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Why South Korea Is Shackled To Windows
baron writes with a blog post explaining in detail why 99.9% of S. Korea uses Windows. This amazing tale began in 1998 when Korea decided it couldn't wait for SSL to be standardized (which it was in 1999) and commissioned an ActiveX control for secure Web transactions. At first there was a secure Netscape plugin too, but we know how that story ended. Quoting: "This nation is a place where Apple Macintosh users cannot bank online, make any purchases online, or interact with any of the nation's e-government sites online. In fact, Linux users, Mozilla Firefox users, and Opera users are also banned from any of these types of transactions..." Now that Microsoft has made ActiveX more secure in Vista, every Web site in S. Korea is scrambling to get things working again and the government is advising citizens not to install Vista. At the end of all this work, they will still be a monoculture in thrall to Microsoft, with millions of users sitting behind some of the fattest pipes in the world.
But I thought Starcraft worked on Mac too...
Laugh. Its funny.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
and how difficult to get it back
This is not just for Computing but the concept is more important than ever now, in Computing
... the NSA loves you when you do!
http://outcampaign.org/
Kinda makes you think that Massachusetts with their push for open formats, etc might
be on to something. (If you we're already thinking that.)
when the government jumps the gun and does what it thinks is best for everyone.
Apparently, the dupe detection software was written in south korea and uses activex to authenticate
4
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/24/21023
too bad kdawson just upgraded to vista
Kids, diversity is bad, MMMM KAY?
"But I thought Starcraft worked on Mac too..."
It's called World of Warcraft...
I don't think you realize the popularity of Starcrft in South Korea. It's almost a national sport, there are multiple cable TV channels that show tournaments live with play-by-play commentators.
Just break the glass and escape through the window.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
Alternatively, from the better-than-what-they're-using-in-north-korea department
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Anyone? I'd love to see a widescale analysis of how much vendor lockin actually costs. When it's this bad I imagine it's disastrous
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Just imagine HAVING to use Windows, oh the humanity!
Yeah, I'm not getting how this is anybody's fault except S. Korea's. SEED is an open specification. There is no reason the Korean community can't develop a plug-in for other systems. All that is required is for the S. Korean CA to allow it. Again, that's S. Korea's fault.
The only fault of Microsoft's lies in an area that the author is grossly misinformed. He says "In IE 7 and in Vista, Microsoft has re-architected Active X controls in such a way to make them 'more safe' by requiring a user action for the control to run", and then links to a page about the Eolas patent resolution. Many places have had to recode websites and controls after this change. While it is Microsoft's fault for the implementation, the impact on S. Korea is entirely up to them.
Sorry, you made your bed.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
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?
Being Korean and known as somebody who's good with computers, a lot of my friends and family members ask me to look at their computer because "it's running too slow". At first I was more than happy to, but now I dread looking at a Korean computer because:
1. it's running Windows with IE and at least 3 extraneous toolbars
2. it hasn't been defragmented since the computer was first built
3. EVERY website HAS to install software to make it run properly
4. EVERY website the user has bookmarked has at least 5 megabytes of flash (and they're all advertisements)
Everybody in Korea signs up for everything, not knowing how useless the service is, how dangerous it is on their computer, and how much traffic it eats up. Just go to www.daum.net or www.naver.co.kr, the two most popular media portals in Korea. What's worse is that Koreans prefer that kind of interface over Google.
I'm not trying to bash Koreans, Windows, or Internet Explorer at all. It's just that when you put the three together, bad things are bound to happen.
Reposting other people's comments from old stories, are we? Welcome to my foe list.
It shouldn't be a huge amount of work to get ActiveX controls working on Windows. .ocx activex control is just a COM DLL really, and ought not to be too much trouble to port to Linux Firefox (in conjunction with WINE perhaps), or to Mac OS possibly in conjunction with the Win32 api compatability layer (Darwin?). A plugin wouldn't be too difficult to write, as ActiveX is better documented than many other areas of Windows. I'm sure that if enough South Korean programmers, and there are a lot, get annoyed, the problem will be sorted, particularly with the Vista issue.
A
Personnely I doubt that Vista will break these Korean ActiveX modules indefinetely, as MS can release a patch after the OS is releashed and selling, at their leisure. MS would never create a situation where an entire country is put off their flagship product, especially a country with 99.9% MS Windows usage, as stated in the article.
While I find the prevalent MS monoculture in South Korea in itself quite alarming and surprising, I don't think that the compatability issues with Vista are a cause for major concern. Nobody is foring anybody to upgrade to Vista after all.
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face - Ben Williams
Not only is the story a dupe, but so is your post!
7 44830
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=218612&cid=17
This is exactly why the generalized use of proprietary and not standard software is a bad idea. Being the most common platform, doesn't make it a standard either since the all country relies on something you have totally no control about.
The first thing I wondered when I read this was, "Did they learn their lesson?" They standardized their entire country on a closed system, and when the vendor of that closed system initiates an arbitrary change, they're pretty much screwed and forced to rebuild things. In my mind, the smart thing would be to bite the bullet, drop Active X, and switch to Firefox and have a true multi-platform solution. Hell, if they can't do everything they require in an extension, they can go as far as making their own fork, and they'll retain that option in the future.
Really, this should be a lesson for everyone.
daum.net is 40KB of html (with all CSS and javascript inline) compressed. It uncompresses to over 150KB ppv, absolutely unbelievable. That web team are way beyond the reach of the almighty clue bat; they need shooting.
Owning a Monopoly must be nice.
Owning the two dark blue properties just before GO is even nicer.
Just thinking about it makes me want to tell my firewall to shun all traffic from large swaths of the world...
Another question: Couldn't this be forced through liability? I.e. These companies need to switch to using the now much-more secure SSL to handle transactions, or find themselves liable when their customers identities are stolen through their weak quasi-encryption scheme. That's why US companies did it--they didn't want to get sued because a weak protocol was cracked.
Who did what now?
If I were N. Korea this is what I would be developing.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The Government of Canada uses a public key infrastructure system, that only works in some browsers. Famously for the past census, only some people could access it.
Some important sites, such as banks and airlines, don't support other browsers or require plugins as well. It is getting better with the important cross platform critical mass of Firefox, but far from perfect.
Is it a public highway, or something designed only for Ford Explorers(tm)?
After this was posted two days ago as Koreans Advised to "Avoid Vista" for Now, there was a lot of confusion created.
It's good that you put up this article for us, helping to clarify that we're talking about South Korea and not North Korea.
Thank you. My comrades in North Korea will be relieved to hear this.
as to the problem that would quickly happen to the rest of the world too if it weren't for OpenSource and GNU/Linux, and the EU fighting Microsoft.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
How is "digital restrictions management" less proper or less accurate than "digital rights management"?
Its purpose is to manage restrictions on what users can or cannot do with the content. In what way does it manage rights?
South Korea is one country that shares a language with only one other country (North Korea).
The matter is worse in other parts of the world where many more were affected.
A while ago, I wrote about Microsoft and Arabization and the issue of browser independence.
Remember that there are about 300 million native Arabic speakers, and it is the 5th language or so worldwide, spread over 20+ countries. Not to mention the many others who read or speak Arabic as a second language.
In the mid to late 1990s, Microsoft entrenched itself in the Arabic internet market. Most sites were just unusable form anything other than Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Since MS IE does not adhere to standards, and it became the dominant browser by the early 2000s, this monopoly further entrenched Microsoft as the sole technology provider for web sites in the Middle East.
Speaking to a developer at a fairly large company about it, he said : "forget Mac and Linux, we say the application requires Microsoft IE 5 [at the time]". I was flabbergasted by that attitude.
Not only is he mandating a certain browser, but an entire operating system and hardware architecture! And that went unchallenged.
Fortunately, things started to improve over the last year or two, with FireFox gaining ground, and there is no single government forcing a monoculture via banking security or something like that. Sites that used not to work (including Al Jazeera Arabic web site) are usable once more, perhaps with a few glitches here and there.
Still, most people use Hotmail for their email, and MSN for chat (voice and text). It may take time, but I hope the spread of FireFox, Mac OS/X and to a lesser extent Linux will continue to keep web site developers cross platform, and never force the monoculture that was prevalent up until a few years ago.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
In World of Warcraft, the Alliance and Horde characters don't speak the same language, so when one side says either "hahahah" or "lololol" (can't remember which), it shows up as "kekekeke" to the other side.