Why not just dump Windows and go for either emulating XP on a Virtual Machine or run OS-X, Linux or BSD? Seriously, if your worried about your employees downloading a "screensaver" for Windows and infecting the network, just run Linux and I bet you over 80% of the time thats what it is. As for "retraining" you would spend more money retraining and getting better hardware (and worse software) to get Vista, and Office 2007 while Ubuntu can be themed like XP/Vista/Amiga/OS-X or any other previous operating system. Open Office has a much lower learning curve then giving them Office 2007. So just switching to Linux takes out just about 100% of malware/virus problems which bring in back-doors and other ways of accessing, not to mention the code is open so you can be 100% sure that you won't get a "stealth update" or delayed patches or even currently unkown flaws in the kernel. As for a firewall, just running your connections through a router would help a bit, set up Firestarter or another iptables front-end for Linux, set secure root passwords and the only way that it can be cracked is if the IT department decided to crack it because they would be the ones that set it up. So moral to the book is, switch to Linux or just about any OS other then Windows, set up a firewall and secure passwords and you will be fine.
I agree that it doesn't seem to do much of anything, the fact though remains if theres something that doesn't "need" that de-fragmenting why keep using the one that does? When I used to use Windows it didn't seem to do much, but then again, on older hard drives running at slower RPMs the difference could be large.
How about a user wishlist? I would probably be using Vista instead of Ubuntu if it had these things that will probably never make it into any of the Vista service packs nor Windows 7
1. A decent license, now open-sourcing Windows would be excellent but just having it under a "you bought the copy now do whatever you want with it" would be a ton better then the usual "Microsoft owns your computer" And that is one of the reasons I switched to Linux
2. Good speed. I shouldn't need 4 Gigs of RAM just to get halfway decent performance out of my operating system, 512 MB should be fast enough and at 2 gigs it should have all the power needed for anything other then heavy gaming and major video editing
3. Non-Fragmenting filesystem, Seriously, when there is file systems on Linux that never have to be de-fragmented that have been there since at least 2000, why can't Windows in 2006 not have it?
4. Acceptance of other operating systems other then Windows. When Windows can't open up simple, free open standards by default such as.ogg,.tar and.pdf without the aid of third-party software that is just stupidity. MS needs to realize that they don't have a monopoly and that the rest of the OS world outside of MS use those and they are gaining while MS is loosing.
5. Security without annoyances. Seriously, what is up with UAC. So now I need to click a dialog box whenever I want to run a binary from a CD-ROM??? When I clicked on it? On Ubuntu on an under-privileged account, I don't even hardly need to type my password for anything other then major system work such as installing software or changing accounts and even then it keeps it for a bit so every time I don't need to enter it.
Its time for MS to start listing to people and make a halfway decent OS, otherwise there will be more people like me switching to Linux or OS-X.
Still though, whats the use of individual tracking seriously besides some "big brother" plot? Sure it would be useful but as with all technology some innovative hacker (I use this term with respect) will find a way to break it and make it useless for the intended purpose. Sure there is always human error, but human error is no match for human genius when they have motivation to go attack "the man"
I honestly wouldn't call Darwin Open source, because you have to enter just about everything about you including your address just to download a copy, if it was truly open-source it should be downloadable on a public FTP server, sure you can get the source, but hey, I don't own a mac and when its a hassle to get the source code, why bother, just get BSD and put a Mac skin on GNOME or KDE.
US consumers are clueless about technology in general. If you would ask the average person if they know simple computer concepts such as partitioning and operating systems they are clueless, never mind how the Internet works. Many times, I have been malevolent tech support (face it, we all have had to fill that role) and people couldn't tell me what the operating system they were running was! They were even more clueless about the processor they were running despite a bold sticker telling you on your computer case. So how can consumers be assumed to know a thing about the internet when most can't even tell you what OS they are running.
Thats when you realize that open-source code is the way to go. Why? Because someone will look at the code as long as its a critical program to the system. This is why Linux and other Open Source programs have minimal bugs and when they do, they are quickly fixed whereas a "service pack" for Windows takes a year or two and about three years for the next version of OS-X. But, if only the code was open, oh well, I guess Ill just stick to Linux....
Red Hat tolerates Cent-OS because they are two different types of OSes. Red Hat is for mostly businesses who need solid support, Cent-OS is for hobbyists and smaller businesses who don't need much support. Also, Cent-OS gives more or less a "trial version" of Red Hat because Red Hat isn't selling the OS like MS and Apple does, they sell support for the OS and theres nothing worse then having a potential big customer decide that the differences between Red Hat and Windows are "too great" and they don't use Red Hat when Cent-OS can get them the look-and-feel along with the programs Red Hat has. But lastly, Red Hat is an open company, they try not to be evil unlike MS, sure they like to make money but building a solid OS is their first priority and an OS cannot be stable, secure and fully functional without it being open.
And also, although it says that they are "on the rise" I doubt that very many people have them and are using them. And also, how long are we going to use our current signals until we can get faster, stronger signals that don't get blocked by these?
The problem with PC gaming, is that nothing is fully equal. First you've got the base game, that costs you like say $40 and assuming you can run the game fine on wine (that way we don't have to include the price for all the MS stuff) you can run it slowly on your current system (say a 1.8 GHZ processor, 1 GB of RAM and a base NVidia graphics card) but now to upgrade it you can spend $70 for more RAM, and $100 for a better graphics card and your looking at a $210 game and when a Wii costs $250 and games cost $50 and run just the same if you bought a Wii for $300 on eBay or somehow bought a $150 used. And now when you figure in the costs for Windows which is $50 if you get the OEM edition and the price of your computer, you have way over the amount for the Wii and a game. And for all the direct-X-10 games, (until they are all made to work well on XP and Linux) you have Vista to live with and the much much higher system requirements, non-existent drivers, a high price and a new OS to learn. And then 3-4 years later you have to upgrade your system again to play a different game while the Wii will be supported for around 5-6 years. It is that why PC gaming is almost dead, and console games are more popular, they are cheaper in the long run not to mention a lack of big titles and subscription fees for WoW and the lack of Linux/OS-X support is why they are dying.
Google doesn't have a monopoly or an abusive monopoly like Microsoft has. Google has some web based software (Maps, Docs, etc.) and some installable software (desktop and toolbar) but they are far from having a monopoly, particularly an abusive MS-Like monopoly. The reason Google got ahead is because they had one of the first "clean layouts" that means no banner ads, no flash, nothing that screams "You have won a free iPod Nano" and its fast to load. MSN, Yahoo, And MS-Live all lack that. Sure Google has a lot of ad revenue but its got competition by the "anti-Google" doubleclick.net and other ad companies. Also, if a much, much better search engine came out people would use that, if not then people go to the best which for most is Google. And Google has made a commitment not to be evil like MS has been, they support Linux, Mac and Windows rather then preferring one over the others and that has boosted it. But I seriously think Google is a bit overrated, first I hate ads and most people (who know a thing about technology) use ad-block or have custom CSS to block ads. Secondly, other then ads and search engines, there are monopolies everywhere else in the technology industry, browsers, OSes, and just about everything else be it abusive like MS as the only operating system or De-Facto like Firefox being the primary browser on Linux. I just can't see Google getting anywhere.
So Bill Gates is suddenly poor? And I'm not meaning that all of them are "geeks" currently but when technology is everywhere it will be the geeks that know how to use it that will save/make more money. How many American/European households spend several hundred dollars setting up a wireless network, an HD-TV, fixing Windows when it blue screens again, I know that many many people spend needless hundreds of dollars doing that. And right now, technology (As in repogrammable devices) aren't everywhere, sure your microwave has technology in it, but theres no way to edit it without swapping ROM chips and rewiring. And it is then, whenever some cracker manages to render *insert common household appliance* unusable, and someone has to pay *insert absurd amount of money* to fix it. Its not that it is hard, but in a MS ruled world, where people don't know a thing about computers and error messages manage to be obscure as possible it makes it seem like only the "1337 Hax0r" can fix it when it is very simple. And as for board members, thats not going to be the case because a true geek makes good code and focuses on making it better and when there is competition, the best code wins. The old "software business" or the coming "software as a service" are both obsolete in a internet based world, programmers will get money from true innovation, and from "mercenary code work" along with sysadmin and true computer repair jobs and the like. Sure they may not become millionaires but they will surely be the most valuable members of a company in a tech based society.
This just proves a simple fact, people won't buy music unless they have heard if for "free" one way or another, be it radio, someone else's MP3 player, internet radio, a YouTube video, a P2P download or as a secondary band at a concert. People don't just go out and buy a CD without not at least remotely liking one song and if a P2P download or even a YouTube video they will be more apt to get a CD by that band. Its not rocket (or computer) science, the P2P networks, and YouTube has replaced radio at least for the "unknown" bands that don't get played on major radio stations and its boosting their CD sales by a lot.
No one can win in "IT warfare" because no matter what you do, as long as someone has the desire to, they will hack and crack it. Think about the iPod's checksum, it was defeated within a few days. HD-DVD and DVDs are cracked and some are reporting Blu-Ray cracked too. And for "skills" in IT, think about how "high tech" America is, yet the average consumer doesn't know any more then how to use an iPod, get around in Word and surf the net, and whenever MS or Apple comes out with a new version we spend millions for "retraining" the fact is, unless you know how to program, and how things work (technically not just that an iPod plays music from a hard drive to your speakers) you can never succeed, the fact is that in IT and the internet, anyone can succeed not just one class/country and right now the "geeks" are dominating not the FBI, CIA or any other government, its the geeks that will win just give it some time. Already there is a "class devision" in technology, some people know how to install RAM, install Linux, use Linux, fix a broken hard drive, how USB and other peripherals work and some spend over $500 on a proprietary OS that doesn't even hardly fit their needs and tech support to fix what they break. Nothing other then the open-sourcing of all code will change that. Just wait 5 years and the average/. reader will have the skills needed to thrive and those who have spent thousands going to "business school" will be working in a way for the "geeks"
No, we don't need Flash to be even more closed. Apple, despite basing just about everything major on open-source code (OS-X, Safari, X, etc.) they don't seem very into making code open, and say if such a major thing such as Flash was acquired by an OS maker, they could alienate Linux users even more by not providing it. Despite saying that "OS-X is so good because small parts of it are open source" Apple hasn't released major software to Linux such as iTunes and then they try to block the ways us F/OSS programmers find ways around it. Apple is just about as hostile to open source as MS is, its just that Apple knows that Linux is good, MS just thinks it should be eliminated.
Not to mention how easy it would be to make a program to guess it, as most people wouldn't be able to totally reproduce it fully all the time, that means more tries it would allow. Plus, what if theres a flaw in Flash/AJAX/JavaScript/Canvas or whatever your drawing in? At least HTTPS is hard to break and HTML is rather secure.
Or number 4. Create Good games where people will actually pre-order and stand in line until midnight when the game is to be released. That is why Nintendo always ends up ahead in games, magazines will poke fun at the Wii, DS, GBA and Gamecube for having a lack of games but yet most of the games that are First or second party titles end up being smash hits, think about Ocarina of Time, people were willing to pay $50 for that game, even look at the Wii and how most American stores are almost always sold out of it and sometimes even Wii points! People are willing to pay full price, just don't make mediocre games (such as Tiger Woods, Madden, etc.)
Games truly aren't that expensive because theres no free/open source equivalent of them. Not to mention I would rather pay $60 for a good game that has a solid gameplay rather then a $20 of a movie-rip-off game that has the gameplay of an old NES game. Next, isn't "price wars" that caused the video game market to crash? It seems that EA a main maker of mediocre games in my opinion (Just look at Madden football and the rest of their yearly sports games) could see the quality of games drop dramatically to E.T. levels? It seems that lately there hasn't been hardly any good console based games except for possibly Halo 3, games for the Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl (not yet released) that seem to get people to buy them. This is supposed to be the "next generation of games" but are we going back to '83?
Seems similar to the RIAA and MPAA, something that Could be used to "pirate" music or make explosives we should ban!!! Be it BitTorrent, or chemistry sets, the only one that loses is the consumer, next I guess they will ban the internet or the selling of computers because as we know you can learn things that are illegal on the computer and you can rip CDs to put on your MP3 Player 111 *shift* !1!
I really don't see any web-based application beating stand alone programs. Number 1, although high speed internet is common, some places only have Dial-Up lines and AT&T and other cell brands Wi-Fi cards are expensive and harder to get working then a stand alone connection on OSes other then Windows. Number 2, its harder to find Open Source/Buyable web programs, for example, if a company wanted to use Google's product, they would have to 1. Trust Google's website not to be cracked 2. Trust that the service will be available and 3. That their internet won't fail. With an open source edition the company can download it, rebrand it and deploy it or with a proprietary solution they can pay an outrageous sum of money and pay someone to rebrand it and deploy it. So, that just leaves the average home user, taking out the Open Source fanatic, the companies and people with slow internet, and some home users run a computer with office '97 on a Windows 98 computer because its cheaper. So no, despite all this Web-2.0 is going to kill *insert application here* it just isn't going to happen.
Ok, so how is a binary (executable code) going to get on the network? If your using Firefox, Opera, Safari or just about any browser other then IE, they block the attempts. If you never download the binary how is it going to infect the network? Its not like HTML has any code that can be run and Python, Perl and PHP are safe as long as you don't download anything. And so how is proprietary info going to get "leaked" unless you use insecure methods such as ActiveX to be run? And if you are worried about your IP address being sent out, use Tor or a tight firewall.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there seems to be almost no possible way, other then exploits in the browsers themselves, to leak info by checking web based E-Mail.
Generally its the rules, sure you should be able to block "inappropriate" sites, but theres no need to block "time wasting" sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Slashdot or YouTube. If an employee can finish their work in 3 hours and no one can give him/her more work for say an hour, theres nothing wrong with them watching a few Youtube movies. The fact is most of these "content filters" end up being more harm then good because most of the IT staff doesn't even know how they work. And all it does is annoy the average employee. So simply if businesses would just switch to Linux, put up a simple content filter, and a firewall all would be good.
How is checking your e-mail, downloading software or using P2P software "risky"? The number 1 rule for all corporate networks is that you lock down your network, at home the most someone could really do is install a bot and make you send out spam messages. At work, your machine should at least have a network-wide firewall, up-to-date antivirus if its a Windows machine, and an under-privileged account if its Windows or Linux. But if everyone switched to Linux, none of it would really be a problem. But seriously, it poses little to no risk to a properly configured machine, nearly non-existent if your not using Windows. Because checking your E-Mail, web based through Firefox or Through POP with Thunderbird (or anything thats not outlook) as long as you don't download any binaries, your safe. As for spyware, just use Firefox, that takes care of most "drive-by-downloads" that IE has and those are the number 1 cause of malware. As for P2P as long as you have a decent firewall and don't download anything of questionable legality, the most it does is use up bandwidth which most ordinary workers won't even feel and most smaller ISPs allow you infinite bandwidth.
But 2007 doesn't dominate the office market, no one saves in.docx hardly except for MS loyalists, most people even still have '97 or 2003 on their machines, the steep learning curve for 2007 is putting people off as is OOo as it retains the same look and can do most editing just fine for 90% of people.
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Why not just dump Windows and go for either emulating XP on a Virtual Machine or run OS-X, Linux or BSD? Seriously, if your worried about your employees downloading a "screensaver" for Windows and infecting the network, just run Linux and I bet you over 80% of the time thats what it is. As for "retraining" you would spend more money retraining and getting better hardware (and worse software) to get Vista, and Office 2007 while Ubuntu can be themed like XP/Vista/Amiga/OS-X or any other previous operating system. Open Office has a much lower learning curve then giving them Office 2007. So just switching to Linux takes out just about 100% of malware/virus problems which bring in back-doors and other ways of accessing, not to mention the code is open so you can be 100% sure that you won't get a "stealth update" or delayed patches or even currently unkown flaws in the kernel. As for a firewall, just running your connections through a router would help a bit, set up Firestarter or another iptables front-end for Linux, set secure root passwords and the only way that it can be cracked is if the IT department decided to crack it because they would be the ones that set it up. So moral to the book is, switch to Linux or just about any OS other then Windows, set up a firewall and secure passwords and you will be fine.
I agree that it doesn't seem to do much of anything, the fact though remains if theres something that doesn't "need" that de-fragmenting why keep using the one that does? When I used to use Windows it didn't seem to do much, but then again, on older hard drives running at slower RPMs the difference could be large.
How about a user wishlist? I would probably be using Vista instead of Ubuntu if it had these things that will probably never make it into any of the Vista service packs nor Windows 7
.ogg, .tar and .pdf without the aid of third-party software that is just stupidity. MS needs to realize that they don't have a monopoly and that the rest of the OS world outside of MS use those and they are gaining while MS is loosing.
1. A decent license, now open-sourcing Windows would be excellent but just having it under a "you bought the copy now do whatever you want with it" would be a ton better then the usual "Microsoft owns your computer" And that is one of the reasons I switched to Linux
2. Good speed. I shouldn't need 4 Gigs of RAM just to get halfway decent performance out of my operating system, 512 MB should be fast enough and at 2 gigs it should have all the power needed for anything other then heavy gaming and major video editing
3. Non-Fragmenting filesystem, Seriously, when there is file systems on Linux that never have to be de-fragmented that have been there since at least 2000, why can't Windows in 2006 not have it?
4. Acceptance of other operating systems other then Windows. When Windows can't open up simple, free open standards by default such as
5. Security without annoyances. Seriously, what is up with UAC. So now I need to click a dialog box whenever I want to run a binary from a CD-ROM??? When I clicked on it? On Ubuntu on an under-privileged account, I don't even hardly need to type my password for anything other then major system work such as installing software or changing accounts and even then it keeps it for a bit so every time I don't need to enter it.
Its time for MS to start listing to people and make a halfway decent OS, otherwise there will be more people like me switching to Linux or OS-X.
Still though, whats the use of individual tracking seriously besides some "big brother" plot? Sure it would be useful but as with all technology some innovative hacker (I use this term with respect) will find a way to break it and make it useless for the intended purpose. Sure there is always human error, but human error is no match for human genius when they have motivation to go attack "the man"
I honestly wouldn't call Darwin Open source, because you have to enter just about everything about you including your address just to download a copy, if it was truly open-source it should be downloadable on a public FTP server, sure you can get the source, but hey, I don't own a mac and when its a hassle to get the source code, why bother, just get BSD and put a Mac skin on GNOME or KDE.
US consumers are clueless about technology in general. If you would ask the average person if they know simple computer concepts such as partitioning and operating systems they are clueless, never mind how the Internet works. Many times, I have been malevolent tech support (face it, we all have had to fill that role) and people couldn't tell me what the operating system they were running was! They were even more clueless about the processor they were running despite a bold sticker telling you on your computer case. So how can consumers be assumed to know a thing about the internet when most can't even tell you what OS they are running.
Thats when you realize that open-source code is the way to go. Why? Because someone will look at the code as long as its a critical program to the system. This is why Linux and other Open Source programs have minimal bugs and when they do, they are quickly fixed whereas a "service pack" for Windows takes a year or two and about three years for the next version of OS-X. But, if only the code was open, oh well, I guess Ill just stick to Linux....
Red Hat tolerates Cent-OS because they are two different types of OSes. Red Hat is for mostly businesses who need solid support, Cent-OS is for hobbyists and smaller businesses who don't need much support. Also, Cent-OS gives more or less a "trial version" of Red Hat because Red Hat isn't selling the OS like MS and Apple does, they sell support for the OS and theres nothing worse then having a potential big customer decide that the differences between Red Hat and Windows are "too great" and they don't use Red Hat when Cent-OS can get them the look-and-feel along with the programs Red Hat has. But lastly, Red Hat is an open company, they try not to be evil unlike MS, sure they like to make money but building a solid OS is their first priority and an OS cannot be stable, secure and fully functional without it being open.
And also, although it says that they are "on the rise" I doubt that very many people have them and are using them. And also, how long are we going to use our current signals until we can get faster, stronger signals that don't get blocked by these?
The problem with PC gaming, is that nothing is fully equal. First you've got the base game, that costs you like say $40 and assuming you can run the game fine on wine (that way we don't have to include the price for all the MS stuff) you can run it slowly on your current system (say a 1.8 GHZ processor, 1 GB of RAM and a base NVidia graphics card) but now to upgrade it you can spend $70 for more RAM, and $100 for a better graphics card and your looking at a $210 game and when a Wii costs $250 and games cost $50 and run just the same if you bought a Wii for $300 on eBay or somehow bought a $150 used. And now when you figure in the costs for Windows which is $50 if you get the OEM edition and the price of your computer, you have way over the amount for the Wii and a game. And for all the direct-X-10 games, (until they are all made to work well on XP and Linux) you have Vista to live with and the much much higher system requirements, non-existent drivers, a high price and a new OS to learn. And then 3-4 years later you have to upgrade your system again to play a different game while the Wii will be supported for around 5-6 years. It is that why PC gaming is almost dead, and console games are more popular, they are cheaper in the long run not to mention a lack of big titles and subscription fees for WoW and the lack of Linux/OS-X support is why they are dying.
Google doesn't have a monopoly or an abusive monopoly like Microsoft has. Google has some web based software (Maps, Docs, etc.) and some installable software (desktop and toolbar) but they are far from having a monopoly, particularly an abusive MS-Like monopoly. The reason Google got ahead is because they had one of the first "clean layouts" that means no banner ads, no flash, nothing that screams "You have won a free iPod Nano" and its fast to load. MSN, Yahoo, And MS-Live all lack that. Sure Google has a lot of ad revenue but its got competition by the "anti-Google" doubleclick.net and other ad companies. Also, if a much, much better search engine came out people would use that, if not then people go to the best which for most is Google. And Google has made a commitment not to be evil like MS has been, they support Linux, Mac and Windows rather then preferring one over the others and that has boosted it. But I seriously think Google is a bit overrated, first I hate ads and most people (who know a thing about technology) use ad-block or have custom CSS to block ads. Secondly, other then ads and search engines, there are monopolies everywhere else in the technology industry, browsers, OSes, and just about everything else be it abusive like MS as the only operating system or De-Facto like Firefox being the primary browser on Linux. I just can't see Google getting anywhere.
So Bill Gates is suddenly poor? And I'm not meaning that all of them are "geeks" currently but when technology is everywhere it will be the geeks that know how to use it that will save/make more money. How many American/European households spend several hundred dollars setting up a wireless network, an HD-TV, fixing Windows when it blue screens again, I know that many many people spend needless hundreds of dollars doing that. And right now, technology (As in repogrammable devices) aren't everywhere, sure your microwave has technology in it, but theres no way to edit it without swapping ROM chips and rewiring. And it is then, whenever some cracker manages to render *insert common household appliance* unusable, and someone has to pay *insert absurd amount of money* to fix it. Its not that it is hard, but in a MS ruled world, where people don't know a thing about computers and error messages manage to be obscure as possible it makes it seem like only the "1337 Hax0r" can fix it when it is very simple. And as for board members, thats not going to be the case because a true geek makes good code and focuses on making it better and when there is competition, the best code wins. The old "software business" or the coming "software as a service" are both obsolete in a internet based world, programmers will get money from true innovation, and from "mercenary code work" along with sysadmin and true computer repair jobs and the like. Sure they may not become millionaires but they will surely be the most valuable members of a company in a tech based society.
This just proves a simple fact, people won't buy music unless they have heard if for "free" one way or another, be it radio, someone else's MP3 player, internet radio, a YouTube video, a P2P download or as a secondary band at a concert. People don't just go out and buy a CD without not at least remotely liking one song and if a P2P download or even a YouTube video they will be more apt to get a CD by that band. Its not rocket (or computer) science, the P2P networks, and YouTube has replaced radio at least for the "unknown" bands that don't get played on major radio stations and its boosting their CD sales by a lot.
No one can win in "IT warfare" because no matter what you do, as long as someone has the desire to, they will hack and crack it. Think about the iPod's checksum, it was defeated within a few days. HD-DVD and DVDs are cracked and some are reporting Blu-Ray cracked too. And for "skills" in IT, think about how "high tech" America is, yet the average consumer doesn't know any more then how to use an iPod, get around in Word and surf the net, and whenever MS or Apple comes out with a new version we spend millions for "retraining" the fact is, unless you know how to program, and how things work (technically not just that an iPod plays music from a hard drive to your speakers) you can never succeed, the fact is that in IT and the internet, anyone can succeed not just one class/country and right now the "geeks" are dominating not the FBI, CIA or any other government, its the geeks that will win just give it some time. Already there is a "class devision" in technology, some people know how to install RAM, install Linux, use Linux, fix a broken hard drive, how USB and other peripherals work and some spend over $500 on a proprietary OS that doesn't even hardly fit their needs and tech support to fix what they break. Nothing other then the open-sourcing of all code will change that. Just wait 5 years and the average /. reader will have the skills needed to thrive and those who have spent thousands going to "business school" will be working in a way for the "geeks"
No, we don't need Flash to be even more closed. Apple, despite basing just about everything major on open-source code (OS-X, Safari, X, etc.) they don't seem very into making code open, and say if such a major thing such as Flash was acquired by an OS maker, they could alienate Linux users even more by not providing it. Despite saying that "OS-X is so good because small parts of it are open source" Apple hasn't released major software to Linux such as iTunes and then they try to block the ways us F/OSS programmers find ways around it. Apple is just about as hostile to open source as MS is, its just that Apple knows that Linux is good, MS just thinks it should be eliminated.
Not to mention how easy it would be to make a program to guess it, as most people wouldn't be able to totally reproduce it fully all the time, that means more tries it would allow. Plus, what if theres a flaw in Flash/AJAX/JavaScript/Canvas or whatever your drawing in? At least HTTPS is hard to break and HTML is rather secure.
Or number 4. Create Good games where people will actually pre-order and stand in line until midnight when the game is to be released. That is why Nintendo always ends up ahead in games, magazines will poke fun at the Wii, DS, GBA and Gamecube for having a lack of games but yet most of the games that are First or second party titles end up being smash hits, think about Ocarina of Time, people were willing to pay $50 for that game, even look at the Wii and how most American stores are almost always sold out of it and sometimes even Wii points! People are willing to pay full price, just don't make mediocre games (such as Tiger Woods, Madden, etc.)
Games truly aren't that expensive because theres no free/open source equivalent of them. Not to mention I would rather pay $60 for a good game that has a solid gameplay rather then a $20 of a movie-rip-off game that has the gameplay of an old NES game. Next, isn't "price wars" that caused the video game market to crash? It seems that EA a main maker of mediocre games in my opinion (Just look at Madden football and the rest of their yearly sports games) could see the quality of games drop dramatically to E.T. levels? It seems that lately there hasn't been hardly any good console based games except for possibly Halo 3, games for the Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl (not yet released) that seem to get people to buy them. This is supposed to be the "next generation of games" but are we going back to '83?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Game_Crash
Seems similar to the RIAA and MPAA, something that Could be used to "pirate" music or make explosives we should ban!!! Be it BitTorrent, or chemistry sets, the only one that loses is the consumer, next I guess they will ban the internet or the selling of computers because as we know you can learn things that are illegal on the computer and you can rip CDs to put on your MP3 Player 111 *shift* !1!
I really don't see any web-based application beating stand alone programs. Number 1, although high speed internet is common, some places only have Dial-Up lines and AT&T and other cell brands Wi-Fi cards are expensive and harder to get working then a stand alone connection on OSes other then Windows. Number 2, its harder to find Open Source/Buyable web programs, for example, if a company wanted to use Google's product, they would have to 1. Trust Google's website not to be cracked 2. Trust that the service will be available and 3. That their internet won't fail. With an open source edition the company can download it, rebrand it and deploy it or with a proprietary solution they can pay an outrageous sum of money and pay someone to rebrand it and deploy it. So, that just leaves the average home user, taking out the Open Source fanatic, the companies and people with slow internet, and some home users run a computer with office '97 on a Windows 98 computer because its cheaper. So no, despite all this Web-2.0 is going to kill *insert application here* it just isn't going to happen.
Ok, so how is a binary (executable code) going to get on the network? If your using Firefox, Opera, Safari or just about any browser other then IE, they block the attempts. If you never download the binary how is it going to infect the network? Its not like HTML has any code that can be run and Python, Perl and PHP are safe as long as you don't download anything. And so how is proprietary info going to get "leaked" unless you use insecure methods such as ActiveX to be run? And if you are worried about your IP address being sent out, use Tor or a tight firewall.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there seems to be almost no possible way, other then exploits in the browsers themselves, to leak info by checking web based E-Mail.
Generally its the rules, sure you should be able to block "inappropriate" sites, but theres no need to block "time wasting" sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Slashdot or YouTube. If an employee can finish their work in 3 hours and no one can give him/her more work for say an hour, theres nothing wrong with them watching a few Youtube movies. The fact is most of these "content filters" end up being more harm then good because most of the IT staff doesn't even know how they work. And all it does is annoy the average employee. So simply if businesses would just switch to Linux, put up a simple content filter, and a firewall all would be good.
Exactly what I was going to type, but I guess if it works on Linux theres always BSD, GNU Hurd and Plan 9
How is checking your e-mail, downloading software or using P2P software "risky"? The number 1 rule for all corporate networks is that you lock down your network, at home the most someone could really do is install a bot and make you send out spam messages. At work, your machine should at least have a network-wide firewall, up-to-date antivirus if its a Windows machine, and an under-privileged account if its Windows or Linux. But if everyone switched to Linux, none of it would really be a problem. But seriously, it poses little to no risk to a properly configured machine, nearly non-existent if your not using Windows. Because checking your E-Mail, web based through Firefox or Through POP with Thunderbird (or anything thats not outlook) as long as you don't download any binaries, your safe. As for spyware, just use Firefox, that takes care of most "drive-by-downloads" that IE has and those are the number 1 cause of malware. As for P2P as long as you have a decent firewall and don't download anything of questionable legality, the most it does is use up bandwidth which most ordinary workers won't even feel and most smaller ISPs allow you infinite bandwidth.
But 2007 doesn't dominate the office market, no one saves in .docx hardly except for MS loyalists, most people even still have '97 or 2003 on their machines, the steep learning curve for 2007 is putting people off as is OOo as it retains the same look and can do most editing just fine for 90% of people.