This can only be a good thing... Seriously, people who use this kind of proprietary software *deserve* to get screwed over by their corporate software masters. For too long people have lived under the false assumption that they have rights, but the fact is these software developers can do whatever the hell they want, and there is nothing people can do about it so long as they keep purchasing their proprietary software! Maybe this will help a few more people get a clue and move to open source.
One more comment... To all the people who are criticizing touch-typing and bragging about how they can type 40-60 WPM without it--get a clue! That's really bad! Now, don't get me wrong--I certainly don't think everyone needs to type at 100 WPM for most jobs, but come on... Anything less is simply not outstanding. I believe that there are probably other, better ways to learn to type, but this one does work well for most people. The point is the end result, not the method... Students should be able to type at a decent rate (75 WPM average?), without looking at the keyboard. The method they choose to employ to do this is entirely arbitrary. I don't know how you can possibly transcribe something quickly when you have to look at the keys, and that is an important skill.
I think a much more important comment is that too many kids get to school already having developed poor typing habits that are difficult to overcome. We really need to teach typing at a very early age, in pre-school.
We had basic first aid in our required health class in high school, but I agree it's ridiculous that more practical skills aren't taught, since a hell of a lot of parents aren't teaching them in this country, assuming they know them at all...which is very often not the case when it comes to personal finance! Everyone knows U.S. schools are always reaching toward the lowest common denominator in order to ensure their funding... We should easily be able to teach kids twice as much as we are now, but that would require us to actually expect something out of them!
I had to take "touch" typing (is there really any other kind?) in elementary school 20 years ago...on Apple IIs! I just assumed that all schools had followed suit by now! I can't believe there are still schools out there that don't require this! I remember my teacher holding a piece of paper over my fingers so I couldn't see while I was being tested... It's shameful to think that any student could graduate in this day and age without knowing how to type! It's also ridiculous that there is even a distinction between "touch" typing and...what, non-touch typing? If you can't type without looking, then you CAN'T TYPE. Simple!
Imagine, whining and complaining about having to walk a whole half a block to use a pay and display machine! It's pathetic. Americans are so embarrassing, I am continually (as in ever single day of my life) embarrassed in new and unimagined ways by my compatriots! These machines work just fine in just about every other country. The only difference is, people aren't all fat-asses and can handle walking a few extra meters! I'm so sick of Americans and their whining. I hate parking meters, and whenever I'm in the U.S. I wish they had pay and display machines available. How people can prefer to use ancient technology is beyond me. Who the hell walks around with pockets full of quarters anyway? Americans, just bury your heads in the sand and please down come out!
Re:Authentication goes both ways.
on
R.I.P. FTP
·
· Score: 1
Well I have to agree with you there. If I were in charge of a server where I knew I had less-knowledgeable users connecting to it, it would make sense to require them to use a particular client which requires them to *type in* the fingerprint I have given to them before it even allows them access. Of course this isn't very secure since they could still use any other client, but assuming most of these users wouldn't know how to do that, it's a step in the right direction.
And it's sad that something as crucial as this should require a "geek card" to talk about!
Perhaps another answer is to start using certificate authorities for SSH they way they do for websites and email...
Re:Missing the point...
on
R.I.P. FTP
·
· Score: 1
Well that was the point the article was making, wasn't it? That even though theoretically spyware could read all of that stuff off the local machine, for the most part it's too difficult to know the format all those various programs use to store passwords, so it's easier to just sniff them in plain text. And even if you have secured your own computer, if a spyware packet sniffer is running on another computer in your network it has access to all that unencrypted traffic as well. It's using operating systems and browsers which are vulnerable to these attacks in the first place that is the biggest worry.
Re:Not every machine is on teh webs
on
R.I.P. FTP
·
· Score: 0
*Especially* in a closed subnet, then even if only two people in that office have access to the ftp server/passwords, anyone else can get infected by spyware/packet sniffers that then have easy access to your passwords. I still remember having endless fun back in high school sniffing people's email passwords and such. What I don't understand is why anyone would prefer FTP in the first place? Every FTP client I've used lately also supports SFTP, so what difference does it make which protocol the user selects? It's beyond me...
Re:Authentication goes both ways.
on
R.I.P. FTP
·
· Score: 1
Then you don't know how to use SSH properly. You need to obtain the public key beforehand, and then *verify* it the first time you connect to a host (you know, when it prints the fingerprint and asks you, "Are you sure you want to continue connecting?") Even Putty in the Windows world does this. It's extremely important.
Missing the point...
on
R.I.P. FTP
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Amazing how this article (and so many people responding) seem to be missing the point entirely. The real problem is people using operating systems that are vulnerable to these types of attacks! I don't know about Vista, but even if Linux was ever targeted for this kind of attack/spyware, you would have to run the software as root to enable packet sniffing! And anyone who uses IE for regular browsing and not just local site development is clearly not a competent web developer and has no business working in this industry! Seriously--how can anyone still use IE, FTP, or anything like that in this day and age? I think I stopped using FTP, what...10 years ago now?
The bottom line is that all hosting companies must disable all access to their services via insecure FTP. It's shameful how many companies still use it. I'm in such an isolated bubble, apparently, that I didn't even know this was still going on until recently I had to access a shared web service to migrate a particular client. I was shocked, to say the least! Secure-FTP (over SSL) is not sufficient as it only encrypts things without verifying the authenticity of the host you are connecting to. It's bad enough that people keep using Windows, but since we can't control this, competent sysadmins really need to take the initiative in disabling FTP. Likewise, unencrypted pop3, imap, telnet, or whatever unencrypted services they provide.
If we always waited for someone else to do something first, we wouldn't get very far as a society! This is why I mention public/government services. Very often these types of innovations need to be pushed through by governments for the very reason that greedy, profit-driven individuals will never do it on their own. Now of course, FOSS does contradict this but only to a certain extent, within the realm of programs individuals are interested in working on as a hobby.
As an example, universities around the world purchase huge amounts of ridiculously expensive software, from massive accounting systems, to scheduling, to student portals, etc. This is insane when most universities are full of talented programmers. So the governments of the world need to force these schools to collaborate on developing solutions to these problems by withholding federal funding. Not only could pay in-house developers to work on the software, they could even integrate it into the curriculum by having students work on certain projects for their courses. This would greatly reduce tuition costs, whether that impacts students directly as in the U.S. or the governments who pay them in civilized societies.
The same scenario can be repeated in countless other public sectors. And once this model gets established, hopefully then the private sector would start to see how much money they could be saving by doing things this way. It's not as if they don't have a great deal of software to use as a foundation. Take OpenOffice.org. It is probably lacking some features that one particular organisation relies on, which is keeping it from switching. But those particular features could probably be added if that corporation would simply spend it's annual license budget for MS Office on development, after which time they would have no recurring license fees. And if lots of companies did this, adding all of the features they rely on, more and more companies would be able to use the product as-is.
Of course, in the U.S. especially, we have a huge problem in that companies, and especially shareholders, are greedy bastards and the idea of contributing something that someone else--especially their competitors--might benefit from is unimaginable to them. Even though *they* are getting the benefit they need, and at a lower cost than before. They don't realize that by supporting these proprietary software companies, they are already supporting their competition who also the same software, by keeping that software company in business.
It's very likely that FOSS is just not compatible with capitalism and human greed, a very sad reality of the society we live in.
It is not equivalent at all, it is far, far more than they deserve for the amount of hours spent working. And we all know that, other than in small, private software companies, programmers never see a cent of those license fees--which are essentially royalties. They are only paid once--it is the corporations which continue to make money indefinitely off of their work.
You're right, but not for technical reasons. It won't happen because the Solidworks' customers aren't willing to take a risk on what they see as a 100% failure... Obviousy people who need the software "now" would have to buy something commercial to satisfy them until a replacement could be made. You would need to have more than a handful of people doing it, too. Something like that would require a multi-million-dollar budget. I won't claim to have all the practical answers, I prefer to think in theoretical terms, as a model of what to work toward. Perhaps this wouldn't work in such a niche market without a lot of people interested in it. I am sure that if you took the annual license fees from all of Solidworks' customers, using it to pay programmers (and not for marketing, sales, shareholder profit, etc.) you could easily come up with a solid product!
Or you can get together with the millions of other people in the world who need the software, each contribute, oh, $10, and make it. And then install it on as many machines as you like, no license fees, no stupid USB dongles, no upgrade costs, nothing.
There is little doubt about which method is more effective, it's just that we've become so entrenched in the previous closed-source model that we don't see any other way out. It does take a huge amount of organization, admittedly, but it can be done, and done to higher standards than most commercial software currently adheres to.
Another less attractive option is what some companies have already tried--agreeing to release the source code once a certain number of "licenses" have been purchased. This is not ideal, however, because the actual process of development remains closed.
The biggest area where we need to employ this type of strategy is in public services--the software that runs our governments, schools and universities, libraries, etc. None of these organizations should be victims of for-profit corporations. They perform basically the same task all over the world, and everyone can benefit from a common, high-quality, open source solution.
I was talking about the taxation issue, not privacy. But that's fine, then you can buy your own land to build your own roads on, or use public transport and walk/bike. I see no downside to getting more people off the road.
Those developers don't want to get paid to write code, they want to write code for free, then get paid to do NOTHING but allow people to download copies of it. That is the problem. Developers should absolutely get paid for writing code. Once. Not over and over again for each person who uses it.
Those are all valid points, but if we *allow* them to use printing as an option, surely it will just prolong this behaviour! Printing an article off for a friend with limited internet access seems reasonable--I was specifically thinking of a work environment. The last couple times I have worked in that type of office, people printed all kinds of things they absolutely did not need--especially people with computers at their desks!
Why do non-IT users need to access work-related webpages at home on their offtime? Also--in the U.S. only 7% still use dial-up.
Maybe we just need a maasive paper tax to help people think twice about what they chose to print!
I can't stand the obviously biased, negative tone of this article summary. Why do you people always assume any kind of taxation is a bad thing? Personally, I would like to see at least a 500% increase in our fuel taxes, to put us on-par with the rest of the world. More importantly, however, this would make taxation much more fair by taxing people on what they actually *use*. As it stands, I pay far more than my fair share of road taxes, since I only drive about 5000 mi/year, compared with disgusting sub- and ex-burbanites who commute ridiculous number of miles each day. Taxation should increase exponentially the farther away ones home is from their place of business. The reason GPS would be useful in the taxation, is that you could automatically charge more for certain high-value routes, like they do now for express lanes, bridges, etc. I hope they implement this soon!
If you're using a modern computer with a 64-bit cpu and a modern 64-bit operating system, you won't get any of the speed benefits of FF3.5 because TraceMonkey does not yet work. This is extremely irritating, to say the least! Mozilla's solution is to run the 32-bit version on top of your 64-bit OS, but this isn't really a solution at all...
It's amazing how many developers are still stuck in the stone age (comparatively, in computer terms)... I wish I had the technical knowledge to help fix something like that, but I imagine JIT compiling takes some serious expertise.
Wow, I *wish* I could get Firefox 3.5 to use so little memory! As I write this Firefox is using 1821M VIRT, 944M RES...and I only have 23 tabs open! Firefox memory usage has always been abysmal for me. Does Firefox perform drastically differently on Linux than on Windows? I would be quite horrified if it actually performed better on Windows, but I don't understand how it possibly managed to be so low...I've never seen Firefox use less than.5G with even a few tabs open for a while... I realize my personal experience involves extensions, plugins and other things which suck of RAM, it still seems terribly high for me. If I leave it running for several days, it will peak 2G and I have to restart the browser.
That's exactly my point. Isn't it easier to watch them when they freely admit their beliefs? Sadly, the KKK do try to remain anonymous, unlike the BNP. And this whole theory relies on having someone to watch in the first place, which in the case of the KKK the watchers are often members themselves which creates a whole world of trouble. But that's a much bigger issue! We certainly have a long history of cops acting rather suspiciously racist, like with the Brazilian kid on the tube, and countless beatings in the US. It seems this will happen whether people admit to such an ideology or not, and so the challenge of preventing it is a separate issue. My whole argument is predicated on the idea that the government should not be allowed to outlaw *any* particular political philosophy, as that is a very slippery slope when this power starts to be abused. I certainly don't want any of these people to be cops, let alone be given a gun, but I guess I'm trying to map out the idealistic high ground on this issue.
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This can only be a good thing... Seriously, people who use this kind of proprietary software *deserve* to get screwed over by their corporate software masters. For too long people have lived under the false assumption that they have rights, but the fact is these software developers can do whatever the hell they want, and there is nothing people can do about it so long as they keep purchasing their proprietary software! Maybe this will help a few more people get a clue and move to open source.
One more comment... To all the people who are criticizing touch-typing and bragging about how they can type 40-60 WPM without it--get a clue! That's really bad! Now, don't get me wrong--I certainly don't think everyone needs to type at 100 WPM for most jobs, but come on... Anything less is simply not outstanding. I believe that there are probably other, better ways to learn to type, but this one does work well for most people. The point is the end result, not the method... Students should be able to type at a decent rate (75 WPM average?), without looking at the keyboard. The method they choose to employ to do this is entirely arbitrary. I don't know how you can possibly transcribe something quickly when you have to look at the keys, and that is an important skill.
I think a much more important comment is that too many kids get to school already having developed poor typing habits that are difficult to overcome. We really need to teach typing at a very early age, in pre-school.
We had basic first aid in our required health class in high school, but I agree it's ridiculous that more practical skills aren't taught, since a hell of a lot of parents aren't teaching them in this country, assuming they know them at all...which is very often not the case when it comes to personal finance! Everyone knows U.S. schools are always reaching toward the lowest common denominator in order to ensure their funding... We should easily be able to teach kids twice as much as we are now, but that would require us to actually expect something out of them!
I had to take "touch" typing (is there really any other kind?) in elementary school 20 years ago...on Apple IIs! I just assumed that all schools had followed suit by now! I can't believe there are still schools out there that don't require this! I remember my teacher holding a piece of paper over my fingers so I couldn't see while I was being tested... It's shameful to think that any student could graduate in this day and age without knowing how to type! It's also ridiculous that there is even a distinction between "touch" typing and...what, non-touch typing? If you can't type without looking, then you CAN'T TYPE. Simple!
Imagine, whining and complaining about having to walk a whole half a block to use a pay and display machine! It's pathetic. Americans are so embarrassing, I am continually (as in ever single day of my life) embarrassed in new and unimagined ways by my compatriots! These machines work just fine in just about every other country. The only difference is, people aren't all fat-asses and can handle walking a few extra meters! I'm so sick of Americans and their whining. I hate parking meters, and whenever I'm in the U.S. I wish they had pay and display machines available. How people can prefer to use ancient technology is beyond me. Who the hell walks around with pockets full of quarters anyway? Americans, just bury your heads in the sand and please down come out!
Well I have to agree with you there. If I were in charge of a server where I knew I had less-knowledgeable users connecting to it, it would make sense to require them to use a particular client which requires them to *type in* the fingerprint I have given to them before it even allows them access. Of course this isn't very secure since they could still use any other client, but assuming most of these users wouldn't know how to do that, it's a step in the right direction.
And it's sad that something as crucial as this should require a "geek card" to talk about!
Perhaps another answer is to start using certificate authorities for SSH they way they do for websites and email...
Well that was the point the article was making, wasn't it? That even though theoretically spyware could read all of that stuff off the local machine, for the most part it's too difficult to know the format all those various programs use to store passwords, so it's easier to just sniff them in plain text. And even if you have secured your own computer, if a spyware packet sniffer is running on another computer in your network it has access to all that unencrypted traffic as well. It's using operating systems and browsers which are vulnerable to these attacks in the first place that is the biggest worry.
*Especially* in a closed subnet, then even if only two people in that office have access to the ftp server/passwords, anyone else can get infected by spyware/packet sniffers that then have easy access to your passwords. I still remember having endless fun back in high school sniffing people's email passwords and such. What I don't understand is why anyone would prefer FTP in the first place? Every FTP client I've used lately also supports SFTP, so what difference does it make which protocol the user selects? It's beyond me...
Then you don't know how to use SSH properly. You need to obtain the public key beforehand, and then *verify* it the first time you connect to a host (you know, when it prints the fingerprint and asks you, "Are you sure you want to continue connecting?") Even Putty in the Windows world does this. It's extremely important.
Amazing how this article (and so many people responding) seem to be missing the point entirely. The real problem is people using operating systems that are vulnerable to these types of attacks! I don't know about Vista, but even if Linux was ever targeted for this kind of attack/spyware, you would have to run the software as root to enable packet sniffing! And anyone who uses IE for regular browsing and not just local site development is clearly not a competent web developer and has no business working in this industry! Seriously--how can anyone still use IE, FTP, or anything like that in this day and age? I think I stopped using FTP, what...10 years ago now?
The bottom line is that all hosting companies must disable all access to their services via insecure FTP. It's shameful how many companies still use it. I'm in such an isolated bubble, apparently, that I didn't even know this was still going on until recently I had to access a shared web service to migrate a particular client. I was shocked, to say the least! Secure-FTP (over SSL) is not sufficient as it only encrypts things without verifying the authenticity of the host you are connecting to. It's bad enough that people keep using Windows, but since we can't control this, competent sysadmins really need to take the initiative in disabling FTP. Likewise, unencrypted pop3, imap, telnet, or whatever unencrypted services they provide.
Wow, are thy building cities into cliff faces now? That's so cool!
And why wouldn't I admit it? At least I can have a discussion without having to resort to petty name-calling.
If we always waited for someone else to do something first, we wouldn't get very far as a society! This is why I mention public/government services. Very often these types of innovations need to be pushed through by governments for the very reason that greedy, profit-driven individuals will never do it on their own. Now of course, FOSS does contradict this but only to a certain extent, within the realm of programs individuals are interested in working on as a hobby.
As an example, universities around the world purchase huge amounts of ridiculously expensive software, from massive accounting systems, to scheduling, to student portals, etc. This is insane when most universities are full of talented programmers. So the governments of the world need to force these schools to collaborate on developing solutions to these problems by withholding federal funding. Not only could pay in-house developers to work on the software, they could even integrate it into the curriculum by having students work on certain projects for their courses. This would greatly reduce tuition costs, whether that impacts students directly as in the U.S. or the governments who pay them in civilized societies.
The same scenario can be repeated in countless other public sectors. And once this model gets established, hopefully then the private sector would start to see how much money they could be saving by doing things this way. It's not as if they don't have a great deal of software to use as a foundation. Take OpenOffice.org. It is probably lacking some features that one particular organisation relies on, which is keeping it from switching. But those particular features could probably be added if that corporation would simply spend it's annual license budget for MS Office on development, after which time they would have no recurring license fees. And if lots of companies did this, adding all of the features they rely on, more and more companies would be able to use the product as-is.
Of course, in the U.S. especially, we have a huge problem in that companies, and especially shareholders, are greedy bastards and the idea of contributing something that someone else--especially their competitors--might benefit from is unimaginable to them. Even though *they* are getting the benefit they need, and at a lower cost than before. They don't realize that by supporting these proprietary software companies, they are already supporting their competition who also the same software, by keeping that software company in business.
It's very likely that FOSS is just not compatible with capitalism and human greed, a very sad reality of the society we live in.
It is not equivalent at all, it is far, far more than they deserve for the amount of hours spent working. And we all know that, other than in small, private software companies, programmers never see a cent of those license fees--which are essentially royalties. They are only paid once--it is the corporations which continue to make money indefinitely off of their work.
You're right, but not for technical reasons. It won't happen because the Solidworks' customers aren't willing to take a risk on what they see as a 100% failure... Obviousy people who need the software "now" would have to buy something commercial to satisfy them until a replacement could be made.
You would need to have more than a handful of people doing it, too. Something like that would require a multi-million-dollar budget. I won't claim to have all the practical answers, I prefer to think in theoretical terms, as a model of what to work toward. Perhaps this wouldn't work in such a niche market without a lot of people interested in it. I am sure that if you took the annual license fees from all of Solidworks' customers, using it to pay programmers (and not for marketing, sales, shareholder profit, etc.) you could easily come up with a solid product!
Or you can get together with the millions of other people in the world who need the software, each contribute, oh, $10, and make it. And then install it on as many machines as you like, no license fees, no stupid USB dongles, no upgrade costs, nothing.
There is little doubt about which method is more effective, it's just that we've become so entrenched in the previous closed-source model that we don't see any other way out. It does take a huge amount of organization, admittedly, but it can be done, and done to higher standards than most commercial software currently adheres to.
Another less attractive option is what some companies have already tried--agreeing to release the source code once a certain number of "licenses" have been purchased. This is not ideal, however, because the actual process of development remains closed.
The biggest area where we need to employ this type of strategy is in public services--the software that runs our governments, schools and universities, libraries, etc. None of these organizations should be victims of for-profit corporations. They perform basically the same task all over the world, and everyone can benefit from a common, high-quality, open source solution.
I was talking about the taxation issue, not privacy. But that's fine, then you can buy your own land to build your own roads on, or use public transport and walk/bike. I see no downside to getting more people off the road.
Those developers don't want to get paid to write code, they want to write code for free, then get paid to do NOTHING but allow people to download copies of it. That is the problem. Developers should absolutely get paid for writing code. Once. Not over and over again for each person who uses it.
Those are all valid points, but if we *allow* them to use printing as an option, surely it will just prolong this behaviour! Printing an article off for a friend with limited internet access seems reasonable--I was specifically thinking of a work environment. The last couple times I have worked in that type of office, people printed all kinds of things they absolutely did not need--especially people with computers at their desks!
Why do non-IT users need to access work-related webpages at home on their offtime? Also--in the U.S. only 7% still use dial-up.
Maybe we just need a maasive paper tax to help people think twice about what they chose to print!
I can't stand the obviously biased, negative tone of this article summary. Why do you people always assume any kind of taxation is a bad thing? Personally, I would like to see at least a 500% increase in our fuel taxes, to put us on-par with the rest of the world. More importantly, however, this would make taxation much more fair by taxing people on what they actually *use*. As it stands, I pay far more than my fair share of road taxes, since I only drive about 5000 mi/year, compared with disgusting sub- and ex-burbanites who commute ridiculous number of miles each day. Taxation should increase exponentially the farther away ones home is from their place of business. The reason GPS would be useful in the taxation, is that you could automatically charge more for certain high-value routes, like they do now for express lanes, bridges, etc. I hope they implement this soon!
It's amazing to me how the description of this article in no way describes what it is actually about!
Stop wasting trees. There is no reason to print a web page. Ever. Stop it.
If you're using a modern computer with a 64-bit cpu and a modern 64-bit operating system, you won't get any of the speed benefits of FF3.5 because TraceMonkey does not yet work. This is extremely irritating, to say the least! Mozilla's solution is to run the 32-bit version on top of your 64-bit OS, but this isn't really a solution at all...
It's amazing how many developers are still stuck in the stone age (comparatively, in computer terms)... I wish I had the technical knowledge to help fix something like that, but I imagine JIT compiling takes some serious expertise.
Wow, I *wish* I could get Firefox 3.5 to use so little memory! As I write this Firefox is using 1821M VIRT, 944M RES...and I only have 23 tabs open! Firefox memory usage has always been abysmal for me. Does Firefox perform drastically differently on Linux than on Windows? I would be quite horrified if it actually performed better on Windows, but I don't understand how it possibly managed to be so low...I've never seen Firefox use less than .5G with even a few tabs open for a while... I realize my personal experience involves extensions, plugins and other things which suck of RAM, it still seems terribly high for me. If I leave it running for several days, it will peak 2G and I have to restart the browser.
That's exactly my point. Isn't it easier to watch them when they freely admit their beliefs? Sadly, the KKK do try to remain anonymous, unlike the BNP. And this whole theory relies on having someone to watch in the first place, which in the case of the KKK the watchers are often members themselves which creates a whole world of trouble. But that's a much bigger issue! We certainly have a long history of cops acting rather suspiciously racist, like with the Brazilian kid on the tube, and countless beatings in the US. It seems this will happen whether people admit to such an ideology or not, and so the challenge of preventing it is a separate issue. My whole argument is predicated on the idea that the government should not be allowed to outlaw *any* particular political philosophy, as that is a very slippery slope when this power starts to be abused. I certainly don't want any of these people to be cops, let alone be given a gun, but I guess I'm trying to map out the idealistic high ground on this issue.