Free trade doesnt mean you can choose to set your prices different in different markets. If MS couldnt do that, they would either pull completely out of countries like India and China (where noone would think of paying more than a few dollars for Windows), or they would go out of business (because they could not sustain a business by selling the OS at India / China prices).
If I am a street vendor, and I flew over here from India, should I not be allowed to sell my wares at US price levels? Should I be forced to sell at whatever price I used in India? Wouldnt THAT be a restriction on free trade, as my competitors will not be bound by that?
The reason Google chrome can update as a user is simple; it installs itself, All 200+MB of Chrome I might add, in your user profile.
If youre doing an enterprise install, you are using the Chrome MSI, which installs to programfiles. The reason it updates automatically is it installs a Google Updater service which is set to start with administrator privileges. Somehow it does it in a way that does not trigger the GPO to redeploy the older version of Chrome (possibly because Chrome keeps older versions laying around after an update?)
Prior to the MSI (which came out early this year) you could use the GooglePack installer to do a machine install, though it was more of a PITA to install.
In case you were not aware, Google also has Chrome GPO templates for managing it. It is significantly better than the situation with Firefox, actually.
People have a tendency to overstate contributions of the deceased as if we can make his life worth more by stating it. His passing is sad, and it sounds like he did an incredible amount to advance the state of computing, but in the end he was another person who happened to have a passion for computing.
I think the sentiment of elevating his life goes sour when you use it to devalue the lives of others by comparison; there is no reason to infer that because your neighbor didnt create C or invent Unix, that their death would be less deserving of sorrow. A person's value is not simply a sum of the things they do and the people they know.
However I am curious to see people saying "wouldnt have Windows,....". Isnt Windows very distinctly NOT unix, in almost every way? Kernel architecture, filesystem paradigms, etc etc etc. And my understanding (its been a LONG time since I read up on this, cut me some slack) was that MS-DOS was built by Gates and co for IBM (as Wikipedia seems to confirm), but that IBM rejected it, and so they went solo. (Actually, it looks like MS-DOS was a modified version of someone else's OS, but still seems to be distinctly not Unix). Windows sprung out of MS-DOS, and the 9x series was eventually replaced by WindowsNT series which was based on some other not-unix OS (Wikipedia notes, VMS). Worth noting is that the entire article on NT mentions Unix only once, in the phrase "features comparable to Unix".
If it was regarding the language, C is undoubtedly important (isnt it still one of the most used languages in existence, esp in the embedded sphere?), but was Windows even built on C?
Er, one of the most fundamental rights you have as the owner of a company is determining where and to whom your goods will be sold. I fail to see why thats "blame-worthy"; why should a vendor be forced to sell to you?
That's just an assumption on your part. I doubt you have any idea what they're thinking.
It is an assumption, based on their reasoning and how when you draw the discussion out, it becomes apparent they have no ethical ground to stand on-- at which point they shift the discussion to "whose ethic" and "I dont care, information wants to be free" and whatnot.
Its very rarely about the content creator; if you manage to show how their actions might harm the creators, they will insist that THOSE creators sold their souls to the label and thus dont deserve any money; or that their prices are too high; or that they need to adapt to the times.
So I will say there may be one or two out there who are intellectually honest about it and really see no issues with downloading, and are able to state that belief; but at least from what Ive seen on slashdot, the vast majority are really just selfish freeloaders. If you want a laugh, go to 4chan and mention that your next computer build will include a paid copy of Windows. Watch as you get ridiculed, and then as some users actually try to DEFEND their freeloading as being OK. The mental acrobatics they perform are really quite impressive.
None of which works at ALL when youre on a domain and your users dont have admin rights.
Whats that, deploy using MSIs? Yea, right. Thats what my clients want, to pay me every two weeks to undeploy the old version and deploy the new one that just came out-- not to mention all the nonsense you have to do (or, at least, once had to do) to actually get a hold of the Java JRE MSI file.
Yea, Ill take my Google Updater method any day-- updates as admin without ever bugging the users with credentials. Are there potential issues with automatic updating software? Dunno, since I went that route my headaches mysteriously decreased and the users mysteriously stopped getting viruses. Not much of an issue in my eyes.
Listen, we all realize that you Opera users are cooler than us, and have had all of our features for years. We're all so happy for the two of you;) Now can we continue discussing why Chrome sucks and IE9 is so wonderful?
Discussion about their dishonesty aside (which is ALL I was criticising), I would argue that no, Chrome is more secure-- and not because IE9 doesnt have awesome features; Im sure it does. But Chrome takes the cake because, very simply, they put the security where it matters-- into focusing on plugins, which are the ACTUAL cause of 90+% of malware infections. Its wonderful that IE protects against bad downloads, and that it blocks XSS, and all the rest; what does it do to mitigate PDF and Flash exploits that are what ACTUALLY cause the infections?
Chrome disables known insecure plugins (with a note about them on pages requesting said plugin), and automatically updates the 2 most commonly exploited ones. That fact alone puts chrome above IE, regardless of what memory protections, download protections, internet zones, etc they apply.
My argument was never about what word you apply to it, my point was that it is wrong on some level, has a negative economic impact on its target, and that basically everyone who splits hairs over what to call it does so for selfish reasons.
Even if we were simply to pretend that those stats mean that IE9's blocking is 9x as effective as Chrome's (which is one heck of an allowance), that has nothing to do with Microsoft's claim. Chrome DOES provide a mechanism for filtering malware URLs, in direct contradiction to their claim.
Im not saying IE9 sucks or that chrome is superior or any of that, Im simply marveling at their gall in making completely false statements with no compunctions.
There is no "closed source version maintained by Oracle". The OSE vs CSE Virtualbox versions disappeared some time ago, with the entire thing being OSE now. They spun some of the bits (USB drivers, some other stuff) off into an extension pack, but 90% of Virtualbox is opensource and nevertheless maintained by Oracle.
Additionally, Its been about 2 years, but I was able to get PXE working no problem on Virtualbox. You might just have to change what NIC driver youre using, and Im pretty sure those were not exclusive to the extension pack.
I regularly run several on my system, and rotate network cards etc on the fly with no issues. Guest OSes are generally Linux / FreeBSD-- current setup is 2 FreeBSD boxes networked with a CentOS. Ive not had any issues, though it did bog the computer down a bit till I got 8GB RAM.
It apparently gets better. They ding chrome for these as well: Does the browser automatically block insecure content from secure (HTTPs) pages? (Even though Chrome does in fact warn you of this. Props to MS, though, they HAVE warned about this since IE6-- though Im pretty sure IE9 does NOT block it automatically).
And this... Does the browser have the ability to restrict an extension or a plugin on a per site basis? Even though I am unaware of IE havign that capability, while chrome has had it for a very long while now-- you can do JS, plugins, images, whatever you want, on a per-site basis.
And this Does the browser benefit from Windows Operating System features that protect against structured exception handling overwrite attacks? Ok, now youre not even TRYING to hide your bias. How about this: Is your browser now, or has it ever been, among the first two browsers owned at the yearly Pwn2Own? I think that should be -10 points, and would put Firefox, Chrome, and Opera squarely on top. Can we get a nice "X" graphic next to IE9 for that one?
It might have been informative. Seriously, when you accuse Chrome of not meeting the requirement, "Does the browser help protect you from websites that are known to distribute socially engineered malware?" when google's anti-malware service is the basis for at least two browsers, and predates IE's effort by at least a year (probably more like 2), it sort of hampers your credibility.
Thats really not accurate, there are many companies who use this type of thing, and that really doesnt qualify as oppression. As it is the company's network, they are perfectly free to mandate what comes in and out of it.
You misunderstand his complaint. He thinks that there is no place for equipment or software that filters the internet at all, whether it is voluntary or not.
Then why aren't the protesting their University for putting them tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that isn't worth a tenth of that?
Because if you get into that kind of debt, it is because of your own decisions, and if you do so in a bad market with no plan to pay it off, its your own damn fault. Whats that, you think you should be able to go to a private university like Georgetown on the cheap? Yea, why dont you tell admissions that.
Here, Ill make it easy for anyone in this situation. See, I am once more in college, having paid my way once, and now paying my way again, and by the end I will probably not have paid more than $40,000 for the entire degree (from GMU, not exactly a terrible university). So heres what you do if youre a budding student and feel the need to go to a really good university.
Knock out general ed requirements at a community college. Seriously, if debt is a concern to you, theres not much reason not to do this.
Apply to colleges that are cheap for in-state tuition. For reference, Virginia has a good number of these (UVA, GMU, JMU, VA Tech, etc).
Go and live in that state to establish residency, while attending. By the end of the first year, you should have established residency, and your rates should plummet. Bonus, you saved a ton of money by NOT living on campus.
Enjoy graduating with a very minor debt, all things considered.
Or if thats too complicated for you, you could simply-- and heres 2 shockers, one after the other-- not go to a super expensive school (gasp) and work your way through college (double gasp!). You should be able to pull in $12k / year working a few nights a week (easily), which means by senior year, you should have pulled in about 40k, which should make your debt very minor. For the record, housing near GMU can be had for around $4k/year, and credits are about $500/credit hour, so per year you would rack up a paltry $8k / year-- this assuming you didnt knock out those gen-eds at NOVA first where its about 1/4th as much, and they guarentee admission to GMU afterwards.
Then again, if you would rather party in your off time, and then wallow in debt that you should never have taken to begin with, thats your business. But I really wish people would stop claiming that that was a failing of the SYSTEM, rather than of personal responsibility and planning (or that of their parents, if they encouraged such debt with no plans to help their child, or simply failed to offer any guidance at all).
Banking should be a service to industry that facilitates socially useful capital and equity, not be an industry in its own right. The social good derived from (say) derivatives shorting is vanishingly close to zero.
Great. Who's paying for it? Wait, dont tell me, you want the government to handle that too?
Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act, impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets, and re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation.
There are possibly some good ideas there, that could have some good reasons. The problem is, most of the people there arent angry because wild speculation leads to an unstable market; theyre mad essentially because some people have more wealth than they do, and they somehow feel entitled to it (or at least want those people to feel their pain). I will admit, I cannot speak for the entire protesting populace, but thats certainly the impression one gets from the posts on occupywallst.org and the wild approval that you see for such ideas as "$20 minimum hourly wage" and "guarenteed income regardless of work status".
So if those are your ideas for fixing some of the worst problems of the market, thats fine, but I really dont buy that that sums up their grievances and suggested remedies.
Slashdot Mirror
Free trade doesnt mean you can choose to set your prices different in different markets. If MS couldnt do that, they would either pull completely out of countries like India and China (where noone would think of paying more than a few dollars for Windows), or they would go out of business (because they could not sustain a business by selling the OS at India / China prices).
If I am a street vendor, and I flew over here from India, should I not be allowed to sell my wares at US price levels? Should I be forced to sell at whatever price I used in India? Wouldnt THAT be a restriction on free trade, as my competitors will not be bound by that?
The reason Google chrome can update as a user is simple; it installs itself, All 200+MB of Chrome I might add, in your user profile.
If youre doing an enterprise install, you are using the Chrome MSI, which installs to programfiles. The reason it updates automatically is it installs a Google Updater service which is set to start with administrator privileges. Somehow it does it in a way that does not trigger the GPO to redeploy the older version of Chrome (possibly because Chrome keeps older versions laying around after an update?)
Prior to the MSI (which came out early this year) you could use the GooglePack installer to do a machine install, though it was more of a PITA to install.
In case you were not aware, Google also has Chrome GPO templates for managing it. It is significantly better than the situation with Firefox, actually.
People have a tendency to overstate contributions of the deceased as if we can make his life worth more by stating it. His passing is sad, and it sounds like he did an incredible amount to advance the state of computing, but in the end he was another person who happened to have a passion for computing.
I think the sentiment of elevating his life goes sour when you use it to devalue the lives of others by comparison; there is no reason to infer that because your neighbor didnt create C or invent Unix, that their death would be less deserving of sorrow. A person's value is not simply a sum of the things they do and the people they know.
It is sad to see another tech great passing.
However I am curious to see people saying "wouldnt have Windows,....". Isnt Windows very distinctly NOT unix, in almost every way? Kernel architecture, filesystem paradigms, etc etc etc. And my understanding (its been a LONG time since I read up on this, cut me some slack) was that MS-DOS was built by Gates and co for IBM (as Wikipedia seems to confirm), but that IBM rejected it, and so they went solo. (Actually, it looks like MS-DOS was a modified version of someone else's OS, but still seems to be distinctly not Unix). Windows sprung out of MS-DOS, and the 9x series was eventually replaced by WindowsNT series which was based on some other not-unix OS (Wikipedia notes, VMS). Worth noting is that the entire article on NT mentions Unix only once, in the phrase "features comparable to Unix".
If it was regarding the language, C is undoubtedly important (isnt it still one of the most used languages in existence, esp in the embedded sphere?), but was Windows even built on C?
Er, one of the most fundamental rights you have as the owner of a company is determining where and to whom your goods will be sold. I fail to see why thats "blame-worthy"; why should a vendor be forced to sell to you?
Thank goodness there are folks like you who never make mistakes, to show us the way.
The HP Probooks-- specifically the 4000 line-- are remarkably good, and are among the best laptops Ive used.
If you use an HP multifunction printer, its your own darn fault if bad things happen. I thought everyone knew to avoid those things.
No, I wasnt talking specifically about you.
That's just an assumption on your part. I doubt you have any idea what they're thinking.
It is an assumption, based on their reasoning and how when you draw the discussion out, it becomes apparent they have no ethical ground to stand on-- at which point they shift the discussion to "whose ethic" and "I dont care, information wants to be free" and whatnot.
Its very rarely about the content creator; if you manage to show how their actions might harm the creators, they will insist that THOSE creators sold their souls to the label and thus dont deserve any money; or that their prices are too high; or that they need to adapt to the times.
So I will say there may be one or two out there who are intellectually honest about it and really see no issues with downloading, and are able to state that belief; but at least from what Ive seen on slashdot, the vast majority are really just selfish freeloaders. If you want a laugh, go to 4chan and mention that your next computer build will include a paid copy of Windows. Watch as you get ridiculed, and then as some users actually try to DEFEND their freeloading as being OK. The mental acrobatics they perform are really quite impressive.
None of which works at ALL when youre on a domain and your users dont have admin rights.
Whats that, deploy using MSIs? Yea, right. Thats what my clients want, to pay me every two weeks to undeploy the old version and deploy the new one that just came out-- not to mention all the nonsense you have to do (or, at least, once had to do) to actually get a hold of the Java JRE MSI file.
Yea, Ill take my Google Updater method any day-- updates as admin without ever bugging the users with credentials. Are there potential issues with automatic updating software? Dunno, since I went that route my headaches mysteriously decreased and the users mysteriously stopped getting viruses. Not much of an issue in my eyes.
Listen, we all realize that you Opera users are cooler than us, and have had all of our features for years. We're all so happy for the two of you ;) Now can we continue discussing why Chrome sucks and IE9 is so wonderful?
Discussion about their dishonesty aside (which is ALL I was criticising), I would argue that no, Chrome is more secure-- and not because IE9 doesnt have awesome features; Im sure it does. But Chrome takes the cake because, very simply, they put the security where it matters-- into focusing on plugins, which are the ACTUAL cause of 90+% of malware infections. Its wonderful that IE protects against bad downloads, and that it blocks XSS, and all the rest; what does it do to mitigate PDF and Flash exploits that are what ACTUALLY cause the infections?
Chrome disables known insecure plugins (with a note about them on pages requesting said plugin), and automatically updates the 2 most commonly exploited ones. That fact alone puts chrome above IE, regardless of what memory protections, download protections, internet zones, etc they apply.
My argument was never about what word you apply to it, my point was that it is wrong on some level, has a negative economic impact on its target, and that basically everyone who splits hairs over what to call it does so for selfish reasons.
Even if we were simply to pretend that those stats mean that IE9's blocking is 9x as effective as Chrome's (which is one heck of an allowance), that has nothing to do with Microsoft's claim. Chrome DOES provide a mechanism for filtering malware URLs, in direct contradiction to their claim.
Im not saying IE9 sucks or that chrome is superior or any of that, Im simply marveling at their gall in making completely false statements with no compunctions.
There is no "closed source version maintained by Oracle". The OSE vs CSE Virtualbox versions disappeared some time ago, with the entire thing being OSE now. They spun some of the bits (USB drivers, some other stuff) off into an extension pack, but 90% of Virtualbox is opensource and nevertheless maintained by Oracle.
Additionally, Its been about 2 years, but I was able to get PXE working no problem on Virtualbox. You might just have to change what NIC driver youre using, and Im pretty sure those were not exclusive to the extension pack.
I regularly run several on my system, and rotate network cards etc on the fly with no issues. Guest OSes are generally Linux / FreeBSD-- current setup is 2 FreeBSD boxes networked with a CentOS. Ive not had any issues, though it did bog the computer down a bit till I got 8GB RAM.
Wait, you interviewed there and you didnt even understand their core business? You do know that filtering is basically what they do right?
Do you start your interviews off by asking, "so....what is your company called, what do you do, and why am I here"?
Its like getting pissed off at Microsoft because you discovered mid-interview that theyre responsible for Windows.
It apparently gets better. They ding chrome for these as well:
Does the browser automatically block insecure content from secure (HTTPs) pages?
(Even though Chrome does in fact warn you of this. Props to MS, though, they HAVE warned about this since IE6-- though Im pretty sure IE9 does NOT block it automatically).
And this...
Does the browser have the ability to restrict an extension or a plugin on a per site basis?
Even though I am unaware of IE havign that capability, while chrome has had it for a very long while now-- you can do JS, plugins, images, whatever you want, on a per-site basis.
And this
Does the browser benefit from Windows Operating System features that protect against structured exception handling overwrite attacks?
Ok, now youre not even TRYING to hide your bias. How about this:
Is your browser now, or has it ever been, among the first two browsers owned at the yearly Pwn2Own?
I think that should be -10 points, and would put Firefox, Chrome, and Opera squarely on top. Can we get a nice "X" graphic next to IE9 for that one?
It might have been informative. Seriously, when you accuse Chrome of not meeting the requirement,
"Does the browser help protect you from websites that are known to distribute socially engineered malware?"
when google's anti-malware service is the basis for at least two browsers, and predates IE's effort by at least a year (probably more like 2), it sort of hampers your credibility.
Thats really not accurate, there are many companies who use this type of thing, and that really doesnt qualify as oppression. As it is the company's network, they are perfectly free to mandate what comes in and out of it.
You misunderstand his complaint. He thinks that there is no place for equipment or software that filters the internet at all, whether it is voluntary or not.
Then why aren't the protesting their University for putting them tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that isn't worth a tenth of that?
Because if you get into that kind of debt, it is because of your own decisions, and if you do so in a bad market with no plan to pay it off, its your own damn fault. Whats that, you think you should be able to go to a private university like Georgetown on the cheap? Yea, why dont you tell admissions that.
Here, Ill make it easy for anyone in this situation. See, I am once more in college, having paid my way once, and now paying my way again, and by the end I will probably not have paid more than $40,000 for the entire degree (from GMU, not exactly a terrible university).
So heres what you do if youre a budding student and feel the need to go to a really good university.
Or if thats too complicated for you, you could simply-- and heres 2 shockers, one after the other-- not go to a super expensive school (gasp) and work your way through college (double gasp!). You should be able to pull in $12k / year working a few nights a week (easily), which means by senior year, you should have pulled in about 40k, which should make your debt very minor. For the record, housing near GMU can be had for around $4k/year, and credits are about $500/credit hour, so per year you would rack up a paltry $8k / year-- this assuming you didnt knock out those gen-eds at NOVA first where its about 1/4th as much, and they guarentee admission to GMU afterwards.
Then again, if you would rather party in your off time, and then wallow in debt that you should never have taken to begin with, thats your business. But I really wish people would stop claiming that that was a failing of the SYSTEM, rather than of personal responsibility and planning (or that of their parents, if they encouraged such debt with no plans to help their child, or simply failed to offer any guidance at all).
Banking should be a service to industry that facilitates socially useful capital and equity, not be an industry in its own right. The social good derived from (say) derivatives shorting is vanishingly close to zero.
Great. Who's paying for it? Wait, dont tell me, you want the government to handle that too?
Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act, impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets, and re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation.
There are possibly some good ideas there, that could have some good reasons. The problem is, most of the people there arent angry because wild speculation leads to an unstable market; theyre mad essentially because some people have more wealth than they do, and they somehow feel entitled to it (or at least want those people to feel their pain). I will admit, I cannot speak for the entire protesting populace, but thats certainly the impression one gets from the posts on occupywallst.org and the wild approval that you see for such ideas as "$20 minimum hourly wage" and "guarenteed income regardless of work status".
So if those are your ideas for fixing some of the worst problems of the market, thats fine, but I really dont buy that that sums up their grievances and suggested remedies.
Its whats known as the "80-19-1 rule". I swear it sounded catchier when someone else said it tho.