First off, the software industry isn't really much of an industry any more. Ten years ago there were more choices and more competition. There's not a whole lot of innovation because there's not a whole lot of competition.
Second, there's a lot of crap software on the market that doesn't work. The quality of software has plummeted to an all-time low. Top-selling products are rarely the best -- merely the most heavily advertised. Consumers are tired of buying products that don't work as advertised.
Third, in the Windows arena, installing a new application is a scary proposition. You never know if it will be incompatible with your equipment or cause your whole system to become unstable.
Fourth, many publishers are crippling their products or finding creative ways to force consumers into subscription services. Purchasing software used to be a simple, straightforward process. Now you don't know if after 30 days or a few months or a year the program will cease working until you pay additional fees.
Fifth, support is virtually non-existent. Publishers dump these products on consumers with no (or lousy) printed documentation. Trying to contact someone who cares is the ultimate exercise in futility, IF you can even find the contact information, which most publishers take great pains to hide.
Sixth, there's a lot of price-fixing in the industry. Popular software prices have remained unrealistically high with huge profit margins, while quality and support have gone downhill. Most packages just aren't worth the money.
Seventh.. the "hardware hamster wheel". Developers nowadays compensate for bad design by requiring massive amounts of resources in order to achieve acceptable performance. Every new iteration of software is more bloated and demands more system resources. In 90% of these cases, it's bad design on the part of developers or attempts to drive hardware sales.
Eigth, version-mania. Publishers produce updates that are often inferior to the products they replace. They play games with upgrade schemes and often create new versions for the sole purpose of generating revenue with little benefit to the user, just lots of extra padded crap that make the newer versions junk.
Half the software on my machine is at least 6-7 years old. I have no desire to upgrade when things work well. I upgrade when there are definitive advantages, but many products just aren't worth upgrading.
Since the subject was brought up, I am compelled to comment. If you're reading this and you watch ANY amount of television, even an hour a week or two, you owe it to yourself to get a Tivo unit.
I was aware of what these things could do but never took much of an interest in them, but when I dumped cable for satellite, I decided to get one, and it really has had a dramatic effect on my life. I'm not a big TV watcher, but the power of the Tivo to automatically grab what you like and allow you to skip commercials completely alters the experience, and opens up new realms where you can program the Tivo to seek out things that interest you that you might otherwise not know about, or not be able to see.
You wonder if this device is that good why isn't it more popular? The reason for this is because it fundamentally changes the way you view television. Networks and cable companies make their money off advertising and profit from people "channel surfing" and trying to dig out content from a sea of crap and advertisements. Tivo negates all that, and it's the scariest thing the cable and networks can imagine. Some networks like NBC have even taken to altering the broadcast times of popular shows to annoy people using DVRs, but Tivo has been very diligent about catching this - I doubt any other DVR is as capable.
I have seen some of the other DVRs and they just aren't as solid and robust as the Tivo. First it's a dedicated Linux-based PC that performs quite well and I would argue that people don't need some combo computer/DVR. The Tivo works for the same reason the iPod works: it's elegant and well designed and excels at one main objective, but is so powerful people find other uses for it.
Trust me. Get yourself a Tivo. I know most everything on TV is crap, but it doesn't have to be when you have a device like this that can siphon the good 0.0001%.
When the US fundamentalists flex their muscles, the rest of the world gets hit. Their latest punching bag is the United Nations Population Fund, known as the UNFPA, which has received a series of body blows from the Bush administration since 2002. With presidential elections looming in November, Washington has stepped up its attacks on the UNFPA in its quest for a few votes more.
It wasn't enough that the Bush administration cut off its annual funding to the UNFPA and took support away from its partner, Marie Stopes International. In June Washington delivered a public snub by refusing to send delegates to the Global Health Council's annual conference, on the grounds that it included speakers from the UNFPA. Now the White House is talking of withholding funding from the World Health Organisation and Unicef unless both cease cooperation with the UNFPA.
Exactly what the fund has done to deserve this obloquy is puzzling. In reality, the answer is: nothing. But in the fevered imaginations of the US fundamentalists, the UNFPA is guilty of supporting the gravest crime, abortion. Not that the UNFPA encourages abortion: it does not. But it has provided family planning advice and support to China, a country demonised by US fundamentalists for its heavy-handed "one child" policy - so the fund has borne the Christian right's fury. The tragedy is that the US state department found no evidence to link the UNFPA with forced abortions. Indeed, the fund has been successful in reducing abortions in China, an outcome the US Christian right should applaud.
That the US government could consider cutting funds to the WHO and Unicef because of fundamentalist obsessions with abortion - an operation that is legal within the US - would be bizarre if not so serious. The three organisations, along with Marie Stopes International, do much important work in the developing world. For the US to let that work be crimped by zealots verges on the immoral. Sadly, abusing multilateral institutions for its own shabby ends is a familiar pattern from this White House.
The problem wasn't with the movies. It was with the rediculously high standards and brain numbing expectations that majority of you/.'ers expected from it.
Pardon me. I don't consider six bucks to be "great expectations".
I just wanted a decent story that didn't meander into a blender of disjointed special effects tied together by stupid, never-ending martial arts scenes with no resolution.
But I digress. My idea of a good movie is one that makes sense instead of just blinding ones' senses with meaningless FX.
.. take some time and know what you're talking about. Don't dismiss the United Nations because a bunch of right wing idiots on TV like to make it their whipping boy. The UN does a lot of good all around the world. And if anything, the US is more responsible for crippling the UN's effectiveness than anyone else.
I am appalled at the lack of appreciation on Slashdot for what I think is the greatest set of Science Fiction and Philosophy movies of all time.
Ex-Squeeze me? With all due respect, you're insane. It's weirdos like you that convince the studios they need to subject everyone else to trash packaged as "science fiction". Please stop paying to see this crap.
The Matrix wasn't a sci-fi movie at all. It was a Kung Foo CGI circle-jerk.
The first movie introduced an interesting premise, but then it turned into an action-adventure Schwartzenager-bash-fest with no rhyme or reason. The sequels just piled higher-and-deeper.
Go to your video store and check out some REAL sci-fi... the sci stands for "science", not "Superfluous Computer Imagery".
If the Matrix is this generation's "Star Wars", I feel SO sorry for them.
Every one of the Matrix movies sucked, except for the first half of the first one. Then it was all downhill.
Personally, I think people who like the matrix must be hooked up to some machine and are computer controlled just like in the movie. That's the only reasonable explanation I can find for the sycophants who don't see that piece of trash of a film for what it is.
Whatever happened to good Sci Fi? It's been a black hole of dumbass CGI battle sequences lately.
One year we had a hurricane hit the city and it took part of the roof off of our old office, followed by about 10" of rain. The roof caved in over three of my servers. I walked into the office to find the ceiling tiles disintegrated and covering all the servers... and they were still running! There was a gaping hold in the roof and a huge waterfall pouring into the room. It was very surreal. That was a long night.
When TV first came on the scene, it was predicted that radio would go away. When the VCR was invented some thought that cinemas would vanish. Neither has happened. Even oldfashioned books, magazines and newspapers are still very much alive.
Just because a new way of distributing information and entertainment appears, doesn't mean the total demise of the previous technologies.
You have a point. However, I think the significance of your point is questionable. I would argue that television DID kill radio. Radio as a focal point of news and entertainment as it was prior to the proliferation of television is no more. It has been replaced by television. Radio still exists not because it hasn't been encroached by television, but because there are a few "convenience issues" that make television impractical where radio works -- the most obvious of this is in vehicles. What do people do when they come home? Do they turn on the TV or the radio? The vast majority turn on the television. Radio is dead as a mainstream means of communicating, informing and entertaining the populace at large. The last few nails in the coffin were laid down by companies like Clear Channel that have sought to make the medium even more soulless.
Television is heading the same route, primarily due to it's ironic ability to oversaturate itself and its own value as a productive source of information and quality entertainment.
Anyone who has had the pleasure to own a Tivo unit recognizes that such technology has the capability to "save television" but because of the outdated desire of media companies wishing to control the content their listeners have access to (or more importantly, the terms and limitations of how that content should be accessed), they're going to kill the expansion of Tivo and the last hope for the medium.
The Internet is definitely NOT like radio or television - there will always be a place for radio and tv, but when I say it's "obsolute", I don't mean people won't listen or watch, but the value of the medium to the people will be greatly diminished in lieu of newer technologies that give consumers more choices. More channels of CRAP however, are not more choices.
There is a fundamental paradigm shift now occuring in television that earlier occurred in radio, that isn't as prominent on the Internet. That's the homogonization of content. Radio became too formulaic and narrow in the demographic market it sought to attract; the same thing has happened to television, leaving a larger-yet-more-widely-demographically-dispersed group of people feeling disenfranchised that are now turning to the Internet as their new source of information and entertainment. And this trend is increasing, which to me, indicates tv is obsolete.
Unless the major media find some way of controlling the Internet, television will become obsolete. Nobody trusts the networks to deliver objective news; 99.9% of the stuff on television is crap.
The Internet gives people the ability to get what they want when they want, kind of like Tivo, but as innovative as Tivo is, it's still at the mercy of the cable companies who continue to wrestle for control over what the viewer should have access to.
As soon as the technology makes video-on-demand more practical and homogenous, TV will die, as will the major networks.
Then we'll employ sophisticated content distribution schemes, similar in nature to RSS allowing users to create their own "channel" of content they are interested in. By the time corporate america realizes that this is a formidible force, it will be too late, but then the fearmongering will begin: regulation, control, jockeying for manipulation of the backbones and NAPs, but still end users will (hopefully) fight for their right to publish and get whatever content they want online.
On behalf of everyone who is being held hostage by Intuit's mafia subscription scheme, I am pleading with developers out there to come up with some sort of alternative. MS Money doesn't seem like an acceptable alternative. We need some ethical, unmaniacal finance software. Please please PLEASE! I'm sick of having to pay a few hundred dollars a year to get tax tables for my accounting system that should be freely available. I'm sick of being forced to upgrade my software to keep it running. I'm sick of Quicken collecting private information on my company and my clients. I don't need to route every facet of my financial dealings through some new "feature" that Quicken has foisted upon us. It has to stop - we need alternatives!!
CERT is anything but a rebel organization. You can bet they were at the end of their patience with Microsoft when they recommended users switch browsers. I think they've given MS too much consideration and it's long overdue. It just makes sense. If there's a vulnerability affecting a mass-installed product that hasn't been patched (and in this case one of the vulnerabilities has been ID'd for almost a year and not fully-fixed), common sense dictates that it's a wise recommendation to suggest people avoid using the product.
Why is MS dancing on this issue? In keeping with the spirit of uber blatant hypocrisy, Microsoft should just do what Fox News, CNN and the Bush administration have done in the face of unarguable criticism: "declare" that their browser is the most secure and that their products are the most trusted and reliable. Never mind the truth. That hasn't stopped the lion's share of most business interests in the last 10 years!
Talk about damage control... they don't have the fix on their site at the time of this writing... so it's vaporware for now.
I know of at least two very large companies who have moved to Firefox in the wake of this latest episode. I suspect many people are finally fed up, which has prompted MS to announce patches before they're even available.
Considering a recent patch to fix a vulnerability broke the complaince of IE as it relates to embedded uids/pws in URLs, I wouldn't be surprised if this "fix" ends up crippling something else.
We should start collecting wagers on what new problems this upcoming "fix" introduces. Otherwise it would probably be online by now.
Except he doesn't have the problem. It's the end user getting burned. Which is exactly why browsers scream about self-signed certs.
If someone is spoofing a web site, there are other more obvious signs.
IMO, anyone who is foolish enough to not pay attention to the URL they're connected to (or clicks on some goofy URL link in a spoofed e-mail) when they provide sensitive information, will not be likely to pay attention to whether or not their browser is in SSL mode either, so it's a lot more probable someone who wants to spoof a secure site will not use SSL in the first place.
I see what you're talking about. A CA will offer an additional layer of protection, but there are a half-dozen other layers that have to be ignored or penetrated before that becomes relevant. This to me is analogous to putting a "do not eat" warning label on a pack of silica gel. You have to wonder whether the person you're protecting is worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, the software industry isn't really much of an industry any more. Ten years ago there were more choices and more competition. There's not a whole lot of innovation because there's not a whole lot of competition.
Second, there's a lot of crap software on the market that doesn't work. The quality of software has plummeted to an all-time low. Top-selling products are rarely the best -- merely the most heavily advertised. Consumers are tired of buying products that don't work as advertised.
Third, in the Windows arena, installing a new application is a scary proposition. You never know if it will be incompatible with your equipment or cause your whole system to become unstable.
Fourth, many publishers are crippling their products or finding creative ways to force consumers into subscription services. Purchasing software used to be a simple, straightforward process. Now you don't know if after 30 days or a few months or a year the program will cease working until you pay additional fees.
Fifth, support is virtually non-existent. Publishers dump these products on consumers with no (or lousy) printed documentation. Trying to contact someone who cares is the ultimate exercise in futility, IF you can even find the contact information, which most publishers take great pains to hide.
Sixth, there's a lot of price-fixing in the industry. Popular software prices have remained unrealistically high with huge profit margins, while quality and support have gone downhill. Most packages just aren't worth the money.
Seventh.. the "hardware hamster wheel". Developers nowadays compensate for bad design by requiring massive amounts of resources in order to achieve acceptable performance. Every new iteration of software is more bloated and demands more system resources. In 90% of these cases, it's bad design on the part of developers or attempts to drive hardware sales.
Eigth, version-mania. Publishers produce updates that are often inferior to the products they replace. They play games with upgrade schemes and often create new versions for the sole purpose of generating revenue with little benefit to the user, just lots of extra padded crap that make the newer versions junk.
Half the software on my machine is at least 6-7 years old. I have no desire to upgrade when things work well. I upgrade when there are definitive advantages, but many products just aren't worth upgrading.
Since the subject was brought up, I am compelled to comment. If you're reading this and you watch ANY amount of television, even an hour a week or two, you owe it to yourself to get a Tivo unit.
I was aware of what these things could do but never took much of an interest in them, but when I dumped cable for satellite, I decided to get one, and it really has had a dramatic effect on my life. I'm not a big TV watcher, but the power of the Tivo to automatically grab what you like and allow you to skip commercials completely alters the experience, and opens up new realms where you can program the Tivo to seek out things that interest you that you might otherwise not know about, or not be able to see.
You wonder if this device is that good why isn't it more popular? The reason for this is because it fundamentally changes the way you view television. Networks and cable companies make their money off advertising and profit from people "channel surfing" and trying to dig out content from a sea of crap and advertisements. Tivo negates all that, and it's the scariest thing the cable and networks can imagine. Some networks like NBC have even taken to altering the broadcast times of popular shows to annoy people using DVRs, but Tivo has been very diligent about catching this - I doubt any other DVR is as capable.
I have seen some of the other DVRs and they just aren't as solid and robust as the Tivo. First it's a dedicated Linux-based PC that performs quite well and I would argue that people don't need some combo computer/DVR. The Tivo works for the same reason the iPod works: it's elegant and well designed and excels at one main objective, but is so powerful people find other uses for it.
Trust me. Get yourself a Tivo. I know most everything on TV is crap, but it doesn't have to be when you have a device like this that can siphon the good 0.0001%.
Leaning to the right
Wednesday July 7, 2004
When the US fundamentalists flex their muscles, the rest of the world gets hit. Their latest punching bag is the United Nations Population Fund, known as the UNFPA, which has received a series of body blows from the Bush administration since 2002. With presidential elections looming in November, Washington has stepped up its attacks on the UNFPA in its quest for a few votes more.
It wasn't enough that the Bush administration cut off its annual funding to the UNFPA and took support away from its partner, Marie Stopes International. In June Washington delivered a public snub by refusing to send delegates to the Global Health Council's annual conference, on the grounds that it included speakers from the UNFPA. Now the White House is talking of withholding funding from the World Health Organisation and Unicef unless both cease cooperation with the UNFPA.
Exactly what the fund has done to deserve this obloquy is puzzling. In reality, the answer is: nothing. But in the fevered imaginations of the US fundamentalists, the UNFPA is guilty of supporting the gravest crime, abortion. Not that the UNFPA encourages abortion: it does not. But it has provided family planning advice and support to China, a country demonised by US fundamentalists for its heavy-handed "one child" policy - so the fund has borne the Christian right's fury. The tragedy is that the US state department found no evidence to link the UNFPA with forced abortions. Indeed, the fund has been successful in reducing abortions in China, an outcome the US Christian right should applaud.
That the US government could consider cutting funds to the WHO and Unicef because of fundamentalist obsessions with abortion - an operation that is legal within the US - would be bizarre if not so serious. The three organisations, along with Marie Stopes International, do much important work in the developing world. For the US to let that work be crimped by zealots verges on the immoral. Sadly, abusing multilateral institutions for its own shabby ends is a familiar pattern from this White House.
The problem wasn't with the movies. It was with the rediculously high standards and brain numbing expectations that majority of you /.'ers expected from it.
Pardon me. I don't consider six bucks to be "great expectations".
I just wanted a decent story that didn't meander into a blender of disjointed special effects tied together by stupid, never-ending martial arts scenes with no resolution.
But I digress. My idea of a good movie is one that makes sense instead of just blinding ones' senses with meaningless FX.
Name me one "Peace-keeping" operation not under the command of the US...err I mean "NATO" that has actually worked.
Name me one under US command that has actually worked... that wasn't during the Clinton administration.
It's not for lack of trying to solve the problem but the biggest problem member has too much power.
Exept for the fact that the US pays for most of the UN's funding..
WRONG! Another ignorant generalization. It's no surprise people like you go around spreading more lies...
The US is mandated to pay 25% of the UN's US$1.2 billion annual budget.
.. take some time and know what you're talking about. Don't dismiss the United Nations because a bunch of right wing idiots on TV like to make it their whipping boy. The UN does a lot of good all around the world. And if anything, the US is more responsible for crippling the UN's effectiveness than anyone else.
I suspect he doesn't know the boot password, which is why he wants to run the thing without a hard drive.
mod this up.. he's right.
Maybe that's my fault. I didn't enter the movie theatre HIGH.
I am appalled at the lack of appreciation on Slashdot for what I think is the greatest set of Science Fiction and Philosophy movies of all time.
Ex-Squeeze me? With all due respect, you're insane. It's weirdos like you that convince the studios they need to subject everyone else to trash packaged as "science fiction". Please stop paying to see this crap.
The Matrix wasn't a sci-fi movie at all. It was a Kung Foo CGI circle-jerk.
The first movie introduced an interesting premise, but then it turned into an action-adventure Schwartzenager-bash-fest with no rhyme or reason. The sequels just piled higher-and-deeper.
Go to your video store and check out some REAL sci-fi... the sci stands for "science", not "Superfluous Computer Imagery".
That's not a bad idea. Release the stuff as open source and maybe someone can make a REAL MOVIE out of that pile of trash.
If the Matrix is this generation's "Star Wars", I feel SO sorry for them.
Every one of the Matrix movies sucked, except for the first half of the first one. Then it was all downhill.
Personally, I think people who like the matrix must be hooked up to some machine and are computer controlled just like in the movie. That's the only reasonable explanation I can find for the sycophants who don't see that piece of trash of a film for what it is.
Whatever happened to good Sci Fi? It's been a black hole of dumbass CGI battle sequences lately.
Matrix I
First half: cool, twisted sci-fi universe that was really creepy and interesting.
Second half: stupid kung foo movie, total destruction of an otherwise good premise
Matrix II
Riverdance in slow motion. Endless parades of CGI army men dancing around acting stupid.
Matrix III
Are you kidding? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I won't get fooled again.
and don't make you feel like you were ripped off after you see what's on them.
Windows IS more user friendly
I agree. The users are quite friendly when they plead with MIS to remove malware and restore lost data.
One year we had a hurricane hit the city and it took part of the roof off of our old office, followed by about 10" of rain. The roof caved in over three of my servers. I walked into the office to find the ceiling tiles disintegrated and covering all the servers... and they were still running! There was a gaping hold in the roof and a huge waterfall pouring into the room. It was very surreal. That was a long night.
Letterman's Top Ten List: "Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11":
10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing
9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election
8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words
7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported
6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger
5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true
4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe
3. Where the hell was Spider-man?
2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth
1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball
When TV first came on the scene, it was predicted that radio would go away. When the VCR was invented some thought that cinemas would vanish. Neither has happened. Even oldfashioned books, magazines and newspapers are still very much alive.
Just because a new way of distributing information and entertainment appears, doesn't mean the total demise of the previous technologies.
You have a point. However, I think the significance of your point is questionable. I would argue that television DID kill radio. Radio as a focal point of news and entertainment as it was prior to the proliferation of television is no more. It has been replaced by television. Radio still exists not because it hasn't been encroached by television, but because there are a few "convenience issues" that make television impractical where radio works -- the most obvious of this is in vehicles. What do people do when they come home? Do they turn on the TV or the radio? The vast majority turn on the television. Radio is dead as a mainstream means of communicating, informing and entertaining the populace at large. The last few nails in the coffin were laid down by companies like Clear Channel that have sought to make the medium even more soulless.
Television is heading the same route, primarily due to it's ironic ability to oversaturate itself and its own value as a productive source of information and quality entertainment.
Anyone who has had the pleasure to own a Tivo unit recognizes that such technology has the capability to "save television" but because of the outdated desire of media companies wishing to control the content their listeners have access to (or more importantly, the terms and limitations of how that content should be accessed), they're going to kill the expansion of Tivo and the last hope for the medium.
The Internet is definitely NOT like radio or television - there will always be a place for radio and tv, but when I say it's "obsolute", I don't mean people won't listen or watch, but the value of the medium to the people will be greatly diminished in lieu of newer technologies that give consumers more choices. More channels of CRAP however, are not more choices.
There is a fundamental paradigm shift now occuring in television that earlier occurred in radio, that isn't as prominent on the Internet. That's the homogonization of content. Radio became too formulaic and narrow in the demographic market it sought to attract; the same thing has happened to television, leaving a larger-yet-more-widely-demographically-dispersed group of people feeling disenfranchised that are now turning to the Internet as their new source of information and entertainment. And this trend is increasing, which to me, indicates tv is obsolete.
Unless the major media find some way of controlling the Internet, television will become obsolete. Nobody trusts the networks to deliver objective news; 99.9% of the stuff on television is crap.
The Internet gives people the ability to get what they want when they want, kind of like Tivo, but as innovative as Tivo is, it's still at the mercy of the cable companies who continue to wrestle for control over what the viewer should have access to.
As soon as the technology makes video-on-demand more practical and homogenous, TV will die, as will the major networks.
Then we'll employ sophisticated content distribution schemes, similar in nature to RSS allowing users to create their own "channel" of content they are interested in. By the time corporate america realizes that this is a formidible force, it will be too late, but then the fearmongering will begin: regulation, control, jockeying for manipulation of the backbones and NAPs, but still end users will (hopefully) fight for their right to publish and get whatever content they want online.
On behalf of everyone who is being held hostage by Intuit's mafia subscription scheme, I am pleading with developers out there to come up with some sort of alternative. MS Money doesn't seem like an acceptable alternative. We need some ethical, unmaniacal finance software. Please please PLEASE! I'm sick of having to pay a few hundred dollars a year to get tax tables for my accounting system that should be freely available. I'm sick of being forced to upgrade my software to keep it running. I'm sick of Quicken collecting private information on my company and my clients. I don't need to route every facet of my financial dealings through some new "feature" that Quicken has foisted upon us. It has to stop - we need alternatives!!
CERT is anything but a rebel organization. You can bet they were at the end of their patience with Microsoft when they recommended users switch browsers. I think they've given MS too much consideration and it's long overdue. It just makes sense. If there's a vulnerability affecting a mass-installed product that hasn't been patched (and in this case one of the vulnerabilities has been ID'd for almost a year and not fully-fixed), common sense dictates that it's a wise recommendation to suggest people avoid using the product.
Why is MS dancing on this issue? In keeping with the spirit of uber blatant hypocrisy, Microsoft should just do what Fox News, CNN and the Bush administration have done in the face of unarguable criticism: "declare" that their browser is the most secure and that their products are the most trusted and reliable. Never mind the truth. That hasn't stopped the lion's share of most business interests in the last 10 years!
Talk about damage control... they don't have the fix on their site at the time of this writing... so it's vaporware for now.
I know of at least two very large companies who have moved to Firefox in the wake of this latest episode. I suspect many people are finally fed up, which has prompted MS to announce patches before they're even available.
Considering a recent patch to fix a vulnerability broke the complaince of IE as it relates to embedded uids/pws in URLs, I wouldn't be surprised if this "fix" ends up crippling something else.
We should start collecting wagers on what new problems this upcoming "fix" introduces. Otherwise it would probably be online by now.
Except he doesn't have the problem. It's the end user getting burned. Which is exactly why browsers scream about self-signed certs.
If someone is spoofing a web site, there are other more obvious signs.
IMO, anyone who is foolish enough to not pay attention to the URL they're connected to (or clicks on some goofy URL link in a spoofed e-mail) when they provide sensitive information, will not be likely to pay attention to whether or not their browser is in SSL mode either, so it's a lot more probable someone who wants to spoof a secure site will not use SSL in the first place.
I see what you're talking about. A CA will offer an additional layer of protection, but there are a half-dozen other layers that have to be ignored or penetrated before that becomes relevant. This to me is analogous to putting a "do not eat" warning label on a pack of silica gel. You have to wonder whether the person you're protecting is worth it.