It's interesting how articles crop up in the media and the public goes into an uproar. It's possible that some may not fully understand the issue. My personal feeling is that Microsoft shouldn't jack with software that doesn't belong to them. It's my computer, it runs the way I want it to, don't install !@#! I don't want. But I also understand what ClickOnce is and I understand that it's the user-installed application that sends.NET version information back to the web server the application is installed from, not the browser and not the browser extension. So, the fact that it's there doesn't concern me so much, except for the resources that I know it's taking up.
About ClickOnce:
In ~ August, 2008, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack One. Visual Studio 2005/2008 allows content creators to produce web applications based on a number of programming languages. These applications can be run as stand-alone or driven through web sites, either way, linked back to database servers, behaving similarly to Flash-based applications driven through Adobe Air. One of the technologies deployed with Visual Studio is ClickOnce, a system which allows the installed application to check for updates upon launch and prompt for new versions. The idea is that once the application is installed, it keeps itself up to date and the user doesn't have to continually mess with software revisions. Microsoft.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases silently install an extension for Mozilla Firefox, called.NET Framework Assistant, which "Adds ClickOnce support and the ability to report installed.NET versions to the web server."
The Problem:
Users are stating they were not told that the Firefox extension was being installed and are only finding out of its existence after-the-fact. To further complicate the issue, once installed, the extension appears with the uninstall button disabled. Users, who don't understand what ClickOnce is and don't understand what is meant by "the web server", are very upset about what this means and what information could be potentially outbound from their PC. Numerous forums list post after post from users who are extremely vocal about Microsoft's audacity of installing plug-ins to non-Microsoft applications and further providing no method for it's removal. While the tactics are dirty, Microsoft is not the first to do this. Sony used music CDs to install a virtually invisible "rootkit", DRM software to PCs to keep tabs on music placed on a host PC. Apple installs a host of applications as part of iTunes, which includes several resource consuming TSRs and Microsoft Outlook components, even if a user doesn't own an iPod.
The Technology:
ClickOnce in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Mini applications built on Visual Basic, VB.NET, C# and others, can be written with Visual Studio 200( x ) and delivered to a host PC through a web-installer. These applications require the Microsoft.NET framework to be installed and if set up correctly, when an update to the software is available, the user is automatically notified and the update applied, eliminating the burden of needing to check for updates. The extension for Firefox allows the user to visit a web page and see information about one of these applications, click on a link and be prompted for it's installation. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The extension simply allows the user access to the installer, it doesn't collect data and send it back to Microsoft or anywhere else. The installed application, upon launch, sends the currently installed version number back to the programmers web server and checks if a newer version is available. If a newer version is available, it notifies the user asks to be installed. The real problem is that Microsoft installed the extension without being asked and after being installed, disabled the uninstall button.
There is nothing wrong with making money from products that you develop, as long as you are the one who actually developed the product. The idea of GPL is that two heads are better than one or in this case 2.xx million. What you cannot do is take the code that someone else developed under GPL, call it your own and make money from it. If Microsoft wants to make money, they should try being original for a change rather than consuming other companies to make up for their own inadequacies (Yahoo). They complain because the Open Source community is hitting them squarely in the pocket book and rightly so. I can put together a fully-functional Ubuntu system which does everything that Vista can and more, and not pay a nickel for software. Down with the man!
Microsoft can take their Vista and shove it. I'll keep my Ubuntu and XP, thank you. Windows is an unfortunate necessary evil. I find XP to be the lesser of the two. One of my associates recently built a new computer and sprung for Vista Ultimate. He and I both have hot-swappable drive trays in our systems but he discovered that the controllers on his 680i motherboard support hot-swapping in XP but not Vista. Strike 1. He spent the next several weeks working with Vista, and yelling at it from time-to-time because of the nagging warnings he continually received. Strike 2. His next discovery was that once his firewire drives went to sleep, Vista was incapable of waking them up again. In order to access his data, he would have to reboot the machine. Strike 3. Not wanting to accept that he threw his money away with Vista, he decided to deal with it a bit longer. We each set up shared directories on our machines. He could connect to my XP shares, but XP could not connect to the Vista shares, even though he set them up as publicly available and had the guest account enabled and working. There is no Strike 4 in baseball, but struggling continued. He then set up an OS X box (10.5) and shared files from it. I could access everything from XP but from Vista, he couldn't get to it. That was it. Vista gone.
He was happier once he switched back to XP. He could access everything I had shared, I could access all of his shares. We could both get to the OS X box and to the NAS in the basement. No more problems. As an added benefit, he found that his framerates in World Of Warcraft doubled once he went back to XP.
On my end, Vista doesn't offer me a single feature that I can't do without. The only things I use XP for at all are working in Adobe Photoshop and Lightwave 3D. For everything else, I use Ubuntu. The windows world is so annoying. All of my hardware is perfect. I've got a soundcard capable of pushing audio to my 5.1 speakers but unless I spring extra cash for surround-enabled DVD software, all of my movies are downsampled to 2-channel. In Ubuntu, no need to buy additional software. It all just works.
Sure, Ubuntu can take a few tries to get it set up correctly, but most other Operating Systems are the same way. It is very possible to kill XP completely by installing the wrong piece of software. Any Linux distro is the same. You figure out what not to do, and you don't do it again. In my friends case, he learned not to use Vista, and he'll never do it again.
The problem with the above article is that people read them and see what they want to see. Taken at face value, it seems to read that the RIAA is arguing that the user converted his files to MP3 for his and his wife's use and that constitutes copyright infringement.
To get a clear picture of what's going on, you need to read the documents: "Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the.mp3 format for his and his wife's use. (Howell Dep. 107:24 to 110:2; 114:1 to 116:16). The.mp3 format is a "compressed format [that] allows for rapid transmission of digital audio files from one computer to another by electronic mail or any other file transfer protocol." Napster, 239 F.3d at 1011. Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. Moreover, Defendant had no authorization to distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings from his KaZaA shared folder."
The original Slashdot article does not mention that the defendant has 2,329 audio files shared publicly through the Kazaa system. The problem is not that he converted files to MP3 for his own use. The problem is that he made them available for others to download.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting how articles crop up in the media and the public goes into an uproar. It's possible that some may not fully understand the issue. My personal feeling is that Microsoft shouldn't jack with software that doesn't belong to them. It's my computer, it runs the way I want it to, don't install !@#! I don't want. But I also understand what ClickOnce is and I understand that it's the user-installed application that sends .NET version information back to the web server the application is installed from, not the browser and not the browser extension. So, the fact that it's there doesn't concern me so much, except for the resources that I know it's taking up.
About ClickOnce:
In ~ August, 2008, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack One. Visual Studio 2005/2008 allows content creators to produce web applications based on a number of programming languages. These applications can be run as stand-alone or driven through web sites, either way, linked back to database servers, behaving similarly to Flash-based applications driven through Adobe Air. One of the technologies deployed with Visual Studio is ClickOnce, a system which allows the installed application to check for updates upon launch and prompt for new versions. The idea is that once the application is installed, it keeps itself up to date and the user doesn't have to continually mess with software revisions. Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases silently install an extension for Mozilla Firefox, called .NET Framework Assistant, which "Adds ClickOnce support and the ability to report installed .NET versions to the web server."
The Problem:
Users are stating they were not told that the Firefox extension was being installed and are only finding out of its existence after-the-fact. To further complicate the issue, once installed, the extension appears with the uninstall button disabled. Users, who don't understand what ClickOnce is and don't understand what is meant by "the web server", are very upset about what this means and what information could be potentially outbound from their PC. Numerous forums list post after post from users who are extremely vocal about Microsoft's audacity of installing plug-ins to non-Microsoft applications and further providing no method for it's removal. While the tactics are dirty, Microsoft is not the first to do this. Sony used music CDs to install a virtually invisible "rootkit", DRM software to PCs to keep tabs on music placed on a host PC. Apple installs a host of applications as part of iTunes, which includes several resource consuming TSRs and Microsoft Outlook components, even if a user doesn't own an iPod.
The Technology:
ClickOnce in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Mini applications built on Visual Basic, VB.NET, C# and others, can be written with Visual Studio 200( x ) and delivered to a host PC through a web-installer. These applications require the Microsoft .NET framework to be installed and if set up correctly, when an update to the software is available, the user is automatically notified and the update applied, eliminating the burden of needing to check for updates. The extension for Firefox allows the user to visit a web page and see information about one of these applications, click on a link and be prompted for it's installation. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The extension simply allows the user access to the installer, it doesn't collect data and send it back to Microsoft or anywhere else. The installed application, upon launch, sends the currently installed version number back to the programmers web server and checks if a newer version is available. If a newer version is available, it notifies the user asks to be installed. The real problem is that Microsoft installed the extension without being asked and after being installed, disabled the uninstall button.
There is nothing wrong with making money from products that you develop, as long as you are the one who actually developed the product. The idea of GPL is that two heads are better than one or in this case 2.xx million. What you cannot do is take the code that someone else developed under GPL, call it your own and make money from it. If Microsoft wants to make money, they should try being original for a change rather than consuming other companies to make up for their own inadequacies (Yahoo). They complain because the Open Source community is hitting them squarely in the pocket book and rightly so. I can put together a fully-functional Ubuntu system which does everything that Vista can and more, and not pay a nickel for software. Down with the man!
Microsoft can take their Vista and shove it. I'll keep my Ubuntu and XP, thank you. Windows is an unfortunate necessary evil. I find XP to be the lesser of the two. One of my associates recently built a new computer and sprung for Vista Ultimate. He and I both have hot-swappable drive trays in our systems but he discovered that the controllers on his 680i motherboard support hot-swapping in XP but not Vista. Strike 1. He spent the next several weeks working with Vista, and yelling at it from time-to-time because of the nagging warnings he continually received. Strike 2. His next discovery was that once his firewire drives went to sleep, Vista was incapable of waking them up again. In order to access his data, he would have to reboot the machine. Strike 3. Not wanting to accept that he threw his money away with Vista, he decided to deal with it a bit longer. We each set up shared directories on our machines. He could connect to my XP shares, but XP could not connect to the Vista shares, even though he set them up as publicly available and had the guest account enabled and working. There is no Strike 4 in baseball, but struggling continued. He then set up an OS X box (10.5) and shared files from it. I could access everything from XP but from Vista, he couldn't get to it. That was it. Vista gone. He was happier once he switched back to XP. He could access everything I had shared, I could access all of his shares. We could both get to the OS X box and to the NAS in the basement. No more problems. As an added benefit, he found that his framerates in World Of Warcraft doubled once he went back to XP. On my end, Vista doesn't offer me a single feature that I can't do without. The only things I use XP for at all are working in Adobe Photoshop and Lightwave 3D. For everything else, I use Ubuntu. The windows world is so annoying. All of my hardware is perfect. I've got a soundcard capable of pushing audio to my 5.1 speakers but unless I spring extra cash for surround-enabled DVD software, all of my movies are downsampled to 2-channel. In Ubuntu, no need to buy additional software. It all just works. Sure, Ubuntu can take a few tries to get it set up correctly, but most other Operating Systems are the same way. It is very possible to kill XP completely by installing the wrong piece of software. Any Linux distro is the same. You figure out what not to do, and you don't do it again. In my friends case, he learned not to use Vista, and he'll never do it again.
The problem with the above article is that people read them and see what they want to see. Taken at face value, it seems to read that the RIAA is arguing that the user converted his files to MP3 for his and his wife's use and that constitutes copyright infringement. To get a clear picture of what's going on, you need to read the documents: "Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife's use. (Howell Dep. 107:24 to 110:2; 114:1 to 116:16). The .mp3 format is a "compressed format [that] allows for rapid transmission of digital audio files from one computer to another by electronic mail or any other file transfer protocol." Napster, 239 F.3d at 1011. Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. Moreover, Defendant had no authorization to distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings from his KaZaA shared folder."
The original Slashdot article does not mention that the defendant has 2,329 audio files shared publicly through the Kazaa system. The problem is not that he converted files to MP3 for his own use. The problem is that he made them available for others to download.