But, the last time I bothered to check, sending bulk mail via the postal service was not free. So why should sending bulk mail over the internet be any different?
It isn't. This is why I am paying a monthly subscription fee to my ISP.
The line between hardcore developers and the average Joe will start to get very fuzzy.
Says who?
The line might change into one between software engineers and 'casual' programmers. The last group are people who previously would not write computer programs, but are now also able to create quick solutions to practical everyday problems. Which is definitely a good thing IMO.
On the other hand there are what I would call software engineers: people who know how to design and construct software in a well-structured manner, who know what they're doing because they are experienced and know the tools of the trade: the capability to choose the right level of abstraction in their designs, and to select the right programming languages/frameworks etc. for the job at hand.
I think it is possible to draw a very clear line between people who have these capabilities, and those who don't.
You could compare it with normal, mechanical engineering: I know the general laws of physics, gravity, some basic things about properties of concrete, wood and steel. Using this knowledge, I could probably build a bridge across the 6-feet wide creek in my backyard (except for the fact that my house doesn't even have a backyard:( ). However, I am utterly unqualified to design, and even less construct any worthwile artifact of mechanical engineering (like, a well-designed bridge crossing a normal river).
I would say the line between those two is pretty clear-cut, right?
One day, your personal hard drive isn't going to be there for you. That's why you should back up regardless of how secure you feel. Most "normal home users" don't have redundant RAID arrays running.
And even if they (the "home enthousiasts") have RAID arrays running, supposedly they will be administering their own machines - which means a simple rm -rf * in the wrong directory can still easily destroy everything. Hence, you make copies on DVD or (automatically) copy the backups to another system.
But I completely fail to see how this has anything to do with security - just like I completely fail to see how this guys uninformed opinion is deemed worthy of getting linked on Slashdot. You can summarize the "article" in 2 lines, and the summary is not exactly news, either.
(btw. the R in RAID stands for Redundant, so talking about a Redundant RAID array is a bit like talking about PIN Numbers or ATM Machines).
This is IMO becoming a problem in a lot of games. Counterstrike, World of Warcraft, Valve with its Steam engine, crap like punkbuster that scans your entire drive, registry and who knows what else, just to make sure you aren't cheating. And we are not talking about minor game companies here.
Don't get me wrong, cheating is a major (if not: the worst) problem in online games, but the lengths to which game providers go to assure (a) that you are using a legally bought version of the game (most important) and (b) that you are not using modified drivers, game libraries etc. in order to cheat (game company couldn't care less, but it costs them customers so they have to care..), could certainly make some of them be rated as 'spyware'. Then again, so can Windows XP itself. After users accepted that activation crap from Microsoft, where else could you expect this thing to go? If Microsoft is allowed to do it, then why not $small_corp_with_questionable_ethics?
(obviously, the answer is that Microsoft should not be allowed to do it in the first place, either. But as it is, this company might actually have a point - if Sony can do it and not be detected for over half a year, why can't they? The idea is ridiculous ofcourse, but hey...)
I saw this first last week asking me to take an OSTG survey at work -- and I thought I had my pop-up blocker off. Nope. And my flash block was off as well -- so it couldn't be that hole either. I wasn't too upset because I thought it was specifically for/. and its parent company...and then a few days later, the same thing with a non OSTG advertisement.
So it's not just me. Argh!!! Well, message to the editors: one 100% foolproof way to make sure that I will *never* take some OSTG survey, is to shove it in my face like that. I know that such things slip by sometimes (the advertiser puts it in without asking the website admins first), so I'd highly recommend you turn it off ASAP because such behaviour on a site like/. is absolutely unacceptable to me. And frankly, I highly doubt I'm the only one who is really annoyed by this.
Yes I know I could get a subscription, and I also am fully aware that it is in your right to do this. Afterall running this site is not exactly free. Still, chasing away potential customers by annoying the hell out of them doesn't seem like such a good way of doing bussiness to me. It's one of the reasons I barely watch TV anymore. Also, Sony can definitely forget about seeing any bussiness for me since their incredible r00tk1t fiasco - same reason basically, don't annoy your (potential) customers.
I'd swear there is no spyware on this machine, but I just got a popover advert when I opened this topic. It was right on top of the comments section. Strangely enough, it disappeared automatically after a few seconds (it had an area that looked like a close button which I did not click, shocked as I was to see something like this happening on slashdot. Obviously, you can never be sure what will actually happen when you click such a close button anyway...).
I think it was some kind of DHTML thing - anyone else got this as well?
Wow, someone managed to mention 'oswd.org' four times in as little as three sentences and still get it posted to slashdot!
Good marketing job, I must admit:)
OK so this is offtopic, but honestly...what exactly is 'news' about some site that I doubt many people here have even heard of being offline for a few weeks?
..producer of the much-beloved email app Mulberry..
Much beloved? I've never heard of it. I wonder what's so special about it? No wonder they went bankrupt if you ask me, I'd say the market for mailclients is (a) rather saturated (plus, every OS already includes at least a halfway decent free-as-in-beer client anyway), and (b) more and more people switch to webmail clients, such as gmail and the like.
Right, Excel is not a stats package, but even some of the basic stats functions in Excel are "broke" by being based on poor assumptions and degraded accuracy....yes, just basic functionality of stats.
Yeah, I see your point (like I said I meant no personal offense or anything, you obviously know better what you're doing and why...). Still, if you need to analyze as many as 500k-1M records from a SQL database, wouldn't it be better to buy or write some (custom) software to do this? There are standard libraries in many languages that can do threading, statistical functions (the right way), so writing some glue code instead of using Excel should not be the hardest thing to do.
At least, if you know how to do such complicated things in Excel, you might as well use a normal programming environment, I guess;)
I agree though, there are bugs (especially those in the simple statistical functions) that should not have been there in the first place, leave alone in the 10th iteration of this software package. The simple fact that these crashes, bugs and limitations still occur could indicate that you are using the tool to do something that is really not an intended use (and/or that writing robust software that actually produces correct results within a reasonable amount of time is not Microsofts main motivation - what else is new;)
Of course, really great tools can be used outside their intended scope in ways that the programmers never even imagined, but if you reach the point where things really break, you might have gone across that border..
Many statistical functions in Excel need work in addition to addressing the poor memory limits - and I don't mean a marginal bump as is common with most Excel upgrades. Someday I'd also like to be able to address more than 65,536 rows and 256 columns.
Or maybe you should try to use the right tool for the right job. That much data in one spreadsheet? Say hello to mister Relational Database! Statistical functions? Enter SPSS or similar programs that are explicitly intended to handle such stuff.
Threading in Excel is poor!
Threading in Excel? You do realize that Excel is not a programming language or Integrated Development Environment, but in essence a Spreadsheet program, right?
(Okay, I admit that you can do so many things in Excel that it's easy to mistake it for a lot of things that it's not really intended or suitable to do....but you ignore this at your own peril...)
Just my $0.02 ofcourse so don't feel offended, but sometimes I can't help wondering why people want to use Microsoft Office to do basically *anything* that a computer can be programmed to do, even when there are much better tools available for a particular job.
No doubt a well deseved +5 for humor, but for those of us less in the know (and a chance at another +5 for informative), what is so bad about POP3?
Mainly the fact that it sends your password over the line in plaintext. While this might be acceptable for your home Linux box with 5 users, it is asking for problems (hacked accounts) in such a large setup. From a security perspective it is as bad as using telnet or ftp.
However, it's a protocol that every mail client supports, so it's not like you have much choice, probably...
I tried the switch out last year when I was starting to get RSI. Despite what people say, you can mentally flip between Qwerty and Dvorak without much of a problem
I've been using Dvorak for over 2 years now. I seriously doubt it would be any help against RSI, but I find that it is more "relaxed" to type using the Dvorak-layout, as the most-used characters are in the center row of the keyboard. So in that sense, it might make a bit of a difference. Probably, the real causes of RSI are more related to stress and the way you sit behind the computer, or just not taking enough (short) breaks. Just using Dvorak layout is not going to take away any of those "real" causes.
Switching to/from Qwerty will be hard(er) in the beginning, when you just (finally!) got used to Dvorak. It will be easier to switch if there is some time in between, e.g. a coffee break. However, by now I can switch in just a second. In fact, I switched the layout while I typed this paragraph just to make sure for myself that this is actually true:)
But you will type faster in Dvorak mode after some time (if you rarely use Qwerty, you will type a bit slower than you can now, probably).
Btw. programming in Dvorak-layout has its issues. For one thing, the keybindings Ctrl-C/V/X are messed up (obviously), and characters like [, { , ] and } - which are frequently used in many programming languages (look at any C/C++/Java code!) - are quite far away in the corner of the keyboard layout. And let's better not even begin to mention things like 'vi' here (you think using the hjkl-keys for cursor navigation is hard to use/remember? Well, try it in Dvorak mode sometime...)
Be sure to read this article before you install the reader.
The software contains functionality that could cause serious privacy concerns - it is possible to include a tracking mechanism in PDF's, readers that this great 'feature' will then contact some website and keep track of how many people read that document.
Any statistics of Firefox usage based on http log analysis will have to be adjusted upwards by some unknown factor based on how many people surf as MSIE using the User Agent Switcher Extension.
I can tell you that factor will be something like 1.0000000000000000000000000001, as only the most diehard nerds will:
(a) even know what a User Agent is (b) know that it can be changed (c) encounter a site that doesn't work with the normal user agent, and realize that it is actually the user agent causing this (d) instead of just leaving that site and never returning, be bothered enough by it to: (e) download an extension or search the web on how to mess with config files to change the user agent setting. (f) run Firefox on a platform other then Windows, because 99,99% of the Windows Firefox users (which is probably 80-90% of the Firefox userbase, but I admit I'm pulling that number out of thin air) will just use IE for that particular site. I mean if you are going to fake that your browser is IE, might as well just use IE then afterall;)
That aside, most people (e.g. me) are probably just too lazy or have better things to do then to bother with stuff like this.
That's why I think this correction factor is, to put it simply, negligable.
From the description, the way you can read messages of other people has nothing to do with 'intercepting' messages. Man in the middle attacks are always possible, but this looks like a simple serverside bug (buffer overflow or string formatting problem, most likely) which will probably be fixed on short notice.
I don't think you can do directed attacks either (e.g. 'intercept' only the mail of a specific target). So I think it's not a real showstopper.
Still, it shows that even Google can make mistakes in their code...who would have thought!;)
What if Windows allowed arbitrary code execution just from viewing a PDF file? Slashdot would be all over it. And yet, it's one of today's Gentoo vulnerability announcements--Xpdf has a fatal flaw. But such stories get rejected by the editors in favor of more Microsoft.
Your reasoning is flawed.
The PDF viewer most people use on Windows (Acrobat^WAdobe Reader) is not a Microsoft app, but is made by Adobe. So if this happened, we would have to blame Adobe, not Microsoft. Many people don't even install a PDF viewer, e.g. on server machines (or just because you don't use PDF's).
A similar thing is true about xpdf: it is not at all part of a 'core' linux system, it is just an app programmed by...I don't even know who. Many people won't even have it installed, especially not on servers. We could blame don't_even_know_who for causing this bug, but probably it would not make a really interesting story.
However, Microsoft has tried to convince us over and over again that YES, IE really is a critical part of their OS, so much so that they can't take it out without breaking Windows (DoJ trial). IE is a part of *every* Windows installation, whether you want it or not.
So YES, I would consider one or more 'critical flaws' where random sites can execute arbitrary code on basically every Windows machine out there without any user interaction whatsoever (apart from visiting a compromised website) newsworthy - more so than a bug in xpdf.
Interesting idea, but if I can't see the mail headers and have to look at the message in HTML format instead of text, yeah, *then* it could actually become hard to distinguish between phishing expeditions/scams and real mail, in some cases.
Before [moving to OS X with a UNIX/BSD kernel], Apple's Mac OSes were a joke - constantly crashing, freezing, etc.
Microsoft could do the same and really hurt all of their competition whose existence is based on the fragility of various/all Windows versions.
Hate to break it to you, but the Windows kernel has not been particularly fragile/constantly crashing/freezing since, let's say, Windows 2000, which was (IIRC) released in 1999, so your comment is like 5 years outdated <insert standard comment about slashdot, nerds and caves here>.
There are many parts in Windows that are causing a lot of problems right now (IE, Outlook, whatever else you can come up with), but the kernel is not the part where I'd look for problems in Windows - so suggesting to replace it doesn't make any sense, IMHO.
So you expect the non-techie masses to have any clue as to what this weird acronym "MCSE" means?
Let me assure you that most people (except techies and maybe managers of techies) do not have the faintest idea what "MCSE" means. So you will have lost those people (your intended audience) by the time they have read the second sentence in your article.
[Linux does not have many worms because..] it doesn't have the market share that Windows machines [have and] because *currently* Linux doesn't have the clueless userbase that Windows does.
So your point is.. what exactly? My point would be that *right now* you could use Linux and not have all of these problems *right at this moment*.
Whereas if you'd continue to use Windows you *do* have all these spyware and worm problems right at this moment.
Maybe in 5 years Linux will have many more (clueless) users, and also more problems like Windows currently has. That still leaves me with the period between now and 5 years in the future where I can just run it and see if the problems get worse. Whereas in Windows it's hell already so I don't need to wait 5 years to make up my mind about that.
Maybe in 5 years Microsoft will finally have their security act together and you could consider switching back if Linux really starts to suck by then. Not that I think this would happen, but by looking at it pragmatically this is what I'd say.
Slashdot Mirror
But, the last time I bothered to check, sending bulk mail via the postal service was not free. So why should sending bulk mail over the internet be any different?
It isn't. This is why I am paying a monthly subscription fee to my ISP.
The line between hardcore developers and the average Joe will start to get very fuzzy.
:( ). However, I am utterly unqualified to design, and even less construct any worthwile artifact of mechanical engineering (like, a well-designed bridge crossing a normal river).
Says who?
The line might change into one between software engineers and 'casual' programmers. The last group are people who previously would not write computer programs, but are now also able to create quick solutions to practical everyday problems. Which is definitely a good thing IMO.
On the other hand there are what I would call software engineers: people who know how to design and construct software in a well-structured manner, who know what they're doing because they are experienced and know the tools of the trade: the capability to choose the right level of abstraction in their designs, and to select the right programming languages/frameworks etc. for the job at hand.
I think it is possible to draw a very clear line between people who have these capabilities, and those who don't.
You could compare it with normal, mechanical engineering: I know the general laws of physics, gravity, some basic things about properties of concrete, wood and steel. Using this knowledge, I could probably build a bridge across the 6-feet wide creek in my backyard (except for the fact that my house doesn't even have a backyard
I would say the line between those two is pretty clear-cut, right?
One day, your personal hard drive isn't going to be there for you. That's why you should back up regardless of how secure you feel. Most "normal home users" don't have redundant RAID arrays running.
And even if they (the "home enthousiasts") have RAID arrays running, supposedly they will be administering their own machines - which means a simple rm -rf * in the wrong directory can still easily destroy everything. Hence, you make copies on DVD or (automatically) copy the backups to another system.
But I completely fail to see how this has anything to do with security - just like I completely fail to see how this guys uninformed opinion is deemed worthy of getting linked on Slashdot. You can summarize the "article" in 2 lines, and the summary is not exactly news, either.
(btw. the R in RAID stands for Redundant, so talking about a Redundant RAID array is a bit like talking about PIN Numbers or ATM Machines).
This is IMO becoming a problem in a lot of games. Counterstrike, World of Warcraft, Valve with its Steam engine, crap like punkbuster that scans your entire drive, registry and who knows what else, just to make sure you aren't cheating. And we are not talking about minor game companies here.
Don't get me wrong, cheating is a major (if not: the worst) problem in online games, but the lengths to which game providers go to assure (a) that you are using a legally bought version of the game (most important) and (b) that you are not using modified drivers, game libraries etc. in order to cheat (game company couldn't care less, but it costs them customers so they have to care..), could certainly make some of them be rated as 'spyware'. Then again, so can Windows XP itself. After users accepted that activation crap from Microsoft, where else could you expect this thing to go? If Microsoft is allowed to do it, then why not $small_corp_with_questionable_ethics?
(obviously, the answer is that Microsoft should not be allowed to do it in the first place, either. But as it is, this company might actually have a point - if Sony can do it and not be detected for over half a year, why can't they? The idea is ridiculous ofcourse, but hey...)
I saw this first last week asking me to take an OSTG survey at work -- and I thought I had my pop-up blocker off. Nope. And my flash block was off as well -- so it couldn't be that hole either. I wasn't too upset because I thought it was specifically for /. and its parent company...and then a few days later, the same thing with a non OSTG advertisement.
/. is absolutely unacceptable to me. And frankly, I highly doubt I'm the only one who is really annoyed by this.
So it's not just me. Argh!!! Well, message to the editors: one 100% foolproof way to make sure that I will *never* take some OSTG survey, is to shove it in my face like that. I know that such things slip by sometimes (the advertiser puts it in without asking the website admins first), so I'd highly recommend you turn it off ASAP because such behaviour on a site like
Yes I know I could get a subscription, and I also am fully aware that it is in your right to do this. Afterall running this site is not exactly free. Still, chasing away potential customers by annoying the hell out of them doesn't seem like such a good way of doing bussiness to me. It's one of the reasons I barely watch TV anymore. Also, Sony can definitely forget about seeing any bussiness for me since their incredible r00tk1t fiasco - same reason basically, don't annoy your (potential) customers.
I'd swear there is no spyware on this machine, but I just got a popover advert when I opened this topic. It was right on top of the comments section. Strangely enough, it disappeared automatically after a few seconds (it had an area that looked like a close button which I did not click, shocked as I was to see something like this happening on slashdot. Obviously, you can never be sure what will actually happen when you click such a close button anyway...).
I think it was some kind of DHTML thing - anyone else got this as well?
Wow, someone managed to mention 'oswd.org' four times in as little as three sentences and still get it posted to slashdot!
:)
Good marketing job, I must admit
OK so this is offtopic, but honestly...what exactly is 'news' about some site that I doubt many people here have even heard of being offline for a few weeks?
..producer of the much-beloved email app Mulberry..
Much beloved? I've never heard of it. I wonder what's so special about it? No wonder they went bankrupt if you ask me, I'd say the market for mailclients is (a) rather saturated (plus, every OS already includes at least a halfway decent free-as-in-beer client anyway), and (b) more and more people switch to webmail clients, such as gmail and the like.
Right, Excel is not a stats package, but even some of the basic stats functions in Excel are "broke" by being based on poor assumptions and degraded accuracy....yes, just basic functionality of stats.
;)
;)
Yeah, I see your point (like I said I meant no personal offense or anything, you obviously know better what you're doing and why...). Still, if you need to analyze as many as 500k-1M records from a SQL database, wouldn't it be better to buy or write some (custom) software to do this? There are standard libraries in many languages that can do threading, statistical functions (the right way), so writing some glue code instead of using Excel should not be the hardest thing to do.
At least, if you know how to do such complicated things in Excel, you might as well use a normal programming environment, I guess
I agree though, there are bugs (especially those in the simple statistical functions) that should not have been there in the first place, leave alone in the 10th iteration of this software package. The simple fact that these crashes, bugs and limitations still occur could indicate that you are using the tool to do something that is really not an intended use (and/or that writing robust software that actually produces correct results within a reasonable amount of time is not Microsofts main motivation - what else is new
Of course, really great tools can be used outside their intended scope in ways that the programmers never even imagined, but if you reach the point where things really break, you might have gone across that border..
Many statistical functions in Excel need work in addition to addressing the poor memory limits - and I don't mean a marginal bump as is common with most Excel upgrades. Someday I'd also like to be able to address more than 65,536 rows and 256 columns.
Or maybe you should try to use the right tool for the right job. That much data in one spreadsheet? Say hello to mister Relational Database! Statistical functions? Enter SPSS or similar programs that are explicitly intended to handle such stuff.
Threading in Excel is poor!
Threading in Excel? You do realize that Excel is not a programming language or Integrated Development Environment, but in essence a Spreadsheet program, right?
(Okay, I admit that you can do so many things in Excel that it's easy to mistake it for a lot of things that it's not really intended or suitable to do....but you ignore this at your own peril...)
Just my $0.02 ofcourse so don't feel offended, but sometimes I can't help wondering why people want to use Microsoft Office to do basically *anything* that a computer can be programmed to do, even when there are much better tools available for a particular job.
No doubt a well deseved +5 for humor, but for those of us less in the know (and a chance at another +5 for informative), what is so bad about POP3?
Mainly the fact that it sends your password over the line in plaintext. While this might be acceptable for your home Linux box with 5 users, it is asking for problems (hacked accounts) in such a large setup. From a security perspective it is as bad as using telnet or ftp.
However, it's a protocol that every mail client supports, so it's not like you have much choice, probably...
.. why anyone would want to cancel AOL.
;)
Neither can I, as in order to cancel, you would have to actually subscribe to AOL first.
Indeed, I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that
I tried the switch out last year when I was starting to get RSI. Despite what people say, you can mentally flip between Qwerty and Dvorak without much of a problem
:)
I've been using Dvorak for over 2 years now. I seriously doubt it would be any help against RSI, but I find that it is more "relaxed" to type using the Dvorak-layout, as the most-used characters are in the center row of the keyboard. So in that sense, it might make a bit of a difference. Probably, the real causes of RSI are more related to stress and the way you sit behind the computer, or just not taking enough (short) breaks. Just using Dvorak layout is not going to take away any of those "real" causes.
Switching to/from Qwerty will be hard(er) in the beginning, when you just (finally!) got used to Dvorak. It will be easier to switch if there is some time in between, e.g. a coffee break. However, by now I can switch in just a second. In fact, I switched the layout while I typed this paragraph just to make sure for myself that this is actually true
But you will type faster in Dvorak mode after some time (if you rarely use Qwerty, you will type a bit slower than you can now, probably).
Btw. programming in Dvorak-layout has its issues. For one thing, the keybindings Ctrl-C/V/X are messed up (obviously), and characters like [, { , ] and } - which are frequently used in many programming languages (look at any C/C++/Java code!) - are quite far away in the corner of the keyboard layout. And let's better not even begin to mention things like 'vi' here (you think using the hjkl-keys for cursor navigation is hard to use/remember? Well, try it in Dvorak mode sometime...)
It's a dupe!
;)
Java Fallout: OO.o 2.0 and the FOSS Community
Well, at least not a dupe posted on the same day this time...the editorial standards of slashdot must have improved then!
Be sure to read this article before you install the reader.
The software contains functionality that could cause serious privacy concerns - it is possible to include a tracking mechanism in PDF's, readers that this great 'feature' will then contact some website and keep track of how many people read that document.
Any statistics of Firefox usage based on http log analysis will have to be adjusted upwards by some unknown factor based on how many people surf as MSIE using the User Agent Switcher Extension.
;)
I can tell you that factor will be something like 1.0000000000000000000000000001, as only the most diehard nerds will:
(a) even know what a User Agent is
(b) know that it can be changed
(c) encounter a site that doesn't work with the normal user agent, and realize that it is actually the user agent causing this
(d) instead of just leaving that site and never returning, be bothered enough by it to:
(e) download an extension or search the web on how to mess with config files to change the user agent setting.
(f) run Firefox on a platform other then Windows, because 99,99% of the Windows Firefox users (which is probably 80-90% of the Firefox userbase, but I admit I'm pulling that number out of thin air) will just use IE for that particular site. I mean if you are going to fake that your browser is IE, might as well just use IE then afterall
That aside, most people (e.g. me) are probably just too lazy or have better things to do then to bother with stuff like this.
That's why I think this correction factor is, to put it simply, negligable.
From the description, the way you can read messages of other people has nothing to do with 'intercepting' messages. Man in the middle attacks are always possible, but this looks like a simple serverside bug (buffer overflow or string formatting problem, most likely) which will probably be fixed on short notice.
;)
I don't think you can do directed attacks either (e.g. 'intercept' only the mail of a specific target). So I think it's not a real showstopper.
Still, it shows that even Google can make mistakes in their code...who would have thought!
What if Windows allowed arbitrary code execution just from viewing a PDF file? Slashdot would be all over it. And yet, it's one of today's Gentoo vulnerability announcements--Xpdf has a fatal flaw. But such stories get rejected by the editors in favor of more Microsoft.
Your reasoning is flawed.
The PDF viewer most people use on Windows (Acrobat^WAdobe Reader) is not a Microsoft app, but is made by Adobe. So if this happened, we would have to blame Adobe, not Microsoft. Many people don't even install a PDF viewer, e.g. on server machines (or just because you don't use PDF's).
A similar thing is true about xpdf: it is not at all part of a 'core' linux system, it is just an app programmed by...I don't even know who. Many people won't even have it installed, especially not on servers. We could blame don't_even_know_who for causing this bug, but probably it would not make a really interesting story.
However, Microsoft has tried to convince us over and over again that YES, IE really is a critical part of their OS, so much so that they can't take it out without breaking Windows (DoJ trial). IE is a part of *every* Windows installation, whether you want it or not.
So YES, I would consider one or more 'critical flaws' where random sites can execute arbitrary code on basically every Windows machine out there without any user interaction whatsoever (apart from visiting a compromised website) newsworthy - more so than a bug in xpdf.
But that's just me ofcourse.
Or do I have to wander the maze of twisty little directories in Microsoft's "Documents and Settings" directory to find where it stores mail.
Tools -> Account Settings -> Server settings (per account) -> change the 'local directory'.
I mean, this option has existed in Thunderbird since I first tried it (don't know exactly when, but we're talking at least half a year).
Interesting idea, but if I can't see the mail headers and have to look at the message in HTML format instead of text, yeah, *then* it could actually become hard to distinguish between phishing expeditions/scams and real mail, in some cases.
Before [moving to OS X with a UNIX/BSD kernel], Apple's Mac OSes were a joke - constantly crashing, freezing, etc.
Microsoft could do the same and really hurt all of their competition whose existence is based on the fragility of various/all Windows versions.
Hate to break it to you, but the Windows kernel has not been particularly fragile/constantly crashing/freezing since, let's say, Windows 2000, which was (IIRC) released in 1999, so your comment is like 5 years outdated <insert standard comment about slashdot, nerds and caves here>.
There are many parts in Windows that are causing a lot of problems right now (IE, Outlook, whatever else you can come up with), but the kernel is not the part where I'd look for problems in Windows - so suggesting to replace it doesn't make any sense, IMHO.
I'd say go for after looking into the long term side effects
;)
This is an interesting remark, because AFAIK this kind of eye surgery (at least for the mass market) really took off during the last 3, maybe 5 years.
So I guess not much might be known about long term side effects as of yet...time will tell.
Then again, please prove me wrong if you can
Koffin or Kremation?
Nah, first we'll see oldsKool, ofcourse.
My piece, written for the non-techie masses
So you expect the non-techie masses to have any clue as to what this weird acronym "MCSE" means?
Let me assure you that most people (except techies and maybe managers of techies) do not have the faintest idea what "MCSE" means. So you will have lost those people (your intended audience) by the time they have read the second sentence in your article.
[Linux does not have many worms because..] it doesn't have the market share that Windows machines [have and] because *currently* Linux doesn't have the clueless userbase that Windows does.
So your point is.. what exactly? My point would be that *right now* you could use Linux and not have all of these problems *right at this moment*.
Whereas if you'd continue to use Windows you *do* have all these spyware and worm problems right at this moment.
Maybe in 5 years Linux will have many more (clueless) users, and also more problems like Windows currently has. That still leaves me with the period between now and 5 years in the future where I can just run it and see if the problems get worse. Whereas in Windows it's hell already so I don't need to wait 5 years to make up my mind about that.
Maybe in 5 years Microsoft will finally have their security act together and you could consider switching back if Linux really starts to suck by then. Not that I think this would happen, but by looking at it pragmatically this is what I'd say.