility.

Re:Time to rethink OS's

[FJGreer]

So which OS are you using? Cause mine does log everything into the logging facilities provided by the operating system (to use the term loosely). Even kernel stuff, not that I have ever had a problem. Linux/*BSD/Solaris/*nix all provide excellent logging services. and you can even tweak the level of verbosity.

Re:Time to rethink OS's

[Have Blue]

Because fucking around with the command line is so much easier and more intuitive than having the error message read "This disk cannot be unmounted because a file on it is in use by the program named ______________ ".

Re:Time to rethink OS's

[geekoid]

Because more windows programmers are not engineers. They want to get it done as fast as possible with as little understanding as possible.

So when they can be bothered to log an error, it's usually done after the programmer looks for the word 'write' in the help system.

Every shop bigger then 20 people I ahve worked at is like this, very few of us actually study the OS. Of course, it is possible thatevery place I have been at is the exception.

Re:Time to rethink OS's

[jimicus]

Mostly Linux.

For application logging, while the OS provides a logging facility through syslog, it's down to an application (such as Apache or OpenLDAP or Postfix or what have you) to actually use it - the OS doesn't force the issue. Thankfully, most Unix applications are actually pretty good at doing so therefore getting everything configured properly is seldom a big deal - you can just check what went wrong in the logs.

Windows has a logging facility as well, but it's remarkable how few things actually use it.