Yes, but it is a temporary way to protect market dominance.
Not when you're filing 2000 patents a year it's not. The patent system protects the market leaders far more extensively than it does their challengers who can rarely even afford to find out what's already patented in the field of interest.
The patent system is not about "keeping the lawyers employed,"
That's true: the legal system as a whole is about keeping lawyers employed.
it's about encouraging technological progress
Well, that's the excuse. The reality is that it's just a way to protect market dominance, which is the general purpose of any monopoly, state-granted or home-grown, and always has been.
If you're serious about doing documentation, use an XML editor wi
Sorry, just had to stop you there. If you're serious about doing anything - don't touch XML. It's shit, it was designed by idiots and it achieves nothing. Just don't go there. Use TeX or Word or a fucking crayon.
The reason XML editors suck is that XML is hopeless for human editing. It is too complex, to losely defined (ie, it's TOO general) and even reading it is a pain, let alone writing it.
Stamp out XML at every opportunity; like cockroches.
All you geeks think you should be able to buy something, jab a screwdriver into it and then expect the manufacturer to support it.
Well, actually we just want cartel actions such as locking people who want product A into also buying product B to be outlawed and, where it already is outlawed, we want the law enforced.
In other words, we don't actually want to have to jam the screwdriver into the thing in the first place just to make it work correctly.
Then the free market can no longer express what the people want.
The free market can not express anything for the same reason that the invisible hand of the market is invisible: it doesn't exist and can't in fact exist.
This is just standard police-state stuff. Just as Orwell had posters of Big Brother Is Watching You everywhere, the Chinese Fascist Party need to keep their population in a state of fear. This keeps them from combining with strangers (since they are afraid to trust anyone) and ultimately from fighting for their freedom. Oppressive Regimes 101.
Remind me again why I should give a shit about athletes who are going to China to help support this bunch of bastards?
How is this news? If anything, it's the sumbitter trying to make a big deal over a newspaper declining to run a tasteless comic.
Tasteless in what way? I've seen real people have nearly the same conversation in all seriousness; were they being tasteless, or just lampoonable? I pick #2.
I did this some time ago for the same reasons and the wankers at RFC-Ignorant.org put my home email server on their blacklist. The twats argued with me that NDRs are such a vital part of email that any amount of spam was a price worth paying for maybe one NDR a year.
Basically, spending exponentially more each year on hardware will give you an advantage. True if by "advantage" you mean "become bankrupt before your competitors".
I think you miss the point - the entire security risk IS when the web browser launches another application.
I was thinking more in terms of applications having a GUI, but on reflection it would be better to not allow your browser to do anything with non-http links.
it's the whole concept of custom URI handlers that is a security nightmare
Why?
Because the more protocols your browser handles the less likely you are to know what's strange behaviour. The user gets a "learnt helplessness" response and just clicks on "OK" - or the equivilent - when they don't recognise what's happening because they've become used to not recognising what's happening.
A web browser should ONLY handle HTTP. Not FTP, not sFTP, not POP3, IMAP, or SMTP, not BitTorrent, not RealPlay, etc etc. By all means launch external programs to handle such things, which will hopefully alert the user to something happening, but hiding all these non-web-browsing activities from the user is a phisher's dream.
It'll be a cold day in hell before I take security advice from a bunch of crooks like Ernst & Young. Presumably there's some obscure way they can make money out of this announcement.
Most of the features I want are actually there, but it's not always obvious where to find them or how to use them. Some features are missing, or are nominally there, but fail to work in the situations where I need them.
You are learning the truth of the User Interface Myth. The UIM states that Microsoft/Apple/Whoever have invested lots of money in designing coherent user interfaces which are superior in every way possible to anything in Linux. The User Interface Truth, however, states that these crappy corporate interfaces only work because people are used to them and fear change more than they desire better interfaces.
You always know when someone has fallen for the User Interface Myth when you see a "Minimise" widget right up tight against a "Close" widget - a moronic interface error which is blindly followed in the name of "user expectations".
I just wanted to take a moment to thank the slashdot community, in advance, for what I am certain will be yet another discussion that will be the picture of decorum and civility.
Well, if it's a discussion about Rove, decorum and civility would be highly inappropriate.
If you truly believed your government was that corrupt, I would hope you wouldn't be on Slashdot, but attempting to remove your government from power by any means necessary.
Yes, because being shot as a terrorist is so much better than just complaining on a website.
That's easy: total surveillance, because it allows the people who control it to get away with crimes and frame those who they fear. Once a system is believed to be perfect proof of anything, those who can edit it become all powerful.
Every law we have to restrain or control the police or government was enacted for a reason, and that reason was abuse of powers by police and governments. Laws like that don't just fall out of trees.
Slashdot Mirror
Not when you're filing 2000 patents a year it's not. The patent system protects the market leaders far more extensively than it does their challengers who can rarely even afford to find out what's already patented in the field of interest.
TWW
That's true: the legal system as a whole is about keeping lawyers employed.
it's about encouraging technological progress
Well, that's the excuse. The reality is that it's just a way to protect market dominance, which is the general purpose of any monopoly, state-granted or home-grown, and always has been.
TWW
Sorry, just had to stop you there. If you're serious about doing anything - don't touch XML. It's shit, it was designed by idiots and it achieves nothing. Just don't go there. Use TeX or Word or a fucking crayon.
The reason XML editors suck is that XML is hopeless for human editing. It is too complex, to losely defined (ie, it's TOO general) and even reading it is a pain, let alone writing it.
Stamp out XML at every opportunity; like cockroches.
TWW
Well, actually we just want cartel actions such as locking people who want product A into also buying product B to be outlawed and, where it already is outlawed, we want the law enforced.
In other words, we don't actually want to have to jam the screwdriver into the thing in the first place just to make it work correctly.
TWW
It only allows for possible alternatives.
TWW
And Wikipedia isn't an encyclopedia.
The free market can not express anything for the same reason that the invisible hand of the market is invisible: it doesn't exist and can't in fact exist.
TWW
TWW
Remind me again why I should give a shit about athletes who are going to China to help support this bunch of bastards?
TWW
Tasteless in what way? I've seen real people have nearly the same conversation in all seriousness; were they being tasteless, or just lampoonable? I pick #2.
TWW
You thinking of The Gods Themselves by Asimov?
Stupid bastards.
What on Earth is this idiot talking about?
TWW
TWW
TWW
I was thinking more in terms of applications having a GUI, but on reflection it would be better to not allow your browser to do anything with non-http links.
TWW
Why?
Because the more protocols your browser handles the less likely you are to know what's strange behaviour. The user gets a "learnt helplessness" response and just clicks on "OK" - or the equivilent - when they don't recognise what's happening because they've become used to not recognising what's happening.
A web browser should ONLY handle HTTP. Not FTP, not sFTP, not POP3, IMAP, or SMTP, not BitTorrent, not RealPlay, etc etc. By all means launch external programs to handle such things, which will hopefully alert the user to something happening, but hiding all these non-web-browsing activities from the user is a phisher's dream.
It'll be a cold day in hell before I take security advice from a bunch of crooks like Ernst & Young. Presumably there's some obscure way they can make money out of this announcement.
TWW
TWW
Well, if it's a discussion about Rove, decorum and civility would be highly inappropriate.
Yes, because being shot as a terrorist is so much better than just complaining on a website.
TWW
Do you mean C-hashed?
You've clearly forgotten American's motto: "We're in charge".
That's easy: total surveillance, because it allows the people who control it to get away with crimes and frame those who they fear. Once a system is believed to be perfect proof of anything, those who can edit it become all powerful.
Every law we have to restrain or control the police or government was enacted for a reason, and that reason was abuse of powers by police and governments. Laws like that don't just fall out of trees.
TWW