I agree with your first paragraph. The rest I have some issues with...
"Also not the least of which is that many Windows apps aren't written in such a way that it's feasible to run them in non-root mode."
This is bad windows security propogated. Default windows machines continue to give the first user administrator privileges. Combined with the fact that until WindowsXP there wasn't even any multi-user capability to speak of there is little incentive or standard for applications to handle multiple user accounts very well.
"With "user-friendly" linuxes coming out, many of which login as root by default, a lot of that protection will go away."
This is absolutely false. The Live CD distros (mepis, knoppix, gnoppix) all have demo and root accounts. SuSe, Fedora, etc all create a non-root account on installation.
"The average user simply isn't willing to have an "administrator" account that they have to use every time they want to install an app."
Don't think this is true either. Everyone I've talked to has wanted to switch to "admin" for installs after hearing about how easily Windows machines can be compromised by just looking at a jpg image, browsing, sometimes even with a fully patched machine as a non-admin (recent activex bug). This isn't all that inconvenient because once people have their initial set of software they don't install much more (well, intentionally in the case of Windows users). So why hasn't MS defaulted to using a non-admin account? I'm guessing they will soon. Hopefully the userland apps will catch up and start handling multi user access better.
"Luckily, mozilla/firefox are being designed in such a way that they are much less likely to exploit lax security than IE is. This will only partially mitigate the problem, though, as people dumb enough to click on a random link and run the program can still get screwed."
I pretty much agree with that. Although even dumb random clicks within Firefox are not able to do things like format your harddrive or run system applications.
It might be worth trying FireFox with the UserAgent Switcher extension:
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/mor ei nfo.php?id=59&vid=617
Using either one of the defaults (IE on MS Win)... Description: Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP) User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) App Name: Microsoft Internet Explorer App Version: 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Platform: Win32
Or a firefox on mac setting... Description: Macintosh User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Macintosh; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0 Platform: Linux i686 (or whatever your platform is)
I've been able to see every java app I've come across (even the Oracle administration/procurement/hr beast at the University I work for).
You could even change the platform Java recognizes (from the Platform setting). However that might cause more problems than it would help.
MSDN and volume licensing are the ONLY ways you can obtain a MUI from Microsoft (in the US as of Fall '04). Individuals cannot purchase separate licenses. Of all the asinine things Microsoft does this has to be at the top. Apparently only people that can afford MSDN/volume licensing have multilingual needs.
"People are discovering that when you buy any product that is subject to "activation", you haven't really bought anything."
Well... As it's been pointed out the editorial comment by Michael isn't exactly the most insightful.
However, Slashdot has to be commended for not pandering to the advertising dollar. A scathing (and only half true) comment against a company who's ad pops up right next to the article.
Answers to the following questions would be more telling:
Will the editorial comment stay under pressure from Valve/Sierra?
Will Michael continue to post articles if there's pressure from Valve/Sierra?
Why does Slashdot post all these stories (even if they're negative) about companies they run ads for? Are they simply required to get a certain number of clicks?
I was irritated when I first read this. Then I figured it out when someone pointed out your signature. It may be a troll, but I'd say it's more insightful catalyst than troll.
Did you read the paragraph right after the quote from Bush saying the treaty isn't fair because China isn't included? Here it is:
" China has since ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and is expected to become an Annex I country within the next decade. The US Natural Resources Defense Council, stated in June 2001 that: "By switching from coal to cleaner energy sources, initiating energy efficiency programs, and restructuring its economy, China has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent since 1997". "
So why aren't we on board with this? It shouldn't cause us a competative disadvantage to any of these countries who have approved the treaty:
India, China, Russia, Japan, Canada, EU, Israel, etc, etc, etc.
You can thank The Disney Corporation for this legislation. They will probably be successful in getting copyright terms extended again 20 years from now.
When I first read this I was thinking but isn't fusion currently incapable of producing more electricity than it consumes? Well, it turns out it is capable of producing more electricity than it consumes, but just barely. Not enough to sustain regular power generation. The record Power Amplification Factor (Q) is 1.25 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_ fusion). This project is expected to push that factor up to 10, which is "proof of principle" but still below what is desirable for "good overall plant efficiency" (http://www.iter.org/ITERPublic/ITER/fr7.html). So that's why it's an "experimental" reactor. Based on the timeline of this project (and assuming it's successful) it looks like usable fusion reactors could be less than 50 years away.
When dealing with automobiles if a manufacturer wants to void your warranty for using third party consumable parts they have to provide those parts for free as part of the warranty. So I say if they're tracking this stuff to keep people from using third party ink cartridges more power to lexmark. It seems like a reasonable prior case that they'd have to give everyone free ink cartridges if they expect third party ink cartridges to void the warranty.
This is the inevitable car analogy, but I think that there's a similarity to car buyers that needs to be said.
My Palm Pilot 3 is practical and useful. I also think I'd in all honesty prefer a sedan to a sports car.
What about those of us who would buy one Honda Inspire for ourselves, and one for the wife? You know the new gas/electric hybrid that's 18k USD with 60mpg. What kind of PDA would I prefer?
I was thinking a Samsung SCH-8500 Cell Phone:
It's $200 USD.
Has PDA functions: phone book, appointments, to-do list, alarms, computer synch etc.
Has voice dialing.
Voice Memos (10 1-minute messages, talk about easy to-do lists; now it just needs handwriting recognition)
Is MUCH lighter and smaller than any handheld: 88 x 50 x 23.5mm 145g (5.2oz)
Web browsing, e-mail, etc.
All kinds of phone features...
It's amazing how advanced cell phones are getting these days. If I were in Palm management I wouldn't be concerned with the WinCE version XYZ devices (they serve very different purposes). I would be more concerned with a phone manufacturer out-featuring the palm (they just need handwriting and a card port). You certainly don't have to worry about your cell phone crashing (which seems to be a big Palm defense). Wouldn't it suck for Palm if Samsung or Motorola's latest cell phone ate up Palm's market share?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your first paragraph. The rest I have some issues with...
"Also not the least of which is that many Windows apps aren't written in such a way that it's feasible to run them in non-root mode."
This is bad windows security propogated. Default windows machines continue to give the first user administrator privileges. Combined with the fact that until WindowsXP there wasn't even any multi-user capability to speak of there is little incentive or standard for applications to handle multiple user accounts very well.
"With "user-friendly" linuxes coming out, many of which login as root by default, a lot of that protection will go away."
This is absolutely false. The Live CD distros (mepis, knoppix, gnoppix) all have demo and root accounts. SuSe, Fedora, etc all create a non-root account on installation.
"The average user simply isn't willing to have an "administrator" account that they have to use every time they want to install an app."
Don't think this is true either. Everyone I've talked to has wanted to switch to "admin" for installs after hearing about how easily Windows machines can be compromised by just looking at a jpg image, browsing, sometimes even with a fully patched machine as a non-admin (recent activex bug). This isn't all that inconvenient because once people have their initial set of software they don't install much more (well, intentionally in the case of Windows users). So why hasn't MS defaulted to using a non-admin account? I'm guessing they will soon. Hopefully the userland apps will catch up and start handling multi user access better.
"Luckily, mozilla/firefox are being designed in such a way that they are much less likely to exploit lax security than IE is. This will only partially mitigate the problem, though, as people dumb enough to click on a random link and run the program can still get screwed."
I pretty much agree with that. Although even dumb random clicks within Firefox are not able to do things like format your harddrive or run system applications.
--David
It might be worth trying FireFox with the UserAgent Switcher extension:
r ei nfo.php?id=59&vid=617
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/mo
Using either one of the defaults (IE on MS Win)...
Description: Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP)
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
App Name: Microsoft Internet Explorer
App Version: 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Platform: Win32
Or a firefox on mac setting...
Description: Macintosh
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Macintosh; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0
Platform: Linux i686 (or whatever your platform is)
I've been able to see every java app I've come across (even the Oracle administration/procurement/hr beast at the University I work for).
You could even change the platform Java recognizes (from the Platform setting). However that might cause more problems than it would help.
--David
MSDN and volume licensing are the ONLY ways you can obtain a MUI from Microsoft (in the US as of Fall '04). Individuals cannot purchase separate licenses. Of all the asinine things Microsoft does this has to be at the top. Apparently only people that can afford MSDN/volume licensing have multilingual needs.
Viva Open Source.
"People are discovering that when you buy any product that is subject to "activation", you haven't really bought anything."
Well... As it's been pointed out the editorial comment by Michael isn't exactly the most insightful.
However, Slashdot has to be commended for not pandering to the advertising dollar. A scathing (and only half true) comment against a company who's ad pops up right next to the article.
Answers to the following questions would be more telling:
Will the editorial comment stay under pressure from Valve/Sierra?
Will Michael continue to post articles if there's pressure from Valve/Sierra?
Why does Slashdot post all these stories (even if they're negative) about companies they run ads for? Are they simply required to get a certain number of clicks?
--dhj
A wondefully modest suggestion.
I was irritated when I first read this. Then I figured it out when someone pointed out your signature. It may be a troll, but I'd say it's more insightful catalyst than troll.
Troll on.
Sonny Bono Xtreme Skiing 2005!
It's no good unless it's XTREME!
Microsoft doesn't have a patent on "X" do they?
--dhj
Did you read the wikipedia link about the U.S. Position on the Kyoto treaty regarding China?
i on_of_the_United_States
n dar.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_protocol#Posit
Did you read the paragraph right after the quote from Bush saying the treaty isn't fair because China isn't included? Here it is:
" China has since ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and is expected to become an Annex I country within the next decade. The US Natural Resources Defense Council, stated in June 2001 that: "By switching from coal to cleaner energy sources, initiating energy efficiency programs, and restructuring its economy, China has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent since 1997". "
So why aren't we on board with this? It shouldn't cause us a competative disadvantage to any of these countries who have approved the treaty:
India, China, Russia, Japan, Canada, EU, Israel, etc, etc, etc.
http://www.climnet.org/EUenergy/ratification/cale
--David
The latest copyright extension legislation in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_ Term_Extension_Act.
You can thank The Disney Corporation for this legislation. They will probably be successful in getting copyright terms extended again 20 years from now.
--David
When I first read this I was thinking but isn't fusion currently incapable of producing more electricity than it consumes? Well, it turns out it is capable of producing more electricity than it consumes, but just barely. Not enough to sustain regular power generation. The record Power Amplification Factor (Q) is 1.25 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_ fusion). This project is expected to push that factor up to 10, which is "proof of principle" but still below what is desirable for "good overall plant efficiency" (http://www.iter.org/ITERPublic/ITER/fr7.html). So that's why it's an "experimental" reactor. Based on the timeline of this project (and assuming it's successful) it looks like usable fusion reactors could be less than 50 years away.
When dealing with automobiles if a manufacturer wants to void your warranty for using third party consumable parts they have to provide those parts for free as part of the warranty. So I say if they're tracking this stuff to keep people from using third party ink cartridges more power to lexmark. It seems like a reasonable prior case that they'd have to give everyone free ink cartridges if they expect third party ink cartridges to void the warranty.
--dhj
My Palm Pilot 3 is practical and useful. I also think I'd in all honesty prefer a sedan to a sports car.
What about those of us who would buy one Honda Inspire for ourselves, and one for the wife? You know the new gas/electric hybrid that's 18k USD with 60mpg. What kind of PDA would I prefer?
I was thinking a Samsung SCH-8500 Cell Phone:
It's $200 USD.
Has PDA functions: phone book, appointments, to-do list, alarms, computer synch etc.
Has voice dialing.
Voice Memos (10 1-minute messages, talk about easy to-do lists; now it just needs handwriting recognition)
Is MUCH lighter and smaller than any handheld: 88 x 50 x 23.5mm 145g (5.2oz)
Web browsing, e-mail, etc.
All kinds of phone features...
It's amazing how advanced cell phones are getting these days. If I were in Palm management I wouldn't be concerned with the WinCE version XYZ devices (they serve very different purposes). I would be more concerned with a phone manufacturer out-featuring the palm (they just need handwriting and a card port). You certainly don't have to worry about your cell phone crashing (which seems to be a big Palm defense). Wouldn't it suck for Palm if Samsung or Motorola's latest cell phone ate up Palm's market share?
--David
I wasnt kissing ass thank you. Its not hurting me any - you can still get to my site.
My sites are showing up unregistered! I really respect NSI for what they have accomplished and I hurts me to see they are going down.