They can file for a patent, even if this thing can't work, or won't work, or even if it violates the laws of thermodynamics. However since this won't work they won't have any trouble with people infringing on their patent, will they?
Active X is one of those good ideas for a world that never came to be. Microsoft didn't get the internet, didn't understand what was coming, what they *saw* coming was a series of competing online services, AOL and MSN etc, where the content would be all produced by massive commercial sites and companies like themselves.(I'm sure there was a plan to make MSN the *only* service) if this world had come to pass Active X would have been merely a bad idea, not an almost criminally stupid one, because then all we would need to protect ourselves from would be the incompetence of a few major vendors, difficult, but possible. Now, if you're going to use windoze/IE+ActiveX you also have to account for the unethical behavior of hundreds of firms + the malice of a few + the overriding incompetence of MS = a situation where only a few skilled users can keep their systems safe, secure and somewhat reliable, the average user, without personal guidance from a skilled professional, is just being thrown to the lions...
The problem, the issue and the greatest need in the internet community is user education. Period. Odds are, that if you're reading slashdot, you know at least enough that you're aware of the security issues involved with something like Active X, but does your mom? Does your sister? Do your customers? What we need to do is lay out a set of safe surfing practices. Practical ones get the average, or even the less than average web user educated enough to follow those practices. Then we'll see these sort of practices decrease, if not actually wither and die. Practical safety procedures, they have to be practical in the sense that we must make sure and offer our grandmothers an alternative to sending you those.exe greeting cards, show them how to point to a URL so you can download elfbowling for yourself, teach them that there are animated greeting cards online that are safe. It is NOT enough to tell them that "that's lame, you don't need to do it" we have to tell them *WHY* and show them a safe alternative.
Profound realizations.
on
The Regulon
·
· Score: 1
That you had when high, or after working for sixty-four hours, drinking jolt and coffee. Are really kind of stupid. Such is the case with this. I'm not trolling here, but this is dumb. Infinite information has no predators? How about all the OTHER information that wants that same space? Surely you realize that most of this information is just copies of the same seven thousand jpeg pr0no pictures anyway? And besides, the whole premise of this is stupid, smoke less dope, it kills brain cells.
To what extent are the costs we're hearing about exagerated? What I'm asking is, how many neccesary upgrades, and general upgrades were stories like this... A customer of mine got a new office desktop, because they were tired of their 486, the new one was "certified" to be compliant, so at least in their mind part, or all of the cost of this machine ($2,000) was a Y2K "Upgrade" while in fact the old machine could have continued functionally. (Word processing, fax&answering machine functions, nothing date senstive.)
Okay, I can follow that. Except for the whole idiotic notion that the power is going to go out. What have you done to prepare for the unicorn stampede that I've predicted for Jan 2? (Hint, nothing, nothing nothing.) Most of these y2K "preparations" are nothing more than some sort of odd hedging your bets against an apocalypse that isn't coming. Don's bottom line if you're afraid of the end of the world, then turning off the web server doesn't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
They can file for a patent, even if this thing can't work, or won't work, or even if it violates the laws of thermodynamics. However since this won't work they won't have any trouble with people infringing on their patent, will they?
Active X is one of those good ideas for a world that never came to be. Microsoft didn't get the internet, didn't understand what was coming, what they *saw* coming was a series of competing online services, AOL and MSN etc, where the content would be all produced by massive commercial sites and companies like themselves.(I'm sure there was a plan to make MSN the *only* service) if this world had come to pass Active X would have been merely a bad idea, not an almost criminally stupid one, because then all we would need to protect ourselves from would be the incompetence of a few major vendors, difficult, but possible. Now, if you're going to use windoze/IE+ActiveX you also have to account for the unethical behavior of hundreds of firms + the malice of a few + the overriding incompetence of MS = a situation where only a few skilled users can keep their systems safe, secure and somewhat reliable, the average user, without personal guidance from a skilled professional, is just being thrown to the lions...
The problem, the issue and the greatest need in the internet community is user education. Period. Odds are, that if you're reading slashdot, you know at least enough that you're aware of the security issues involved with something like Active X, but does your mom? Does your sister? Do your customers? What we need to do is lay out a set of safe surfing practices. Practical ones get the average, or even the less than average web user educated enough to follow those practices. Then we'll see these sort of practices decrease, if not actually wither and die. Practical safety procedures, they have to be practical in the sense that we must make sure and offer our grandmothers an alternative to sending you those .exe greeting cards, show them how to point to a URL so you can download elfbowling for yourself, teach them that there are animated greeting cards online that are safe. It is NOT enough to tell them that "that's lame, you don't need to do it" we have to tell them *WHY* and show them a safe alternative.
That you had when high, or after working for sixty-four hours, drinking jolt and coffee. Are really kind of stupid. Such is the case with this. I'm not trolling here, but this is dumb. Infinite information has no predators? How about all the OTHER information that wants that same space? Surely you realize that most of this information is just copies of the same seven thousand jpeg pr0no pictures anyway? And besides, the whole premise of this is stupid, smoke less dope, it kills brain cells.
To what extent are the costs we're hearing about exagerated? What I'm asking is, how many neccesary upgrades, and general upgrades were stories like this... A customer of mine got a new office desktop, because they were tired of their 486, the new one was "certified" to be compliant, so at least in their mind part, or all of the cost of this machine ($2,000) was a Y2K "Upgrade" while in fact the old machine could have continued functionally. (Word processing, fax&answering machine functions, nothing date senstive.)
Okay, I can follow that. Except for the whole idiotic notion that the power is going to go out. What have you done to prepare for the unicorn stampede that I've predicted for Jan 2? (Hint, nothing, nothing nothing.) Most of these y2K "preparations" are nothing more than some sort of odd hedging your bets against an apocalypse that isn't coming. Don's bottom line if you're afraid of the end of the world, then turning off the web server doesn't matter.