Seems like a rather silly article, as most medium-large business I've encountered already shut off desktop firewalls since the hassle of managing a firewall on every machine often outweighs the risks.
Most medium-large business IT staff are idiots. That doesn't make them right.
In your experiences with corporate IT, your corporate IT staff have thus been incompetent.
Windows firewall is configuration via group policy, with multiple profiles for both inside and outside of your network. Your perimeter firewall will NOT save your network from some arse-clown plugging in an infected box. It will NOT save your laptop from being infected whilst in use at a wifi hotspot.
It will also not protect your network from some idiot plugging in an unsecured Wifi access point, or for that matter hopping onto a machine left logged in and unlocked.
The perimeter firewall mitigates the bulk of the threats to your corporate network sure, but if you have nothing else to protect your internal hosts, you're leaving yourself open to getting screwed, big time.
The bandwidth isn't there yet. Physical media will not die until we have un-metered fibre to the home, and that is years off.
In the time it would take me to download 20-50gigs of content (i.e., 1 BD-ROM worth), i could easily get in my car, drive the 5km to the nearest store and buy SEVERAL TIMES that amount of content. I can also store it for offline viewing (e.g., whilst in transit while internet access is unavailable, like on a plane) without chewing hard drive storage.
Besides, physical media is also needed for transporting your own content, and optical disk, even blu-ray (and its successor) is far cheaper than flash - and always will be - to produce.
Streaming is an additional media delivery method - not a replacement.
Because there are plenty of alternatives on other platforms. There are plenty of alternatives on windows as well, but "IE" has become a platform in itself, due to the prevalence of shitty microsoft-HTML sites in corporate intranets. Currently the only browser that deals with the corporate intranet AND the internet without needing 2 browsers is IE. And its shit.
If you're on an open platform and don't use microsoft corporate intranet websites, you have no need for IE.
I've rolled both IE7 and IE8 out throughout the company I work for, and none (not ONE) of our shitty 10 year old web-apps that were coded by idiots back in the late 90s/early 2000s broke.
Write to the published standards. Also, if you're a proper developer, get a technet subscription and get access to whatever software of theirs you need and never pay full price for an OS again. There are solutions to your problems - you just haven't found them.
... and before you mark this as troll, yes there are decent alternatives if you do not have certain requirements.
If your requirements include sharepoint and other microsoft web-apps, then you need IE. IE9 looks to be the first version of IE that doesn't genuinely suck monkey balls, so of course people are keen to test drive it.
Will IE9 replace the other alternatives in general use? Who knows - but it will certainly replace the browser people need for IE-only microsoft apps, and I know plenty of people, myself included who are all too keen to see IE8 (never mind 7 or 6!) die in a fire.
People bitched when apple abandoned the floppy drive as archaic, out of date technology (and replaced it with cloud storage, back in 1996 before the world even new what cloud storage was) too.
Video from Wikimedia Commons doesn't work on an iPhone because the element in Safari for iOS supports only patented codecs, not Theora or VP8, and Wikimedia Foundation has a blanket rule against patented codecs.
Strawman much? Becuase obviously this is such a major problem that I have never encountered it - didn't even realize wikipedia HAD video (to be honest, video is not what i use an encyclopedia for, but fair enough there is maybe some video content there somewhere).
The OPs point was that if a site was UNUSABLE he would stop visiting. There is plenty of available content on wikipedia for the iphone, and they even have mobile optimized, iphone compatible site.
Quite possibly not as much. Don't forget iOS counts the iPad, and prior to Mobile Safari on the iPhone most web browsers on phones were shit. Be it due to the display not being big enough, the interface being clunky, etc.
I presume most of the touchscreen devices are in the same ballpark these days, but as far as that goes, apple has the biggest share of THAT market by far at the moment.
If you don't want to abandon flash, then don't support the iDevices. There's only a tiny market you're ignoring, right?
Personally, i see no flash as a win. Yes, there are uses for it, but virtually anything flash can do, can be done in Javascript + HTML. Both of which are open and have freely available development tools. Flash no longer has a reason to exist, and is a huge lock-in to Adobe.
You'd think that the/. crowd would be in full support of this given the abysmal support linux has "enjoyed" from Adobe for the past decade or so, but it seems that a lot of them can't be pleased.
If you fall into the Linux fanboy camp, why does it matter to you what apple does? Buy an android device instead.
The reason the apple hardware/software combo is usually so slick is BECAUSE of restrictions like this. If this does not interest you, then you are not apple's target market.
GPU acceleration is a browser implementation detail. This is the IE9 specific browser implementation. Thus, it is not cross platform, because it is PART OF IE9.
The point is - write your application to use web graphics. It will (should) work with whatever GPU acceleration is implemented. on IE9, it will be this. On other browsers, it will use whatever they end up implementing. You are not writing code to talk talk to this acceleration, it is transparent, and irrelevant to your code. If it is available, it will be used.
Let me clarify my stance, and what I'm getting at. The iphone may look like a computer from a programming standpoint, but it also includes radio transmitters that work on a licensed spectrum, and DRM code.
I don't see how it can be legal to fuck with that without approval/license from the FCC, even if apple gave you system level access on the device? So, it is sandboxed...
It comes down to choice, and ownership. Let's say I'm a retired refrigerator repairman, I buy a fridge and the damn thing breaks down and needs fixing.
No, not quite. If your iphone breaks you are free to order the spare parts to fix it. Barring warranty issues, you are also free to open the thing up and replace the parts. A better analogy might be that you have an AM radio, and want to extend its functionality to say, transmit to another AM radio.
Alternatively, you are attempting to modify your fridge (and distribute your modifications to others), without an electricians license. The law doesn't really allow you to do that, either, as you are not qualified to ensure the device is safe after your modifications.
If you really want to run your own code on the iphone, the dev kit is all of 99 dollars (plus a mac to run xcode). Its more than possible to run your own custom apps if you really want to.
would someone buy a piece of hardware that continually needs to be "jailbroken" just to be able to be used in the way they want to use it?
Because for a huge number of people, the device does NOT need to be jailbroken to be used in the way they want to use it. Including myself. I jailbroke my first iphone, saw there was nothing REALLY of use that I couldn't do with signed approved app-store code, and didn't bother on my 3g-s.
Am i representative of 100% of the/. community? Of course not, but in reality the nerd crowd who want to run their own code on the iphone are a tiny share of the market.
DRM. Apple sell devices that play and protect secure DRM'd content. The fact that hacks keep coming out and left reasonably open for local user leads me to believe that Apple in reality don't care so much, but have an obligation to the big content producers to give "best effort" to keep the device secure.
That said.... I've had an iphone 3g, currently have a 3G-S. I jail-broke the 3G, had a look at some of the software on Cydia, didn't really find anything worth shit to me (plenty of novelty apps that were cool for 5-10 minutes and were then forgotten about), and didn't bother jailbreaking after a firmware update.
YMMV, but as a phone that does email and calandar, the stock firmware has all i need... and at least the code i am running is SIGNED and approved, rather than trusting some random on the interwebs that his code isn't in actual fact some trojan thats going to steal my shit.
I know that doesn't mix with the slashdot ethos of wanting to run whatever code you like on the device, but really - the stock firmware does all I want. Its an appliance like a refrigerator to me... I just want it to work, and be able to call someone and get a replacement/repair in short order if/when it fucks up.
The success of the iphone leads me to believe there are plenty of non-nerds out there with a similar viewpoint.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you sack the guy.
Meanwhile you have 100 (or more) staff unable to work due to compromised machines.
Because your admin couldn't be bothered spending 15 minutes to configure group policy properly....
Not configuring a desktop firewall in this day and age is sheer, inexcusable laziness.
Most medium-large business IT staff are idiots. That doesn't make them right.
In your experiences with corporate IT, your corporate IT staff have thus been incompetent.
Windows firewall is configuration via group policy, with multiple profiles for both inside and outside of your network. Your perimeter firewall will NOT save your network from some arse-clown plugging in an infected box. It will NOT save your laptop from being infected whilst in use at a wifi hotspot.
It will also not protect your network from some idiot plugging in an unsecured Wifi access point, or for that matter hopping onto a machine left logged in and unlocked.
The perimeter firewall mitigates the bulk of the threats to your corporate network sure, but if you have nothing else to protect your internal hosts, you're leaving yourself open to getting screwed, big time.
seriously.
The bandwidth isn't there yet. Physical media will not die until we have un-metered fibre to the home, and that is years off.
In the time it would take me to download 20-50gigs of content (i.e., 1 BD-ROM worth), i could easily get in my car, drive the 5km to the nearest store and buy SEVERAL TIMES that amount of content. I can also store it for offline viewing (e.g., whilst in transit while internet access is unavailable, like on a plane) without chewing hard drive storage.
Besides, physical media is also needed for transporting your own content, and optical disk, even blu-ray (and its successor) is far cheaper than flash - and always will be - to produce.
Streaming is an additional media delivery method - not a replacement.
Because there are plenty of alternatives on other platforms. There are plenty of alternatives on windows as well, but "IE" has become a platform in itself, due to the prevalence of shitty microsoft-HTML sites in corporate intranets. Currently the only browser that deals with the corporate intranet AND the internet without needing 2 browsers is IE. And its shit.
If you're on an open platform and don't use microsoft corporate intranet websites, you have no need for IE.
I've rolled both IE7 and IE8 out throughout the company I work for, and none (not ONE) of our shitty 10 year old web-apps that were coded by idiots back in the late 90s/early 2000s broke.
Write to the published standards. Also, if you're a proper developer, get a technet subscription and get access to whatever software of theirs you need and never pay full price for an OS again. There are solutions to your problems - you just haven't found them.
If your requirements include sharepoint and other microsoft web-apps, then you need IE. IE9 looks to be the first version of IE that doesn't genuinely suck monkey balls, so of course people are keen to test drive it.
Will IE9 replace the other alternatives in general use? Who knows - but it will certainly replace the browser people need for IE-only microsoft apps, and I know plenty of people, myself included who are all too keen to see IE8 (never mind 7 or 6!) die in a fire.
There are still people who don't understand satire.
People bitched when apple abandoned the floppy drive as archaic, out of date technology (and replaced it with cloud storage, back in 1996 before the world even new what cloud storage was) too.
They also thgouht the ipod was shit as well.
Like him or not, to write off what steve says as BS because no one else has done it yet is short sighted.
Strawman much? Becuase obviously this is such a major problem that I have never encountered it - didn't even realize wikipedia HAD video (to be honest, video is not what i use an encyclopedia for, but fair enough there is maybe some video content there somewhere).
The OPs point was that if a site was UNUSABLE he would stop visiting. There is plenty of available content on wikipedia for the iphone, and they even have mobile optimized, iphone compatible site.
Exactly. Adobe also knows this, hence they are starting to push out HTML5 + Javascript development tools.
Eventually, flash will die, and Adobe's customers will more than likely simply migrate their development tools from flash to the new HTML5 suite.
In terms of paying customer base, the death of flash should be quite manageable by Adobe.
Quite possibly not as much. Don't forget iOS counts the iPad, and prior to Mobile Safari on the iPhone most web browsers on phones were shit. Be it due to the display not being big enough, the interface being clunky, etc.
I presume most of the touchscreen devices are in the same ballpark these days, but as far as that goes, apple has the biggest share of THAT market by far at the moment.
If you don't want to abandon flash, then don't support the iDevices. There's only a tiny market you're ignoring, right?
Personally, i see no flash as a win. Yes, there are uses for it, but virtually anything flash can do, can be done in Javascript + HTML. Both of which are open and have freely available development tools. Flash no longer has a reason to exist, and is a huge lock-in to Adobe.
You'd think that the /. crowd would be in full support of this given the abysmal support linux has "enjoyed" from Adobe for the past decade or so, but it seems that a lot of them can't be pleased.
If you fall into the Linux fanboy camp, why does it matter to you what apple does? Buy an android device instead.
The reason the apple hardware/software combo is usually so slick is BECAUSE of restrictions like this. If this does not interest you, then you are not apple's target market.
by approximately 6 hours of use by one country....
quiet, children.
Your GPU is more efficient at drawing graphics than your CPU. So use it for what is intended for, yes?
GPU acceleration is a browser implementation detail. This is the IE9 specific browser implementation. Thus, it is not cross platform, because it is PART OF IE9.
The point is - write your application to use web graphics. It will (should) work with whatever GPU acceleration is implemented. on IE9, it will be this. On other browsers, it will use whatever they end up implementing. You are not writing code to talk talk to this acceleration, it is transparent, and irrelevant to your code. If it is available, it will be used.
Let me clarify my stance, and what I'm getting at. The iphone may look like a computer from a programming standpoint, but it also includes radio transmitters that work on a licensed spectrum, and DRM code.
I don't see how it can be legal to fuck with that without approval/license from the FCC, even if apple gave you system level access on the device? So, it is sandboxed...
No, not quite. If your iphone breaks you are free to order the spare parts to fix it. Barring warranty issues, you are also free to open the thing up and replace the parts. A better analogy might be that you have an AM radio, and want to extend its functionality to say, transmit to another AM radio.
Alternatively, you are attempting to modify your fridge (and distribute your modifications to others), without an electricians license. The law doesn't really allow you to do that, either, as you are not qualified to ensure the device is safe after your modifications.
If you really want to run your own code on the iphone, the dev kit is all of 99 dollars (plus a mac to run xcode). Its more than possible to run your own custom apps if you really want to.
Oh fair enough ni thought you meant why would any one at all bug one :-P. Carry on...
Because for a huge number of people, the device does NOT need to be jailbroken to be used in the way they want to use it. Including myself. I jailbroke my first iphone, saw there was nothing REALLY of use that I couldn't do with signed approved app-store code, and didn't bother on my 3g-s.
Am i representative of 100% of the /. community? Of course not, but in reality the nerd crowd who want to run their own code on the iphone are a tiny share of the market.
DRM. Apple sell devices that play and protect secure DRM'd content. The fact that hacks keep coming out and left reasonably open for local user leads me to believe that Apple in reality don't care so much, but have an obligation to the big content producers to give "best effort" to keep the device secure.
That said.... I've had an iphone 3g, currently have a 3G-S. I jail-broke the 3G, had a look at some of the software on Cydia, didn't really find anything worth shit to me (plenty of novelty apps that were cool for 5-10 minutes and were then forgotten about), and didn't bother jailbreaking after a firmware update.
YMMV, but as a phone that does email and calandar, the stock firmware has all i need... and at least the code i am running is SIGNED and approved, rather than trusting some random on the interwebs that his code isn't in actual fact some trojan thats going to steal my shit.
I know that doesn't mix with the slashdot ethos of wanting to run whatever code you like on the device, but really - the stock firmware does all I want. Its an appliance like a refrigerator to me... I just want it to work, and be able to call someone and get a replacement/repair in short order if/when it fucks up.
The success of the iphone leads me to believe there are plenty of non-nerds out there with a similar viewpoint.
Wonder how long this will take to get bundled into otherwise innocuous looking iphone apps, and inserted into the app store :D