Ok, cool, I was wrong - but in the opposite direction, as it were. The main point is that no, plugins do not use XUL and JavaScript exclusively, and so are not guaranteed to be sandboxed and secure.
That's certainly possible - but given that it is citizens of other countries (those on the export prohibition list) that would be using the proxies, I'm not sure what good banning them would be.
Unless you're suggesting that serving via a proxy would be banned, in which case, how would you tell that the connection was coming via a proxy?
If they want to have any corporate entity in the US they have to follow these laws, the actual physical location of the servers doesn't matter
This falls under the general heading of "the courts can see when someone is trying to exploit a perceived loophole in the law and do not usually have a sense of humour about such things". Or - take the piss, expect to have the book thrown at you.
I rather suspect that the vast majority of the fines involved in infringement cases are due to the upper limit of $150,000 dollars per infringement; next to that the attorneys' fees are going to be pretty small.
I don't know about the situation in your country, but here in the UK any car over a certain age undergoes mandatory regular testing (the MOT), which is designed to check the road-worthiness of the car. These tests are paid for by the owner of the car, and not having a valid MOT certificate brings all sorts of problems (not least of which is that it invalidates your insurance).
Perhaps the same should be true of PCs? Since we're equating poorly maintained cars with poorly maintained PCs.
I kind of doubt Microsoft is ever going to fix this
XP reached end of mainstream support on 14th April 2009 (source); as such it's very unlikely you'll see any more updates for XP other than security updates.
I suspect that's because there is a great deal of political power and quick money to be had in crises when people are desperate and afraid, but not so much in preparedness and prevention.
I suspect it's because people are lazy and short-sighted myself, though greed probably has a hand in it too.
Exactly what I was going to say. In my experience, most "ordinary" people want their computers to work, and preferably to look pretty. Macs would seem to deliver on both counts.
I've definitely seen it printed on a book, and I took no notice of it. I simply do not believe that (UK) copyright law prevents me from lending a book to a friend.
You've made the mistake of trying to apply rules to English; they do exist, but almost all of them have at least one exception, and this one is no different.
Ogg can always be improved to work things out better. It's still a young format and much improvements can be made... Your codec doesn't support H.264 v2.6.4.3.2.3.6 please upgrade
So.. Ogg can be improved, which implies the need for the user to upgrade every once in a while, which is fine. Meanwhile, H.264 can require the user to upgrade which is bad?
So... they're intentionally overriding the system default setting? How much to scroll per wheel notch click is set in the mouse properties control panel applet (on Windows, YMMV on other systems).
Then they should fix the extensions framework, not cram already existing extensions into the core browser.
(Yes, I do realise what fixing the framework would entail, but if it's as bad as you say it is, then it needs to be done, as part of a major version release of course)
That may not be google's doing; presumably the google.cn search is going to be favouring Chinese-language pages, while the google.com/.co.uk search will be favouring English-language ones.
As such, Google may just be reflecting the inherent bias in its source, rather than applying a bias of its own.
If you believe any different, you really don't understand the strengths of community driven software.
And you clearly don't understand the motivations of adware/spyware/malware pedllers, or how ready most people are to install some wizzy little widget or browser toolbar without thought to what else might be coming along for the ride.
Sure, open-source, community-driven software will mostly be free of such crap, but should an alternative OS gain sufficient market share to make it worth their while, the crapware people will target it, and users will install their junk.
Indeed. I have a Visa debit card (via my bank) and their "Verified by Visa" system did not allow non-alphanumeric characters in passwords when I signed up for it.
In which case it is guaranteed to be written down somewhere on a piece of paper.
And you can have that piece of paper when you manage to get my wallet off me without me noticing. (And if someone does steal my wallet, I'll inform the system's administrators of the theft along with my bank, credit card company, etc)
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with writing passwords down and protecting the piece of paper. Now if you're writing them down along with the rest of the authentication details (or they're obvious from context) and putting the paper somewhere stupid, that's different.
Slashdot Mirror
admit to release low quality games that need additional promotion to be sold
At least they're admitting to it; that's more than say EA do...
Ok, cool, I was wrong - but in the opposite direction, as it were. The main point is that no, plugins do not use XUL and JavaScript exclusively, and so are not guaranteed to be sandboxed and secure.
That's certainly possible - but given that it is citizens of other countries (those on the export prohibition list) that would be using the proxies, I'm not sure what good banning them would be.
Unless you're suggesting that serving via a proxy would be banned, in which case, how would you tell that the connection was coming via a proxy?
If they want to have any corporate entity in the US they have to follow these laws, the actual physical location of the servers doesn't matter
This falls under the general heading of "the courts can see when someone is trying to exploit a perceived loophole in the law and do not usually have a sense of humour about such things". Or - take the piss, expect to have the book thrown at you.
I'm guessing because plugins in firefox are written using javascript and XUL
No. Addons use XUL & JavaScript, plugins are native.
What's the difference? Flash, Java, etc are plugins, AdBlock Plus, Firebug, etc are addons
I rather suspect that the vast majority of the fines involved in infringement cases are due to the upper limit of $150,000 dollars per infringement; next to that the attorneys' fees are going to be pretty small.
And who would decide things on such a case by case basis? I believe there is an institution created to do just that...
I don't know about the situation in your country, but here in the UK any car over a certain age undergoes mandatory regular testing (the MOT), which is designed to check the road-worthiness of the car. These tests are paid for by the owner of the car, and not having a valid MOT certificate brings all sorts of problems (not least of which is that it invalidates your insurance).
Perhaps the same should be true of PCs? Since we're equating poorly maintained cars with poorly maintained PCs.
I kind of doubt Microsoft is ever going to fix this
XP reached end of mainstream support on 14th April 2009 (source); as such it's very unlikely you'll see any more updates for XP other than security updates.
I suspect that's because there is a great deal of political power and quick money to be had in crises when people are desperate and afraid, but not so much in preparedness and prevention.
I suspect it's because people are lazy and short-sighted myself, though greed probably has a hand in it too.
Exactly what I was going to say. In my experience, most "ordinary" people want their computers to work, and preferably to look pretty. Macs would seem to deliver on both counts.
I've definitely seen it printed on a book, and I took no notice of it. I simply do not believe that (UK) copyright law prevents me from lending a book to a friend.
You do realise that your entire argument could be applied equally well to Free software, don't you?
Don't like what $randomCompany is doing with "your" code? Just write them a letter asking them to stop!
"It's" is both possessive and a contraction.
No, no a thousand times no.
You've made the mistake of trying to apply rules to English; they do exist, but almost all of them have at least one exception, and this one is no different.
Ogg can always be improved to work things out better. It's still a young format and much improvements can be made... Your codec doesn't support H.264 v2.6.4.3.2.3.6 please upgrade
So.. Ogg can be improved, which implies the need for the user to upgrade every once in a while, which is fine. Meanwhile, H.264 can require the user to upgrade which is bad?
Well if the default is "use the system setting", then why are people complaining that the behaviour has changed?
That said though, mine is set to the default and I don't see the behaviour that the OP is describing.
I don't know about any other browsers, but F11 puts the browser in full screen mode for both Firefox and IE.
Yeah, but the UK is filled with a bunch of piss-pots.
Piss-heads; a piss-pot is exactly what it sounds like - a pot to piss into.
Well, perhaps the vulnerability had already been reported (or spotted internally) and MS had already started work on a patch for it.
With the holidays, time for QA, etc, file dates from late Dec and early Jan for a release today really doesn't seem out of the ordinary.
So... they're intentionally overriding the system default setting? How much to scroll per wheel notch click is set in the mouse properties control panel applet (on Windows, YMMV on other systems).
Then they should fix the extensions framework, not cram already existing extensions into the core browser.
(Yes, I do realise what fixing the framework would entail, but if it's as bad as you say it is, then it needs to be done, as part of a major version release of course)
That may not be google's doing; presumably the google.cn search is going to be favouring Chinese-language pages, while the google.com/.co.uk search will be favouring English-language ones.
As such, Google may just be reflecting the inherent bias in its source, rather than applying a bias of its own.
If you believe any different, you really don't understand the strengths of community driven software.
And you clearly don't understand the motivations of adware/spyware/malware pedllers, or how ready most people are to install some wizzy little widget or browser toolbar without thought to what else might be coming along for the ride.
Sure, open-source, community-driven software will mostly be free of such crap, but should an alternative OS gain sufficient market share to make it worth their while, the crapware people will target it, and users will install their junk.
Indeed. I have a Visa debit card (via my bank) and their "Verified by Visa" system did not allow non-alphanumeric characters in passwords when I signed up for it.
In which case it is guaranteed to be written down somewhere on a piece of paper.
And you can have that piece of paper when you manage to get my wallet off me without me noticing. (And if someone does steal my wallet, I'll inform the system's administrators of the theft along with my bank, credit card company, etc)
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with writing passwords down and protecting the piece of paper. Now if you're writing them down along with the rest of the authentication details (or they're obvious from context) and putting the paper somewhere stupid, that's different.