The security hole in Outlook is that it automatically downloads attachments and runs them.
No it doesn't.
The security hole in Outlook is that it let's users launch (or save) an attachment and only shows one (1) dialog warning them that it might be a virus. Maybe it should show 5 dialogs, each with a bigger font. 10? With the patch it now only lets you save it. But you can still launch it through Explorer. Damn.
I personally leave it turned off, but I know that some of my family members like it. All things considered I think it humanizes the interface slightly. Of course, I understand how it would be really annoying for advanced users if you couldn't turn it off.
But in the future I think these things will be much more useful. Microsoft Agent extends this idea a little bit. It's fully scriptable and supports text-to-speech. Combine this with a little bit of AI, a search engine, and speech recognition and it could be pretty sweet.
The problem is that the stupid GUI dose not (a) help develop a users intuition about they way the system works and (b) dose not interact well with scripting and user programming.
I agree with your basic argument, but not your (a) and (b) points.
Back in college I worked in a computer lab. People would come in and I would have to teach them to use the mouse. Amazingly, a half our later they were in Word and writing their paper. They were usually good to go until they had to figure out footnotes or page numbering. Compare this to the computer-savvy CS students that have to spend the first few weeks getting comfortable with Unix and a text editor (with a high learning curve) before they can even begin to do anything.
As for scripting, GUIs don't have to interfere. You're just stuck in the Unix shell scripting mentality. A ton of Windows applications (Office, Visio, Rat. Rose, Visual Studio, etc.) can be scripted (through COM) in very powerful ways. It's usually language independent (I occasionally use perl to automate stuff in Visual Studio).
How is Naster "obviously" violating the laws? Users have to agree that they will not share copyrighted materials when they use the service. Blame the users for copyright infringement, not the company.
Oh, give me a break. That's just a facade. Napster is a service for illegally distributing copyrighted music. All the old pirate BBSs used to say the exact same thing (and, unlike Napster, when they got busted they took responsibility for it).
Didn't anybody read yesterday's "Lawsuits Suck" article? There are plenty of real things to take action on; Napster is a lost cause. They are clearly violating the law, and the law (in this instance) is correct in protecting copyrights.
...after all that work, and still not see a dime. Why don't we just find someone who's willing to do this work for $50k
Because for the same price of hiring one decent programmer for six months they can get a bunch of suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H people to write software for them and then pick and choose which implementation to use.
On the bright side this would make a great project for a college-level graphics class... It could help someone's tuition.
I'm confused. Is the goal here to save money or get rid of MS and replace it with Linux at any cost?
Be very careful before you go replacing a MS system with an Oracle system. Oracle isn't exactly known for cheap licences.
Since this is a university are you guys using the academic discount? I would assume that you're still eligable. That could save a significant amount of cost. There are also "Campus Agreements" that might be able to save the department money.
Converting the web server to Linux is probably reasonable assuming that you can save money. But you've already paid for the licences, right?
This point gets missed quite frequently -- OEMs pay a lot less than retail for each copy of Windows.
I don't know the exact figures, but at best you would have only saved enough to buy a pizza and some beer. Personally I consider that a bargain.
Lastly, it is worth pointing out that MS never forced anyone to upgrade. All MS software that matters still runs fine on Win95 gold.
It is highly likely that most of the people here have spent more money on Linux than Windows. I even think I have -- I bought a slackware dist in a bookstore back around '94 and then Redhat (4.0 I think) a few years later to support my Matrox Millenium.
And now, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. It turns out that Microsoft had attempted to buy Blue Mountain Arts, but when that deal fell through, they decided to create their own email greeting card service. The bug in Outlook Express (and in WebTV) appeared by pure accident just as Microsoft's service began.
I don't claim to know the whole story, but I scanned through the OE source code (out of curiosity) and I can pretty confidently say that it was a total accident.
Not to mention that I guess MS's cards also got filtered sometimes. Oh, and did I mention that the same filtering sytem (or might have been Outlook) canned mail to me from a MS recruiter? Yeah, I'll bet that was intentional.
But the good news is that the filters seem to be getting better. The hotmail ones work pretty darn well, IMHO.
But I can tell that this is a highly respected publisher that is Very Concerned About Freedom. In fact, based on their home page it looks like they're mostly concerned about anarchy, anarchy, and, well... anarchy. An appropriate publisher, I guess.
You are too busy to answer fully, but you have time to waste on slashdot. And this is an extremely important issue, but you don't have time to refute it.
Exactly right. The article was quite long and it would take considerable effort to refute the whole thing. I read pretty quick, usually reading Slashdot while waiting for stuff to build.
But I gave my little rant, and I'm pretty confident that people with the author's opinion are in the minority, so I have no reason to spend a lot of time defending the status quo.
Or, maybe you just like to sound important and sound off
Occasionally. It's fun to debate, though I prefer smaller forums.
I betcha it's not even 1%. Unless you define writer, actor, etc as only those who make a living at it. A self-fulfilling definition.
Pray tell, what does the other 99% of the population do that doesn't involve intellectual property? It's probably true that the number of people directly receiving royalties from their work are small, but we are now in a service and information based economy. The only way that works is we have laws and also general respect for intellectual property.
Farmers, hard laborors, prison guards, and bottom-chain retail workers are probably the groups least (positively) impacted by intellectual property rights. Most professionals are highly impacted. Hmmm. Some doctors might be a notable exception.
Nowhere does he say a subsidy paid from taxes. You say that scientists work for corporations, and that there is no general subsidy for scientists. Why then do you bring in a strawman of a fictional tax subsidy for creative people?
Under the Royalties section he writes: "The alternative in this case is some reorganisation of the economic system. Those few currently dependent on royalties could instead receive a salary, grant or bursary, just as most scientists do." So... scientists hired by corporations are't exactly on the side of the author. Example - Say DuPont hires chemists to build new plastics. Well, they're not exactly giving away how they do it. And, surprise, the scientists hired by our government, whether it be to build the hydrogen bomb or measure bovine methane pollution, are paid for using our tax money.
Look, I agree that a lot of recent patents are nonsense, but for the most part the laws governing IP are right and just.
Luckily, I think that most people here generally respect copy(right|left) and intellectual property. Napster users excluded, of course (unless you're only trading noncommercial songs).
I'm sorry. I just don't buy it. I don't have time to refute this entire article point by point, but I'll do a bit. (But first of all, I want to note that I have absolutely no problem with people that want to give their work away.)
Governments generate large quantities of information. They produce statistics on population, figures on economic production and health, texts of laws and regulations, and vast numbers of reports. The generation of this information is paid for through taxation and, therefore, it might seem that it should be available to any member of the public.
Agreed. This part makes sense, nothing to do with the subject really since governments are supposed to be servants of the people anyway.
The idea behind patents is that the fundamentals of an invention are made public while the inventor for a limited time has the exclusive right to make, use or sell the invention. But there are quite a few cases in which patents have been used to suppress innovation
This is pretty much a summary of the article. Intellectual property is sometimes abused by the rich, so it must be altogether bad.
More generally, intellectual property is one more way for rich countries to extract wealth from poor countries.
Sigh. "From each according to his ability... to each according to his need." "Why can't we all just be even?"
The potential financial returns from intellectual property are said to provide an incentive for individuals to create. In practice, though, most creators do not actually gain much benefit from intellectual property. Independent inventors are frequently ignored or exploited (...and later on...) What about all the writers, inventors and others who depend for their livelihood on royalties? First, it should be mentioned that only a very few individuals make enough money from royalties to live on. For example, there are probably only a few hundred self-employed writers in the US
Pure bullshit. Every writer, actor, producer, director, programmer, designer, architect, publisher, and many millions of other people all make their living from intellectual property whether they know it or not. Oh, but wait:
Those few currently dependent on royalties could instead receive a salary, grant or bursary, just as most scientists do.... Getting rid of intellectual property would reduce the incomes of a few highly successful creative individuals.... But there would be economic resources released: there would be more money available for other creators
Oh! Now I see!! Let's just collect more taxes and subsidize everybody that wants to be creative! I mean, why should the truely creative people get paid more than people who's stuff sucks and no one would actually pay for it. Yeah, this way both Mr. Speilberg and I will make movies, and we'll get paid the same! Cool!! BTW: I'm pretty sure most scientists work for corporations, colleges, or for the government doing specific work for the military or public health and environment issues. I've never heard of a general subsidy for scientists.
I could go on and on, but to wrap it up: Doing away with intellectual property would bring us back to the dark ages. Intelligent and creative people would all of the sudden have no real opportunity. Anything they create would fundamentally have no value. Land owners and those strong enough to snag up other material resources would become all powerful. Yuck.
There are few things I would fight to the death for, and intellectual property rights is one of them, right along with freedom of speech.
Last but not least, the author is a total hypocrite:
Available for 7.95 pounds from Freedom Press
Who will be first to OCR the book and put it online? Not that I want to read the garbage, but it's just the natural thing to do...
Re:Groupthink? Yes! Here's how it happened...
on
The Myth Of The Borg
·
· Score: 1
So am I being an individual thinker or not when I say I generally agree with the groupthink thing?
It is a fact, however, that people naturally fall into this. Some of the stereotypes presented in this thread are amazingly accurate, but the most interesting thing is that MS is not unique in this respect. Every company has a certain tone of groupthink. An exception might be companies where the employees all hate their job.
Think carefully before you decide that this somehow doesn't apply to you. Try to look objectively at your company. Look at Slashdot and the general tone of the posts here.
Now, read chapters 12 and 13 in Rapid Development by Steve McConnell. Whether you're working to put a man on the moon or you're an Amish farmer doing a barn raising you probaby want this kind of groupthink.
As to employees not being responsible for the actions of their companies? Well, I believe the excuse "I was only following orders" went out of fashion in 1945. Also, there is a quote which goes something like "For evil to succeed, all that is required is for no good man to stand against it". I think that applies.
How 'bout a response to this from the inside?
On Evilness: I've been working here for about 2 years, and I don't seem to be carrying out any 'evil' orders. But, I can understand how certain events (especially the way they're taken out of context by the media) combined with agressive business tactics have turned people against MS. I sincerely hope that MS softens up a bit.
It's interesting, though, is how pure accidents (a perfect example is filtering cards from that one company into the Junk folder in OE) that could have never been predicted during development are misconstrued as malicious intent. If there is a conspiracy it's one that causes anti-MS people act like MS is omniscient and attach malicious intent to everything they do or don't do.
On Product Quality: People need to understand that MS is a business and the overriding goal is to make money. Most (~3/4) developers here are scarily good and want to develop excellent products. However, the other necessary goal is to ship within a small amount of time.
Jini relates more to "Universal Plug and Play". I'm not an expert on either, but it's important to understand one major distinction: Jini is based on Java. Now, I personally like Java, but shouldn't any long term solution not be tied to a single language?
Slashdot Mirror
The security hole in Outlook is that it automatically downloads attachments and runs them.
No it doesn't.
The security hole in Outlook is that it let's users launch (or save) an attachment and only shows one (1) dialog warning them that it might be a virus. Maybe it should show 5 dialogs, each with a bigger font. 10? With the patch it now only lets you save it. But you can still launch it through Explorer. Damn.
I personally leave it turned off, but I know that some of my family members like it. All things considered I think it humanizes the interface slightly. Of course, I understand how it would be really annoying for advanced users if you couldn't turn it off.
But in the future I think these things will be much more useful. Microsoft Agent extends this idea a little bit. It's fully scriptable and supports text-to-speech. Combine this with a little bit of AI, a search engine, and speech recognition and it could be pretty sweet.
The problem is that the stupid GUI dose not (a) help develop a users intuition about they way the system works and (b) dose not interact well with scripting and user programming.
I agree with your basic argument, but not your (a) and (b) points.
Back in college I worked in a computer lab. People would come in and I would have to teach them to use the mouse. Amazingly, a half our later they were in Word and writing their paper. They were usually good to go until they had to figure out footnotes or page numbering. Compare this to the computer-savvy CS students that have to spend the first few weeks getting comfortable with Unix and a text editor (with a high learning curve) before they can even begin to do anything.
As for scripting, GUIs don't have to interfere. You're just stuck in the Unix shell scripting mentality. A ton of Windows applications (Office, Visio, Rat. Rose, Visual Studio, etc.) can be scripted (through COM) in very powerful ways. It's usually language independent (I occasionally use perl to automate stuff in Visual Studio).
How is Naster "obviously" violating the laws? Users have to agree that they will not share copyrighted materials when they use the service. Blame the users for copyright infringement, not the company.
Oh, give me a break. That's just a facade. Napster is a service for illegally distributing copyrighted music. All the old pirate BBSs used to say the exact same thing (and, unlike Napster, when they got busted they took responsibility for it).
Didn't anybody read yesterday's "Lawsuits Suck" article? There are plenty of real things to take action on; Napster is a lost cause. They are clearly violating the law, and the law (in this instance) is correct in protecting copyrights.
Because for the same price of hiring one decent programmer for six months they can get a bunch of suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H people to write software for them and then pick and choose which implementation to use.
On the bright side this would make a great project for a college-level graphics class... It could help someone's tuition.
I'm confused. Is the goal here to save money or get rid of MS and replace it with Linux at any cost?
Be very careful before you go replacing a MS system with an Oracle system. Oracle isn't exactly known for cheap licences.
Since this is a university are you guys using the academic discount? I would assume that you're still eligable. That could save a significant amount of cost. There are also "Campus Agreements" that might be able to save the department money.
Converting the web server to Linux is probably reasonable assuming that you can save money. But you've already paid for the licences, right?
And you also didn't loose $100
This point gets missed quite frequently -- OEMs pay a lot less than retail for each copy of Windows.
I don't know the exact figures, but at best you would have only saved enough to buy a pizza and some beer. Personally I consider that a bargain.
Lastly, it is worth pointing out that MS never forced anyone to upgrade. All MS software that matters still runs fine on Win95 gold.
It is highly likely that most of the people here have spent more money on Linux than Windows. I even think I have -- I bought a slackware dist in a bookstore back around '94 and then Redhat (4.0 I think) a few years later to support my Matrox Millenium.
If you really want to fly, get out of the plane... I highly recommend taking along a parachute.
Actually, I think that's called falling.
Was it Coign?
The Coign Automatic Distributed Partitioning System
And now, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. It turns out that Microsoft had attempted to buy Blue Mountain Arts, but when that deal fell through, they decided to create their own email greeting card service. The bug in Outlook Express (and in WebTV) appeared by pure accident just as Microsoft's service began.
I don't claim to know the whole story, but I scanned through the OE source code (out of curiosity) and I can pretty confidently say that it was a total accident.
Not to mention that I guess MS's cards also got filtered sometimes. Oh, and did I mention that the same filtering sytem (or might have been Outlook) canned mail to me from a MS recruiter? Yeah, I'll bet that was intentional.
But the good news is that the filters seem to be getting better. The hotmail ones work pretty darn well, IMHO.
I must have missed that.
But I can tell that this is a highly respected publisher that is Very Concerned About Freedom. In fact, based on their home page it looks like they're mostly concerned about anarchy, anarchy, and, well... anarchy. An appropriate publisher, I guess.
You are too busy to answer fully, but you have time to waste on slashdot. And this is an extremely important issue, but you don't have time to refute it.
Exactly right. The article was quite long and it would take considerable effort to refute the whole thing. I read pretty quick, usually reading Slashdot while waiting for stuff to build.
But I gave my little rant, and I'm pretty confident that people with the author's opinion are in the minority, so I have no reason to spend a lot of time defending the status quo.
Or, maybe you just like to sound important and sound off
Occasionally. It's fun to debate, though I prefer smaller forums.
I betcha it's not even 1%. Unless you define writer, actor, etc as only those who make a living at it. A self-fulfilling definition.
Pray tell, what does the other 99% of the population do that doesn't involve intellectual property? It's probably true that the number of people directly receiving royalties from their work are small, but we are now in a service and information based economy. The only way that works is we have laws and also general respect for intellectual property.
Farmers, hard laborors, prison guards, and bottom-chain retail workers are probably the groups least (positively) impacted by intellectual property rights. Most professionals are highly impacted. Hmmm. Some doctors might be a notable exception.
Nowhere does he say a subsidy paid from taxes. You say that scientists work for corporations, and that there is no general subsidy for scientists. Why then do you bring in a strawman of a fictional tax subsidy for creative people?
Under the Royalties section he writes: "The alternative in this case is some reorganisation of the economic system. Those few currently dependent on royalties could instead receive a salary, grant or bursary, just as most scientists do." So... scientists hired by corporations are't exactly on the side of the author. Example - Say DuPont hires chemists to build new plastics. Well, they're not exactly giving away how they do it. And, surprise, the scientists hired by our government, whether it be to build the hydrogen bomb or measure bovine methane pollution, are paid for using our tax money.
Look, I agree that a lot of recent patents are nonsense, but for the most part the laws governing IP are right and just.
Luckily, I think that most people here generally respect copy(right|left) and intellectual property. Napster users excluded, of course (unless you're only trading noncommercial songs).
I'm sorry. I just don't buy it. I don't have time to refute this entire article point by point, but I'll do a bit. (But first of all, I want to note that I have absolutely no problem with people that want to give their work away.)
Governments generate large quantities of information. They produce statistics on population, figures on economic production and health, texts of laws and regulations, and vast numbers of reports. The generation of this information is paid for through taxation and, therefore, it might seem that it should be available to any member of the public.Agreed. This part makes sense, nothing to do with the subject really since governments are supposed to be servants of the people anyway.
The idea behind patents is that the fundamentals of an invention are made public while the inventor for a limited time has the exclusive right to make, use or sell the invention. But there are quite a few cases in which patents have been used to suppress innovation
This is pretty much a summary of the article. Intellectual property is sometimes abused by the rich, so it must be altogether bad.
More generally, intellectual property is one more way for rich countries to extract wealth from poor countries.
Sigh. "From each according to his ability... to each according to his need." "Why can't we all just be even?"
The potential financial returns from intellectual property are said to provide an incentive for individuals to create. In practice, though, most creators do not actually gain much benefit from intellectual property. Independent inventors are frequently ignored or exploited (...and later on...) What about all the writers, inventors and others who depend for their livelihood on royalties? First, it should be mentioned that only a very few individuals make enough money from royalties to live on. For example, there are probably only a few hundred self-employed writers in the US
Pure bullshit. Every writer, actor, producer, director, programmer, designer, architect, publisher, and many millions of other people all make their living from intellectual property whether they know it or not. Oh, but wait:
Those few currently dependent on royalties could instead receive a salary, grant or bursary, just as most scientists do.... Getting rid of intellectual property would reduce the incomes of a few highly successful creative individuals.... But there would be economic resources released: there would be more money available for other creators
Oh! Now I see!! Let's just collect more taxes and subsidize everybody that wants to be creative! I mean, why should the truely creative people get paid more than people who's stuff sucks and no one would actually pay for it. Yeah, this way both Mr. Speilberg and I will make movies, and we'll get paid the same! Cool!! BTW: I'm pretty sure most scientists work for corporations, colleges, or for the government doing specific work for the military or public health and environment issues. I've never heard of a general subsidy for scientists.
I could go on and on, but to wrap it up: Doing away with intellectual property would bring us back to the dark ages. Intelligent and creative people would all of the sudden have no real opportunity. Anything they create would fundamentally have no value. Land owners and those strong enough to snag up other material resources would become all powerful. Yuck.
There are few things I would fight to the death for, and intellectual property rights is one of them, right along with freedom of speech.
Last but not least, the author is a total hypocrite:
Available for 7.95 pounds from Freedom Press
Who will be first to OCR the book and put it online? Not that I want to read the garbage, but it's just the natural thing to do...
So am I being an individual thinker or not when I say I generally agree with the groupthink thing?
It is a fact, however, that people naturally fall into this. Some of the stereotypes presented in this thread are amazingly accurate, but the most interesting thing is that MS is not unique in this respect. Every company has a certain tone of groupthink. An exception might be companies where the employees all hate their job.
Think carefully before you decide that this somehow doesn't apply to you. Try to look objectively at your company. Look at Slashdot and the general tone of the posts here.
Now, read chapters 12 and 13 in Rapid Development by Steve McConnell. Whether you're working to put a man on the moon or you're an Amish farmer doing a barn raising you probaby want this kind of groupthink.
As to employees not being responsible for the actions of their companies? Well, I believe the excuse "I was only following orders" went out of fashion in 1945. Also, there is a quote which goes something like "For evil to succeed, all that is required is for no good man to stand against it". I think that applies.
How 'bout a response to this from the inside?
On Evilness: I've been working here for about 2 years, and I don't seem to be carrying out any 'evil' orders. But, I can understand how certain events (especially the way they're taken out of context by the media) combined with agressive business tactics have turned people against MS. I sincerely hope that MS softens up a bit.
It's interesting, though, is how pure accidents (a perfect example is filtering cards from that one company into the Junk folder in OE) that could have never been predicted during development are misconstrued as malicious intent. If there is a conspiracy it's one that causes anti-MS people act like MS is omniscient and attach malicious intent to everything they do or don't do.
On Product Quality: People need to understand that MS is a business and the overriding goal is to make money. Most (~3/4) developers here are scarily good and want to develop excellent products. However, the other necessary goal is to ship within a small amount of time.
I think this famous ad perfectly fits: The Penalty of Leadership
Jini relates more to "Universal Plug and Play". I'm not an expert on either, but it's important to understand one major distinction: Jini is based on Java. Now, I personally like Java, but shouldn't any long term solution not be tied to a single language?