Hypotheticals don't cut it. I'd like to hear an example of a single feature in Office that is so critical as to make a spreadsheet not work at all, which isn't supported in Open Office.
The most common objections I hear to Open Office are that it doesn't look the same and that it doesn't have wizards. The more prevalent problems I encounter are people trying to open Office 2007 documents on Windows 2003. They usually don't want to spend a boatload of money just to be able to open documents from work while they're at home. I usually end up showing them how to open the documents at work and "save as...", though many of them have opted to just get OO because it gets the job done even if it's not as pretty.
...testing was what the production environment was for. Nothing like having dozens of end users flooding the help desk with calls because someone messed with a server or an active database. They take care of all that pesky and tedious testing for you!
Indulgences were the fundraising tool, the notion of Purgatory simply created the demand. Johann Tetzel even came up with a witty slogan, translated from German, it went something like, "Every time a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs!".
This very act of blatant corruption is purportedly what motivated Martin Luther to post his theses on the church door, and later led to the schism. So naturally Protestants would wish to distance themselves from the things the movement's founder was protesting.
"Moral Hazard" is a very specific perverse incentive, I think there's a different one at play when it comes to day traders. I can't think of a specific term to describe it, other than it's sort of a ruleset for a grand game of "chicken", where everyone is rushing towards an unknown doom point. Those who bail early win the least, those who hold out the longest come closest to catastrophe, but also have the potential to win the biggest payoffs.
So, these people are merely doing their best to run up a hill of ascending prices in the midst of a stampede. There's a cliff at the top of this hill, which they know full well is ahead of them because they're reasonably (if not fully) aware that the value is inflated and as soon as enough investors pull-out of the stampede, the cliff will suddenly appear. Being in the stampede, they can't tell where exactly the cliff is, they're just trying to stay in it until the last possible minute at which point they hope to jump out of the stampede themselves and enjoy their position up on the hill, while watching everyone else tumble off the cliff as they look down on the poor suckers who didn't have the fortitude to earn the big payoff. The realistic value of a commodity or stock is not only not their primary concern, it's the exact thing they're working against. They are uninformed speculators whose behavior amplifies both mania & hysteria and causes wild market swings that can have rather profound impacts on the economy. They're the strongest destabilizing force the market knows.
On the other hand, responsible, knowledgeable brokers make their trades on what they believe, in their educated opinions, to be the true value of a stock. They're usually looking to build a sustainable, profitable portfolio, not to achieve a quick short-term, high-risk gain. They of course will take advantage of the price slumps that the day trading speculators cause, and sometimes the inflated prices as well, but they are a stabilizing force who do a bit better at making rational decisions and stabilizing the market.
Sure, your burning software may be infected. It could've been infected by malware on the intarwebs, the developers who coded it may have infused it with malware. Your BIOS EEPROM in your brand-new computer could've been corrupted with malware by a delivery guy, someone in the store, or even someone at the computer factory. Your imagination is the only limit as to the ways anything might be somehow corrupt and be a security risk. Regressive arguments, assumptions, and circular reasoning are the way with security, nothing illustrates the Münchhausen Trilemma better.
So no, there's no way you can ever be 100% confident you're secure. You simply have to take reasonable precautions, make reasonable assumptions, and hope you're not overlooking something that's reasonably possible.
It is to disentangle the personal affairs of the principals from the business and to create a tidy framework for the business to be owned by multiple people but still be treated as a single entity under the law for taxation and other purposes. It was rather messy if a principal died or had to transfer his interests in the business, and it was all tied directly to him. Corporations are legal fictions that allow these commonplace issues to be resolved and the business to continue operating. As another poster mentioned, it also allows the law to put an end to shenanigans. Without being incorporated in some form, if a business felt like misbehaving, the law could only shut it down by attempting to charge whatever bad actors individually, and the resulting chaos could make it difficult to sort responsibility out. When the business is a corpus under the law, it can be held accountable in lawsuits and concealing and shuffling assets to keep them out of reach of creditors becomes less easy.
One small problem there, bud. It's not true. You see, security is one of those things you can never prove, since it's not really possible to prove a negative. You can just do the best you can and look at results. and hope that nobody proves you wrong. HOWEVER, if you're going to make vague rhetorical remarks about the potential for proving security to be lacking, well that's FUD. You're catering to fears that you have not demonstrated have any basis in reality. You're attempting to sow uncertainty and doubts where you simply haven't made your case.
In order to MAKE it true and not just be another FUD spreader, you need to do just one simple thing...prove a compelling positive. I would like to hear you make a case for a virus, in the wild, that affects Linux. Just one. I took the bait once. Back atcha kid, it's your turn to demonstrate how your statements have any basis in reality.
I'll just point out that this article was about XP being infected, Yes, it's stale and 8 years old, but whether you appreciate this fact or not, it's still the face of Microsoft Windows as far as the computing public are concerned. Security flaws and all. The vulnerability/severity/patching-delay stats that are published all over the web tell the tale of which OSes are the most secure (for whatever reasons) and are patched the fastest when a vulnerability does come to light. And for fun, here's an interesting little research project some folks did to see how all the then-current OSes fared, including popular Linux & Unix flavors, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Mac OS X. If the results surprise you, you probably have more to learn about what elements of design make an OS secure...or not. http://www.omninerd.com/articles/2006_Operating_System_Vulnerability_Summary
I'm not even suggesting Linux is insecure, other than to say it's just as open to viruses as any other OS.
Well no, no it's not. Please stop spreading the fear, uncertainty, and doubt on Microsoft's behalf if you know better, please educate yourself more if you don't.
Not all OSes are created equal. Not all default accounts that the system sets the initial end user up with are full root-level accounts which require no further authentication to modify any and all system files for the user or any processes that happen to launch under that user's credentials.
Not all OSes are closed-source that tout the notion of security-via-obscurity. Yes, I know that's one of the red herrings that Microsofties try to claim that gives Linux a security edge due to its smaller portion of desktop marketshare, but nothing is more obscure than source code that only a handful of people can see and understand its flaws. Microsoft seems to think that this is somehow more secure than open source code that has all of its flaws bared to the light of day since it was in development. But Microsoft's closed-source philosophy is obviously quite a failed model in light of how many people are able to discover flaws in it and exploit it anyway, leaving Microsoft either denying there's a problem or rushing out a fix. Sucks to be you if you're one of the people who gets infected after some ne'er-do-well discovers a flaw but before the programmers at Microsoft figure out how to fix it, because they're the only ones who can fix it for you under almost all circumstances.
Not all OSes deny you the ability to patch your computer against security vulnerabilities and other flaws that have been discovered since it was released simply because you didn't pay for them or they merely *think* you didn't pay for them.
Linux does a much better job at isolating system space from userspace. Linux was developed under the assumption that it would be attacked from all sides, so it made sure to harden and protect its vital components from the everyday users. Linux is open source, so anyone can see what's wrong with it and fix it and submit their repair for the developers to review and release...and they generally seem to do so before a black hat finds and exploits the flaw. The good folks who release distributions and manage repositories don't care if you paid for Linux or not...you can fix or even upgrade your system whether or not you have the "Genuine (dis)Advantage".
The fake AV viruses simply have a list of "threats" they "found" to bamboozle the user into paying for the "service". All paying for it does is cause the threatening popups to go away. If you stop paying, it then threatens to reinstall all the (utterly nonexistent) viruses and trojans it claims to have found. It's all a fraud wrapped-up in a tidy package of lies. The only thing the extortionware does is detect money in your bank account and remove it as soon as you provide the billing details to the operators of the scam.
The type of infection in question is very superficial. In most examples I've seen, it doesn't even require local admin permissions to infect a Windows machine. Mostly what it does is loads its executable files and makes a mess of the logged-in user's profile, but it's unable to do much damage at the system level. Some infections seem to be worse than others, it probably just depends on what permissions the current user has.
I wonder if the reason that most of the mainstream AV products fail to classify these fake anti-malware viruses as what they are-- viruses, is some sort of honor code that exists between thieves and extortionists. It's pathetic how the most expensive security products on the market today just refuse to expose and remove a virus that morphs into a well-known trojan when the user gives-in to the threats.
It might be more successful if they could only learn to SPELL and use proper GRAMMAR. This software is definitely cleverly-implemented. The extortionists' abuse of the English language turns what could be a successful scam into a comical failure.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame your users. Almost all of these fake anti-malware viruses seem to exploit flaws in certain outdated versions of Sun Java or browsers.
Not to mention, the users have little choice in the matter once exploited-- and they likely did nothing to become infected other than visiting a website that happened to be infected. The AV2009 virus and others tend to hijack the system on a superficial, but widespread infection, flooding the users with threatening popups that they are unable to close and in many cases hijacking their browsers to divert most search terms that could be related to locating a removal or security tool to the scammer's website.
I would like more details on how this is being spread. I've been battling it a handful of flavors for well over a year now. I suspect it spreads from "legit" websites that have had their databases compromised via SQL-injection attacks (as mentioned here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/24/mass_web_infection/ and in a few other stories on the Reg over the past couple of years). I have most of the staff here trained to just turn their computers off if they become infected (we have no choice but to use an outdated Java platform) or to run a scan to remove the virus.
The three "R"s? I know all about the "reboot" and "reimage" ones, but what's the 3rd? I'd be tempted to say "defenestrate", but that doesn't start with "R"...
(Yes, I am aware that the above post was referring to basic high school education...).
Cursive has a very specific application, it's a continuous script that keeps spotting to a minimum when using an ink stylus with minimal or no regulation (think quills and fountain pens). That makes it obsolete from a technical standpoint. It's not supposed to be more legible, and it makes flourishes a bit easier to incorporate because it looks like they belong. Printing is pragmatic and it's faster. Cursive script would be best taught in an art class these days. When speed writing (such as taking notes), I either type or print. While I still can write in the cursive script I learned in elementary school, even I can hardly decipher my own cursive if I've scrawled it down fast. Print writing, at least in my case, is far more legible even if hurried.
The guy lived his life, saw the end coming and chose not to suffer. The only sad part is that our sick society is in such denial about the inevitability of death that he was forced to choose such a gruesome method rather than having the option of something more peaceful.
More peaceful, like "going home", reclining in a chaise lounge, surrounded by a gorgeous panoramic video view of pre-dystopian-future Earth, with classical music playing in the background as one drinks a poison-laced beverage (nb: this is not necessarily "drinking the kool aid")?
Car/tangible goods analogies utterly fail in this type of circumstance.
That said, "I didn't know," is not grounds for nullifying a contract.
This is more how it went down: Caldera distributes Linux under the GPL. Caldera buys what's left of SCO. Caldera renames itself to "SCO Group". SCO Group claims Linux stole from SCO's intellectual property.
So the questions are more whether (a) Caldera/SCO Group's acceptance of the GPL wiped out all future claims they might have against Linux, and (b) whether they could possibly inherit any and all potential past and present infringement claims simply upon purchasing some rights to a given piece of intellectual property. It doesn't matter if they put the code there or not. Caldera agreed to the GPL in regards to the entire package that their Linux distribution was at the time. Not solely the code they contributed, but the whole thing.
A more accurate analogy would be that Caldera sold a car with a stolen radio installed, they either didn't know or simply didn't care. Then they bought the entire estate of someone who had just died, who it found out happened to be the radio's rightful owner. Then Caldera sued the person they sold the car to for damages relating to the possession of the stolen radio and all the listening enjoyment they experienced. I would say this scenario wouldn't fly in any court of law. It is usually assumed that unless specifically stated otherwise, when someone transfers ownership of something to someone else, they are necessarily making a binding quitclaim as far as their interests in the property are concerned.
Licenses to use/distribute/modify software are not transferring ownership to any tangible goods, but they are essentially a conditional quitclaim. Once someone licenses their code under the GPL, there are no take-backs and suing people who use it in the future, all their claims against that package are gone forever. You can't un-license your contribution under the GPL any more than you can un-see that extreme porn your friend emailed you last week.
My question is whether Caldera ceased to exist before SCO Group was incorporated. This would be the only way I can see that SCO could arguably have any standing here, if it was just a company that bought a cool addition to its portfolio and then changed its name from one thing to the other, I doubt that'd float.
If you think the sound quality on your cordless phones is good, try one of those old Western Electric rotary dial phones. They really don't make them like they used to. I suppose they were so well-engineered because the Bell System didn't want to be replacing them constantly, that would cost them money, so they built them to work well and work virtually forever so those lease dollars would keep rolling in.
The Model 500 is over 50 years old now. I have one that was in my cabin when I bought it. It outlasted about a dozen modern cordless phones until I just got sick of replacing them and stuck with it (I rewired the connections it so it would ring normally). It had been the only phone in the cabin probably since the 50s, it was the only landline phone in my place at the time I disconnected my landline in favor of my mobile phone.
What can I say, I held out as long as I could, but the condition of the copper trunk is in absolutely deplorable condition due to damage from snow plows & road graders and lack of timely corrective maintenance when that damage occurred. I couldn't use a modem over that line except for the occasional lucid moment in the dead of either summer or winter (when the ground wasn't heaving due to freezing or thawing, or maybe it was a moisture issue with the pedestals or switching equipment), and sometimes even the handset was barely usable due to cross-talk and static in the spring and fall. The techs just couldn't do much to fix it without replacing all the aged, wrecked copper, so they didn't bother. When Qwest reinstated distance surcharges due to my rural location, that was the end of it. At least in my case, the landline was a victim of simply being unable to compete. Yeah, the audio quality was great when it was good, but it was unusable when it was bad. It's really not worth $25/month (IMHO) to pay for the use of failing infrastructure that the phone company didn't seem to have any plans to replace. I have no sympathy for them when they cry about losing landline customers, in most cases, it's their own fault.
I'm not that AC and I have no clue about the allegations against Zionists, but it's a historical fact that the "Final Solution" originally was just to deport the undesirables.
The only problem with that was that the war ruined those plans. Ships that were supposed to carry the human cargo were apparently stuck in port by blockades and other countries refused to take the refugees. Even if there was some crazy Zionist conspiracy, it wasn't the reason the deportations failed. Camps that were designed as transportation hubs became overcrowded. There were still prisoners arriving by the boxcar-full, though. Conditions became deplorable, and on top of that, the Nazis were struggling with food supplies to keep their armies fed (which was their priority) and so prisoners started starving too. Rather than reverse course because the plan had failed, the Nazis started rationalizing that it would be better to start euthanizing the prisoners rather than let them starve to death or die of diseases, and death camps became established. But that's when the real horrors started, because then they started down other slippery slopes that resulted in even greater atrocities, including just making new purpose-built death camps, ceasing to make deportation efforts, and losing all pretenses.
This is why Americans can't allow ourselves to rationalize why it's okay to suspend liberties for any classes of people we view to be threats or to imprison scores of them in camps like Guantanamo around the globe for Thought Crimes. The moment you start going down the path that justifies imprisoning non-criminals, who you can't hold real trials for because their crimes are not really defined, and you essentially make them non-persons, it's that much easier to rationalize on down that slope. We say we need to do it to make ourselves safer and stronger, but if we don't check that behavior, it'll lead to shame that our culture won't be able to live down.
I'm not sure that "friends" is the appropriate word here. People who are kind enough to beg the OP to use his stuff because they're too lazy or stupid to buy their own are generally not "friends", they're sponges. What's the likelihood they'd do him favors in return when he's in need? Do they hang out with him after class and help him with his work a lot? Or are they just cordial to him and his best pal in the world when they need something from him and otherwise he may as well not exist? If so, they're sponges. If the willingness to be used by sponges is a mark of good social graces, I don't see a problem with being at the bottom of that social pecking order. There are only certain situations involving social politics where it might be to one's advantage to do so.
That said, there's a place for social gifting. If someone has a desperate need and you help them out, that's an entirely different thing. Your generosity is still a scarce resource that will be appreciated and not assumed or taken-advantage of. If someone really is a friend, it's appropriate to share since generosity is mutual. But for people who just want to take advantage and use your stuff so they don't have to buy and maintain their own, "Sorry, can't help you there," is an appropriate answer, especially if there's --any-- chance you'd lose a non-trivial amount of time and money due to what might someone might do to the item they wish to borrow, and you don't have a reasonable expectation that they'd make it right in such an event.
We used to do this when they didn't have the ability to use frames, had too old of a browser, or used an unsupported browser. I used to have a couple different versions of websites to be both compatible with IE and Netscape, but now there's no reason for that. If I was implementing a site these days that was complex enough that IE 6 would choke on it, I don't think I'd even bother to make an alternate version. I'd just make a simple error page stating that the visitor was using an unsupported browser and have download links to mozilla.com and maybe microsoft.com.
To the "...but your CLIENTS might need it!" argument which others have mentioned, would you really want a client like that? Being hopelessly behind due to organizational incompetence manifests itself in many ways, and one is using horribly outdated software. The customer is not always right, and taking-on a customer who's chronically wrong will bring worlds of grief. Part of good business management is being willing to "fire" your customers and not take jobs that will be more trouble than they're worth. The best case scenario is you somehow manage to make the customer happy and get paid. The more likely scenario is that nothing will make them happy, everything you do will be wrong because they don't have any clue what they actually want or how to implement it, they'll provide the wrong specs and then revise themselves time and time again, and then they'll not pay you & they'll mention how much you suck to the rest of their contacts. After a couple such experiences, I learned that I needed to screen my customers in much the same way that they reviewed the bids folks submitted to them. I haven't had a significant problem with a client since I took that mindset into bidding on jobs.
I would tend to think of such a comment as a psychological ploy to check the fanboy flamer attitude, since a fanboy couldn't well throw an irrational tantrum and mod the poster down without giving-in to the notion that he's an irrational fanboy at some level. Even someone who was thinking about modding the post down for a legitimate gripe might hesitate to do so for similar reasons. Nobody wants to be a Microsoft fanboy.
But nearly as prominently, it plays to the crowd, just like a politician calling for change & hope who is promising to turn the establishment on its ear. The "I'm standing-up against the corruption and stupidity at potential risk to my own reputation" tends to be a big hit when one is largely preaching to the choir.
All that said, it was a harshly-worded post, and while I agree with it, I can see how it could set-off some delusional Microsoft fanboys. The author was clearly conscious of the abrasive nature of his rebuttal.
Slashdot Mirror
Hypotheticals don't cut it. I'd like to hear an example of a single feature in Office that is so critical as to make a spreadsheet not work at all, which isn't supported in Open Office.
The most common objections I hear to Open Office are that it doesn't look the same and that it doesn't have wizards. The more prevalent problems I encounter are people trying to open Office 2007 documents on Windows 2003. They usually don't want to spend a boatload of money just to be able to open documents from work while they're at home. I usually end up showing them how to open the documents at work and "save as...", though many of them have opted to just get OO because it gets the job done even if it's not as pretty.
Hah, that's what I thought, too.
/sarcasm (in case you couldn't tell)
Indulgences were the fundraising tool, the notion of Purgatory simply created the demand. Johann Tetzel even came up with a witty slogan, translated from German, it went something like, "Every time a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs!".
This very act of blatant corruption is purportedly what motivated Martin Luther to post his theses on the church door, and later led to the schism. So naturally Protestants would wish to distance themselves from the things the movement's founder was protesting.
"Moral Hazard" is a very specific perverse incentive, I think there's a different one at play when it comes to day traders. I can't think of a specific term to describe it, other than it's sort of a ruleset for a grand game of "chicken", where everyone is rushing towards an unknown doom point. Those who bail early win the least, those who hold out the longest come closest to catastrophe, but also have the potential to win the biggest payoffs.
So, these people are merely doing their best to run up a hill of ascending prices in the midst of a stampede. There's a cliff at the top of this hill, which they know full well is ahead of them because they're reasonably (if not fully) aware that the value is inflated and as soon as enough investors pull-out of the stampede, the cliff will suddenly appear. Being in the stampede, they can't tell where exactly the cliff is, they're just trying to stay in it until the last possible minute at which point they hope to jump out of the stampede themselves and enjoy their position up on the hill, while watching everyone else tumble off the cliff as they look down on the poor suckers who didn't have the fortitude to earn the big payoff. The realistic value of a commodity or stock is not only not their primary concern, it's the exact thing they're working against. They are uninformed speculators whose behavior amplifies both mania & hysteria and causes wild market swings that can have rather profound impacts on the economy. They're the strongest destabilizing force the market knows.
On the other hand, responsible, knowledgeable brokers make their trades on what they believe, in their educated opinions, to be the true value of a stock. They're usually looking to build a sustainable, profitable portfolio, not to achieve a quick short-term, high-risk gain. They of course will take advantage of the price slumps that the day trading speculators cause, and sometimes the inflated prices as well, but they are a stabilizing force who do a bit better at making rational decisions and stabilizing the market.
Sure, your burning software may be infected. It could've been infected by malware on the intarwebs, the developers who coded it may have infused it with malware. Your BIOS EEPROM in your brand-new computer could've been corrupted with malware by a delivery guy, someone in the store, or even someone at the computer factory. Your imagination is the only limit as to the ways anything might be somehow corrupt and be a security risk. Regressive arguments, assumptions, and circular reasoning are the way with security, nothing illustrates the Münchhausen Trilemma better.
So no, there's no way you can ever be 100% confident you're secure. You simply have to take reasonable precautions, make reasonable assumptions, and hope you're not overlooking something that's reasonably possible.
All I can say is, "Kudos, Comcast!"
Those are two words that just don't seem quite right next to each other, but yet there they are.
It is to disentangle the personal affairs of the principals from the business and to create a tidy framework for the business to be owned by multiple people but still be treated as a single entity under the law for taxation and other purposes. It was rather messy if a principal died or had to transfer his interests in the business, and it was all tied directly to him. Corporations are legal fictions that allow these commonplace issues to be resolved and the business to continue operating. As another poster mentioned, it also allows the law to put an end to shenanigans. Without being incorporated in some form, if a business felt like misbehaving, the law could only shut it down by attempting to charge whatever bad actors individually, and the resulting chaos could make it difficult to sort responsibility out. When the business is a corpus under the law, it can be held accountable in lawsuits and concealing and shuffling assets to keep them out of reach of creditors becomes less easy.
It's not FUD if it's true.
One small problem there, bud. It's not true. You see, security is one of those things you can never prove, since it's not really possible to prove a negative. You can just do the best you can and look at results. and hope that nobody proves you wrong. HOWEVER, if you're going to make vague rhetorical remarks about the potential for proving security to be lacking, well that's FUD. You're catering to fears that you have not demonstrated have any basis in reality. You're attempting to sow uncertainty and doubts where you simply haven't made your case.
In order to MAKE it true and not just be another FUD spreader, you need to do just one simple thing...prove a compelling positive. I would like to hear you make a case for a virus, in the wild, that affects Linux. Just one. I took the bait once. Back atcha kid, it's your turn to demonstrate how your statements have any basis in reality.
I'll just point out that this article was about XP being infected, Yes, it's stale and 8 years old, but whether you appreciate this fact or not, it's still the face of Microsoft Windows as far as the computing public are concerned. Security flaws and all. The vulnerability/severity/patching-delay stats that are published all over the web tell the tale of which OSes are the most secure (for whatever reasons) and are patched the fastest when a vulnerability does come to light. And for fun, here's an interesting little research project some folks did to see how all the then-current OSes fared, including popular Linux & Unix flavors, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Mac OS X. If the results surprise you, you probably have more to learn about what elements of design make an OS secure...or not. http://www.omninerd.com/articles/2006_Operating_System_Vulnerability_Summary
I'm not even suggesting Linux is insecure, other than to say it's just as open to viruses as any other OS.
Well no, no it's not. Please stop spreading the fear, uncertainty, and doubt on Microsoft's behalf if you know better, please educate yourself more if you don't.
Not all OSes are created equal. Not all default accounts that the system sets the initial end user up with are full root-level accounts which require no further authentication to modify any and all system files for the user or any processes that happen to launch under that user's credentials.
Not all OSes are closed-source that tout the notion of security-via-obscurity. Yes, I know that's one of the red herrings that Microsofties try to claim that gives Linux a security edge due to its smaller portion of desktop marketshare, but nothing is more obscure than source code that only a handful of people can see and understand its flaws. Microsoft seems to think that this is somehow more secure than open source code that has all of its flaws bared to the light of day since it was in development. But Microsoft's closed-source philosophy is obviously quite a failed model in light of how many people are able to discover flaws in it and exploit it anyway, leaving Microsoft either denying there's a problem or rushing out a fix. Sucks to be you if you're one of the people who gets infected after some ne'er-do-well discovers a flaw but before the programmers at Microsoft figure out how to fix it, because they're the only ones who can fix it for you under almost all circumstances.
Not all OSes deny you the ability to patch your computer against security vulnerabilities and other flaws that have been discovered since it was released simply because you didn't pay for them or they merely *think* you didn't pay for them.
Linux does a much better job at isolating system space from userspace. Linux was developed under the assumption that it would be attacked from all sides, so it made sure to harden and protect its vital components from the everyday users. Linux is open source, so anyone can see what's wrong with it and fix it and submit their repair for the developers to review and release...and they generally seem to do so before a black hat finds and exploits the flaw. The good folks who release distributions and manage repositories don't care if you paid for Linux or not...you can fix or even upgrade your system whether or not you have the "Genuine (dis)Advantage".
The fake AV viruses simply have a list of "threats" they "found" to bamboozle the user into paying for the "service". All paying for it does is cause the threatening popups to go away. If you stop paying, it then threatens to reinstall all the (utterly nonexistent) viruses and trojans it claims to have found. It's all a fraud wrapped-up in a tidy package of lies. The only thing the extortionware does is detect money in your bank account and remove it as soon as you provide the billing details to the operators of the scam.
The type of infection in question is very superficial. In most examples I've seen, it doesn't even require local admin permissions to infect a Windows machine. Mostly what it does is loads its executable files and makes a mess of the logged-in user's profile, but it's unable to do much damage at the system level. Some infections seem to be worse than others, it probably just depends on what permissions the current user has.
I wonder if the reason that most of the mainstream AV products fail to classify these fake anti-malware viruses as what they are-- viruses, is some sort of honor code that exists between thieves and extortionists. It's pathetic how the most expensive security products on the market today just refuse to expose and remove a virus that morphs into a well-known trojan when the user gives-in to the threats.
It might be more successful if they could only learn to SPELL and use proper GRAMMAR. This software is definitely cleverly-implemented. The extortionists' abuse of the English language turns what could be a successful scam into a comical failure.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame your users. Almost all of these fake anti-malware viruses seem to exploit flaws in certain outdated versions of Sun Java or browsers.
Not to mention, the users have little choice in the matter once exploited-- and they likely did nothing to become infected other than visiting a website that happened to be infected. The AV2009 virus and others tend to hijack the system on a superficial, but widespread infection, flooding the users with threatening popups that they are unable to close and in many cases hijacking their browsers to divert most search terms that could be related to locating a removal or security tool to the scammer's website.
I would like more details on how this is being spread. I've been battling it a handful of flavors for well over a year now. I suspect it spreads from "legit" websites that have had their databases compromised via SQL-injection attacks (as mentioned here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/24/mass_web_infection/ and in a few other stories on the Reg over the past couple of years). I have most of the staff here trained to just turn their computers off if they become infected (we have no choice but to use an outdated Java platform) or to run a scan to remove the virus.
The three "R"s? I know all about the "reboot" and "reimage" ones, but what's the 3rd? I'd be tempted to say "defenestrate", but that doesn't start with "R"...
(Yes, I am aware that the above post was referring to basic high school education...).
Cursive has a very specific application, it's a continuous script that keeps spotting to a minimum when using an ink stylus with minimal or no regulation (think quills and fountain pens). That makes it obsolete from a technical standpoint. It's not supposed to be more legible, and it makes flourishes a bit easier to incorporate because it looks like they belong. Printing is pragmatic and it's faster. Cursive script would be best taught in an art class these days. When speed writing (such as taking notes), I either type or print. While I still can write in the cursive script I learned in elementary school, even I can hardly decipher my own cursive if I've scrawled it down fast. Print writing, at least in my case, is far more legible even if hurried.
Man, I was about to say the same thing. I'm still surprised the first comment on this story wasn't something to this effect, though!
The guy lived his life, saw the end coming and chose not to suffer. The only sad part is that our sick society is in such denial about the inevitability of death that he was forced to choose such a gruesome method rather than having the option of something more peaceful.
More peaceful, like "going home", reclining in a chaise lounge, surrounded by a gorgeous panoramic video view of pre-dystopian-future Earth, with classical music playing in the background as one drinks a poison-laced beverage (nb: this is not necessarily "drinking the kool aid")?
Car/tangible goods analogies utterly fail in this type of circumstance.
That said, "I didn't know," is not grounds for nullifying a contract.
This is more how it went down: Caldera distributes Linux under the GPL. Caldera buys what's left of SCO. Caldera renames itself to "SCO Group". SCO Group claims Linux stole from SCO's intellectual property.
So the questions are more whether (a) Caldera/SCO Group's acceptance of the GPL wiped out all future claims they might have against Linux, and (b) whether they could possibly inherit any and all potential past and present infringement claims simply upon purchasing some rights to a given piece of intellectual property. It doesn't matter if they put the code there or not. Caldera agreed to the GPL in regards to the entire package that their Linux distribution was at the time. Not solely the code they contributed, but the whole thing.
A more accurate analogy would be that Caldera sold a car with a stolen radio installed, they either didn't know or simply didn't care. Then they bought the entire estate of someone who had just died, who it found out happened to be the radio's rightful owner. Then Caldera sued the person they sold the car to for damages relating to the possession of the stolen radio and all the listening enjoyment they experienced. I would say this scenario wouldn't fly in any court of law. It is usually assumed that unless specifically stated otherwise, when someone transfers ownership of something to someone else, they are necessarily making a binding quitclaim as far as their interests in the property are concerned.
Licenses to use/distribute/modify software are not transferring ownership to any tangible goods, but they are essentially a conditional quitclaim. Once someone licenses their code under the GPL, there are no take-backs and suing people who use it in the future, all their claims against that package are gone forever. You can't un-license your contribution under the GPL any more than you can un-see that extreme porn your friend emailed you last week.
My question is whether Caldera ceased to exist before SCO Group was incorporated. This would be the only way I can see that SCO could arguably have any standing here, if it was just a company that bought a cool addition to its portfolio and then changed its name from one thing to the other, I doubt that'd float.
If you think the sound quality on your cordless phones is good, try one of those old Western Electric rotary dial phones. They really don't make them like they used to. I suppose they were so well-engineered because the Bell System didn't want to be replacing them constantly, that would cost them money, so they built them to work well and work virtually forever so those lease dollars would keep rolling in.
The Model 500 is over 50 years old now. I have one that was in my cabin when I bought it. It outlasted about a dozen modern cordless phones until I just got sick of replacing them and stuck with it (I rewired the connections it so it would ring normally). It had been the only phone in the cabin probably since the 50s, it was the only landline phone in my place at the time I disconnected my landline in favor of my mobile phone.
What can I say, I held out as long as I could, but the condition of the copper trunk is in absolutely deplorable condition due to damage from snow plows & road graders and lack of timely corrective maintenance when that damage occurred. I couldn't use a modem over that line except for the occasional lucid moment in the dead of either summer or winter (when the ground wasn't heaving due to freezing or thawing, or maybe it was a moisture issue with the pedestals or switching equipment), and sometimes even the handset was barely usable due to cross-talk and static in the spring and fall. The techs just couldn't do much to fix it without replacing all the aged, wrecked copper, so they didn't bother. When Qwest reinstated distance surcharges due to my rural location, that was the end of it. At least in my case, the landline was a victim of simply being unable to compete. Yeah, the audio quality was great when it was good, but it was unusable when it was bad. It's really not worth $25/month (IMHO) to pay for the use of failing infrastructure that the phone company didn't seem to have any plans to replace. I have no sympathy for them when they cry about losing landline customers, in most cases, it's their own fault.
I'm not that AC and I have no clue about the allegations against Zionists, but it's a historical fact that the "Final Solution" originally was just to deport the undesirables.
The only problem with that was that the war ruined those plans. Ships that were supposed to carry the human cargo were apparently stuck in port by blockades and other countries refused to take the refugees. Even if there was some crazy Zionist conspiracy, it wasn't the reason the deportations failed. Camps that were designed as transportation hubs became overcrowded. There were still prisoners arriving by the boxcar-full, though. Conditions became deplorable, and on top of that, the Nazis were struggling with food supplies to keep their armies fed (which was their priority) and so prisoners started starving too. Rather than reverse course because the plan had failed, the Nazis started rationalizing that it would be better to start euthanizing the prisoners rather than let them starve to death or die of diseases, and death camps became established. But that's when the real horrors started, because then they started down other slippery slopes that resulted in even greater atrocities, including just making new purpose-built death camps, ceasing to make deportation efforts, and losing all pretenses.
This is why Americans can't allow ourselves to rationalize why it's okay to suspend liberties for any classes of people we view to be threats or to imprison scores of them in camps like Guantanamo around the globe for Thought Crimes. The moment you start going down the path that justifies imprisoning non-criminals, who you can't hold real trials for because their crimes are not really defined, and you essentially make them non-persons, it's that much easier to rationalize on down that slope. We say we need to do it to make ourselves safer and stronger, but if we don't check that behavior, it'll lead to shame that our culture won't be able to live down.
I'm not sure that "friends" is the appropriate word here. People who are kind enough to beg the OP to use his stuff because they're too lazy or stupid to buy their own are generally not "friends", they're sponges. What's the likelihood they'd do him favors in return when he's in need? Do they hang out with him after class and help him with his work a lot? Or are they just cordial to him and his best pal in the world when they need something from him and otherwise he may as well not exist? If so, they're sponges. If the willingness to be used by sponges is a mark of good social graces, I don't see a problem with being at the bottom of that social pecking order. There are only certain situations involving social politics where it might be to one's advantage to do so.
That said, there's a place for social gifting. If someone has a desperate need and you help them out, that's an entirely different thing. Your generosity is still a scarce resource that will be appreciated and not assumed or taken-advantage of. If someone really is a friend, it's appropriate to share since generosity is mutual. But for people who just want to take advantage and use your stuff so they don't have to buy and maintain their own, "Sorry, can't help you there," is an appropriate answer, especially if there's --any-- chance you'd lose a non-trivial amount of time and money due to what might someone might do to the item they wish to borrow, and you don't have a reasonable expectation that they'd make it right in such an event.
We used to do this when they didn't have the ability to use frames, had too old of a browser, or used an unsupported browser. I used to have a couple different versions of websites to be both compatible with IE and Netscape, but now there's no reason for that. If I was implementing a site these days that was complex enough that IE 6 would choke on it, I don't think I'd even bother to make an alternate version. I'd just make a simple error page stating that the visitor was using an unsupported browser and have download links to mozilla.com and maybe microsoft.com.
To the "...but your CLIENTS might need it!" argument which others have mentioned, would you really want a client like that? Being hopelessly behind due to organizational incompetence manifests itself in many ways, and one is using horribly outdated software. The customer is not always right, and taking-on a customer who's chronically wrong will bring worlds of grief. Part of good business management is being willing to "fire" your customers and not take jobs that will be more trouble than they're worth. The best case scenario is you somehow manage to make the customer happy and get paid. The more likely scenario is that nothing will make them happy, everything you do will be wrong because they don't have any clue what they actually want or how to implement it, they'll provide the wrong specs and then revise themselves time and time again, and then they'll not pay you & they'll mention how much you suck to the rest of their contacts. After a couple such experiences, I learned that I needed to screen my customers in much the same way that they reviewed the bids folks submitted to them. I haven't had a significant problem with a client since I took that mindset into bidding on jobs.
I would tend to think of such a comment as a psychological ploy to check the fanboy flamer attitude, since a fanboy couldn't well throw an irrational tantrum and mod the poster down without giving-in to the notion that he's an irrational fanboy at some level. Even someone who was thinking about modding the post down for a legitimate gripe might hesitate to do so for similar reasons. Nobody wants to be a Microsoft fanboy.
But nearly as prominently, it plays to the crowd, just like a politician calling for change & hope who is promising to turn the establishment on its ear. The "I'm standing-up against the corruption and stupidity at potential risk to my own reputation" tends to be a big hit when one is largely preaching to the choir.
All that said, it was a harshly-worded post, and while I agree with it, I can see how it could set-off some delusional Microsoft fanboys. The author was clearly conscious of the abrasive nature of his rebuttal.