Isn't this getting to be THE cliche response on slashdot now?
We should all get together and make our own beowulf cluster of reverse-engineered petrified natalie portmans, running overclocked crusoes with iMac mice.
I would like to respectfully disagree with you, Mr. Cthulhu.
I believe that Kerberos is a fairly strategic technical standard. In short, it is major. Think Echelon, think crypto policy. Data security is information security, it's power. It's actually what this whole fight is about - the abiltiy to control information. If MS-Kerberos becomes the standard, and Microsoft controls it, it could easily become tomorrows NSAKey. To more than just browser transactions. MS must not be allowd to quash the open version of this standard, and then control it's proprietary version, while it becomes the defacto and very likely the dejure standard. When that happens, freedom will be well and truly fucked.
If only we could prove that that Fillipino college dropout was covertly a Microsoft employee.
And why is it that it's the Phillipine Islands, but people who live there are Fillipinos? Why aren't they Phillipinos? Why aren't people from Canada Terrance-inos?
You CAN'T beat them fair and square, because Microsoft bought the market, and you can't beat them in court, because they bought the law (DMCA, UTICA, etc.)
I blame all of the idiots who didn't vote for McCain.
Presenting the Microsoft Hall of Innovation ===================================
Close Combat Popular game purchased from Atomic Games
Flight Simulator Purchased from the Bruce Artwick Organisation
Age of Empires Collabaration with Ensemble studios(Gopal R S)
FrontPage Microsoft's HTML editor was purchased from Vermeer Technologies in 1996
FoxPro This database application came along with Microsoft's purchase of Fox Software in 1986
Internet Explorer Desperate to play catch-up in the fast-moving Internet world Microsoft licensed code from Spyglass Inc one ofthe two licensees of the original Mosaic code base in 1995 and called it MSIE Microsoft then proceeded to distribute MSIE for free denying Spyglass substantial royalties for their key contribution to the product
MS-DOS The original Microsoft cash cow this CPM clone then called Q-DOS was purchased from the Seattle Computer Company in 1981 Microsoft then proceeded to thwart Seattle Computer's license rights to the product The tiny company sued Microsoft and prevailed in court
Object Linking Environment OLE
Microsoft settled a suit with Wang Labs over patent infringement code portions of OLE which is also the heart of Microsoft's ActiveX
PowerPoint This presentation software package was renamed and re branded after Microsoft's purchase of Forethought Inc in 1987
SQL Server This important database product is based on code purchased from Sybase in 1988
Visual Basic Ruby the foundation for Microsoft's highly important Visual Basic product was purchased from Cooper Software in 1991
Visual C Microsoft purchased the Lattice C code compiler which became Visual C Microsoft's software development environment
Visual SourceSafe Purchased from OneTree Software Shortly after OneTree's SourceSafe was released Microsoft preannounced a similar application called Microsoft Delta which failed to sell Microsoft then purchased OneTree and renamed SourceSafe as Microsoft Visual SourceSafe
Windows Technologies used in Windows multitasking came to Microsoft with their purchase of Dynamical Systems in 1986 Portions of the interface were licensed from Apple Computer also in 1986
XENIX Microsoft's version of Unix was actually written under contract by the Santa Cruz Operation(SCO)
The Intellimouse, which Goldtouch is now suing for patent violations over. Seems Goldtouch had a meeting with M$ and tried to sell them their ergonomic mouse technology. M$ didn't buy, but 6 months later released a mouse which looked remarkably simular...
Dear Microsoft, I expect compensation for the many many hours I spent during the years 1987-1995, tweaking autoexec.bat and config.sys files to get your defective DOS operating system (which others will point out that it *wasn't* yours) to function properly.
Counting interest, I reckon $50,000 ought to do it.
That amounts to only $2 per american (if we all bought 1 CD) - which brings the prices back down to oh, $18/CD. Which is still outrageous. Like someone else said - $10 is highway robbery. More like $5 is fair.
That's what I'm saying! The fact that the default, installed behavior of these products opens this vulnerability in the human-factor, is why Outlook is dangerous. As others have pointed out, you can disable Windows Scripting Host, but because it's enabled by default, as a whole, across the internet, the entire globe, you'll save a similar percentage to that which is represented by "folks smart enough to not click". You'll still get the majority of people hosed, economic ruin, etc.
I am not so full of myself that I am certain that I will never click on one of these and get burned. I've been safe so far, but there are nifty things my friends email me that are fun to run, and someday - I dread that day - I might get burned. I run Outlook mail because that's what's required for my job. I keep the dangerous stuff disabled. But I'm also reinstalling all my junk all the time, or installing upgrades. When is the complexity going to catch up with me, and when am I going to either forget to disable something, or some new feature get put it that I didn't read up on? The fault lies with the software manufacturer, and setting up these risky features to run unimpeded by default. They HAVE secure settings for Outlook, they just aren't the default. This is why, I believe, Microsoft should be held accountable.
Simple! The same place web-browsers draw it by default! When a use action causes executable code to be downloaded and run, we get a nice little warning dialog. Those of us educated enough to know it could be harmful, will click "NO", and go on with our lives. The rest will be formatting and reinstalling Windows, and thinking twice the next time.
The fact that Outlook installs the capability to run executable code WITHOUT a human's capability to stop it, that is the problem, the security hole, the bug. It is a simple thing to add this kind of safety check, and Microsoft wont do it. The guy who wrote the program to test if his 150 users would format their hard drives PROVES that as a "system" humanity is vulnerable to this kind of exploit. As individuals, some of us aren't, but as a whole - we are. To quote MIB; "a person is smart, people are scared stupid animals, and you know it."
Humanity as a whole is now a critical, functional component of a system, known as the internet. That component is vulnerable, in that a certain % of them will run ILOVEYOU worms. Giving everyone a second-chance warning dialog would significantly reduce the damage such worms can cause. It won't protect everyone, but a higher percentage. Microsoft does not take this into account. I call that irresponsible. Even negligent. As is running anything mission critical on a system with such vulnerabilities.
agreed, except that, I don't think products would be cheaper. Pay would be adjusted accordingly, so it would be a zero-sum game, as far as overall standard of living goes.
Viewing advertisments is not paying for your content. You are under no obligation, implied or otherwise, to view ads. The content is offered for free. While the assumption made by the sponsor is that X content viewers = X ad viewers = x-y(rational people)= actual sales, that is an assumption, not a compulsion or obligation.
Whether y is the number of people who think for themselves, or y is the number of people who hit the mute button on their remote during commercials, or y is the number of people who get up and go potty or grab a beer, or use TiVo to time-shift past the commercials, or whether y is the number of people who disable banners, that assumption is made by the sponsor, and is risk inherent in the venture, and is reflected in the value of the ad "real-estate".
The only real effect here is that our value for Y increases, and the risk to sponsors rises, and therefore the value of that ad real-estate declines. The outcome, a simple escalation of advertising: 1 ad previously viewed by 100,000 people costs $100,000, now viewed by 10,000 people, now only costs $10,000, so instead of one ad, the content providers must now sell 10 ads to get the same revenue. Or, the content provider must also provide a better method of binding the advertising to the content - which will result in, probably, proprietary content formats bound to proprietary viewers, which do not permit ad filtering. (or in a simpler form, probably ad banners that originate on the same server and rotate via a CGI or something).
Either way, the costs to content providers and advertisers will increase, again decreasing the value of the ad "real-estate".
While we can imagine this game running a few dozen rounds in web browsers, other than stuff like product placement, I don't really see any alternative to ad-supported TV broadcasting when you throw a powerful weapon like TiVo into the mix. Except a migration to a pay-per-view model.
heh, I just finished downloading 9 gigs of MP3's (including a few Metallica albums) from another NT server across network neighborhood. I didn't use Find. But I did use Start->Run \\servername\sharename.
I've heard a lot of pro-IP-law folks here stating that copyrights exist to give people an incentive to work and create things, invent things, do works of art, etc.
As a former artist, I think that's a load of bull. I quit my former field to work in computers because I was greedy. I wanted money. I wanted to support myself, and my family, I wanted to be rich. I got my wish. But I still have a creative urge, and I still sometimes do art in my spare time. I create FAR less art than I would have if I was a professional artist trying to make ends meet, and that is in favor of the pro-IP-law argument. But the fact is, the vast majority of that potential art would have been complete CRAP. Good art is made for the love of art. Not for survival purposes. This comes into effect when some rock stars become muti-gazillionaires. They're not working to survive, they're making their music because they love the art. But others (like Metallica) are apparently in it just to make a buck. Their art tends to suck (Backstreet Boyz, etc. - Metallica being the painful, probably misguided exception here).
The fact is, if the art was distributed free to fans, with the exception of concerts, live performances, bands would have no revenue, musicians could not survive, and would have to flip burgers for a living. In the case of a band like XTC where the lead singer was psychologically unable to perform in front of an audience, it would have been a needless loss of some great art to society, but for these others, (er- Backstreet Boyz, need I come up with the millions of other examples?) society, humanity, would be far better off if these guys were flipping burgers, or more likey, surfing at daddy's beach-house.
But if economic survival was not an issue, for the artists, for anyone, then the truly great artists would be at their leisure to create great art, to do what their heart desires, to do so in a manner which is unaffected by economic concerns (lets edit this track down to 3:47, so it's playable on the radio), and they would be free to allow the material to be distributed for free, instead of forcing this artificial supply-shortage scenario that the record labels want.
hm. My VERY LARGE software company, was doing a project that used DCOM extensively. The end result was a big piece of poo. Several critical things were broken, and we tracked down the problems to DCOM - asked MS to fix them, and got the blow-off.
So we learned a valuable lesson - and ripped out DCOM and implemented our own code to cover those functions. One year later, we finally have a shippable product. Luckily, our company is big enough and robust enough to handle that kind of crap. But our smaller competitors (and others) may not be so lucky. Perhaps there are secret tricks to these DCOM APIs that only MS Engineers are privy to - but they're going to have to face the fact that their broken protocol is NOT going to be adopted, if it can't be made to work. I just wish more 3rd party software vendors would realize that using Microsoft (or any proprietary) APIs is a trap that should be avoided at all costs.
Slashdot Mirror
Happy Cinco de Mayo to you too!
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
YES! We also need a checkbox stating whether we consent to having our post deleted if it contains any copyright-infringing material.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
If you listen to fools -
The mob rules.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Reminds one somewhat of the outcome of a recent war just finished a few years back in the Middle East, does it not?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
So you're not saying that Hitler needed a hug, he needed some Thorazine?
He wasn't "evil"? How would you know evil when you saw it?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Isn't this getting to be THE cliche response on slashdot now?
We should all get together and make our own beowulf cluster of reverse-engineered petrified natalie portmans, running overclocked crusoes with iMac mice.
Narf!
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
what happened to the times when we used to say;
"aw, that's bullshit, that'll never stand up in court!"
. . . and we'd be right?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
I would like to respectfully disagree with you, Mr. Cthulhu.
I believe that Kerberos is a fairly strategic technical standard. In short, it is major. Think Echelon, think crypto policy. Data security is information security, it's power. It's actually what this whole fight is about - the abiltiy to control information. If MS-Kerberos becomes the standard, and Microsoft controls it, it could easily become tomorrows NSAKey. To more than just browser transactions. MS must not be allowd to quash the open version of this standard, and then control it's proprietary version, while it becomes the defacto and very likely the dejure standard. When that happens, freedom will be well and truly fucked.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
If only we could prove that that Fillipino college dropout was covertly a Microsoft employee.
And why is it that it's the Phillipine Islands, but people who live there are Fillipinos? Why aren't they Phillipinos? Why aren't people from Canada Terrance-inos?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
too bad you couldn't have put him in front of a Mac. Or an Ultra Sparc.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
You CAN'T beat them fair and square, because Microsoft bought the market, and you can't beat them in court, because they bought the law (DMCA, UTICA, etc.)
I blame all of the idiots who didn't vote for McCain.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Any additions?
Presenting the Microsoft Hall of Innovation
===================================
Close Combat
Popular game purchased from Atomic Games
Flight Simulator
Purchased from the Bruce Artwick Organisation
Age of Empires
Collabaration with Ensemble studios(Gopal R S)
FrontPage
Microsoft's HTML editor was purchased from Vermeer Technologies in 1996
FoxPro
This database application came along with Microsoft's purchase of Fox Software in 1986
Internet Explorer
Desperate to play catch-up in the fast-moving Internet world Microsoft licensed code from Spyglass Inc one ofthe two licensees of the
original Mosaic code base in 1995 and called it MSIE Microsoft then proceeded to distribute MSIE for free denying Spyglass substantial royalties for their key contribution to the product
MS-DOS
The original Microsoft cash cow this CPM clone then called Q-DOS was purchased from the Seattle Computer Company in 1981 Microsoft then proceeded to thwart Seattle Computer's license rights to the product The tiny company sued Microsoft and prevailed in court
Object Linking Environment OLE
Microsoft settled a suit with Wang Labs over patent infringement code portions of OLE which is also the heart of Microsoft's ActiveX
PowerPoint
This presentation software package was renamed and re branded after Microsoft's purchase of Forethought Inc in 1987
SQL Server
This important database product is based on code purchased from Sybase in 1988
Visual Basic
Ruby the foundation for Microsoft's highly important Visual Basic product was purchased from Cooper Software in 1991
Visual C
Microsoft purchased the Lattice C code compiler which became Visual C Microsoft's software development environment
Visual SourceSafe
Purchased from OneTree Software Shortly after OneTree's SourceSafe was released Microsoft preannounced a similar application called Microsoft Delta which failed to sell Microsoft then purchased OneTree and renamed
SourceSafe as Microsoft Visual SourceSafe
Windows
Technologies used in Windows multitasking came to Microsoft with their purchase of Dynamical Systems in 1986 Portions of the interface were licensed from Apple Computer also in 1986
XENIX
Microsoft's version of Unix was actually written under contract by the Santa Cruz Operation(SCO)
The Intellimouse, which Goldtouch is now suing for patent violations over. Seems Goldtouch had a meeting with M$ and tried to sell them their ergonomic mouse technology. M$ didn't buy, but 6 months later released a mouse which looked remarkably simular...
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
. . . until halfway there, they decide it's not worth it, and Earth would be a much nicer planet to take over.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Dear Microsoft,
I expect compensation for the many many hours I spent during the years 1987-1995, tweaking autoexec.bat and config.sys files to get your defective DOS operating system (which others will point out that it *wasn't* yours) to function properly.
Counting interest, I reckon $50,000 ought to do it.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Between this, the open cookie jar, and Steven Barhkto, it's only a matter of time before we're all Microsoft mind-controlled zombies.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
$480 million? I think thats WAY low.
That amounts to only $2 per american (if we all bought 1 CD) - which brings the prices back down to oh, $18/CD. Which is still outrageous. Like someone else said - $10 is highway robbery. More like $5 is fair.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
or, buy a G4 PowerMac and be done with it.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
If one could figure out how to ping a given IP from VBS, then this would indeed, be a nice DDoS attack. . .
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
That's what I'm saying! The fact that the default, installed behavior of these products opens this vulnerability in the human-factor, is why Outlook is dangerous. As others have pointed out, you can disable Windows Scripting Host, but because it's enabled by default, as a whole, across the internet, the entire globe, you'll save a similar percentage to that which is represented by "folks smart enough to not click". You'll still get the majority of people hosed, economic ruin, etc.
I am not so full of myself that I am certain that I will never click on one of these and get burned. I've been safe so far, but there are nifty things my friends email me that are fun to run, and someday - I dread that day - I might get burned. I run Outlook mail because that's what's required for my job. I keep the dangerous stuff disabled. But I'm also reinstalling all my junk all the time, or installing upgrades. When is the complexity going to catch up with me, and when am I going to either forget to disable something, or some new feature get put it that I didn't read up on? The fault lies with the software manufacturer, and setting up these risky features to run unimpeded by default. They HAVE secure settings for Outlook, they just aren't the default. This is why, I believe, Microsoft should be held accountable.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Where should the line be drawn?
Simple! The same place web-browsers draw it by default! When a use action causes executable code to be downloaded and run, we get a nice little warning dialog. Those of us educated enough to know it could be harmful, will click "NO", and go on with our lives. The rest will be formatting and reinstalling Windows, and thinking twice the next time.
The fact that Outlook installs the capability to run executable code WITHOUT a human's capability to stop it, that is the problem, the security hole, the bug. It is a simple thing to add this kind of safety check, and Microsoft wont do it. The guy who wrote the program to test if his 150 users would format their hard drives PROVES that as a "system" humanity is vulnerable to this kind of exploit. As individuals, some of us aren't, but as a whole - we are. To quote MIB; "a person is smart, people are scared stupid animals, and you know it."
Humanity as a whole is now a critical, functional component of a system, known as the internet. That component is vulnerable, in that a certain % of them will run ILOVEYOU worms. Giving everyone a second-chance warning dialog would significantly reduce the damage such worms can cause. It won't protect everyone, but a higher percentage.
Microsoft does not take this into account.
I call that irresponsible. Even negligent. As is running anything mission critical on a system with such vulnerabilities.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
agreed, except that, I don't think products would be cheaper. Pay would be adjusted accordingly, so it would be a zero-sum game, as far as overall standard of living goes.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
You naughty *TROLL*!
Viewing advertisments is not paying for your content. You are under no obligation, implied or otherwise, to view ads. The content is offered for free.
While the assumption made by the sponsor is that X content viewers = X ad viewers = x-y(rational people)= actual sales, that is an assumption, not a compulsion or obligation.
Whether y is the number of people who think for themselves, or y is the number of people who hit the mute button on their remote during commercials, or y is the number of people who get up and go potty or grab a beer, or use TiVo to time-shift past the commercials, or whether y is the number of people who disable banners, that assumption is made by the sponsor, and is risk inherent in the venture, and is reflected in the value of the ad "real-estate".
The only real effect here is that our value for Y increases, and the risk to sponsors rises, and therefore the value of that ad real-estate declines. The outcome, a simple escalation of advertising: 1 ad previously viewed by 100,000 people costs $100,000, now viewed by 10,000 people, now only costs $10,000, so instead of one ad, the content providers must now sell 10 ads to get the same revenue. Or, the content provider must also provide a better method of binding the advertising to the content - which will result in, probably, proprietary content formats bound to proprietary viewers, which do not permit ad filtering. (or in a simpler form, probably ad banners that originate on the same server and rotate via a CGI or something).
Either way, the costs to content providers and advertisers will increase, again decreasing the value of the ad "real-estate".
While we can imagine this game running a few dozen rounds in web browsers, other than stuff like product placement, I don't really see any alternative to ad-supported TV broadcasting when you throw a powerful weapon like TiVo into the mix.
Except a migration to a pay-per-view model.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
heh, I just finished downloading 9 gigs of MP3's (including a few Metallica albums) from another NT server across network neighborhood. I didn't use Find. But I did use Start->Run \\servername\sharename.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
I'd like to add to this -
I've heard a lot of pro-IP-law folks here stating that copyrights exist to give people an incentive to work and create things, invent things, do works of art, etc.
As a former artist, I think that's a load of bull. I quit my former field to work in computers because I was greedy. I wanted money. I wanted to support myself, and my family, I wanted to be rich. I got my wish. But I still have a creative urge, and I still sometimes do art in my spare time.
I create FAR less art than I would have if I was a professional artist trying to make ends meet, and that is in favor of the pro-IP-law argument.
But the fact is, the vast majority of that potential art would have been complete CRAP. Good art is made for the love of art. Not for survival purposes. This comes into effect when some rock stars become muti-gazillionaires. They're not working to survive, they're making their music because they love the art. But others (like Metallica) are apparently in it just to make a buck. Their art tends to suck (Backstreet Boyz, etc. - Metallica being the painful, probably misguided exception here).
The fact is, if the art was distributed free to fans, with the exception of concerts, live performances, bands would have no revenue, musicians could not survive, and would have to flip burgers for a living. In the case of a band like XTC where the lead singer was psychologically unable to perform in front of an audience, it would have been a needless loss of some great art to society, but for these others, (er- Backstreet Boyz, need I come up with the millions of other examples?) society, humanity, would be far better off if these guys were flipping burgers, or more likey, surfing at daddy's beach-house.
But if economic survival was not an issue, for the artists, for anyone, then the truly great artists would be at their leisure to create great art, to do what their heart desires, to do so in a manner which is unaffected by economic concerns (lets edit this track down to 3:47, so it's playable on the radio), and they would be free to allow the material to be distributed for free, instead of forcing this artificial supply-shortage scenario that the record labels want.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
hm. My VERY LARGE software company, was doing a project that used DCOM extensively. The end result was a big piece of poo. Several critical things were broken, and we tracked down the problems to DCOM - asked MS to fix them, and got the blow-off.
So we learned a valuable lesson - and ripped out DCOM and implemented our own code to cover those functions. One year later, we finally have a shippable product. Luckily, our company is big enough and robust enough to handle that kind of crap. But our smaller competitors (and others) may not be so lucky. Perhaps there are secret tricks to these DCOM APIs that only MS Engineers are privy to - but they're going to have to face the fact that their broken protocol is NOT going to be adopted, if it can't be made to work. I just wish more 3rd party software vendors would realize that using Microsoft (or any proprietary) APIs is a trap that should be avoided at all costs.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .