People have been posting some insightful comments, many of which seem to be emphasizing the difficulty of convincing the boss, the HR people, etc... to convert to a different kind of software.
But everybody seems to have forgotten the most compelling factor as far as I think most small businesses would be concerned-- the price tag. Linux replacements for MS Office are FREE!
Large corporations have got to be spending six to seven figures on MS Office, so it must be a convincing factor for them too.
Frankly, as good as Star Office might be, I won't be comfortable using _my_ pitch to a boss until the Helix Code stuff is finished and solid.... but other people will certainly disagree.
Without sounding too cheeky, I want to make sure you guys know that you are being interviewed by a truly unique audience...
Slashdot is frequented by some of the best, brightest, and most bored members of the high tech community. Does Metallica realize that if you asked this community to HELP you build the internet music distribution center of the future, people would likely jump at the change to help you do it! Regardless of what other opinions people may have, I doubt that anybody really wants to infringe on your rights to make money on your own hard work, but we also recognize that the times they are a changin'...
As a famous and talented band, you have a unique opportunity to work with some of these talented tech folks and build something that will be truly lasting. How cool would it be to have Metallica's legacy be: "The Band brough the Music Industry into Tomorrow" as opposed to "The Band that sued thousands of its own fans"?
Just ask! You'd be suprised how many talented people would be excited to pitch in.
One thing that really impressed me about the original Macintosh machinese was that the Apple engineers were really creative about how they built the hardware-- not just what the box itself looked like.
For example, I was really impressed when I learned that the Macintosh SE/30 included custom ICs to accelerate the normal windowing GUI operations. This was YEARS before the PC saw any kind of real 2D acceleration... and it was a great idea. Anybody who ever played with an SE/30 and a PC of the same era would see the awesome performance advantage the SE/30 had.
That being said, I was reading through some of "Inside Macintosh" books circa the SE/30 and these guys looked like they were BEASTS to program-- people really had to write assembly language GUI programs? I guess I'm a spoiled product of the OOPY late 90s, but that seems like a deathwish if ever I heard one.
Another interesting tidbit-- the Apple Macintosh OS is more INfamouse than famous, we all know, but those from around the San Jose area will appreciate the code name Apple engineers had for the OS: Winchester Mystery OS -- signal traps and jumps to null addresses etc... I laughed hard at that one...
Good that she's woken up to the real world without her life being destroyed, and hopefully she'll make much wiser decisions in the future.
This week is sexual abuse awareness week... Looks like some slashdotters could be more aware. You're not REALLY suggesting that it was her fault she got raped by four men, are you? Because she was drunk?
Linux, as defined by CmdrTaco of Slashdot is: "the GNU license operating system created by Linus Torvalds and the rest of the internet. Unix-like and free, it powers power systems maintained by power users."
Does anyone else find it very humorous that Rob Malda serves as the authoritative definer of Linux?
Not to pick on him in particular, but celebrity is ridiculous sometimes.
But I really think it is ridiculous that the Linux community has to waste CPU cycles on trying to educate people about this distinction.
It would be one thing if all the stuff I saw in the papers was "Redhat blah blah blah", but this is simply not the case! I have by far seen "Linux" in the headlines, and not "Redhat"... Do lots of other people really feel differently?
One of the big problems I have with organized religion is that the adherents of various congregations get their panties all in a bunch when they think they're being passed over. Redhat may well have the strongest following for the moment, but that could change in a wink. Linux, however, is a software movement that is here to stay.
Get some sense people and spend your energy on something more productive to the open source movement! (And this comes from a die hard Slackware user!)
This page was what confused me... It is the page linked to by the "Features" button in each page's header... I found what are apparently the most up to date release notes on the download page...
When can I expect some distribution with these features?
1) XFree86 4.0 (How can the Mandrake page get away with saying their 3.0 is the "latest"?)
2) Journalled File System (any of the contenders)... I know this is still very much up in the air still, but I figured that someone on Slashdot would be able to give a good date estimate for when to expect it in a mainstream distro)
3) Complete support for the DRI (Direct Redering Infrastructure?)-- perhaps this is directly involved with 1..
4) GOOD sound support-- How come even with Creative Labs cards I still have trouble getting sound to work, Redhat included? Does everyone else have the same troubles?
Sheesh... if you're going to do it, why not do it right?
Who knows where I can find a list of links to new PDAs/Laptops that are going to be using Crusoe? (forgive the slightly off-topicness please moderators)
A previous post suggested that ORBS, or some organization of the same nature, sue AOL. As I pointed out in response to that post, I think getting lawyers involved at all is a bad idea, on EITHER side.
If sysadmins just start refusing all AOL e-mail when their servers act up, I think AOL will fix its problems fast. Maybe they will be dumb enough to take legal action too, but you better believe that if everyone banded together to refuse AOL mail, they would listen up FAST. Much faster than any court case could ever proceed.
The customer complaints would be tremendous and it would cause an ISP to lose credibility with customers who don't understand things like ORBS and open relays, who only understand things like grandma can't e-mail her granddaughter happy birthday.
But I think this is exactly what needs to happen in order for AOL to change their practices. Here at Dartmouth, the system administrators regularly just stop refusing AOL e-mail onto campus. If enough administrators responded to AOL this way, I think they would wisen up quickly.
Furthermore, I think this is a much cheaper and effecient solution than relying on the court system to force them into doing it. God knows enough stuff is being forced through legally these days-- and it almost seems like a crap shoot as to whether or not the judge/jury will actually "get it" when the problem is explained to them.
As painful as it sounds, boycotting AOL e-mail when their servers get rowdy is what I think will be the best solution... I'm happy ORBS put them on the list.
I love GNOME, but one thing that I really miss is good integration of sound. Let me be clear... I'm not just talking about blips and burps to coincide with user clicks on the standard window widgets... I want it to be easy for application developer to add in audio aspects to their applications UI presentation.
For example-- if I was developing a word processor, I'd want it to be straightforward for me the developer to add a pleasing click with each word that is highlighted.
I understand there are some technical problems to be solved here, but there are more than enough sharp people working on GNOME to make good sound UI happen-- if it is made a priority. I admit that I'm pretty ignorant as to how GNOME is approaching sound. Could you fill me in (and hopefully reassure me)?
Normally I would reserve comment, but... This announcement makes PERFECT sense to me. See, by having the Microsoft software engineers write code for a REAL operating system, Bill must be hoping that they'll actually learn good development techniques (that is, besides hitting the REBOOT button or slapping a three finger salute-- things they're assuredly experts at). By coding in an environment where mistakes mean just trying again instead of another trip to the water cooler, things might start to really look up for the quality of Microsoft's code. Just one more way that Linux is going to change the world! Never thought it would actually be by SAVING Microsoft's ass... But chalk it up to Bill for having the master plan! BWA HA HA!
He said that "it felt wrong", both in terms of execution (it's much faster to click your way around the OS than try to short-cut through it using voice commands), and it terms of the social stigma that's attached to "talking to yourself". He didn't think that the latter would be overcome, but he also pointed out that a long time ago, even talking on a cell phone was out-of-the-ordinary enough for people to look at you funny.
Why not just have both (stylus and voice) and allow the user to use whichever is most appropriate?
I agree that voice doesn't make sense for some OS-type tasks, but if I want to leave an interesting note for myself, or dictate and e-mail, I really don't want to deal with typing.
I think the social stigma of "talking to yourself" is a bad argument... Does anybody think it looks weird when police, etc.. use walkie-talkies? Personally, I think the idea of talking into my PDA would be kind of cool.
Besides, isn't talking into a cell phone "talking to yourself" as nobody is actually there with you. Seems like talking to your PDA would look a lot like talking to your cell phone! (OK, maybe it IS ridiculous looking...;) )
I somehow doubt that modern speech recognition technology is sufficient to recognize instructions at a quiet-whisper level.
Let's ignore for a moment that the most recent version of MacOS seems to be just fine at recognizing individual voices. This argument, and others like it in the discussion, miss the point I think-- Even if technology isn't good enough to do it now, there is a fantastic future for voice-recognition in PDAs. I personally have held off on buying a Palm Pilot because I don't want to have to fuss with the pen all the time. If somebody manages to develop a PDA than can effectively save me the pain of having to write in everything, I will be all set to buy.
At least initially, I would be ok with a combination stylus/voice recognition interface... Saying that a crowd of people will mess up voice recognition and therefore it is lousy for PDAs seems the same argument as "trying to write on a bumpy car/bus will make it impossible for PDAs to recognize handwriting"... and yet people seem to be just fine with Palm's handwriting recognition.
Bottom line: there is a GREAT future for voice rec in PDAs...
Bullshit. You must be on a different web than I am, because I have never seen a web browser where Javascript was a key feature -- not counting stuff like games that are written to show off what Javascript can do. From what I've seen, the main use of Javascript is that newbie webmeisters try to use it as a replacement for links.
I humbly disagree... DHTML, which is rapidly establishing itself as a nice way of deploying apps that do a lot of work on the client side, counts in a big way on scripting capabilities. Slashdot wouldn't be half as slow as it is if it didn't have silly perl scripts doing so much on the server side...
This is your idea of a "key feature"?! Look, if the web needs menus, that's fine. But running scripts on the client side isn't the right way to add that feature. Anybody with half a brain could do a lot better.
It was an example... thus, easy to pick on. The point was that scripting offers easy ways to make the browsing experience more friendly.
Besides, what's the big deal about making it easy for newbies to add nice features to their web pages? Does EVERYTHING have to be so complex that only an experienced engineer can have nice pages? HTML became popular in the first place because it was accessible to the masses... Scripting extends this promise...
The engineering circle has had years to do something about this crap. They didn't. Browser makers could have shipping their browsers with all client-side execution "features" disabled by default, all along. They didn't. They could have put up a warning popup that tries to scare the user whenever they turn on this stuff. They didn't. Who are you calling irresponsible?
Fine. BOTH the browser makers and CERT. The solution, as I pointed out in my original post, is to put pressure on the browser makers-- preferably without creating a consumer panic. I think it is pure hysteria to be telling people to disable scripting because it is exploitable. There are a million and one leaks in security with modern computers. The size of the problem does not justify the change of creating a consumer panic.
The only way we can reliably fix this hole is for all of us running servers to remove trust of clients -- we can't depend on clients to disable scripting or cookies.
And that is really the key. Not only can we not depend on them to disable scripting and cookies, we SHOULD NOT depend on them to do so... It makes all the "good guys" lives that much more difficult when they can't take advantage of the neat technologies available to users just because there are those out there abusing them.
IMHO, most of this problem could be solved by having smarter browsers. Granted, it is a difficult problem, but what is this about ActiveX controls allowing you to reformat a hard drive!? That is utterly ridiculous. I can't believe that any browser manufacturer would even consider allowing this kind of access to the underlying OS (and I actually _like_ IE).
My proposal:
1) Make it a no-brainer for the consumer... Don't bother them at all unless there is a genuine crisis. Exploitable security holes are only genuinely a crisis if they do something worse than crash a machine-- which happens a lot anyways to those of us who aren't running "real" operating systems.
2) Make it almost a no-brainer for the developer. I should have to think about invalid input from the user, definitely. But I shouldn't have to worry about buffer overrun errors and the like... The subsystems I develop on should be robust.
3) Make it the browser developer's job to keep the system safe from the Web. The browser is our "window" into the web. Thus, IT should filter the nasties that might come in...
Frankly, I think this kind of notice is totally irresponsible on the part of CERT. This is exactly the kind of news that the media loves to latch onto and turn into all kinds of sensational press. CERT actually recommends in their notice that users disable all scripting in their browsers! There may well be a security issue here, but that does not justify risking a major consumer panic... Scripting is a key feature of almost every interesting site these days-- even the one's that don't do a ton of stuff on the client side have nice "mouseovers" to allow friendly messages for the user at the bottom of the screen.
Following CERT's recommendations amounts to disabling a vast part of the web's functionality entirely. They should have cooperated with other authorities on the web to publish this information in a more sensible manner. Doing things this way just draws attention to a problem that can be solved inside of the engineering circle and without bugging the consumer.
Speaking in support of the non-US people who might be participating in this discussion, I think that current US immigration law is absolutely ridiculous. I have some brilliant friends at school who, simply because of the way the INS works, find it almost impossible to get their foot in the door for work-- even in the tech sector! The US should have its doors wide open to educated immigrants. Anybody who has worked for more than a week in tech realizes that the current US "lead" in technology is in a huge way related to the brilliant people that we import.
Why don't the geeks get behind some relaxation of US immigration law for those pursuing or already having a higher education?
Slashdot Mirror
People have been posting some insightful comments, many of which seem to be emphasizing the difficulty of convincing the boss, the HR people, etc... to convert to a different kind of software.
But everybody seems to have forgotten the most compelling factor as far as I think most small businesses would be concerned-- the price tag. Linux replacements for MS Office are FREE!
Large corporations have got to be spending six to seven figures on MS Office, so it must be a convincing factor for them too.
Frankly, as good as Star Office might be, I won't be comfortable using _my_ pitch to a boss until the Helix Code stuff is finished and solid.... but other people will certainly disagree.
I don't care if he is a "doctor"; he needs to take a remedial English class.
Yes, well can you REALLY justify the use of that semi-colon?
Without sounding too cheeky, I want to make sure you guys know that you are being interviewed by a truly unique audience...
Slashdot is frequented by some of the best, brightest, and most bored members of the high tech community. Does Metallica realize that if you asked this community to HELP you build the internet music distribution center of the future, people would likely jump at the change to help you do it! Regardless of what other opinions people may have, I doubt that anybody really wants to infringe on your rights to make money on your own hard work, but we also recognize that the times they are a changin'...
As a famous and talented band, you have a unique opportunity to work with some of these talented tech folks and build something that will be truly lasting. How cool would it be to have Metallica's legacy be: "The Band brough the Music Industry into Tomorrow" as opposed to "The Band that sued thousands of its own fans"?
Just ask! You'd be suprised how many talented people would be excited to pitch in.
One thing that really impressed me about the original Macintosh machinese was that the Apple engineers were really creative about how they built the hardware-- not just what the box itself looked like.
For example, I was really impressed when I learned that the Macintosh SE/30 included custom ICs to accelerate the normal windowing GUI operations. This was YEARS before the PC saw any kind of real 2D acceleration... and it was a great idea. Anybody who ever played with an SE/30 and a PC of the same era would see the awesome performance advantage the SE/30 had.
That being said, I was reading through some of "Inside Macintosh" books circa the SE/30 and these guys looked like they were BEASTS to program-- people really had to write assembly language GUI programs? I guess I'm a spoiled product of the OOPY late 90s, but that seems like a deathwish if ever I heard one.
Another interesting tidbit-- the Apple Macintosh OS is more INfamouse than famous, we all know, but those from around the San Jose area will appreciate the code name Apple engineers had for the OS: Winchester Mystery OS -- signal traps and jumps to null addresses etc... I laughed hard at that one...
Good that she's woken up to the real world without her life being destroyed, and hopefully she'll make much wiser decisions in the future.
This week is sexual abuse awareness week... Looks like some slashdotters could be more aware. You're not REALLY suggesting that it was her fault she got raped by four men, are you? Because she was drunk?
Why is the point so important for you to prove?
Seriously.
Linux, as defined by CmdrTaco of Slashdot is: "the GNU license operating system created by Linus Torvalds and the rest of the internet. Unix-like and free, it powers power systems maintained by power users."
Does anyone else find it very humorous that Rob Malda serves as the authoritative definer of Linux?
Not to pick on him in particular, but celebrity is ridiculous sometimes.
When did you make your last kernal diffs Rob?
But I really think it is ridiculous that the Linux community has to waste CPU cycles on trying to educate people about this distinction.
It would be one thing if all the stuff I saw in the papers was "Redhat blah blah blah", but this is simply not the case! I have by far seen "Linux" in the headlines, and not "Redhat"... Do lots of other people really feel differently?
One of the big problems I have with organized religion is that the adherents of various congregations get their panties all in a bunch when they think they're being passed over. Redhat may well have the strongest following for the moment, but that could change in a wink. Linux, however, is a software movement that is here to stay.
Get some sense people and spend your energy on something more productive to the open source movement! (And this comes from a die hard Slackware user!)
-dbm
Sorry for the mistaken post
This page was what confused me... It is the page linked to by the "Features" button in each page's header... I found what are apparently the most up to date release notes on the download page...
Now includes brand new XFree 4.0 servers, with new modular architecture.
Hmmph! I must have looked at the wrong page!
Still interested in answers to the other questions though...
When can I expect some distribution with these features?
1) XFree86 4.0 (How can the Mandrake page get away with saying their 3.0 is the "latest"?)
2) Journalled File System (any of the contenders)... I know this is still very much up in the air still, but I figured that someone on Slashdot would be able to give a good date estimate for when to expect it in a mainstream distro)
3) Complete support for the DRI (Direct Redering Infrastructure?)-- perhaps this is directly involved with 1..
4) GOOD sound support-- How come even with Creative Labs cards I still have trouble getting sound to work, Redhat included? Does everyone else have the same troubles?
Thanks for any answers!
Sheesh... if you're going to do it, why not do it right?
Who knows where I can find a list of links to new PDAs/Laptops that are going to be using Crusoe? (forgive the slightly off-topicness please moderators)
Does anybody else think it was less than a coincidence that the source code to the _old_ Mozilla was released on April Fool's?
Thank God the Mozilla group finally ditched it and started from scratch. My only pet peeve-- incomplete support for Cascading Style Sheets 2.0!
And when they are wrong, the lawyers descend.
A previous post suggested that ORBS, or some organization of the same nature, sue AOL. As I pointed out in response to that post, I think getting lawyers involved at all is a bad idea, on EITHER side.
If sysadmins just start refusing all AOL e-mail when their servers act up, I think AOL will fix its problems fast. Maybe they will be dumb enough to take legal action too, but you better believe that if everyone banded together to refuse AOL mail, they would listen up FAST. Much faster than any court case could ever proceed.
The customer complaints would be tremendous and it would cause an ISP to lose credibility with customers who don't understand things like ORBS and open relays, who only understand things like grandma can't e-mail her granddaughter happy birthday.
But I think this is exactly what needs to happen in order for AOL to change their practices. Here at Dartmouth, the system administrators regularly just stop refusing AOL e-mail onto campus. If enough administrators responded to AOL this way, I think they would wisen up quickly.
Furthermore, I think this is a much cheaper and effecient solution than relying on the court system to force them into doing it. God knows enough stuff is being forced through legally these days-- and it almost seems like a crap shoot as to whether or not the judge/jury will actually "get it" when the problem is explained to them.
As painful as it sounds, boycotting AOL e-mail when their servers get rowdy is what I think will be the best solution... I'm happy ORBS put them on the list.
I love GNOME, but one thing that I really miss is good integration of sound. Let me be clear... I'm not just talking about blips and burps to coincide with user clicks on the standard window widgets... I want it to be easy for application developer to add in audio aspects to their applications UI presentation.
For example-- if I was developing a word processor, I'd want it to be straightforward for me the developer to add a pleasing click with each word that is highlighted.
I understand there are some technical problems to be solved here, but there are more than enough sharp people working on GNOME to make good sound UI happen-- if it is made a priority. I admit that I'm pretty ignorant as to how GNOME is approaching sound. Could you fill me in (and hopefully reassure me)?
-dbm
Normally I would reserve comment, but... This announcement makes PERFECT sense to me. See, by having the Microsoft software engineers write code for a REAL operating system, Bill must be hoping that they'll actually learn good development techniques (that is, besides hitting the REBOOT button or slapping a three finger salute-- things they're assuredly experts at). By coding in an environment where mistakes mean just trying again instead of another trip to the water cooler, things might start to really look up for the quality of Microsoft's code. Just one more way that Linux is going to change the world! Never thought it would actually be by SAVING Microsoft's ass... But chalk it up to Bill for having the master plan! BWA HA HA!
That was a long drop for a wee person like yourself. Hope you didn't split your cantelope on the bottom...
Sheesh--- Slashdot should REALLY weed LFs on posts...
He said that "it felt wrong", both in terms of execution (it's much faster to click your way around the OS than try to short-cut through it using voice commands), and it terms of the social stigma that's attached to "talking to yourself". He didn't think that the latter would be overcome, but he also pointed out that a long time ago, even talking on a cell phone was out-of-the-ordinary enough for people to look at you funny.
;) )
Why not just have both (stylus and voice) and allow the user to use whichever is most appropriate?
I agree that voice doesn't make sense for some OS-type tasks, but if I want to leave an interesting note for myself, or dictate and e-mail, I really don't want to deal with typing.
I think the social stigma of "talking to yourself" is a bad argument... Does anybody think it looks weird when police, etc.. use walkie-talkies? Personally, I think the idea of talking into my PDA would be kind of cool.
Besides, isn't talking into a cell phone "talking to yourself" as nobody is actually there with you. Seems like talking to your PDA would look a lot like talking to your cell phone! (OK, maybe it IS ridiculous looking...
I somehow doubt that modern speech recognition technology is sufficient to recognize instructions at a quiet-whisper level.
Let's ignore for a moment that the most recent version of MacOS seems to be just fine at recognizing individual voices. This argument, and others like it in the discussion, miss the point I think-- Even if technology isn't good enough to do it now, there is a fantastic future for voice-recognition in PDAs. I personally have held off on buying a Palm Pilot because I don't want to have to fuss with the pen all the time. If somebody manages to develop a PDA than can effectively save me the pain of having to write in everything, I will be all set to buy.
At least initially, I would be ok with a combination stylus/voice recognition interface... Saying that a crowd of people will mess up voice recognition and therefore it is lousy for PDAs seems the same argument as "trying to write on a bumpy car/bus will make it impossible for PDAs to recognize handwriting"... and yet people seem to be just fine with Palm's handwriting recognition.
Bottom line: there is a GREAT future for voice rec in PDAs...
Bullshit. You must be on a different web than I am, because I have never seen a web browser where Javascript was a key feature -- not counting stuff like games that are written to show off what Javascript can do. From what I've seen, the main use of Javascript is that newbie webmeisters try to use it as a replacement for links.
I humbly disagree... DHTML, which is rapidly establishing itself as a nice way of deploying apps that do a lot of work on the client side, counts in a big way on scripting capabilities. Slashdot wouldn't be half as slow as it is if it didn't have silly perl scripts doing so much on the server side...
This is your idea of a "key feature"?! Look, if the web needs menus, that's fine. But running scripts on the client side isn't the right way to add that feature. Anybody with half a brain could do a lot better.
It was an example... thus, easy to pick on. The point was that scripting offers easy ways to make the browsing experience more friendly.
Besides, what's the big deal about making it easy for newbies to add nice features to their web pages? Does EVERYTHING have to be so complex that only an experienced engineer can have nice pages? HTML became popular in the first place because it was accessible to the masses... Scripting extends this promise...
The engineering circle has had years to do something about this crap. They didn't. Browser makers could have shipping their browsers with all client-side execution "features" disabled by default, all along. They didn't. They could have put up a warning popup that tries to scare the user whenever they turn on this stuff. They didn't. Who are you calling irresponsible?
Fine. BOTH the browser makers and CERT. The solution, as I pointed out in my original post, is to put pressure on the browser makers-- preferably without creating a consumer panic. I think it is pure hysteria to be telling people to disable scripting because it is exploitable. There are a million and one leaks in security with modern computers. The size of the problem does not justify the change of creating a consumer panic.
The only way we can reliably fix this hole is for all of us running servers to remove trust of clients -- we can't depend on clients to disable scripting or cookies.
And that is really the key. Not only can we not depend on them to disable scripting and cookies, we SHOULD NOT depend on them to do so... It makes all the "good guys" lives that much more difficult when they can't take advantage of the neat technologies available to users just because there are those out there abusing them.
IMHO, most of this problem could be solved by having smarter browsers. Granted, it is a difficult problem, but what is this about ActiveX controls allowing you to reformat a hard drive!? That is utterly ridiculous. I can't believe that any browser manufacturer would even consider allowing this kind of access to the underlying OS (and I actually _like_ IE).
My proposal:
1) Make it a no-brainer for the consumer... Don't bother them at all unless there is a genuine crisis. Exploitable security holes are only genuinely a crisis if they do something worse than crash a machine-- which happens a lot anyways to those of us who aren't running "real" operating systems.
2) Make it almost a no-brainer for the developer. I should have to think about invalid input from the user, definitely. But I shouldn't have to worry about buffer overrun errors and the like... The subsystems I develop on should be robust.
3) Make it the browser developer's job to keep the system safe from the Web. The browser is our "window" into the web. Thus, IT should filter the nasties that might come in...
Frankly, I think this kind of notice is totally
irresponsible on the part of CERT. This is exactly the kind of news that the media loves to latch onto and turn into all kinds of sensational press. CERT actually recommends in their notice that users disable all scripting in their browsers! There may well be a security issue here, but that does not justify risking a major consumer panic... Scripting is a key feature of almost every interesting site these days-- even the one's that don't do a ton of stuff on the client side have nice "mouseovers" to allow friendly messages for the user at the bottom of the screen.
Following CERT's recommendations amounts to disabling a vast part of the web's functionality entirely. They should have cooperated with other authorities on the web to publish this information in a more sensible manner. Doing things this way just draws attention to a problem that can be solved inside of the engineering circle and without bugging the consumer.
Just my two cents...
Speaking in support of the non-US people who might be participating in this discussion, I think that current US immigration law is absolutely ridiculous. I have some brilliant friends at school who, simply because of the way the INS works, find it almost impossible to get their foot in the door for work-- even in the tech sector! The US should have its doors wide open to educated immigrants. Anybody who has worked for more than a week in tech realizes that the current US "lead" in technology is in a huge way related to the brilliant people that we import.
Why don't the geeks get behind some relaxation of US immigration law for those pursuing or already having a higher education?