To users, security is about protecting the machine from external threats.
And right there is half the problem; the most common threat faced by a desktop machine is that of a user with admin privs unwittingly installing a trojan or virus.
the military can have the moral quandry of whether they want to cold-bloodedly slaughter a significant percentage of the US population
It wouldn't take that though; massacre a few selected groups (probably only one or two) and the vast majority of the population would find their resolve melt away, leaving just the ones who were always willing to die for the cause in the first place.
He will be gone in two years to be replaced by another egomaniac.
If I were a conspiracy nut (which I'm not), I'd likely counter that with theories about the election being suspended due to imposition of martial law, or the fact that you're at war, or possibly a (staged?) terrorist attack in the run-up to the elections.
Now that I read the parent a little more carefully, there's actually no good way to tell whether his email client is web-based or standalone.
If it was web-based, and he uses FF as his main browser, why would clicking a link in an email *ever* open the link in IE? Similarly, if it was web-based and he reads it in IE, why would clicking a link *ever* open it in FF? That's not how system defaults work in Windows (or any system), as it would be utterly counter-intuitive - you open your non-default browser, browse to a website, click a link, and it launches your default browser? No.
He uses a stand-alone client.
As for the main point, imho it is unforgivable for any application to make itself default and/or take over file associations from other applications without asking. Just because I've installed it doesn't mean I want to switch over to it immediately (or indeed at all!).
No offence, but you just demonstrated your ignorance of the problem. For example, think about how making stuff bigger would help a screen reader parse a page and work out what were common navigational elements and what was actual content, and deliver the content to its blind user.
Accessibility is much more involved than making sure that the partially-sighted can make out the text as they squint at the screen.
I have never and will never use IE as my primary browser, and yet I still installed IE7 almost as soon as soon as it was officially available.
Why? Because lots of other apps use the IE web component, so anything that makes my PC that little bit less exposed to IE exploits has to be a good thing.
Most people aren't seriously suggesting that all existing websites should be scrapped and redesigned from the ground up. However, if you're creating a new website or redesigning an existing one, imho it's selfish not to spend a little extra effort to make it accessible. It's also rather foolish not to take the opportunity to extend your skillset and improve your CV...
1) The poll says 39.5% of respsondents are running an illegal copy of Windows; that's not "almost half" of Dutch geeks, it's not even almost half of Dutch geeks that run Windows 2) The original assertion was that most copies of Windows on the desktop are illicit; geeks most certainly do not make up the majority of desktop users
I stand by my assertion that the majority of desktop users do not have the technical skills nor contacts required to install an illicit copy of Windows. It's been a long, long time since geeks were in the majority amongst computer users.
The truth, I suspect, is that there are a lot more legit XP installs out there than the Geek is willing to admit.
Of course there are. Think about it - most users are barely able to secure their machines, even though all it really takes is installing some av software, not switching off its auto-update feature, and installing Windows updates fromtime to time (which is also fully automated by default).
Are we really exepcted to believe that these same people are able to not only obtain an illicit copy of XP and a serial number, but successfully install it? Most people treat their PCs as though they were appliances; they use whatever copy of Windows came with it, changing only when they change PCs.
It's only us geeks that are likely to install our own OS. For what it's worth, I personally think that anyone who installs illicit software deserves whatever problems they get. My enthusiasm for shutting them out of updates is tempered only by the realisation that if they can't get security updates, they'll be that much more likely to get compromised and send me even more spam (or send spam "from" my domain).
But most of desktop users just don't own a legal copy.
Do you have any figures to back up that assertion? I likewise assert that the vast majority of desktop users have perfectly legal copies of Windows, as they simply use whatever came with their PC when they bought it, and that likewise the majority of users buy their PCs from big-name shops/manufacturers that install correctly licenced copies.
Office and other apps, now that's a different story. As everyone here keeps saying, though, most users couldn't install Windows if they tried, so how would they be using a pirated copy? (I appreciate that some system bulders install pirated copies of Windows, but they're in the minority, not the majority.)
We've hit an all-time low
on
Slashdot's Vastu
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Why was this posted? Is this news for nerds? Is it stuff that matters? Is it anything other than irrelevant bullshit?
I wonder what interesting stories were rejectd so this crap could be posted.
when the os is responsible for the infection in the first place
That's called blaming the victim. By that logic, anyone who gets mugged or beaten up is at fault for not being tough enough to deal with their attackers.
I suspect very strongly that in the case of money, simply having the means to create counterfeit bills will probably land you in a whole heap of trouble. Governments tend not to have much of a sense of humour when it comes to that sort of thing.
10 years ago, in this case, I'd have laughed if somone had suggested the guy could be arrested just for this. Since the attack on the WTC, however...
Almost every single article posted here about such-and-such a company taking down a blog, or removing comments from a forum, or something along those lines will have many comments decrying it as censorship.
theres a mass of suckers out there who can't stop downloading their songs by the pound
Who's the sucker - the one who cherry-picks the two or three songs off an album that they actually like and buys them at 79p each, or the one who buys the CD for £15?
2) I assume that in the US, as in every other civillised country, you have different types of prisons, and that he's going to end up in one of hte ones that they reserve for non-violent, non-sexual offenders, and that thus the chances are excellent that it'll be 5 long, uneventful months.
The problem is not "zero respect for intellectual property", it's zero respect for punishment that is wildly disproportionate to the crime in question. Yes, a crime in which no one was harmed nor ever intended to be harmed should carry a lesser penalty.
Now, I don't disagree with you, and I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with the guy getting 5 months inside. I'm not convinced that society is served by jailing him at all, although in my opinion he does need to be punished for his actions.
However, there is a reason why the punishment is so disproportionate to the crime - it's because the crime is so easy to commit and there's such a small chance of being caught. The idea is that in this sort of case, as the risk of being caught is so low, the way to deter people from offending is to jack the punishment up. That changes the balance of risk back to being somewhere nearer it outweighing the benefits, thus (theoretically) convincing people not to do it. Of course, it doesn't always work, but then people still commit murder despite the risk of execution, or armed robbery, kidnapping, etc despite the risk of dying in a shoot-out with the police, etc.
Now, I'm not saying that I agree with the idea necessarily, but that's the theory behind it as I understand it. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so feel free to correct me if I'm delusional...
If it's open source, it's made to work, not made for profit
You clearly haven't spent much time on sourceforge or freshmeat. A huge amount of open source projects never get any further than the planning stages, or a few buggy features. Not that that's not necessarily true of commercial software too, but to suggest that if it's open source it's automatically good, stable and complete is quite simply wrong.
And with Vista's new hardware requirements likely not matching their current hardware, there's yet another possibility he will look at his options before buying a new computer.
That makes no sense - he won't go with Vista on his new computer because his current one won't run it with all the bells and whistles?
I can appreciate the idea that if he's buying a whole new computer he might look at alternatives, but Vista's hardware requirements won't be a factor - he simply won't know or understand them. The sales assistant will say "And this one is perfect for email and the web, and comes with the latest version of Windows!" and that's all he'll know.
My father still thinks of the hard drive capacity as being a measure of the power of his system, even though I fitted more RAM for him specifically to improve its performance...
No, the fact that the XP installer does support USB keyboards means that there was something different about this one - therefore, if not a hardware fault, certainly a hardware issue. Feel free to practice your sarcasm though, it could use it.
There was no reasoning present at all, just an assertion. (I can't comment on whether it was a fair-minded assessment or not, as I've never read Forbes.)
Slashdot Mirror
The first line of the summary says that they "face 'unlimited fines'" - doesn't that imply to you that there are laws dealing with this in the UK?
To users, security is about protecting the machine from external threats.
And right there is half the problem; the most common threat faced by a desktop machine is that of a user with admin privs unwittingly installing a trojan or virus.
the military can have the moral quandry of whether they want to cold-bloodedly slaughter a significant percentage of the US population
It wouldn't take that though; massacre a few selected groups (probably only one or two) and the vast majority of the population would find their resolve melt away, leaving just the ones who were always willing to die for the cause in the first place.
He will be gone in two years to be replaced by another egomaniac.
If I were a conspiracy nut (which I'm not), I'd likely counter that with theories about the election being suspended due to imposition of martial law, or the fact that you're at war, or possibly a (staged?) terrorist attack in the run-up to the elections.
Of course, I'm not, so I won't.
Now that I read the parent a little more carefully, there's actually no good way to tell whether his email client is web-based or standalone.
If it was web-based, and he uses FF as his main browser, why would clicking a link in an email *ever* open the link in IE? Similarly, if it was web-based and he reads it in IE, why would clicking a link *ever* open it in FF? That's not how system defaults work in Windows (or any system), as it would be utterly counter-intuitive - you open your non-default browser, browse to a website, click a link, and it launches your default browser? No.
He uses a stand-alone client.
As for the main point, imho it is unforgivable for any application to make itself default and/or take over file associations from other applications without asking. Just because I've installed it doesn't mean I want to switch over to it immediately (or indeed at all!).
No offence, but you just demonstrated your ignorance of the problem. For example, think about how making stuff bigger would help a screen reader parse a page and work out what were common navigational elements and what was actual content, and deliver the content to its blind user.
Accessibility is much more involved than making sure that the partially-sighted can make out the text as they squint at the screen.
I have never and will never use IE as my primary browser, and yet I still installed IE7 almost as soon as soon as it was officially available.
Why? Because lots of other apps use the IE web component, so anything that makes my PC that little bit less exposed to IE exploits has to be a good thing.
Most people aren't seriously suggesting that all existing websites should be scrapped and redesigned from the ground up. However, if you're creating a new website or redesigning an existing one, imho it's selfish not to spend a little extra effort to make it accessible. It's also rather foolish not to take the opportunity to extend your skillset and improve your CV...
Well, two points spring to mind:
1) The poll says 39.5% of respsondents are running an illegal copy of Windows; that's not "almost half" of Dutch geeks, it's not even almost half of Dutch geeks that run Windows
2) The original assertion was that most copies of Windows on the desktop are illicit; geeks most certainly do not make up the majority of desktop users
I stand by my assertion that the majority of desktop users do not have the technical skills nor contacts required to install an illicit copy of Windows. It's been a long, long time since geeks were in the majority amongst computer users.
The truth, I suspect, is that there are a lot more legit XP installs out there than the Geek is willing to admit.
Of course there are. Think about it - most users are barely able to secure their machines, even though all it really takes is installing some av software, not switching off its auto-update feature, and installing Windows updates fromtime to time (which is also fully automated by default).
Are we really exepcted to believe that these same people are able to not only obtain an illicit copy of XP and a serial number, but successfully install it? Most people treat their PCs as though they were appliances; they use whatever copy of Windows came with it, changing only when they change PCs.
It's only us geeks that are likely to install our own OS. For what it's worth, I personally think that anyone who installs illicit software deserves whatever problems they get. My enthusiasm for shutting them out of updates is tempered only by the realisation that if they can't get security updates, they'll be that much more likely to get compromised and send me even more spam (or send spam "from" my domain).
But most of desktop users just don't own a legal copy.
Do you have any figures to back up that assertion? I likewise assert that the vast majority of desktop users have perfectly legal copies of Windows, as they simply use whatever came with their PC when they bought it, and that likewise the majority of users buy their PCs from big-name shops/manufacturers that install correctly licenced copies.
Office and other apps, now that's a different story. As everyone here keeps saying, though, most users couldn't install Windows if they tried, so how would they be using a pirated copy? (I appreciate that some system bulders install pirated copies of Windows, but they're in the minority, not the majority.)
Why was this posted? Is this news for nerds? Is it stuff that matters? Is it anything other than irrelevant bullshit?
I wonder what interesting stories were rejectd so this crap could be posted.
when the os is responsible for the infection in the first place
That's called blaming the victim. By that logic, anyone who gets mugged or beaten up is at fault for not being tough enough to deal with their attackers.
I suspect very strongly that in the case of money, simply having the means to create counterfeit bills will probably land you in a whole heap of trouble. Governments tend not to have much of a sense of humour when it comes to that sort of thing.
10 years ago, in this case, I'd have laughed if somone had suggested the guy could be arrested just for this. Since the attack on the WTC, however...
Almost every single article posted here about such-and-such a company taking down a blog, or removing comments from a forum, or something along those lines will have many comments decrying it as censorship.
theres a mass of suckers out there who can't stop downloading their songs by the pound
Who's the sucker - the one who cherry-picks the two or three songs off an album that they actually like and buys them at 79p each, or the one who buys the CD for £15?
For the thousandth fucking time, that bill only applies to non-citizens!
That's ok then - as long as it's only non-citizens* that you treat as being sub-human.
(* And anyone declared to be an enemy combatant for whatever reason, citizen or not)
Two points:
1) He's getting 5 months too, not 5 years
2) I assume that in the US, as in every other civillised country, you have different types of prisons, and that he's going to end up in one of hte ones that they reserve for non-violent, non-sexual offenders, and that thus the chances are excellent that it'll be 5 long, uneventful months.
The problem is not "zero respect for intellectual property", it's zero respect for punishment that is wildly disproportionate to the crime in question. Yes, a crime in which no one was harmed nor ever intended to be harmed should carry a lesser penalty.
Now, I don't disagree with you, and I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with the guy getting 5 months inside. I'm not convinced that society is served by jailing him at all, although in my opinion he does need to be punished for his actions.
However, there is a reason why the punishment is so disproportionate to the crime - it's because the crime is so easy to commit and there's such a small chance of being caught. The idea is that in this sort of case, as the risk of being caught is so low, the way to deter people from offending is to jack the punishment up. That changes the balance of risk back to being somewhere nearer it outweighing the benefits, thus (theoretically) convincing people not to do it. Of course, it doesn't always work, but then people still commit murder despite the risk of execution, or armed robbery, kidnapping, etc despite the risk of dying in a shoot-out with the police, etc.
Now, I'm not saying that I agree with the idea necessarily, but that's the theory behind it as I understand it. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so feel free to correct me if I'm delusional...
If it's open source, it's made to work, not made for profit
You clearly haven't spent much time on sourceforge or freshmeat. A huge amount of open source projects never get any further than the planning stages, or a few buggy features. Not that that's not necessarily true of commercial software too, but to suggest that if it's open source it's automatically good, stable and complete is quite simply wrong.
Google is not a government organisation, so "free speech" is not an issue.
That's true, but it wouldn't stop people screaming about it as though it were an issue.
And with Vista's new hardware requirements likely not matching their current hardware, there's yet another possibility he will look at his options before buying a new computer.
That makes no sense - he won't go with Vista on his new computer because his current one won't run it with all the bells and whistles?
I can appreciate the idea that if he's buying a whole new computer he might look at alternatives, but Vista's hardware requirements won't be a factor - he simply won't know or understand them. The sales assistant will say "And this one is perfect for email and the web, and comes with the latest version of Windows!" and that's all he'll know.
My father still thinks of the hard drive capacity as being a measure of the power of his system, even though I fitted more RAM for him specifically to improve its performance...
Ah yes, Orkin. The only company with more bugs than Microsoft.
You clearly haven't had to work with some of the products I've had to work with - like pretty much anything that CA has anything to do with.
No, the fact that the XP installer does support USB keyboards means that there was something different about this one - therefore, if not a hardware fault, certainly a hardware issue. Feel free to practice your sarcasm though, it could use it.
There was no reasoning present at all, just an assertion. (I can't comment on whether it was a fair-minded assessment or not, as I've never read Forbes.)