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Sorry, I forgot IE was the reference browser for the Internet and Microsoft failed, or wait, it wasn't, and developers only tested with IE? Who's problem was this again?

I wasn't blaming Microsoft, only stating the problem. However, bundling IE with Windows and giving it the dominant marketshare, and breaking as many standards as they did, exacerbated the problem. If IE was mostly compliant, I really wouldn't care -- let people use IE, I'll develop on Firefox, and things will mostly work.

Compare this to standards which actually work -- I hit "print to PDF" or "save as PDF" on Linux, in a browser or an OpenOffice document, open it on Acrobat Reader on Windows, and it works. Take any PDF from the Internet, open it in Okular on Linux, and it works. People who know will tell you ways in which Adobe may have broken the standard, but they generally work. Contrast this to having to test in every browser, and run it through the w3c validator...

Standard file compression, which one, are you serious?

zip is a standard, which is probably why it's used as the container format for everything from Chrome extensions to ODF documents to id software games.

Now, are other compression formats warranted? Sure, but the one that's most visibly included with Windows is zip, and it's interoperable.

ZOMG, Microsoft the monopoly is bundling file compression utilities with Windows, what about WinZip? /sarcasm.

And I don't have a problem with that.

My problem isn't that IE has huge marketshare -- I don't like it, but I can live with it. My problem is that IE has huge marketshare and consistently breaks shit, and I as a web developer have to spend something like 25% of my time supporting it.

Contrast with zip -- I can use the zip commandline tool on Linux, or the Rubyzip library in Ruby, or WinZip on Windows, etc, etc, and they'll all open just fine with "Compressed Folder" on Windows.

Do you see the difference? Microsoft actually got the zip support right.

Gimp isn't RedHat is!1

If you're being serious, you're a moron. If you're being sarcastic, you made my point for me -- what, exactly, does RedHat have a monopoly on?

It's a bit like accusing Apple of abusing their monopoly on desktop computers. Why does nobody care that Safari is the default browser on OS X? Simple: Apple doesn't have the monopoly. Microsoft does, which means they have to play by different rules.

I'm not talking about monopolies, I'm poking fun at the reactions to them. If RedHat were found to be a monopoly, would random ballots make any more sense?

Only if RedHat were actually abusing their monopoly. Even then, I'd only care if they were doing so in a way that actually breaks standards. They want to include Gimp? Fine. They want to include a version of Gimp that makes PNGs that no one else can read? Fuck 'em.

You and I both know that many, many flamewars would end if every distro offered to log you into KDE or Gnome, listed in random order.

Indeed, Ubuntu solves this by making that choice for you. However, this is mitigated by several facts:

• You can replace Gnome with KDE, and Ubuntu has never claimed otherwise. You may be able to remove IE now, but Microsoft certainly tried to prevent it, to claim it was impossible.
• Kubuntu exists. Where can I download a Firefox-only Windows?
• Neither Ubuntu nor Kubuntu is a monopoly.
• Gnome and KDE actually cooperate on standards, improving both.
• Gnome programs work in KDE, and vice versa.

And so on -- all of which aren't true of browsers. Also, Gnome and KDE both have decent market share of the small market of Linux desktop environments...

And maybe I'm hanging out in the wrong forums, but I don't see Gn

Would you have suggested checking for SWF headers before this issue was published?

No. I would have suggested checking for zip file headers (0x04034b50 as a little-endian dword) at the start of the file. The zip file format specifies such headers, and it is only the fact that most zip processing software doesn't check for them that allows the prepending. If docx is defined as being a zip file, it should follow all the rules for such a file.

Zip and gzip use the same compression.

According to the ZIP file format specification, ZIP can use a dynamic LZW algorithm.

The whole reason gzip exists is because the standard UNIX compress uses LZW - which, until recently, was protected by a patent (that was the problem with GIFs).

Instead of using LZW, gzip uses the unprotected LZ algorithm, which doesn't contain the improvements that Welch (the 'W' in LZW) made.

So not only do they not use the same algorithm, but that's the whole point of gzip in the first place!

The BSD license is also limiting to an extent. I cannot claim I wrote the code for instance.

So now you're whining that not only aren't you free to profit off of someone else's work, but that you can't take credit for someone else's work? WTF?

Regarding ZIP, yes BSD implementations exist. And I doubt it would take two months to implement from a spec. Anyway, these guys trying to make a buck off of Phil Katz's rotting corpse would probably be more than happy to sell you a license. But then that's not "free" either, at least "free" as in "letting you rip people off". My bad.

The BSD license is also limiting to an extent. I cannot claim I wrote the code for instance.

So now you're whining that not only aren't you free to profit off of someone else's work, but that you can't take credit for someone else's work? WTF?

Regarding ZIP, yes BSD implementations exist. And I doubt it would take two months to implement from a spec. Anyway, these guys trying to make a buck off of Phil Katz's rotting corpse would probably be more than happy to sell you a license. But then that's not "free" either, at least "free" as in "letting you rip people off". My bad.

This sounds a lot like pkware's strategy with DCL. They actually tried to tell me I should use it because its patented. I told them it's surprising that we'd even consider using it in spite of it being patented.

(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.

They have? That's news to me. When I got my first CD player in 1985, the average price of a new CD in a record store was $12. In 2004, the average price of a new CD in a record store is $18. Now, granted there are bargain-basement $5.99 CDs these days, as well as sale-priced new releases at the $12 or $13 price point, but as a whole, CDs aren't cheaper today than they were nearly 20 years ago.

Does that excuse "piracy," or "theft" or whatever you want to call it? No, it doesn't, but let's ratchet down the level of nonsense in the rhetoric used here. "Stealing" isn't the right word for making an unauthorized copy of something. The original still exists and can be sold to someone, and "piracy" is a loaded word with completely inappropriate connotations. How about we just call it "unauthorized copying" or "copyright dilution"?

I've always had a problem with software and entertainment industry estimates of losses due to unauthorized copying. First, they assume that every copy illegally-made represents a lost sale, which is nonsense. If a 15-year-old kid has 8,000 songs on his hard drive, there's no chance in hell that he would have bought those 8,000 songs if he hadn't had access to them for free. He might have spent anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of thousand bucks on music, but there's no chance he'd have bought 600 CDs worth of music at $15-$18 a crack ($9,000-$11,000).

And here's another thing: Twenty years ago, my friends and I taped songs off of FM radio and played them in our walkmans. Or we'd dupe our LPs onto tape and trade copies with each other. I easily had access to ten times as much music as I could afford to buy, but in spite of record industry whining, I bought *more* music because of that practice, not less.

One study stated that that kids and adults alike who used the original Napster were more likely to buy music than people who didn't. Numerous studies have shown that there's zero correlation between "piracy" and the decline of sales for the music industry. Is it any surprise to people that the last year of sales increases for the music industry was the last year that the original Napster was in operation?

This is not an apologia for listening to music without paying for any of it. It's simply a realistic look at what's really going on. The record industry has its head up its ass and always has. Suing and prosecuting your customers is bad for business.

Software "piracy" is different, but not *that* different. Much of the software industry used to accept that "piracy" was just another form of marketing. Microsoft has always given lip service to stamping out "piracy," but until they had established a monopoly, they did virtually nothing to prevent it before the fact because they knew it was easier to convert a "pirate" into a paying customer than it was to get a skeptic to buy from you in the first place. Most people these days will automatically use MS products, so now Microsoft puts copy-protection technology in its products to force people to pay up-front.

Is making an unauthorized copy of music or software theft? According to the law, it is. However, there needs to be a middle ground between the "information wants to be free" left and the Ashcroft search-and-seizure right.

Most people would gladly reward artists and programmers for their work. That's how shareware works, and it made Phil Katz a substantial amount of money before his death. So how about we find new ways to reward creators of content, instead of finding new ways to criminalize what people have done for decades?

Don't misunderstand me. There are true criminals out there who are selling counterfeit or other illegally-copied versions of products (such as music and sof

The PKWare specs seem to be here.

Yeah.
Might be useful to note that you just described the OLD encryption method used back in PKZIP 2.04g. The method that's already fully described in the publically available PKZIP Application Note.

The encryption used now is quite a bit different, supporting RC2/RC4-64/128, 3DES-112/168, and AES-128/192/256. Oh, and there's also the business about using a passphrase and/or a list of recipients (dig certs) to encrypt the files. THAT is the strong encryption they're talking about.

Biography

"Now, PKWare has grown up. It's become just another successful software company with a board of directors and a long-term marketing plan. Katz would doubtless be proud of its continued growth, but one can't help but wonder if the spark that made PKWare unique died with its creator."

Yeah. His mom...

As you can check

"George Haddix

Chairman and CEO

George Haddix was previously founder and president of CSG Systems Inc., a $600 million software and services company. He was formerly chief executive officer of U.S. West Network Systems Inc. and chairman and chief executive officer of Applied Communications Inc. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of InfoUSA and CSG Systems International. Mr. Haddix has a doctorate in mathematics from Iowa State University."

They just forgot to say that Mr Haddix was formely Mrs Katz and after having divorced from the now deceded journalist 'John', she got a sex change operation...

What are you talking about?

If you go to PkWare's web site there is a link on their front page which says they have published the file format changes so everyone can play nice. This page then links to another application note with the actual format spec inside.

Note also, Pkware actually added their new encryption, authentication, and extra compression options in V5.0 last year. Their newest release is V6.0. To be fair, I dont know when they published the spec?

What are you talking about?

If you go to PkWare's web site there is a link on their front page which says they have published the file format changes so everyone can play nice. This page then links to another application note with the actual format spec inside.

Note also, Pkware actually added their new encryption, authentication, and extra compression options in V5.0 last year. Their newest release is V6.0. To be fair, I dont know when they published the spec?

There's some here and here.

The .zip format has great inroads into the corporate world, whereas PGP is still a geek's toy. By leveraging (cough) the massive usage numbers, they could be successful with this. Of course, it remains to be seen what features they want to add. But enough zip files fly around corporate networks without security, that it does make sense to improve PKZip in that area.

On the other hand, WinZip has a a head start, as the preferred way to deal with zip files for most people. And the PKWare website seems to come up blank on Mozilla, not an encouraging sign.

But what I really want is security for my PDA data, so it is secure over the network, and secure on the hard drive of any PC, even a PC that others have access to. Can zip help with this? Not sure.

I think you're confusing Phil Zimmerman of PGP fame with this guy of PKZip fame.

If I remember correctly, PKZ204G was the last official DOS version of the program...

Actually, PKWARE did finally release an updated version last year, PKZIP for DOS version 2.50. Its main feature updates were support for Win9x long file names, better support for archives with many (i.e. over 16,000) files, Y2K compliance, and a few other features scattered in there. You can find more information at http://www.pkware.com/catalog/zipdos.html .

Well, from this link, it looks like PKware was competing against winzip.

Reading the documentation for WinZip, I come across this line:
WinZip incorporates compression code by the Info-ZIP group, which is used with their permission.

This seems to indicate to me that WinZip didn't licence anything from PKware.

I had been a staunch user of Phil Katz' PKARC package after he significantly improved the original ARC program in the mid-1980s. Then the guy in New Jersey who wrote ARC got in a totally unnecessary fight with him over whether Phil had copied his code instead of reverse-engineering it (welcome to the world of "share" ware). Phil then decided to revamp the whole project and wrote the PKZIP package which stormed the BBS world in the late 1980s and has proven to be stable and solid up to the present day. Check out his company, PKWARE for more info.

Then, in 1990, due to its success in the PC world, a number of people decided to try and port it to other platforms. To his credit, Phil gave the project his blessing and thus Info-Zip was born.

Info-Zip was the first net mailing list I ever signed up for, way back in 1990. (The second was RISKS-L, and then the mail deluge really started!) Jean-Loup Gailly was one of the leading developers along with Kai-Uwe Rommel, Mark Adler, Rich Wales, Greg Roelofs and many others. I was just a lurker, cheering on the gang, and they did in fact port the zip and unzip program to just about every platform imaginable (whence the motto, "The only program that runs on more platforms is 'Hello world'!)

Zip is the unfortunately rare example of a tool that matured and then was left alone. No bloat, no flaky extensions. It just works. I have zipped literally several million files into many thousands of archives over the years, and never had it fail, not even once (disk corruption issues aside). I've archived files of 15 bytes and 1500 megabytes. The encryption is reasonably good; it took the likes of Paul Kocher to really break it. It's efficient; some have been able to exceed its compression and speed abilities but it's solid and reliable enough that no other program has ever challenged it as the supreme cross-platform file archive utility.

The other notable thing about Info-Zip is that it was really one of the very first true "bazaar" style development projects on the net, combining the talents of programmers from all over the globe through what would now be considered ploddingly slow email and list connections. Info-Zip precedes Linux itself and many other similar development efforts by at least a couple of years, and hearkens back to RBBS as the true originator of distributed development of free software. Read all about it at the Info-Zip home page.

Jean-Loup was a key contributor to the success of Info-Zip as both a programming project and a new kind of development project literally spanning the globe. So if you don't mind, this is a big "hooray" for this news. I hope he does well at Mandrake, which is clearly meeting a need in the end-user market as Linux pushes outward past the "server-only" typecasting that certain industry pundits and major companies want to confine it to.

Allez!

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The Ad network is currently owned by Conducent. For a while it was owned by Marble Associates, a company I worked for and that closed operations a year ago (not my fault). Marble bought the network from the inventors (I forgot the name of their company), who established the first ad network, but they were not very successful with it.

When I started to work with the system at Marble, at first I found it intriguing, but then we figured out quickly why it wasn't doing that well:

1. You need a lot of money to establish the critical mass for making people notice the network exists.
2. You need a killer app to give people an incentive to download the software (hint: yet another unzipper won't do the job).
3. People are very nervous about privacy, storage capacity and performance implications.
4. The target group are non-professionals. In professional environments (where most money is), sofware is purchased.
5. Banners are lame and nothing new.