UID of current account is meaningless. I've been on/. since its inception.
You're obviously either a youngster, another corporate tool with no mind or soul of your own, or a bot. Too difficult to determine which one, from where I stand.
I've worked in the software industry for about 25 years, and I can tell you without any shred of doubt that MOST people are forced to license Windows for their computer. Unless they buy a Mac, in which case they are forced to license the MacOS.
Every once in a while, there is a slashdot story about someone who demanded a refund for the Windows license that was forced upon them when they bought a computer. But those "conscientous objectors" represent less than 0.001% of the population. Insignificant.
Like the other reading-comprehension-challenged retards on this thread, you have entirely missed the point. I never said that an individual Photoshop license is cheaper than an individual Windows license. I said that Windows has sold orders of magnitudes more licenses than Photoshop. Like 100x-1000x more licenses. Therefore, it is no surprise that what the idiots believe is "free" support lasts much much longer for Windows than for Photoshop. Simple economics.
I hope for your sake that you're just one of the/trolls who serves the/. corporate masters, and not really as stupid as you make yourself appear. Jackass.
Yes, it does. If you'd just do a few basic web searches to gain the industry knowledge that you lack from experience, then pull out a calculator, and do the math.
I didn't "bitch about" Microsoft, and I didn't compare their support to Adobe.
I only pointed out that Windows support is NOT free, and it has been amortized across ~magnitudes~ more licenses than Photoshop. These are easily verified facts, even if you don't have experience in the volume software licensing biz.
I've gotta wonder if the average slashdot reader has gone full-retard, or if this crap and downmodding is astroturf-bot activity from Microsoft. Perhaps it was a clue when the/. Gates-Borg icon was redesigned all happy, and then mostly disappeared from articles in the last few years.
Sorry but Microsoft does the best at offering security fixes at no cost.
MS security fixes are not "no cost".
They just look cheaper on the surface, because the cost is amortized across BILLIONS of forced Windows licenses, instead of MILLIONS of Photoshop licenses.
Three orders of magnitude is very large in real life.
Few successful Java-related attacks are related to zero-day exploits. Almost all are related to Java security bugs that have been patched for months (or longer),' Grimes writes.
I'd like to see a reliable reference for this.
Would also like to know the impact of "zero month" exploits. Much more relevant, since Java's auto-updater pings once a month.
Personally I only use Java for a handful of local applications, and I always disable the auto-updater attack vector.
Most people don't know how to do that. It looks like a giant task if you don't know how.
And where would they host those services? On their own PC? That's usually off (or not in range of a network if it's a laptop). These things are more difficult than they seem.
Actually they are much easier than they seem.
Anyone can figure it out with just a few web searches.
Mainstream hosting providers like GoDaddy (you know, the company with the hot chicks in the superbowl ads) provide always-on servers for about $6/month, with email and forum and wiki and blog software all installed. Most folks I know spend 10x that much on their cell phone plan.
The only reason Facebook is still around is that many folks are too lazy to take control of their own information. But not all folks. There are many millions of personal listservs & blogs & wikis & forums on the interwebs.
When my wife go out now, one of her comments is "it's better at home." We only go out to eat when she wants to give me a break or when the cook is awesome.
Yeah. I used to have the same feeling and comments. But then we ate at some Michelin-starred restaurants. Pricey, sometimes $100s per person, but if you're a good cook, you will appreciate why chefery is a profession.
There's this Thai place that I have not (yet) been able to do better.
Thai cuisine is super easy. It's 90% about the ingredients. Everyone knows lemongrass, ginger, basil, chilis, coconut. Most home chefs forget the kaffir and galangal, and often use the wrong basil.
Only if your car insurance also lowers your gas mileage, decreases your acceleration & cornering & braking performance, and flashes your headlights, while honking your horn randomly, when you're just trying to drive from A to B.
Most commercial anti-virus software exhibits ~exactly~ the behaviors that people expect from a virus: degraded performance, consumption of disk and memory resources, intrusive popups, etc.
most of the time you are just paying for nothing but when you actually need it, it's pretty damn helpful.
When you actually need it, it's too late. As someone mentioned earlier, basic digital hygiene is the best solution. Beyond that a free AV package to run a one-time scan if/when something slips through.
Often, users abandon a task when they hit a speed bump, because they have many competing tasks to perform, and realize that this one is not so important after all, so they move on to something else.
Also often, users change approaches to a task when they hit a speed bump, because they realize that another approach (eg, emailing an attachment from their fast nearby computer, instead of fiddling with the slow phone in their hand), would be faster.
Just one click can be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. And opening a browser and typing in a URL is more than one click.
Just one of the boilerplate risk factors in the S-1 filing that distract from the real whoppers, like:
"In 2011, Zynga accounted for approximately 12% of our revenue, which amount was comprised of revenue derived from payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga. Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers."
I'll make a WAG here that Zynga's addictive little games, with folks clicking like mad on their virtual pigs or whatever, account for more Facebook page views than just about anything else on FB. So the ~indirect~ advertising revenue from Zynga apps is even more than the 12% from direct revenue.
Zynga must be looking at the numbers and saying, dang, we give away 30% of our "virtual goods" purchases to FB, plus we give away ALL of the third-party ad revenue on FB. And now we the capital to build & launch or own independent platform. So...
When that happens, Facebook will lose a huge chunk, perhaps even the majority, of their revenue. Certainly much more than the 12% number they tried to slip by in the S-1.
...within Facebook's network effect, Critical mass has long since been surpassed and Metcalfe's Law has grown to such a large proportion that, for current users of Facebook, leaving Facebook is akin to simply switching off the internet altogether.
Metcalfe's Law was conceived for fully connected telecomm networks.
But social networks are not fully connected.
People tend to form discrete social groups--friends, family, work colleagues, customers, etc--and typically want to keep these groups separate with regards to their level of personal disclosures. There are some cross-connections, sure, but those connections grow fewer and fewer as eg folks realize that, oh no, I don't want my boss to see those party pictures, or my friends to know about my brother's cancer, or my customers to know about the company layoffs, etc.
So the network effect is much lower, and the critical mass required for persistence of the network is much higher.
One of Facebook's largest risks is that someone implements a clean, secure, distributed, open-source social networking server. Like what Diaspora set out to do, but hasn't done yet. The server could pull data that you care about from Facebook, to ease your transition, but it wouldn't expose your own info to Facebook. Then it's very easy to "pull the plug", send validation links to everyone whom you care about, and just leave a link on your FB page saying "click here to access my private and secure personal page".
The switchover would not be seamless, but the privacy and security benefits would far outweigh the minor hassle of a few clicks. Eventually many people would do it, leaving their personal data only on a server run by someone they know & trust.
It matters because a very large percentage of people will not take that extra step.
Basically Apple is saying, if you want to provide your users the convenience of an in-app purchase, with apps that have we have accepted into our store, you need to pay us a cut.
This policy is only ridiculous and over-reaching if it loses money for Apple in the long run.
Bear in mind, this end-run around in-app purchases was not for a single app. It was for MANY apps that use the Dropbox SDK. So it makes sense that Apple would react. If it was just one app, they might never have noticed.
Partly because he rages with the eloquence of Hunter Stockton Thompson, and partly because he is correct.
Personally I'm very uncomfortable with the rules of Apple's sandbox...but it is their sandbox, so they do get to make the rules. Anyone who doesn't like the rules can leave the sandbox. Or hedge their bets by buying AAPL. Haha.
Windows 8 practically forces you to login with your Windows Live/Hotmail details to access features such as the Metro Store, synchronization and SkyDrive,' he writes.
Begs the question: Why would anyone who claims to be a "PC Pro" use Windows 8? Or even Windows 7. Or god forbid, Vista.
TFA is an anti-advertisement for "PC Pro", whatever it is, website or pulp.
XPSP3 was the end of the line for Windows. It is the most secure and least intrusive Windows OS for anyone who knows what they are doing.
Just my 2 cents, based on using and maintaining more than a dozen Windows laptops.
Fwiw, I have accounts on both Hotmail and Gmail, from near the inception of each, and neither of them have ever been hacked.
Zuck doesn't hold a majority of shares. But he holds class B shares, so he ends up having majority voting rights. IIRC, 57% of the vote. The CEO part is of course irrelevant, in terms of who controls the overall direction of the company.
A strange combination of clever and ironic. Fishbowl is an anagram of Blowfish, though I dunno if they use that cipher. However to most folks, a fishbowl is something in clear view, under close observation. Quirky.
Clearly you've never interacted with astronauts and potential astronauts.
The ones who go up there are absolutely not the "best & brightest". In the beginning, they were good test pilots. Now, they are politically connected. In either case, peak intelligence is not a factor.
Think about it. Why would risk their life riding a rocket to orbit?
If you want to see earth from space, there are plenty of orbital cameras with better resolution than your eyes.
If you want to experience free-fall, you can go skydiving pretty much anywhere, any day of the week, with orders of magnitude smaller risk.
If you want to run free-fall experiments, you can send them up with the robots.
That leaves what? Bragging rights, and a significant risk of death. The smartest folks don't care about the former, and they avoid the latter. So they stay on the planet.
But the big problem is that we send humans at all. It's a terrible waste of resources. Anything a human can do in earth orbit, can be done much more safely and cheaply and efficiently by a human on the ground, via remote control.
The only reason why Macs are perceived as more secure is because they have less market share, and therefore less interest to those who make the malware. Period.
Nah. Macs are perceived as more secure because Apple ~advertises~ them that way.
PCs are perceived as less secure because the mainstream (Windows/PC) software ecosystem, including FUD miscreants like Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro, market their products and maintain their control via scare tactics. They make malware sound more pervasive and damaging than it is. Ironically, most of the damage comes from their products.
The reality is that Macs and PCs are of approximately equal value to malware authors. PCs, because there are more of them. Macs, because they are generally higher-value targets.
Don't kid yourself based on the advertising and marketing.
fwiw I supported hundreds of Macs in the late 80s/early 90s, and viruses were a huge issue even then. We spent almost as much time removing viruses, as we did recovering files from corrupted floppies.:)
Slashdot Mirror
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
More precisely,
sarcasm = min(range(wit))
UID of current account is meaningless. I've been on /. since its inception.
You're obviously either a youngster, another corporate tool with no mind or soul of your own, or a bot. Too difficult to determine which one, from where I stand.
In any case, you = jackass^2.
Sigh.
I've worked in the software industry for about 25 years, and I can tell you without any shred of doubt that MOST people are forced to license Windows for their computer. Unless they buy a Mac, in which case they are forced to license the MacOS.
Every once in a while, there is a slashdot story about someone who demanded a refund for the Windows license that was forced upon them when they bought a computer. But those "conscientous objectors" represent less than 0.001% of the population. Insignificant.
Like the other reading-comprehension-challenged retards on this thread, you have entirely missed the point. I never said that an individual Photoshop license is cheaper than an individual Windows license. I said that Windows has sold orders of magnitudes more licenses than Photoshop. Like 100x-1000x more licenses. Therefore, it is no surprise that what the idiots believe is "free" support lasts much much longer for Windows than for Photoshop. Simple economics.
I hope for your sake that you're just one of the /trolls who serves the /. corporate masters, and not really as stupid as you make yourself appear. Jackass.
The better quesition is, why did /. CHANGE that icon? I dunno how many decades you've been in the industry, but still. Think about it.
Does not compute.
Yes, it does. If you'd just do a few basic web searches to gain the industry knowledge that you lack from experience, then pull out a calculator, and do the math.
I didn't "bitch about" Microsoft, and I didn't compare their support to Adobe.
I only pointed out that Windows support is NOT free, and it has been amortized across ~magnitudes~ more licenses than Photoshop. These are easily verified facts, even if you don't have experience in the volume software licensing biz.
I've gotta wonder if the average slashdot reader has gone full-retard, or if this crap and downmodding is astroturf-bot activity from Microsoft. Perhaps it was a clue when the /. Gates-Borg icon was redesigned all happy, and then mostly disappeared from articles in the last few years.
Follow the money...
Sorry but Microsoft does the best at offering security fixes at no cost.
MS security fixes are not "no cost".
They just look cheaper on the surface, because the cost is amortized across BILLIONS of forced Windows licenses, instead of MILLIONS of Photoshop licenses.
Three orders of magnitude is very large in real life.
Few successful Java-related attacks are related to zero-day exploits. Almost all are related to Java security bugs that have been patched for months (or longer),' Grimes writes.
I'd like to see a reliable reference for this.
Would also like to know the impact of "zero month" exploits. Much more relevant, since Java's auto-updater pings once a month.
Personally I only use Java for a handful of local applications, and I always disable the auto-updater attack vector.
Most people don't know how to do that. It looks like a giant task if you don't know how.
And where would they host those services? On their own PC? That's usually off (or not in range of a network if it's a laptop). These things are more difficult than they seem.
Actually they are much easier than they seem.
Anyone can figure it out with just a few web searches.
Mainstream hosting providers like GoDaddy (you know, the company with the hot chicks in the superbowl ads) provide always-on servers for about $6/month, with email and forum and wiki and blog software all installed. Most folks I know spend 10x that much on their cell phone plan.
The only reason Facebook is still around is that many folks are too lazy to take control of their own information. But not all folks. There are many millions of personal listservs & blogs & wikis & forums on the interwebs.
Its mainly just an easy central point of contact for extremely lazy people.
FTFY.
The rest of us take a few minutes to set up a mailing list server, or a wiki server, or a forum server. It really isn't that hard.
When my wife go out now, one of her comments is "it's better at home." We only go out to eat when she wants to give me a break or when the cook is awesome.
Yeah. I used to have the same feeling and comments. But then we ate at some Michelin-starred restaurants. Pricey, sometimes $100s per person, but if you're a good cook, you will appreciate why chefery is a profession.
There's this Thai place that I have not (yet) been able to do better.
Thai cuisine is super easy. It's 90% about the ingredients. Everyone knows lemongrass, ginger, basil, chilis, coconut. Most home chefs forget the kaffir and galangal, and often use the wrong basil.
It is very satisfying for personal/hobbyist applications. Lots of libraries for graphics, sound, serial port, remote control, etc.
www.processing.org
AV software is like car insurance
Only if your car insurance also lowers your gas mileage, decreases your acceleration & cornering & braking performance, and flashes your headlights, while honking your horn randomly, when you're just trying to drive from A to B.
Most commercial anti-virus software exhibits ~exactly~ the behaviors that people expect from a virus: degraded performance, consumption of disk and memory resources, intrusive popups, etc.
most of the time you are just paying for nothing but when you actually need it, it's pretty damn helpful.
When you actually need it, it's too late. As someone mentioned earlier, basic digital hygiene is the best solution. Beyond that a free AV package to run a one-time scan if/when something slips through.
Don't be so quick to assume user stupidity.
Often, users abandon a task when they hit a speed bump, because they have many competing tasks to perform, and realize that this one is not so important after all, so they move on to something else.
Also often, users change approaches to a task when they hit a speed bump, because they realize that another approach (eg, emailing an attachment from their fast nearby computer, instead of fiddling with the slow phone in their hand), would be faster.
Just one click can be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. And opening a browser and typing in a URL is more than one click.
Just one of the boilerplate risk factors in the S-1 filing that distract from the real whoppers, like:
"In 2011, Zynga accounted for approximately 12% of our revenue, which amount was comprised of revenue derived from payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga. Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers."
I'll make a WAG here that Zynga's addictive little games, with folks clicking like mad on their virtual pigs or whatever, account for more Facebook page views than just about anything else on FB. So the ~indirect~ advertising revenue from Zynga apps is even more than the 12% from direct revenue.
Zynga must be looking at the numbers and saying, dang, we give away 30% of our "virtual goods" purchases to FB, plus we give away ALL of the third-party ad revenue on FB. And now we the capital to build & launch or own independent platform. So...
When that happens, Facebook will lose a huge chunk, perhaps even the majority, of their revenue. Certainly much more than the 12% number they tried to slip by in the S-1.
...within Facebook's network effect, Critical mass has long since been surpassed and Metcalfe's Law has grown to such a large proportion that, for current users of Facebook, leaving Facebook is akin to simply switching off the internet altogether.
Metcalfe's Law was conceived for fully connected telecomm networks.
But social networks are not fully connected.
People tend to form discrete social groups--friends, family, work colleagues, customers, etc--and typically want to keep these groups separate with regards to their level of personal disclosures. There are some cross-connections, sure, but those connections grow fewer and fewer as eg folks realize that, oh no, I don't want my boss to see those party pictures, or my friends to know about my brother's cancer, or my customers to know about the company layoffs, etc.
So the network effect is much lower, and the critical mass required for persistence of the network is much higher.
One of Facebook's largest risks is that someone implements a clean, secure, distributed, open-source social networking server. Like what Diaspora set out to do, but hasn't done yet. The server could pull data that you care about from Facebook, to ease your transition, but it wouldn't expose your own info to Facebook. Then it's very easy to "pull the plug", send validation links to everyone whom you care about, and just leave a link on your FB page saying "click here to access my private and secure personal page".
The switchover would not be seamless, but the privacy and security benefits would far outweigh the minor hassle of a few clicks. Eventually many people would do it, leaving their personal data only on a server run by someone they know & trust.
"this" at the beginning of a post is shorthand for "I agree with the parent post", not "I am replying to the parent post". So, not redundant.
If you want it shorter, replace with "yes", or even shorter, "+1".
It matters because a very large percentage of people will not take that extra step.
Basically Apple is saying, if you want to provide your users the convenience of an in-app purchase, with apps that have we have accepted into our store, you need to pay us a cut.
This policy is only ridiculous and over-reaching if it loses money for Apple in the long run.
Bear in mind, this end-run around in-app purchases was not for a single app. It was for MANY apps that use the Dropbox SDK. So it makes sense that Apple would react. If it was just one app, they might never have noticed.
Will someone please mod parent up?
Partly because he rages with the eloquence of Hunter Stockton Thompson, and partly because he is correct.
Personally I'm very uncomfortable with the rules of Apple's sandbox...but it is their sandbox, so they do get to make the rules. Anyone who doesn't like the rules can leave the sandbox. Or hedge their bets by buying AAPL. Haha.
Windows 8 practically forces you to login with your Windows Live/Hotmail details to access features such as the Metro Store, synchronization and SkyDrive,' he writes.
Begs the question: Why would anyone who claims to be a "PC Pro" use Windows 8? Or even Windows 7. Or god forbid, Vista.
TFA is an anti-advertisement for "PC Pro", whatever it is, website or pulp.
XPSP3 was the end of the line for Windows. It is the most secure and least intrusive Windows OS for anyone who knows what they are doing.
Just my 2 cents, based on using and maintaining more than a dozen Windows laptops.
Fwiw, I have accounts on both Hotmail and Gmail, from near the inception of each, and neither of them have ever been hacked.
He has majority voting rights over the company, plus he's working "in the trenches" as CEO, plus he already has more money than he can spend.
So no, he doesn't NEED to work on investor relations at all. Unless he wants to add another zero to his already astronomical net worth.
At this point in his life, I'm guessing he doesn't care so much about that next zero. Which makes Facebook a bad stock bet imho.
Douche, perhaps.
Clueless, unlikely.
Hipster, absolutely not.
Majority Voteholder, bitch
Fixed that for you.
Zuck doesn't hold a majority of shares. But he holds class B shares, so he ends up having majority voting rights. IIRC, 57% of the vote. The CEO part is of course irrelevant, in terms of who controls the overall direction of the company.
re: "The doubly-encrypted phone, dubbed Fishbowl"
A strange combination of clever and ironic.
Fishbowl is an anagram of Blowfish, though I dunno if they use that cipher.
However to most folks, a fishbowl is something in clear view, under close observation.
Quirky.
Clearly you've never interacted with astronauts and potential astronauts.
The ones who go up there are absolutely not the "best & brightest". In the beginning, they were good test pilots. Now, they are politically connected. In either case, peak intelligence is not a factor.
Think about it. Why would risk their life riding a rocket to orbit?
If you want to see earth from space, there are plenty of orbital cameras with better resolution than your eyes.
If you want to experience free-fall, you can go skydiving pretty much anywhere, any day of the week, with orders of magnitude smaller risk.
If you want to run free-fall experiments, you can send them up with the robots.
That leaves what? Bragging rights, and a significant risk of death. The smartest folks don't care about the former, and they avoid the latter. So they stay on the planet.
But the big problem is that we send humans at all. It's a terrible waste of resources. Anything a human can do in earth orbit, can be done much more safely and cheaply and efficiently by a human on the ground, via remote control.
The only reason why Macs are perceived as more secure is because they have less market share, and therefore less interest to those who make the malware. Period.
Nah. Macs are perceived as more secure because Apple ~advertises~ them that way.
PCs are perceived as less secure because the mainstream (Windows/PC) software ecosystem, including FUD miscreants like Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro, market their products and maintain their control via scare tactics. They make malware sound more pervasive and damaging than it is. Ironically, most of the damage comes from their products.
The reality is that Macs and PCs are of approximately equal value to malware authors. PCs, because there are more of them. Macs, because they are generally higher-value targets.
Don't kid yourself based on the advertising and marketing.
fwiw I supported hundreds of Macs in the late 80s/early 90s, and viruses were a huge issue even then. We spent almost as much time removing viruses, as we did recovering files from corrupted floppies. :)