i've never had a problem keeping my settings when i update firefox. i'm at 1.0.3 and none of my settings have changed. the only thing it asks is if i want firefox start as my homepage, which i have to uncheck. that's the only thing i would change. everything else is perfect in my opinion.
and yes, fixes are released with new versions... but they're not major updates... 1.0.1, 1.0.2, and 1.0.3 (which is the latest). what's wrong with this? you set the software to autocheck for updates and it tells you that there's a critical update. you update it, it downloads the latest version and you install it. plain and simple. where, with microsoft, you need IE to get the updates for IE. that's great, huh? and yes, i realize i just said the same thing for firefox, but you can download the update using whatever browser you want.
now i've seen reason to doubt their products. the main one i've seen come up many times is a trojan. i don't know the name off-hand. and it's with even the latest versions and definitions. you can update it today and i will almost guarantee it won't find it.
also, my other issue with their home product is that by default, it's set to try to clean the infected file. today's viruses can't be cleaned because the file is the virus. so if it can't clean it, it takes no action. that's the most absurd setting i've ever seen. they should have it set to try to clean adn then quarantine if unsuccessful. i dread looking at computers that have norton installed, you know they're infected the minute they come in.
one question should be asked... who releases patches and security updates in a more timely manner? mozilla or microsoft? while firefox may have had more security flaws than IE, it gets patched almost immediately.
i have begun to doubt symantec's expertise. i work in a college where virus outbreaks are pretty common. now i've seen a computer with the most up to date, newest version of norton/symantec anti-virus and it seems that it still does not find all the viruses. viruses and trojans that are relatively harmful to the system. i would take this story with a grain of salt...
this isn't at all even a poll on censorship. it's a poll on privacy, which i am pretty sure that just about every slashdotter is in favor of. they're 2 separate issues. i don't think bloggers should have the right to publish names and addresses adn other information without permission. however, i don't think bloggers should be censored when it comes to other content. posting my address violates my rights, posting your feelings on your employer violates nobody's rights.
and i still think that the majority of the population who would be worried about this wouldn't be thinking of berkeley for the tech savvy, but just as a school. the majority of people don't know which schools are big tech schools (aside from the obvious ones like MIT, caltech, GA tech, VA tech, RIT, RPI, WPI, etc), and those they know have "tech" in their name.
i've never seen i2hub, so i've got no idea (i'm not a student). it also depends on when they're looking with regard to who they catch and which schools are the easiest to get names from.
maybe, just maybe, they found lots of people sharing lots of files from berkeley. and how do we know they were able to target certain schools? if they were doing that, don't you think they would've done that to begin with when hunting on the "normal" internet?
UCLA has just as much name recognition as berkeley, except with the CS stuff. i think you're being a bit tinfoil hat paranoid here... they just want money, they don't really care where it comes from as long as they get as much money as they can.
and that's where what they look for comes into play. the sharing of the files is most likely not research, while downloading is. they don't sue you for downloading (hell, you could own the cd and just don't feel like ripping it to mp3 yourself for all they know), they sue you for sharing. it's the distribution that's illegal (and that they can more easily use to win a lawsuit against you).
i've heard rumors (note these are only rumors) that they have recruited students at various colleges to monitor file sharing networks, probably giving them access to the tools they use and probably bribing them as well.
except there's one thing... remote desktop is turned off by default in a standard XP installation. remote assistance requires you to start it when you want assistance. and the only things shared by default are the standard admin shares, which exist in win2k and NT. so while exceptions are made (and i haven't verified this yet) for those protocols, they're either something that's been around in NT releases for years or they're turned off by default anyways.
actually, the only things it allows by default are remote assistance, remote desktop, and file and printer sharing. and i could be wrong on that as well. it might block all that stuff by default. other programs it asks if you want to allow them or not.
see my post above regarding this same issue... basically if a student actually uses IRC (as opposed to a bot running on their computer talking on the IRC ports, which is most of our "IRC" traffic), they can get thei IP address unblocked.
this is why blocks/throttling are removed at night. however, when that happens and students can't do what 80% of people do on the internet (web surfing, AIM chatting), you have to implement something to allow this over people who don't realize that they have p2p clients running. education only goes so far. most students don't listen when you constantly tell them that p2p clients keep running in the system tray after you "close" them. they also don't realize that by default, they're sharing all their music to the internet. this is where most of our bandwidth is used up, which is why we're blocking p2p at the moment. please note, i disagree with full blocking, but it's not my decision...
there are bots that come loaded in spyware that talk on the IRC ports, unfortunately, this means blocking IRC. most of the "IRC" traffic is not actual IRC, but because some students do use it, they just need to ask permission and the block will be lifted for them.
you have this all wrong... a university limits bandwidth to p2p applications for reasons beyond the legality issues. they do it because (1) they can't afford to increase the total amount of bandwidth to campus in general without a major increase in tuition or a grant to do just that. they limit these applications because, regardless of legality, they are generally not being used for academic purposes (a student downloading legal music, such as concerts from bands that allow taping/trading, is not using the network for academic purposes). the primary purpose of the bandwidth to a university is academic and business related. everything else takes second to that. when p2p apps take over 70+% of the total bandwidth, it makes other uses difficult, including plain web browsing.
i went to the university of connecticut. i worked for resnet at uconn. at the time, they did something similar with the bandwidth, throttled it way down during business hours. increased it a little from 5pm-8pm, a little more from 8pm-10pm, and it was no holds bar after 10. this was to allow night classes and any straggling professors or grad students doing research the ability to do their jobs. however, there was still a problem, so they throttled the upstream p2p bandwidth 24/7. this made everyone happy. i graduated in 2001. i think things are different there now, and they block most p2p all day, every day. things went downhill after certain staff members left there...
i now work for providence college. a much smaller, private school. we don't have the money uconn does. p2p is throttled down completely, along with IRC. those that use IRC can have their ip adresses removed from the block. these blocks are because p2p took over our entire amount of bandwidth and made it difficult to do anything at any tiem of the day (including late night). we also don't have the time/money to deal with RIAA/MPAA issues, but that's not so much part of the reason for the block as the lack of bandwidth.
no, i'm not disallusioned or psychotic... in a capitalist society, they're doing what they know how to do as a company... compete. and it seems that they've wiped out all the competition (except apple, who seems to be an up and coming contender). as for the competition... well, in the OS market, there's not much for personal computing, other than linux which, as far as i am concerned still lacks the organization to be something for your average user. so there's apple and microsoft. some of their practices, while relatively unethical, are nothing new. companies have been doing the same thing for decades. microsoft is just worrying about their bottom line. however, if you look one of my other comments above, you will see that i do disagree with a lot of their practices, since they do stifle innovation.
i agree with you that microsoft needs to think of the industry as a whole.
basically my comment was because the first comments posted to the blog were intelligent constructive criticism and thought-provoking. the last comments, obviously posted by slashdot readers weren't anything but a bunch of bashing comments, comments that if replied to with intelligence would just turn up more bashing, ignoring the subject at hand. they make the majority of OSS fans out to be a bunch of idiots.
i'm not for or against microsoft. they do have some good products (windows 2000, for example). i disagree with some of their practices (non-standards compliant browser, making their own standards, activex issues, etc). my issue is that i'm sick of all the idiotic crap that comes from so many people who say they want to see OSS become a more prevalent part of computing. personally, the only way i really see that happening is if people work together rather than against each other, and this might mean trying to work with microsoft instead of against them. look at what large companies like IBM and HP have done for linux... think about if microsoft jumped on the OSS bandwagon. it won't happen tomorrow, but i do see it happening. but they probably refuse to because of all the negative energy towards them from the OSS community. they are not the enemy.
the blog was obviously microsoft-centric, considering it was written by an employee. however, the comments were pretty interesting and thought-provoking until you got to the ones posted today after this was posted to slashdot. why must all the people on slashdot be out to get microsoft? as a company they are not evil. a lot of the comments to the blog just make open source advocates out to be a bunch of complete idiots. one comment in particular... "move away from closed source, that's always been microsoft's downfall". microsoft doesn't seem to be collapsing or losing money to me... apparently closed source works for them. come on now people, get real...
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right... but with automatic updates, you can't have complete control over the update process.
try to get mcafee through work... the enterprise edition is much nicer than the home edition.
last i knew, clamav didn't have realtime protection for windows users, which is where the biggest market is...
i've never had a problem keeping my settings when i update firefox. i'm at 1.0.3 and none of my settings have changed. the only thing it asks is if i want firefox start as my homepage, which i have to uncheck. that's the only thing i would change. everything else is perfect in my opinion.
haven't used avg much... but the last time i used it, i still liked mcafee better.
1.1? aren't they still on 1.0?
and yes, fixes are released with new versions... but they're not major updates... 1.0.1, 1.0.2, and 1.0.3 (which is the latest). what's wrong with this? you set the software to autocheck for updates and it tells you that there's a critical update. you update it, it downloads the latest version and you install it. plain and simple. where, with microsoft, you need IE to get the updates for IE. that's great, huh? and yes, i realize i just said the same thing for firefox, but you can download the update using whatever browser you want.
i used to favor symantec over mcafee, royally...
now i've seen reason to doubt their products. the main one i've seen come up many times is a trojan. i don't know the name off-hand. and it's with even the latest versions and definitions. you can update it today and i will almost guarantee it won't find it.
also, my other issue with their home product is that by default, it's set to try to clean the infected file. today's viruses can't be cleaned because the file is the virus. so if it can't clean it, it takes no action. that's the most absurd setting i've ever seen. they should have it set to try to clean adn then quarantine if unsuccessful. i dread looking at computers that have norton installed, you know they're infected the minute they come in.
one question should be asked... who releases patches and security updates in a more timely manner? mozilla or microsoft? while firefox may have had more security flaws than IE, it gets patched almost immediately.
i have begun to doubt symantec's expertise. i work in a college where virus outbreaks are pretty common. now i've seen a computer with the most up to date, newest version of norton/symantec anti-virus and it seems that it still does not find all the viruses. viruses and trojans that are relatively harmful to the system. i would take this story with a grain of salt...
this isn't at all even a poll on censorship. it's a poll on privacy, which i am pretty sure that just about every slashdotter is in favor of. they're 2 separate issues. i don't think bloggers should have the right to publish names and addresses adn other information without permission. however, i don't think bloggers should be censored when it comes to other content. posting my address violates my rights, posting your feelings on your employer violates nobody's rights.
and i still think that the majority of the population who would be worried about this wouldn't be thinking of berkeley for the tech savvy, but just as a school. the majority of people don't know which schools are big tech schools (aside from the obvious ones like MIT, caltech, GA tech, VA tech, RIT, RPI, WPI, etc), and those they know have "tech" in their name.
i've never seen i2hub, so i've got no idea (i'm not a student). it also depends on when they're looking with regard to who they catch and which schools are the easiest to get names from.
maybe, just maybe, they found lots of people sharing lots of files from berkeley. and how do we know they were able to target certain schools? if they were doing that, don't you think they would've done that to begin with when hunting on the "normal" internet?
UCLA has just as much name recognition as berkeley, except with the CS stuff. i think you're being a bit tinfoil hat paranoid here... they just want money, they don't really care where it comes from as long as they get as much money as they can.
and that's where what they look for comes into play. the sharing of the files is most likely not research, while downloading is. they don't sue you for downloading (hell, you could own the cd and just don't feel like ripping it to mp3 yourself for all they know), they sue you for sharing. it's the distribution that's illegal (and that they can more easily use to win a lawsuit against you).
i've heard rumors (note these are only rumors) that they have recruited students at various colleges to monitor file sharing networks, probably giving them access to the tools they use and probably bribing them as well.
except there's one thing... remote desktop is turned off by default in a standard XP installation. remote assistance requires you to start it when you want assistance. and the only things shared by default are the standard admin shares, which exist in win2k and NT. so while exceptions are made (and i haven't verified this yet) for those protocols, they're either something that's been around in NT releases for years or they're turned off by default anyways.
RTFA... it says you can open it with quicktime.
actually, the only things it allows by default are remote assistance, remote desktop, and file and printer sharing. and i could be wrong on that as well. it might block all that stuff by default. other programs it asks if you want to allow them or not.
see my post above regarding this same issue... basically if a student actually uses IRC (as opposed to a bot running on their computer talking on the IRC ports, which is most of our "IRC" traffic), they can get thei IP address unblocked.
this is why blocks/throttling are removed at night. however, when that happens and students can't do what 80% of people do on the internet (web surfing, AIM chatting), you have to implement something to allow this over people who don't realize that they have p2p clients running. education only goes so far. most students don't listen when you constantly tell them that p2p clients keep running in the system tray after you "close" them. they also don't realize that by default, they're sharing all their music to the internet. this is where most of our bandwidth is used up, which is why we're blocking p2p at the moment. please note, i disagree with full blocking, but it's not my decision...
there are bots that come loaded in spyware that talk on the IRC ports, unfortunately, this means blocking IRC. most of the "IRC" traffic is not actual IRC, but because some students do use it, they just need to ask permission and the block will be lifted for them.
you have this all wrong... a university limits bandwidth to p2p applications for reasons beyond the legality issues. they do it because (1) they can't afford to increase the total amount of bandwidth to campus in general without a major increase in tuition or a grant to do just that. they limit these applications because, regardless of legality, they are generally not being used for academic purposes (a student downloading legal music, such as concerts from bands that allow taping/trading, is not using the network for academic purposes). the primary purpose of the bandwidth to a university is academic and business related. everything else takes second to that. when p2p apps take over 70+% of the total bandwidth, it makes other uses difficult, including plain web browsing.
i went to the university of connecticut. i worked for resnet at uconn. at the time, they did something similar with the bandwidth, throttled it way down during business hours. increased it a little from 5pm-8pm, a little more from 8pm-10pm, and it was no holds bar after 10. this was to allow night classes and any straggling professors or grad students doing research the ability to do their jobs. however, there was still a problem, so they throttled the upstream p2p bandwidth 24/7. this made everyone happy. i graduated in 2001. i think things are different there now, and they block most p2p all day, every day. things went downhill after certain staff members left there...
i now work for providence college. a much smaller, private school. we don't have the money uconn does. p2p is throttled down completely, along with IRC. those that use IRC can have their ip adresses removed from the block. these blocks are because p2p took over our entire amount of bandwidth and made it difficult to do anything at any tiem of the day (including late night). we also don't have the time/money to deal with RIAA/MPAA issues, but that's not so much part of the reason for the block as the lack of bandwidth.
no, i'm not disallusioned or psychotic... in a capitalist society, they're doing what they know how to do as a company... compete. and it seems that they've wiped out all the competition (except apple, who seems to be an up and coming contender). as for the competition... well, in the OS market, there's not much for personal computing, other than linux which, as far as i am concerned still lacks the organization to be something for your average user. so there's apple and microsoft. some of their practices, while relatively unethical, are nothing new. companies have been doing the same thing for decades. microsoft is just worrying about their bottom line. however, if you look one of my other comments above, you will see that i do disagree with a lot of their practices, since they do stifle innovation.
i agree with you that microsoft needs to think of the industry as a whole.
basically my comment was because the first comments posted to the blog were intelligent constructive criticism and thought-provoking. the last comments, obviously posted by slashdot readers weren't anything but a bunch of bashing comments, comments that if replied to with intelligence would just turn up more bashing, ignoring the subject at hand. they make the majority of OSS fans out to be a bunch of idiots.
i'm not for or against microsoft. they do have some good products (windows 2000, for example). i disagree with some of their practices (non-standards compliant browser, making their own standards, activex issues, etc). my issue is that i'm sick of all the idiotic crap that comes from so many people who say they want to see OSS become a more prevalent part of computing. personally, the only way i really see that happening is if people work together rather than against each other, and this might mean trying to work with microsoft instead of against them. look at what large companies like IBM and HP have done for linux... think about if microsoft jumped on the OSS bandwagon. it won't happen tomorrow, but i do see it happening. but they probably refuse to because of all the negative energy towards them from the OSS community. they are not the enemy.
the blog was obviously microsoft-centric, considering it was written by an employee. however, the comments were pretty interesting and thought-provoking until you got to the ones posted today after this was posted to slashdot. why must all the people on slashdot be out to get microsoft? as a company they are not evil. a lot of the comments to the blog just make open source advocates out to be a bunch of complete idiots. one comment in particular... "move away from closed source, that's always been microsoft's downfall". microsoft doesn't seem to be collapsing or losing money to me... apparently closed source works for them. come on now people, get real...
the only issue i have is that the firefox icons are not a fox, but a red bird, more like firebird. the thunderbird ones are nice though.