Slashdot Mirror
Vista Bug Costs Users In Swedish Town Their Internet
Lund, Sweden refuses to work around a Vista bug, so people who live there must choose between Vista and internet access. It's nice to see the right people being held accountable for a change.
Factoring out the Linux/MS opinions, maybe people should not be connecting their machines directly to the Internet in the first place (although not being able to connect and use a paid for service is a bit harsh). If there were a law about computer security, not directly connecting machines to the Internet would be one of the first points in it, next to not running unknown executables as root or administrator that are received via IM or E-mail.
Barring honeypots and routers with a hardened attack surface, I don't understand why anyone would connect any machine directly to the Internet without some type of hardware firewall. This applies for not just Microsoft operating systems, but any type of OS, be it Linux, BSD, MacOS, AIX, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, Ultrix, Tru-64, OS/2, VMS, or any other OS with a TCP/IP stack. Its just asking for trouble, because remote exploits are not just limited to Windows.
One idea that would solve the problem for everybody involved would be having Lund offer NAT-ready firewalling routers with their Internet offerings (either for free, or for a small fee.) This way, people's machines are protected from Internet attack (which means fewer zombie boxes on the ISP's network), and people can use the Internet regardless of operating system, because the router does the DHCP handshaking for internal machines (or even that can be shut off and people use their own fixed set of IPs.)
"The difference is that people use Linux by choice, and the people making that choice know that they're sacrificing compatibility.
People using Vista are very likely to just have bought a new computer since the beginning of the year, and have no idea why things don't work with it."
People use Vista by choice. Nobody is forced to keep the OS that comes by default with their computer. They have the option to downgrade to XP, or upgrade to bsd or linux. If they go the upgrade route, they can end up with extra $$$ in their pockets, by getting a refund on Vista.
Or if they insist on using a retard OS, they can use a linux boot disk to get on the net, and keep Vista for offline use, which is what all Windows users should be doing, anyway.
A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses.
This one is a pretty low bar, I'll grant you that. One can be indignant of a number of things. I'll leave whether or not it confuses the individual with the mod points up to that individual, but again, this isn't particularly hard to do.
A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections."
The OP is on topic and does anyone here think that MS being used by a large percentage of the population is incorrect? The last paragraph is opinion, neither more or less inflammatory that 95.398% of the posts here, including this one..
Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.
I really don't get that impression from the OP. Maybe the word "dickish" upset some of the more highly refined members of the forum. I suppose we could consider adding the tag "Adult Language" for these folks so as not to upset their delicate sensibilities. I find it really ironic that anyone could mod a comment troll given the submitter of the thread.
There, I feel better. Much more satisfying than metamoderating.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
*IF* MS is violating the standard. Whilst its likely, the ISP is still being the worst kind of "j00 sux0rs, /we l33t" attitude that just fucks things up for everybody and gives Linux users a bad name.
I havn't heard of any other ISP having this problem, nor does the router we use at work have any issues with Vista networking - those Vista machines get DHCP addresses from it without problem, so.. just what exactly is the problem with the ISP DHCP servers?
I read the article, its remarkably light on details. For all I know from reading that, the problem is a misconfigured Linux server at the ISP end.