I would prefer to take the whole argument out of the realm of infections or viruses.
Great, wonderful. So instead of keeping it in teh real m of viruses by talking about viruses and how the GPL isn't like them, you'll take some other tack?
PS: you know, I don't think I've said one word through this entire exchange about whether people should know about the GPL or whether people are doing something illegal or whether the GPL is good or bad. You don't have to bring that up in every message, it's not relevant to the conversation you and I are having.
I already explained to you that I misttyped my original post, and yet you continue to repeat the idea that I have this mistaken belief.
And I have already pointed out that your followup didn't significantly change what you wrote. Some viruses can be easily spread through droplet infection, which is what you described, but most (including AIDS) aren't among them.
I don't know what you believe. I only know what you wrote.
If people are arguing that the GPL is not a virus because it's "too hard to contract" (which is what "you have to do something to be infected" comes down to), that's a problem. Really.
I'm not an open source programmer, so apply your anger elsewhere.
I am an open source programmer, actually.
I just happen to be one who's aware that there's more problems in the world than whether Linux or Windows wins the battle of the server room. One of those problems is people with HIV and AIDS being treated as pariahs, ostracised, and even attacked because they carry a virus... one that is extremely hard to transmit. Claiming that the GPL isn't viral because "you can get a virus just by someone walking by" is, well, it's like using depleted uranium ammo to spread democracy. It's like killing people in the name of Christ. You really hit a sore spot with that line.
YOU did.
Not some nebulous open-source programmer out there somewhere. Not the FSF. Not Linus Torvals or Richard Stallman or Eric raymond. You, personally, posted that message. If you got it from something someone else wrote, then they should be just as ashamed of it. If you just thought it up, unthink it. But please quit using it, OK?
And even in the original context it's a silly argument: every use of the word "virus" in the computer realm refers to software that propogates passively. You have to do something to catch a virus, it doesn't just attack your computer... the whole distinction between viruses and worms is based on that point.
So... I'm sure you can come up with a better argument than "you have to do something to be 'infected' by the GPL". Please do that in the future, instead of using this silly and poisonous argument. It doesn't do anything but make people think you're clutching at straws because, well, everyone who's actually aware of the etymology of the term knows it's nosense.
I meant to write, "have someone else walk by you, cough, and you become infected"
That's still not true for most viruses.
It doesn't matter why you don't like the term, or whether the term is derogatory, or whatever. If you want to counter the term, find an argument that isn't stupid and prejudicial.
All you're worried about is someone getting the benefit of your software without paying you.
The people who are hurt by the meme you're propogating have to worry about losing their jobs, public ostracism, alienation, physical assault. Put your little problem into that context, damnit.
The definition comes from the way biological viruses work. You do not have to take any steps to become infected. You can sit there quite passively and have someone else walk by you and you become infected.
Viruses in general are quite fragile, and most need a liquid medium to propogate. Even highly contagious viruses usually require physical contact of contaminated liquids with an open wound or mucous membranes, which is why face masks are used... they prevent droplets of infected fluids from coming into contact with the mouth and lungs.
Many viruses require more intimate contact than that.
The idea that you "don't have to do anything" to be infected by viral diseases is pernicious and dangerous. It encourages prejudice, AND discourages people from taking effective steps to avoid infection.
Propogating that meme because you consider "viral" to have poor connotations is vile.
If you want to counter the negative connotations of "viral", then either co-opt the term or come up with a better response. Because the one you're using now is simply stupid.
Viral means you get infected whether you take action or not.
Where does this definition come from?
This isn't part of the biological definition of viruses, or else viruses that are hard enough to transmit that they require fluid exchange (such as STDs) wouldn't be considered "viral".
This isn't part of the computer definition of viruses, or else only things like email worms would be considered "viral". In fact, computer malware that transmits whether you take action or not are generally referred to as "worms".
The GPL is quite analogous to traditional computer viruses. You can make a good case that it's a good use of viral technology, like gene therapy, but arguing that it's not viral because of some made-up qualification that you claim is a requirement for it being "viral" is just plain silly.
No, it can't. It's not even theoretically possible to remove and disable everything that's necessary for IE to be fundamentally secure, without either crippling the system or completely blocking any access to any potentially untrusted content completely.
That means: no access through HTTP, through IMAP, through POP, through Exchange, through FTP, through any protocol at all to any content outside the local system and any other systems inside the same trust boundary.
If that's the kind of "locking down" you're talking about, I would have to grant you the point but you should at least acknowledge that it's a pyrhhic victory... since what you're left with is no longer a web browser.
If you mean that it's possible to configure IE so that it can actually be used effectively as a web browser, and still completely prevent any page in the "Internet Zone" from even theoretically elevating its zone, I don't believe you any more than I'd believe you if you told me that it wasn't theoretically possible for me to break "root" on UNIX.
That page doesn't say "Safari has all the same problems as Internet Explorer". It says "Safari is doing something that is similar to one of the problems in Internet Explorer". There's several design problems in IE, and they should all be avoided.
The big one, their un-firewalled active content, is completely unrelated to the promiscuous use of helper applications. In both IE and Safari if you find a security hole in a helper application you can find ways to exploit it. But only in IE can you do this even if the user you're attacking doesn't even have that helper application on their computer and you have to serve it up to them!
The difference between "the browser is calling an external program that may be insecure", and "the browser needs to directly execute untrusted code" is like the difference between eating leftover pizza and running naked through the hot ward and snogging ebola victims.
Safari lets you turn off the bindings and they stay off. The only way I could find to keep IE from opening PDF documents in Acrobat Reader was to remove the plugin from the Acrobat directory completely.
If a third-party application uses Webkit to display content, and adds a component to Webkit to make that work, that component only exists in that application's copy of Webkit (this is how dashboard works, for example, and why the only "security problem" with dashboard is that Safari treats dashboard widgets as "safe" files). If a third-party application uses the HTML control, and adds an ActiveX component, by default all applications have access to that ActiveX component.
It is not even difficult to run Safari safely. You can turn off "open 'safe' files after downloading" and you can restrict the application bindings. You can't secure Internet Explorer even if you want to, because if you did that Windows Explorer, the control panel, Software Update, and an increasing number of little Windows-Explorer-integrated applets would misbehave or simply not work.
The difference between "the browser is doing something dangerous that you can turn off without breaking any software" and "the browser is doing something dangerous that is essential to the normal working of the computer" is like the difference between walking through a bad part of town and living there.
It's inherently impossible to know if the wave function collapses or not. There are valid interpretations of QM in which the collapse is just a mathematical simplification. That's really what the Everett-Wheeler-Grahame hypothesis (the badly-misnamed and much-misunderstood "multiple universe" model) is all about.
Boy, you would think they could make them as cheap at least.
They could make them just as cheaply as Dell or HP could make a similar PC, in fact they almost certainly do make them for about that price since they use the same far-eastern systems houses as Dell and HP. It's not anything in the actual physical hardware that makes Macs expensive, it's the 40% profit margin that does it.
I can believe all I want that someone died on a cross. Doesn't necessarily make any difference to me unless you have some notion that that person was not human, an alien or some sort of supreme being.
Then the belief you're talking about isn't faith (in the sense of the word that is translated into English as "faith" or "belief") in Christ.
If you believed in Christ, if you had faith in Him, then you would be called to behave in a way that was consistent with that. If you're not called to behave in that way and if you care about your salvation, you should reflect on that.
I'm assuming from your comments that you don't consider yourself a Christian, that you don't care about your salvation, that you consider salvation irrational or impossible, and that's just the way you are.
The thing that I find surprising is the people who claim to be Christians and claim to believe in Christ but who don't act in a way consistent with that belief, in the sense that the Bible uses the term.
That is completely indefensible, unless you presume that all virus wrriters hate Microsoft and do not have any other goal than to hurt Microsoft users.
I am completely unable to imagine the confusion that must exist in your mind that would lead you to this assumption. I guess I will have to repeat the fundamental reason that virus writers write so many viruses that attack Windows.
Windows is a much easier target.
Windows is much easier for virus-writers to attack, because Windows has implemented a mechanism for documents to execute scripts or plugins with full local user rights when they are displayed in a web browser, mail reader, and other applications that use the HTML control to display untrusted content.
Microsoft has attempted to reduce the impact of this problem by adding more and more rules for the HTML control to use to determine whether it's going to let a document do this, and more and more steps for an attacker to go through, but they have left this fundamental mechanism in place.
The very idea that this kind of mechanism has any purpose that's even vaguely important enough to keep it around is simply incomprehensible. Back before Microsoft did it, when you'd come across it in science fiction or adventure novels or movies or TV shows, anyone who was familiar with the technology rolled their eyes. It was intuitively obvious that nobody would be as comprehensively stupid as to provide a mechanism for an untrusted document to run code on your computer. It was laughable. It was insane. There was a running joke about it (the "GOOD TIMES" virus) which was funny because EVERYONE KNEW that nobody would EVER write a mail program that would run a virus just by looking at the message.
Then Microsoft did it.
And they're still doing it.
And the kinds of attacks this makes possible simply don't exist anywhere else in the computer industry. Nowhere. No other browser even has a mechanism to say "download this executable program from me and run it, just like it had been downloaded and unpacked and launched".
But IE does. Outlook Express does. And as long as they do, it will be hundreds of times easier for a virus writer to write a program that attacks Windows than one that attacks any other operating system in use today. Because the hard part, really the only hard part, of writing a virus is getting that first block of code in and running... once you have that you're home free.
And that is why "If there were 90% Macs and 10% Windows users, you'd STILL write that Windows virus.", because your Windows virus would still hit ten times as many victims as the Mac one.
I started the thread by responding to someone who was commenting that the Intel switch would mean that Apple could make Macs that were as cheap as PCs now. My response was that there are good reasons why Macs weren't as cheap as PCs and that the processor wasn't one of them.
Macs always have been more expensive than PCs, but only in the way that Mercedes is more expensive than Hyundai.
So, if you believe that Jesus dying for your sins is all that it takes to get into heaven, then, yes, you might as well go sin as much as you want; you're covered.
But if you think that way, you don't really believe.
Belief is not just "oh yeh, that's right, Christ-died-onna-cross". It's integrating that and everything it implies into the way you think, and if you really do it's not conceivable you'll "go and sin as much as you want".
The gist of it is that if you really have faith, you will be naturally called to do works. If you are not called to works then what you have is not faith, and if you care about your own salvation you need to care about why you're not called to show that faith.
To be open, a standard must be useable for free or a nominal fee
To be open a standard must be usable for free. You may have to pay for a copy of the standard, but royalties are a complete killer... if you have to pay royalties you obviously can't ship source or even a good enough description of your interfaces for someone to interoperate with you.
If 5400 RPM is enough to satisfy you, you can always replace the drive yourself. You'll have heat problems, though.
That's the real problem: the thing has even more of a heat problem than a laptop because it's just about as cramped and it's got a smaller surface area... and remember that several models of Apple laptops have had a history of overheating if you run them with the lid closed.
I suspect that's one reason they didn't put more VRAM or a better GPU in it... they simply couldn't keep it cool.
That tiny size that some of the people in this thread have been arguing is an advantage? That's what's crippling it.
The top brass makes money whenever the company sells an MS product and potentially loses out when someone tries OSS software.
Perhaps if Microsoft were to make money off OSS they wouldn't be so hostile.
They do have Interix, but they don't advertise it or ship it with Windows, and they seem to only keep it around so that people who would otherwise give up and switch to Linux have a way to get their UNIX fix while still being a Microsoft shop.
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I would prefer to take the whole argument out of the realm of infections or viruses.
Great, wonderful. So instead of keeping it in teh real m of viruses by talking about viruses and how the GPL isn't like them, you'll take some other tack?
PS: you know, I don't think I've said one word through this entire exchange about whether people should know about the GPL or whether people are doing something illegal or whether the GPL is good or bad. You don't have to bring that up in every message, it's not relevant to the conversation you and I are having.
Can you find a better counterargument than "you have to do something to get 'infected' by the GPL", then?
I already explained to you that I misttyped my original post, and yet you continue to repeat the idea that I have this mistaken belief.
And I have already pointed out that your followup didn't significantly change what you wrote. Some viruses can be easily spread through droplet infection, which is what you described, but most (including AIDS) aren't among them.
I don't know what you believe. I only know what you wrote.
If people are arguing that the GPL is not a virus because it's "too hard to contract" (which is what "you have to do something to be infected" comes down to), that's a problem. Really.
I'm not an open source programmer, so apply your anger elsewhere.
I am an open source programmer, actually.
I just happen to be one who's aware that there's more problems in the world than whether Linux or Windows wins the battle of the server room. One of those problems is people with HIV and AIDS being treated as pariahs, ostracised, and even attacked because they carry a virus... one that is extremely hard to transmit. Claiming that the GPL isn't viral because "you can get a virus just by someone walking by" is, well, it's like using depleted uranium ammo to spread democracy. It's like killing people in the name of Christ. You really hit a sore spot with that line.
YOU did.
Not some nebulous open-source programmer out there somewhere. Not the FSF. Not Linus Torvals or Richard Stallman or Eric raymond. You, personally, posted that message. If you got it from something someone else wrote, then they should be just as ashamed of it. If you just thought it up, unthink it. But please quit using it, OK?
And even in the original context it's a silly argument: every use of the word "virus" in the computer realm refers to software that propogates passively. You have to do something to catch a virus, it doesn't just attack your computer... the whole distinction between viruses and worms is based on that point.
So... I'm sure you can come up with a better argument than "you have to do something to be 'infected' by the GPL". Please do that in the future, instead of using this silly and poisonous argument. It doesn't do anything but make people think you're clutching at straws because, well, everyone who's actually aware of the etymology of the term knows it's nosense.
I meant to write, "have someone else walk by you, cough, and you become infected"
That's still not true for most viruses.
It doesn't matter why you don't like the term, or whether the term is derogatory, or whatever. If you want to counter the term, find an argument that isn't stupid and prejudicial.
All you're worried about is someone getting the benefit of your software without paying you.
The people who are hurt by the meme you're propogating have to worry about losing their jobs, public ostracism, alienation, physical assault. Put your little problem into that context, damnit.
The definition comes from the way biological viruses work. You do not have to take any steps to become infected. You can sit there quite passively and have someone else walk by you and you become infected.
Viruses in general are quite fragile, and most need a liquid medium to propogate. Even highly contagious viruses usually require physical contact of contaminated liquids with an open wound or mucous membranes, which is why face masks are used... they prevent droplets of infected fluids from coming into contact with the mouth and lungs.
Many viruses require more intimate contact than that.
The idea that you "don't have to do anything" to be infected by viral diseases is pernicious and dangerous. It encourages prejudice, AND discourages people from taking effective steps to avoid infection.
Propogating that meme because you consider "viral" to have poor connotations is vile.
If you want to counter the negative connotations of "viral", then either co-opt the term or come up with a better response. Because the one you're using now is simply stupid.
Viral means you get infected whether you take action or not.
Where does this definition come from?
This isn't part of the biological definition of viruses, or else viruses that are hard enough to transmit that they require fluid exchange (such as STDs) wouldn't be considered "viral".
This isn't part of the computer definition of viruses, or else only things like email worms would be considered "viral". In fact, computer malware that transmits whether you take action or not are generally referred to as "worms".
The GPL is quite analogous to traditional computer viruses. You can make a good case that it's a good use of viral technology, like gene therapy, but arguing that it's not viral because of some made-up qualification that you claim is a requirement for it being "viral" is just plain silly.
What's your point?
If someone else gets a patent on the iPod user interface, isn't that a perfect example of why software patents are a problem?
"It is not even difficult to run Safari safely. "
Same could be said for IE really.
No, it can't. It's not even theoretically possible to remove and disable everything that's necessary for IE to be fundamentally secure, without either crippling the system or completely blocking any access to any potentially untrusted content completely.
That means: no access through HTTP, through IMAP, through POP, through Exchange, through FTP, through any protocol at all to any content outside the local system and any other systems inside the same trust boundary.
If that's the kind of "locking down" you're talking about, I would have to grant you the point but you should at least acknowledge that it's a pyrhhic victory... since what you're left with is no longer a web browser.
If you mean that it's possible to configure IE so that it can actually be used effectively as a web browser, and still completely prevent any page in the "Internet Zone" from even theoretically elevating its zone, I don't believe you any more than I'd believe you if you told me that it wasn't theoretically possible for me to break "root" on UNIX.
The big one, their un-firewalled active content, is completely unrelated to the promiscuous use of helper applications. In both IE and Safari if you find a security hole in a helper application you can find ways to exploit it. But only in IE can you do this even if the user you're attacking doesn't even have that helper application on their computer and you have to serve it up to them!
Safari lets you turn off the bindings and they stay off. The only way I could find to keep IE from opening PDF documents in Acrobat Reader was to remove the plugin from the Acrobat directory completely.
If a third-party application uses Webkit to display content, and adds a component to Webkit to make that work, that component only exists in that application's copy of Webkit (this is how dashboard works, for example, and why the only "security problem" with dashboard is that Safari treats dashboard widgets as "safe" files). If a third-party application uses the HTML control, and adds an ActiveX component, by default all applications have access to that ActiveX component.
It is not even difficult to run Safari safely. You can turn off "open 'safe' files after downloading" and you can restrict the application bindings. You can't secure Internet Explorer even if you want to, because if you did that Windows Explorer, the control panel, Software Update, and an increasing number of little Windows-Explorer-integrated applets would misbehave or simply not work.
Don't you find that evil in it's own regard?
Should I? Are they using the money for something you think I should disapprove of?
It's inherently impossible to know if the wave function collapses or not. There are valid interpretations of QM in which the collapse is just a mathematical simplification. That's really what the Everett-Wheeler-Grahame hypothesis (the badly-misnamed and much-misunderstood "multiple universe" model) is all about.
Is that a recent picture of you, wildman?
My hair's longer and my beard's grayer now, but I look about as wild.
Depends on whether yours is already collapsed or not.
My head or my wave function?
Boy, you would think they could make them as cheap at least.
They could make them just as cheaply as Dell or HP could make a similar PC, in fact they almost certainly do make them for about that price since they use the same far-eastern systems houses as Dell and HP. It's not anything in the actual physical hardware that makes Macs expensive, it's the 40% profit margin that does it.
I can believe all I want that someone died on a cross. Doesn't necessarily make any difference to me unless you have some notion that that person was not human, an alien or some sort of supreme being.
Then the belief you're talking about isn't faith (in the sense of the word that is translated into English as "faith" or "belief") in Christ.
If you believed in Christ, if you had faith in Him, then you would be called to behave in a way that was consistent with that. If you're not called to behave in that way and if you care about your salvation, you should reflect on that.
I'm assuming from your comments that you don't consider yourself a Christian, that you don't care about your salvation, that you consider salvation irrational or impossible, and that's just the way you are.
The thing that I find surprising is the people who claim to be Christians and claim to believe in Christ but who don't act in a way consistent with that belief, in the sense that the Bible uses the term.
That is completely indefensible, unless you presume that all virus wrriters hate Microsoft and do not have any other goal than to hurt Microsoft users.
I am completely unable to imagine the confusion that must exist in your mind that would lead you to this assumption. I guess I will have to repeat the fundamental reason that virus writers write so many viruses that attack Windows.
Windows is a much easier target.
Windows is much easier for virus-writers to attack, because Windows has implemented a mechanism for documents to execute scripts or plugins with full local user rights when they are displayed in a web browser, mail reader, and other applications that use the HTML control to display untrusted content.
Microsoft has attempted to reduce the impact of this problem by adding more and more rules for the HTML control to use to determine whether it's going to let a document do this, and more and more steps for an attacker to go through, but they have left this fundamental mechanism in place.
The very idea that this kind of mechanism has any purpose that's even vaguely important enough to keep it around is simply incomprehensible. Back before Microsoft did it, when you'd come across it in science fiction or adventure novels or movies or TV shows, anyone who was familiar with the technology rolled their eyes. It was intuitively obvious that nobody would be as comprehensively stupid as to provide a mechanism for an untrusted document to run code on your computer. It was laughable. It was insane. There was a running joke about it (the "GOOD TIMES" virus) which was funny because EVERYONE KNEW that nobody would EVER write a mail program that would run a virus just by looking at the message.
Then Microsoft did it.
And they're still doing it.
And the kinds of attacks this makes possible simply don't exist anywhere else in the computer industry. Nowhere. No other browser even has a mechanism to say "download this executable program from me and run it, just like it had been downloaded and unpacked and launched".
But IE does. Outlook Express does. And as long as they do, it will be hundreds of times easier for a virus writer to write a program that attacks Windows than one that attacks any other operating system in use today. Because the hard part, really the only hard part, of writing a virus is getting that first block of code in and running... once you have that you're home free.
And that is why "If there were 90% Macs and 10% Windows users, you'd STILL write that Windows virus.", because your Windows virus would still hit ten times as many victims as the Mac one.
You started the thread by comparing prices.
I started the thread by responding to someone who was commenting that the Intel switch would mean that Apple could make Macs that were as cheap as PCs now. My response was that there are good reasons why Macs weren't as cheap as PCs and that the processor wasn't one of them.
Macs always have been more expensive than PCs, but only in the way that Mercedes is more expensive than Hyundai.
You're not disagreeing with me when you say this.
The drive, ok, but that buys you a very silent computer.
That doesn't mean it's not crippled.
That just means that if your requirement is a very silent computer, that crippling is worth it to you.
It's like responding to the difference in price between Macs and PCs by talking about how great OSX is and how you don't need antivirus.
That doesn't mean a Mac isn't more expensive, it's just an explanation for why you bought it despite it being more expensive.
I happen to agree with you. OSX is worth paying the Mac Tax. That doesn't mean the Mac Tax doesn't exist.
So, if you believe that Jesus dying for your sins is all that it takes to get into heaven, then, yes, you might as well go sin as much as you want; you're covered.
But if you think that way, you don't really believe.
Belief is not just "oh yeh, that's right, Christ-died-onna-cross". It's integrating that and everything it implies into the way you think, and if you really do it's not conceivable you'll "go and sin as much as you want".
The gist of it is that if you really have faith, you will be naturally called to do works. If you are not called to works then what you have is not faith, and if you care about your own salvation you need to care about why you're not called to show that faith.
To be open, a standard must be useable for free or a nominal fee
To be open a standard must be usable for free. You may have to pay for a copy of the standard, but royalties are a complete killer... if you have to pay royalties you obviously can't ship source or even a good enough description of your interfaces for someone to interoperate with you.
If you absorb enough negative information, will that collapse your head?
If 5400 RPM is enough to satisfy you, you can always replace the drive yourself. You'll have heat problems, though.
That's the real problem: the thing has even more of a heat problem than a laptop because it's just about as cramped and it's got a smaller surface area... and remember that several models of Apple laptops have had a history of overheating if you run them with the lid closed.
I suspect that's one reason they didn't put more VRAM or a better GPU in it... they simply couldn't keep it cool.
That tiny size that some of the people in this thread have been arguing is an advantage? That's what's crippling it.
The top brass makes money whenever the company sells an MS product and potentially loses out when someone tries OSS software.
Perhaps if Microsoft were to make money off OSS they wouldn't be so hostile.
They do have Interix, but they don't advertise it or ship it with Windows, and they seem to only keep it around so that people who would otherwise give up and switch to Linux have a way to get their UNIX fix while still being a Microsoft shop.