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Koreans Advised to "Avoid Vista" for Now
An anonymous reader writes "The Chosonilbo reports that several government ministries in South Korea are advising users not to install Windows Vista, at least until popular online services can be made compatible. The problem is that ActiveX is pervasive in the Korean webspace, employed by everyone from web games to online banking. Upgrading to Vista is expected to render many of these services unusable. Portions of the popular "Hangul" word processor, a major competitor to Office in that country, are also not functioning under Vista. The Ministry of Information is planning to publish compatibility information for popular websites, and urging users to carefully research the implications of upgrading."
Many people ask me why I insist on server side web apps unless there is absolutely positively no way around it. Now they know why. Client side processing means client side requirements. Server side processing means the client can be using anything from a PC with Firefox to an iPhone with... oh wait :P
I hate printers.
The more promising the view, the steeper the cliff...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Wait, Battle.net isn't compatible with Vista?
They must be undergoing some sort of existential crisis.
Cross browser/OS compatibility isn't important at all?
Ran into this with my partner, who is Korean. Her online banking uses incredibly invasive, poorly conceived and programmed software called nProtect. Which installs a bloody device driver to function. It actually blue screened Vista randomly. It does not install without Administrator level access to the machine (obviously). In addition, it required that you run IE7 in Administrator mode when attempting to log in. Also, many many websites did not function reliably with Vista and IE7, their ActiveX controls expecting to have administrator level access to the machine. Advanced technologically? Hardly. Just proprietary and locked in, and not very security conscious. The amount of times I had to click "Allow this website to install an ActiveX control" is just insane, I don't want to think of the amount of remote code execution vulnerabilities present on a machine with all these controls installed. They're pretty much conditioned to allow the website to install any old thing, really, since so many of their websites require it.
Good point. I got fixated on the ActiveX comments about games, banks and forgot about the users.
Then again, I always forget about the users. If it weren't for the pesky users, the computers would run fine!
Short version: they use Active-X because of US export policy.
Long version: Before Clinton allowed export of strong encryption, web browsers outside US only supported 40-bit encryption. So instead of using ssl with 40-bit keys, the Korean government adopted something called SEED, a homegrown algorithm with support for longer keys. So all the online banking stuff was done with it. This was around when IE was taking over the browser market, so banks used Active X to implement SEED. People liked it because it allowed them very nice and frequently updated widgets, and most people were running windows anyway.
Fast forward 10 years, the whole country is dependent on Active-X and therefore MS, with *zero* support for alternatives. As everyone is using IE, most web sites (including Korean Government sites) are designed only for IE+Acitve-X. All banking, shopping, stock trading, is done through Active-X, with no alternatives. This discourages people from using anything but Windows, perpetuating the monopoly. Korea is the only country where the stock market and most financial system shutdown because of the MS-SQL slammer worm (back in Jan '05). With help from rampant software piracy, MS is *the* dominant player in *all* software markets, and Korea's culture of homogeneity has simply perpetuated the monopoly.
I'm hoping people learned their lesson and will shift to more standards compliance and alternative implementations, but somehow I don't think so. In fact, the Korean Government will demand MS "fix" "their" problem, as obviously it is MS's fault for breaking "the Internet".
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
No, the problem is that incompetently created websites use delicate nonportable nonstandard proprietary software that is only interoperative with one single obsolete platform.
Don't blame Vista; blame people who aren't responsible, experienced, or forward-looking enough to see why complying with standards is so necessary.
Now let's see how people will fix their glaring mistake. Will they "fix" it by repeating it (i.e. rewriting ActiveX controls to be compatible with Vista, so that they can get paid to screw their customers again in 5 years when the next version of Windows comes out) or will they fix it by removing the irresponsible dependencies?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but CRTs are superior to LCDs for gaming in every way but the usual reasons to buy LCD, size and weight. LCDs have one resolution, CRTs can do many resolutions (and true multisync CRTs, which are admittedly a rarity these days, can do all KINDS of things.) The best LCD has a refresh rate and is chunky compared to a CRT, which has persistence due to phosphors.
SED is supposed to address the issue of persistence, but won't solve any of the other issues.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"