[...] there are no software patents allowed in the UK.
That's what I was thinking, but upon checking found that a recent High Court decision might allow software patents after all. There's certainly a lot of confusion over the subject and an apparent disparity between the UK Patent Office and the European Patent Office. See the IPKat blog:
[...] the UK-IPO has highlighted Mr Justice Patten's decision of today [...] to overturn the UK-IPO's decision to refuse an application by Symbian, on the grounds that it consisted solely of a computer program.
The judge drew attention to the split between the attitudes of the UK-IPO and the EPO, since the EPO has already allowed the patent to be granted.
The blog post mostly echos the press release from the UK Patent Office, who plan to appeal due to the judge failing to apply the Aerotel/Macrossan test.
So it does seem that, medium to long-term, the BBC might have made a big mistake.
As for software patents in general, I believe the only way to truly be rid of the scourge is to get the US to declare software as unpatentable. The US government, and the lobbyists from its companies have tremendous power and influence around the world, and they are pushing hard for software patentability. Even though it's obviously a bad idea, and most software developers are strongly opposed to it, morecountries seem to be considering it. No real sources for this last paragraph as it's only my opinion, take it or leave it.:)
Well, people today, especially video game players, are ignorant enough that someone might not get the "joke".
Could just be that it wasn't very funny, or immediately obvious?
After all, everything that's worth existing was created a maximum of 5 years ago, everything else is "crap".
I think the Louis Armstrong version is a lot older than five years. Yours is the quintessential 'get off my lawn!' post.
Of course, whilst I defer to the authority of your relatively low id, I personally just prefer the Louis Armstrong version of that song (having listened to both).:-)
Which will hopefully, in turn, force us to create a better network.
As long as the masses can still get to their myspace, facebook and ebay, the majority of people won't care enough to make funding something of that scale possible.
This seems to be overly-cynical. People aren't bad at adopting new things, they just need a motivator:
A killer application (no Reiser jokes please!), something that will make people switch. Must be tangible though, abstract concepts like freedom alone won't be enough. Freedom to troll Internet forums and freedom from the government snooping at what porn you're looking at is enough for some people. What's really needed is a big win, something like Wikipedia moving over to our better network, would make a vast number of the Internet follow.
Fear. Wait for the government to start locking people up/bringing people in for questioning just based on their Internet browsing habits, then make sure everyone knows about it.
Uncertainty. A whispering campaign is the order of the day, make sure people know they're being watched when online. No-one likes to be spied on, particularly by the Kafka-esque bureaucracies our governments have become.
Doubt. Another aspect of the whispering campaign, make people think about how good the Internet used to be before the US government fucked it up.
Abusing Firefox market share (well, not really). When surfing normally, Firefox could present a small banner at the top of the window: 'Warning: you are browsing unsafely, third parties may be watching this connection (switch safe browsing on)' pressing the 'switch safe browsing on' button could enable encryption, or whatever improvement is used to circumvent this law, on. If the site does not have a 'safe' version, another warning could be displayed, this will provide an incentive for site owners to update their systems to support the improvements.
Wow, the things Microsoft have taught me. Thanks Bill! Anyway, getting back to the point, the biggest risk to an improved network, is that legislation may be created to stop it being used. Most people are willing to bend the law a little, but not break it.
Incidentally, who was the bloke speaking after Lessig? He had some very good points about how the Internet on mobiles isn't taking off because of the huge fees carriers are demanding, and the assumption by venture capitalists that the Internet 'just works' by itself. Very insightful comments from him.
This would be true if FOSS were solely developed by volunteers, only interested in their own preferences, but there are two other groups to take into consideration:
power users who like the idea of FOSS, whom use it and want it to work for their friends and family;
companies that market and sell support for FOSS desktops;
We haven't seen good usability in FOSS products due to the reason you mentioned: the software developers have been the only stake-holders in the process. That situation is changing. For example: the person who wrote the article, works for Canonical. It is in Canonical's interests to get as many users on Ubuntu as possible, this is all part of fixing bug #1!. Canonical can afford to pay usability experts to improve FOSS, and as average users try things out, they -- or their power user friends -- will raise bugs when usability issues arise.
Great progress is being made, if you check out Matthew's previous blog post on usability issues, from when he first started working for Canonical, you'll see most of the problems shown there have been fixed.
The only thing I see standing in the way, are developer egos. I personally hope these can be worked around!
If I buy a Microsoft or Apple product, they have an obligation to fix my bugs, or they lose my money and get bad publicity.
Which would be why Microsoft has been getting a lot of bad publicity recently (just joking!)
I like having that power.
You would have that power, and more, if you paid for a support from Canonical, Novell or Redhat (this last not so much, since we're talking about the desktop here and Redhat is more of a server distro).
You see, Microsoft or Apple don't really have an obligation to fix your bugs, as when you buy the OS you've handed over the only bargaining counter you held. Companies that support GNU/Linux, on the other hand, live and die by the quality of their support, and ability to retain customers in support contracts.
Let me give an example: if you have a heavy investment in GNU/Linux, and support contracts with Canonical. If they do something you don't like, you can switch to Mandriva or SLED. However, if you have a heavy investment in Windows, and Microsoft does something you don't like, what other Windows vendor are you going to switch to?
Microsoft in particular has a lot of power to force people into upgrading, they can leverage the other software they produce: Office, DirectX, games etc. to force you to upgrade by tying them to new versions of Windows.
Note that I'm not arguing whether desktop GNU/Linux is a joke, just that this is not the reason for it.:)
According to the article Troy (the one who wrote the blog post you're referring to) already apologised for it:
Having worked on KDE 4 for more than three years, KDE developers reacted with understandable anger. In particular, Troy Unrau, best known for his "Road to KDE 4" articles, went so far as to say in his blog, "KDE and open source is not ever obligated to please users. We are not obligated to fix bugs. We are not obligated to implement things that you demand. We are not obligated to provide open forums for you to attack us personally."
A week later, Unrau apologized, but his rant had already fuelled the flames. When Unrau put his KDE activities on hold for personal reasons, his departure was widely seen as a reaction to the situation. Many saw Seigo's suspension of his blog so that he could focus on coding in a similar light, although he himself explains it as a wish to step down after more than a year of being the chief public relations figure in KDE.
Also note that this is just one person, they are not representative of the entire KDE4 dev community. Secondly, note from that apology blog post, that Troy -- I keep wanting to write McLure -- Unrau has stopped working on KDE, so your point is not only inaccurate but untimely.
Draw upon the extensive knowledge of the GNU/Linux community, for example:
whenever he asks a question, reply with either: 'OMG RTFM!!!11!One' or 'man *question*'. The shortest and most arrogant answer is always most helpful.
if there's a piece of hardware not supported, the best way of helping a newbie is by shouting, as loudly as possible, 'IT IS THE MANUFACTURERS FAULT!' Calmly explaining the situation with hardware support in GNU/Linux is not a good idea. It only leads to further questions (to which the answer is 'OMG it's Free software, code the driver yourself you n00b!');
if he finds any shortcomings in the software, ensure you encourage him by assuming the problem is his fault. Make certain to chortle condescendingly whenever he points anything out to you. If it is at all possible to blame the shortcoming on him, ensure that as you wander off -- chortling as before -- say, just audibly, 'luser error';
newbies feel most secure when their mentors display their superiority, always make sure your boy is aware of your vast knowledge and epic intellect;
loudly proclaiming that, 'next year will be the year of the Linux desktop' makes GNU/Linux newbies feel secure about the platform's future;
If he actually does find a bug, here are some of the basics you should tell him about bug reporting:
keep it vague - developers don't want your life story, don't bother with debug traces and all that guff;
always gush - the ideal bug report is at least half gushing about how he loves the software;
demand developers contact him personally - this is very important, developers prefer communicating privately, private e-mail is best;
always raise new reports - it's never worth the bother of checking whether your bug has already been reported;
bug reports aren't just for bugs! - feel free to use bug reports for idle chat about the issue, or related things, even for just storing your shopping lists, tricking people into viewing goatse, or even rickrolling the devs;
most bug reports are the highest priority - if you're raising a bug report, it's of the highest priority to you, right? So generally, enter bugs with the highest priority possible.
Now this post may seem like a troll, but if you do exactly the opposite of what I advise, he should do well.
Re:Only works if it's default install
on
TrueCrypt 6.0 Released
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Actually, there was a conversation about this last time the subject of TrueCrypt came up. Unfortunately it went mostly unnoticed, because a forensic investigator can tell if a hidden partition is present, masquerading as free space:
A data forensic specialist will look at all these free blocks, and guess what your SCSI/IDE/FC harddrive tells them in the low level meta data how many seek misses I've had in each area of the disk. Why are you seeking around a lot in data that is "free". OH NO! I just figured out you have secret data on the drive, and I can request the court to compel you to disclose the key.
I think you, and many other Slashdotters have 'Reiser Ego' (coined!) You see TrueCrypt as an extremely clever and infallible tool you can use to circumvent the stupidity of courts and the dunder-heads who work in computer forensics. For the most part however, these people are not stupid, and geeks are not able to avoid prosecution via their l33t h4xX0r skills.
I fear big egos will lead many geeks to underestimate their adversaries. Feel free to prove me wrong, of course.:)
Firebug beta add on is killing the memory usage, and yslow interferes with WebDevelopers toolbar... Sorry, Mozilla
What part of your problems have been caused my Mozilla? Those are all issues with add-ons, you should hop over and report them to the authors.:)
On my own Web sites Firefox 3 usage is at ~12%. Our reporting software (AWStats) doesn't do a breakdown by day, so that's 12% for the whole month. That's out of the 50% of visitors who're using Firefox. Pretty good in my opinion, although we are aiming at a technical audience.
What interests me is the breakdown of IE versions. 13% using IE7 Vs. 17% IE6 (total IE usage is ~33%), even though we have a big notice for IE6 users telling them the site won't display properly and that they should upgrade. Seems IE6 users are either very stubborn, or in a corporate environment, where they're not able to upgrade. I expect it's a mixture of both.
Up here in Canada (and most of the world) we're fans of the metric system. So, here's the summary for everyone outside the US:
"Canadian scientists are developing a 65 kilogram microsatellite to detect and track near-earth asteroids and comets, as well as satellites and space junk. The suitcase-sized Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite includes a 15 centimetre diameter telescope, smaller than most amateur astronomers' scopes, that by being located 700 kilometres above the Earth's atmosphere will be able to detect moving asteroids delivering as few as 50 photons of light in a 100-second exposure. The NEOSSat will twist and turn hundreds of times each day, orbiting from pole to pole every 50 minutes almost always in sunlight. The telescope has a sunshade that allows searching the sky to within 45 degrees of the Sun, in order to detect near-Earth asteroids whose orbits are entirely inside Earth's."
Emphasis mine. Am hoping CmdrTaco isn't going to sue me Associated Press style for copying the summary.;)
Not to disagree with you, just wanted to point out that this law is not popular in Britain.
IIRC the Lords can bounce this back (with good reason) to the Commons, by the time this goes back and forth a couple of times the media will be in a good frenzy about it. The fact that Gordon Brown had to do a deal with another political party to get this through is not going down well:
But there was uproar in the Commons as the result of the key vote on 42 days was announced after five hours of tense debate - with Tory and Lib Dem MPs shouting "You've been bought" at the DUP benches.
They claim the DUP was offered a string of inducements - including extra financial help for Northern Ireland - to guarantee its support.
I for one am hoping this gets pushed back by the Lords.
--- Back to the article ---
this is the same country that charges prisoners who have been falsely accused for bed and boarding costs.
Got a decent reference? Seriously, that link is to the 'Daily Mail', the sensationalism in that paper is renowned. Even its founder (Lord Northcliffe) said its winning formula is to give readers: 'a daily hate'. This is the same paper that pays foreign people to break the law, so they can report about how East Europeans are 'destroying Britain'.
Does anyone else find it odd that Microsoft touted support for ODF then pushed back supporting OOXML to the next version of Office just before all these complaints landed on ISO's doormat?
This, to my mind, shows two things:
Microsoft believes these appeals/complaints are likely to succeed;
they certainly have paid shills in a number of ISO committees, otherwise they wouldn't have seen this coming;
Apparently representatives from Microsoft were stalling for time in Brazil. So the support for ODF In Office seems like firefighting more than anything. The dropping of the Microsoft project, encoding books to OOXML, would also seem to be a sign that Microsoft is giving up.
*joke* If these appeals are successful, I for one will be on Alex Brown's blog, posting this video of Kryten in 'smug mode'. Muahaha. */joke*
Are you capable of reading and understanding atleast the title of the page that I linked to?
Yes.
It's really hard to discuss things with someone that's either mentally impaired or intentionally acting dumb.
I agree that conversing with you is difficult. Acknowledging your problem is the first step to fixing it.:)
Shit joke, but how did you expect me to react (rhetorical question).
About the Netcraft vs. SecuritySpace stats: Netcraft base their server survey on what server software runs a domain, subdomain or any other thing arbitrarily defined as a 'site': This includes live.com profiles, myspace.com profiles and blogger.com sites. I have searched for the document on netcraft.com that confirms this, but it has disappeared. This is reasonably common knowledge though: see this Slashdot post and this Web Server Survey from last year.
SecuritySpace, on the other hand, counts physical servers. There are problems with this approach, but physical servers were what we were discussing.
Additionally, I wouldn't describe Netcraft's figures as accurate. They have been gamed by Microsoft: Firstly by the deal with GoDaddy, which caused the first jump in favour of IIS and GoDaddy's subsequent purchase of RegisterFly, which caused the second.
Also note the absence of Facebook profiles as sites, it's a closed community so cannot be counted, skewing the results in favour of Microsoft again.
Err, neither *nix nor Windows are attacked in the web server space.
Sorry, this doesn't seem to make sense.
> Also, the privilege escalation methods on *nix are less obnoxious than the Windows equivalent, which is usually switched off as a result.
Proof please.
On Gnome (under Debian or Ubuntu), click System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager it asks for your password. Close Synaptic, then open it again. Notice it doesn't ask for your password again because there is a sensible grace period.
Windows Vista, on the other hand, dumbly asks you to "Cancel or Allow?" every time. This drives users to distraction, so they turn the feature off. Secondly, users are trained to mindlessly click "allow". Entering a password is enough of an interruption to make people think about what triggered the dialog, but the grace period means they are not interrupted too often.
No. Windows is not less secure. Proof please. Spyware and all do not count: they are not security issues if the user initiated them
They do count if Microsoft could have implemented the feature properly (like sudo). If people just turn the feature off because it's interrrupting their work the feature might as well not exist. Therefore we are back to the default situation where Windows users are always logged in as root, but *nix users are not (so malware and whatnot can only effect that user's home directory, not the rest of the system).
It's also quite difficult to run random binaries downloaded of the 'net, which brings us neatly back to the article, as an extra permission on the file is required. This bug in Safari would not be as much of an issue on *nix.
This is enough without getting into Windows Firewall + random services Vs. not needing a firewall due to not having any random services. The modular design of *nix, where it's possible to minimise risk by only installing the software you need Vs. the Windows software monolith.
Lastly, I was saying the assertion that:
Microsoft isn't any less secure, it's just targeted more because of its market share.
Is contestable and threw in a few examples of the way in which it might be contested. You, on the other hand, are just being confrontational without addressing the main point of my post.
Lazy admins cause 90% of the real world exploits out there, not the choice of OS or software. I would say Linux and Windows are more secure than Apple code at this point. Windows used to be far more shittier before Win2k.
Well, that 90% is plucking figures out of your arse, but the sentiment rings true (although I would have plucked 45% lazy admins, and 45% lazy programmers personally). Really, though all this is not the point.
Overall you've cherry-picked what was basically an aside to my main point, and attempted to invalidate the entire post based upon that. Note that it says: contestable (or would have, if my spelling was better!) followed by some examples of ways in which the claim may be incorrect. Invalidating these does not detract from the main point, which is this: vulnerabilities in any alternative-to-Microsoft software reflect badly upon all alternative-to-Microsoft software because of the argument: "Microsoft software isn't any less secure, it's just targeted more because of its market share." Stories like these can, and will, be trotted out as examples of failures of alternative-to-Microsoft products.
Really, I'm not trying to bash Microsoft (that's just an unintended side effect:) ), but point out how important it is for the alternatives to have a good security record. This is due to that line, many people percieving parts of the software industry as "Microsoft" and "other stuff" (test this out on your friendly, local PHB).
As an example: if Safari has a bad security record, it has an effect on Firefox as people will not believe the marketing that it's "more secure" than IE. I'm not really arguing whether it is more secure or not, just that all these alternatives tout security, but one of them isn't following through on that, damaging the perception of all of them.
Why do Apple's Safari vulnerabilities on both Windows and Mac make all *nix stuff look bad? I think this is one case where fanboy mods or no, the point fails.
Because every time there is a security hole in their competitor's software the Microsoft fanboys (and shills) come out with the "Microsoft isn't any less secure, it's just targeted more because of its market share," line. By itself this is contestible: Web servers are riper targets for Internet based attacks (always on, always connected) and *nix has a clear lead there. Also, the privilege escalation methods on *nix are less obnoxious than the Windows equivalent, which is usually switched off as a result. Meaning Windows hasn't got the relevant market share, and is less secure than the alternatives.
So, when Apple do something like this, the MS fanboys roll out FUD about their competitors software being just as buggy as their own (see above). People believing this are less inclined to even look at other software: why waste the effort, when the quality is no better?
I think what the OP is trying to say is that Apple has an effect on all non-Microsoft software, because in many markets anything non-Microsoft is lumped into the "alternatives" category. That's certainly how the Microsoft fanboys and shills will try to spin this anyway.
if I were pissed off enough and just happened to have the resources to blow shit up, I would be somewhat tempted to raise hell in Washington or Buckingham
You want to raise hell in Buckingham? What would be the point?
At least look up the capital city of the country you're talking about, getting it wrong devalues your point somewhat.:)
As in science, this incremental improvement will move all of us forward.
Well this is interesting, whenever Open Source tries to learn from Microsoft Steve 'rabid-monkey-man' Ballmer starts throwing around software/idea patent threats.
If this is an incremental process that can move us all forward, how about Microsoft offer up their patents to the OSDL Patent Commons? Or just allow Free/Open Source software developers to work without threat of being sued? Oh yeah, they'd rather reserve the right to sue anyone who dares to even look at their markets.
still downloaded Mein Kampf to own it, read it, understand a different point of view.
My grandfather was a spy during part of the Second World War. He worked mostly in Spain (was from Argentina, so could speak good Spanish), helping people escape Franco's rule. He smuggled a copy of Mein Kampf home. We've still got it, an original complete with Hitler signature stamp. Doesn't make the bloke a Nazi though, he just wanted to find out what was going through Hitler's demented mind.
The more works like this are swept under the carpet, the less chance we have of understanding the followers of their doctrines. Forcing any sort of extremist material underground just makes it interesting, seems politicians are unaware of the Streisand Effect.
Lintilla: See this device? Arthur Dent: Looks like a watch... Lintilla: It's a crisis inducer. I set it to Mk. 9 and... Hurry, they're after us! Arthur Dent: Who? Lintilla: No-one! Come on, through the tunnel, they're coming! Arthur Dent: But... Lintilla: They're coming! Arthur Dent: Well, if you say so.
Seems like Douglas Adams was way ahead of you and the Pentagon on this one.:)
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I was thinking, but upon checking found that a recent High Court decision might allow software patents after all. There's certainly a lot of confusion over the subject and an apparent disparity between the UK Patent Office and the European Patent Office. See the IPKat blog:
The blog post mostly echos the press release from the UK Patent Office, who plan to appeal due to the judge failing to apply the Aerotel/Macrossan test.
So it does seem that, medium to long-term, the BBC might have made a big mistake.
As for software patents in general, I believe the only way to truly be rid of the scourge is to get the US to declare software as unpatentable. The US government, and the lobbyists from its companies have tremendous power and influence around the world, and they are pushing hard for software patentability. Even though it's obviously a bad idea, and most software developers are strongly opposed to it, more countries seem to be considering it. No real sources for this last paragraph as it's only my opinion, take it or leave it. :)
Could just be that it wasn't very funny, or immediately obvious?
I think the Louis Armstrong version is a lot older than five years. Yours is the quintessential 'get off my lawn!' post.
Of course, whilst I defer to the authority of your relatively low id, I personally just prefer the Louis Armstrong version of that song (having listened to both). :-)
Bah, it's not the Louis Armstrong version. Here's what you need, brings back memories of my younger days, playing Fallout/Fallout 2.
This seems to be overly-cynical. People aren't bad at adopting new things, they just need a motivator:
Wow, the things Microsoft have taught me. Thanks Bill! Anyway, getting back to the point, the biggest risk to an improved network, is that legislation may be created to stop it being used. Most people are willing to bend the law a little, but not break it.
Incidentally, who was the bloke speaking after Lessig? He had some very good points about how the Internet on mobiles isn't taking off because of the huge fees carriers are demanding, and the assumption by venture capitalists that the Internet 'just works' by itself. Very insightful comments from him.
This would be true if FOSS were solely developed by volunteers, only interested in their own preferences, but there are two other groups to take into consideration:
We haven't seen good usability in FOSS products due to the reason you mentioned: the software developers have been the only stake-holders in the process. That situation is changing. For example: the person who wrote the article, works for Canonical. It is in Canonical's interests to get as many users on Ubuntu as possible, this is all part of fixing bug #1!. Canonical can afford to pay usability experts to improve FOSS, and as average users try things out, they -- or their power user friends -- will raise bugs when usability issues arise.
Great progress is being made, if you check out Matthew's previous blog post on usability issues, from when he first started working for Canonical, you'll see most of the problems shown there have been fixed.
The only thing I see standing in the way, are developer egos. I personally hope these can be worked around!
Which would be why Microsoft has been getting a lot of bad publicity recently (just joking!)
You would have that power, and more, if you paid for a support from Canonical, Novell or Redhat (this last not so much, since we're talking about the desktop here and Redhat is more of a server distro).
You see, Microsoft or Apple don't really have an obligation to fix your bugs, as when you buy the OS you've handed over the only bargaining counter you held. Companies that support GNU/Linux, on the other hand, live and die by the quality of their support, and ability to retain customers in support contracts.
Let me give an example: if you have a heavy investment in GNU/Linux, and support contracts with Canonical. If they do something you don't like, you can switch to Mandriva or SLED. However, if you have a heavy investment in Windows, and Microsoft does something you don't like, what other Windows vendor are you going to switch to?
Microsoft in particular has a lot of power to force people into upgrading, they can leverage the other software they produce: Office, DirectX, games etc. to force you to upgrade by tying them to new versions of Windows.
Note that I'm not arguing whether desktop GNU/Linux is a joke, just that this is not the reason for it. :)
According to the article Troy (the one who wrote the blog post you're referring to) already apologised for it:
Also note that this is just one person, they are not representative of the entire KDE4 dev community. Secondly, note from that apology blog post, that Troy -- I keep wanting to write McLure -- Unrau has stopped working on KDE, so your point is not only inaccurate but untimely.
I agree with the Funny mod though.
Draw upon the extensive knowledge of the GNU/Linux community, for example:
If he actually does find a bug, here are some of the basics you should tell him about bug reporting:
Now this post may seem like a troll, but if you do exactly the opposite of what I advise, he should do well.
Actually, there was a conversation about this last time the subject of TrueCrypt came up. Unfortunately it went mostly unnoticed, because a forensic investigator can tell if a hidden partition is present, masquerading as free space:
I think you, and many other Slashdotters have 'Reiser Ego' (coined!) You see TrueCrypt as an extremely clever and infallible tool you can use to circumvent the stupidity of courts and the dunder-heads who work in computer forensics. For the most part however, these people are not stupid, and geeks are not able to avoid prosecution via their l33t h4xX0r skills.
I fear big egos will lead many geeks to underestimate their adversaries. Feel free to prove me wrong, of course. :)
What part of your problems have been caused my Mozilla? Those are all issues with add-ons, you should hop over and report them to the authors. :)
On my own Web sites Firefox 3 usage is at ~12%. Our reporting software (AWStats) doesn't do a breakdown by day, so that's 12% for the whole month. That's out of the 50% of visitors who're using Firefox. Pretty good in my opinion, although we are aiming at a technical audience.
What interests me is the breakdown of IE versions. 13% using IE7 Vs. 17% IE6 (total IE usage is ~33%), even though we have a big notice for IE6 users telling them the site won't display properly and that they should upgrade. Seems IE6 users are either very stubborn, or in a corporate environment, where they're not able to upgrade. I expect it's a mixture of both.
Emphasis mine. Am hoping CmdrTaco isn't going to sue me Associated Press style for copying the summary. ;)
Not to disagree with you, just wanted to point out that this law is not popular in Britain.
IIRC the Lords can bounce this back (with good reason) to the Commons, by the time this goes back and forth a couple of times the media will be in a good frenzy about it. The fact that Gordon Brown had to do a deal with another political party to get this through is not going down well:
I for one am hoping this gets pushed back by the Lords.
--- Back to the article ---
Got a decent reference? Seriously, that link is to the 'Daily Mail', the sensationalism in that paper is renowned. Even its founder (Lord Northcliffe) said its winning formula is to give readers: 'a daily hate'. This is the same paper that pays foreign people to break the law, so they can report about how East Europeans are 'destroying Britain'.
Microsoft software is only free if their time has no value. ;-)
Does anyone else find it odd that Microsoft touted support for ODF then pushed back supporting OOXML to the next version of Office just before all these complaints landed on ISO's doormat?
This, to my mind, shows two things:
Apparently representatives from Microsoft were stalling for time in Brazil. So the support for ODF In Office seems like firefighting more than anything. The dropping of the Microsoft project, encoding books to OOXML, would also seem to be a sign that Microsoft is giving up.
*joke* If these appeals are successful, I for one will be on Alex Brown's blog, posting this video of Kryten in 'smug mode'. Muahaha. */joke*
No.
Yes.
I agree that conversing with you is difficult. Acknowledging your problem is the first step to fixing it. :)
Shit joke, but how did you expect me to react (rhetorical question).
About the Netcraft vs. SecuritySpace stats: Netcraft base their server survey on what server software runs a domain, subdomain or any other thing arbitrarily defined as a 'site': This includes live.com profiles, myspace.com profiles and blogger.com sites. I have searched for the document on netcraft.com that confirms this, but it has disappeared. This is reasonably common knowledge though: see this Slashdot post and this Web Server Survey from last year.
SecuritySpace, on the other hand, counts physical servers. There are problems with this approach, but physical servers were what we were discussing.
Additionally, I wouldn't describe Netcraft's figures as accurate. They have been gamed by Microsoft: Firstly by the deal with GoDaddy, which caused the first jump in favour of IIS and GoDaddy's subsequent purchase of RegisterFly, which caused the second.
Also note the absence of Facebook profiles as sites, it's a closed community so cannot be counted, skewing the results in favour of Microsoft again.
You're talking about Web sites, I'm talking about Web servers. I did use a reputable source.
Sorry, this doesn't seem to make sense.
On Gnome (under Debian or Ubuntu), click System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager it asks for your password. Close Synaptic, then open it again. Notice it doesn't ask for your password again because there is a sensible grace period.
Windows Vista, on the other hand, dumbly asks you to "Cancel or Allow?" every time. This drives users to distraction, so they turn the feature off. Secondly, users are trained to mindlessly click "allow". Entering a password is enough of an interruption to make people think about what triggered the dialog, but the grace period means they are not interrupted too often.
They do count if Microsoft could have implemented the feature properly (like sudo). If people just turn the feature off because it's interrrupting their work the feature might as well not exist. Therefore we are back to the default situation where Windows users are always logged in as root, but *nix users are not (so malware and whatnot can only effect that user's home directory, not the rest of the system).
It's also quite difficult to run random binaries downloaded of the 'net, which brings us neatly back to the article, as an extra permission on the file is required. This bug in Safari would not be as much of an issue on *nix.
This is enough without getting into Windows Firewall + random services Vs. not needing a firewall due to not having any random services. The modular design of *nix, where it's possible to minimise risk by only installing the software you need Vs. the Windows software monolith.
Lastly, I was saying the assertion that:
Is contestable and threw in a few examples of the way in which it might be contested. You, on the other hand, are just being confrontational without addressing the main point of my post.
How rude! I shall protest this allegation. :)
An edge? 73% Apache vs. 19% IIS is more than an edge. :)
Well yes, it's worth noting the same goes for IIS.
Well, that 90% is plucking figures out of your arse, but the sentiment rings true (although I would have plucked 45% lazy admins, and 45% lazy programmers personally). Really, though all this is not the point.
Overall you've cherry-picked what was basically an aside to my main point, and attempted to invalidate the entire post based upon that. Note that it says: contestable (or would have, if my spelling was better!) followed by some examples of ways in which the claim may be incorrect. Invalidating these does not detract from the main point, which is this: vulnerabilities in any alternative-to-Microsoft software reflect badly upon all alternative-to-Microsoft software because of the argument: "Microsoft software isn't any less secure, it's just targeted more because of its market share." Stories like these can, and will, be trotted out as examples of failures of alternative-to-Microsoft products.
Really, I'm not trying to bash Microsoft (that's just an unintended side effect :) ), but point out how important it is for the alternatives to have a good security record. This is due to that line, many people percieving parts of the software industry as "Microsoft" and "other stuff" (test this out on your friendly, local PHB).
As an example: if Safari has a bad security record, it has an effect on Firefox as people will not believe the marketing that it's "more secure" than IE. I'm not really arguing whether it is more secure or not, just that all these alternatives tout security, but one of them isn't following through on that, damaging the perception of all of them.
Because every time there is a security hole in their competitor's software the Microsoft fanboys (and shills) come out with the "Microsoft isn't any less secure, it's just targeted more because of its market share," line. By itself this is contestible: Web servers are riper targets for Internet based attacks (always on, always connected) and *nix has a clear lead there. Also, the privilege escalation methods on *nix are less obnoxious than the Windows equivalent, which is usually switched off as a result. Meaning Windows hasn't got the relevant market share, and is less secure than the alternatives.
So, when Apple do something like this, the MS fanboys roll out FUD about their competitors software being just as buggy as their own (see above). People believing this are less inclined to even look at other software: why waste the effort, when the quality is no better?
I think what the OP is trying to say is that Apple has an effect on all non-Microsoft software, because in many markets anything non-Microsoft is lumped into the "alternatives" category. That's certainly how the Microsoft fanboys and shills will try to spin this anyway.
Yeah, but so what? I just tested, and it works in Linux! ~
Some operating systems provide a well defined (documented) set of interfaces/APIs/libraries to develop with. Version info included.
Some don't.
The market shows which philosophy is more successful.
Yes, the Webserver market, the embedded market and the supercomputer markets do indeed show which OS is superior.
Thanks for the insight, AC! :)
You want to raise hell in Buckingham? What would be the point?
At least look up the capital city of the country you're talking about, getting it wrong devalues your point somewhat. :)
Well this is interesting, whenever Open Source tries to learn from Microsoft Steve 'rabid-monkey-man' Ballmer starts throwing around software/idea patent threats.
If this is an incremental process that can move us all forward, how about Microsoft offer up their patents to the OSDL Patent Commons? Or just allow Free/Open Source software developers to work without threat of being sued? Oh yeah, they'd rather reserve the right to sue anyone who dares to even look at their markets.
My grandfather was a spy during part of the Second World War. He worked mostly in Spain (was from Argentina, so could speak good Spanish), helping people escape Franco's rule. He smuggled a copy of Mein Kampf home. We've still got it, an original complete with Hitler signature stamp. Doesn't make the bloke a Nazi though, he just wanted to find out what was going through Hitler's demented mind.
The more works like this are swept under the carpet, the less chance we have of understanding the followers of their doctrines. Forcing any sort of extremist material underground just makes it interesting, seems politicians are unaware of the Streisand Effect.
Lintilla: See this device? ... Hurry, they're after us!
:)
Arthur Dent: Looks like a watch...
Lintilla: It's a crisis inducer. I set it to Mk. 9 and
Arthur Dent: Who?
Lintilla: No-one! Come on, through the tunnel, they're coming!
Arthur Dent: But...
Lintilla: They're coming!
Arthur Dent: Well, if you say so.
Seems like Douglas Adams was way ahead of you and the Pentagon on this one.