I'm seriously tired of hearing about "What A Great Browser IE Is".
This story is supposed to be about "How Great Samba Is" for managing to survive despite the Empire's best efforts to break it.
Once again, for the record:
IE IS NOT A BROWSER. IE IS NOT "SOFTWARE".
IE IS A CRIMINAL TOOL OF AN ANTICOMPETITIVE MONOPOLY. _NO_ONE_ SHOULD USE IE!!!
Those Of Us Who Use Other Browsers(tm), especially on Other OSen(tm) are fed up with M$IE and its invasion of the Internet on bahalf of the Evil Empire(tm). We've now come to a point where we must actively hide the real identity of our browsers and state that we're using IE in order to gain admittance to an increasing number of web sites. These web sites then claim that, since no one but IE users hit their site, no one is using anything besides IE and they better soup up their websites with tons of M$ proprietary "content" that only works in IE. This has reached critical mass, and soon we'll _have_ to have M$ and IE in order to browse the web at all. As a Linux user, this bothers me.
Kids, that isn't what the Internet is about, at all. The Internet is about open standards, interoperatbility, and easy communication between different systems and even hardware. IE's purpose is to break all that, and it is therefore evil.
And I _REALLY_ don't care about "How Great IE Works", or "How Much Cool Innovation IE Has Brought To The Internet", or any of that.
I'll probably get modded down for ragging on "The Internet's Greatest Browser", you moderators on crack obviously love to hear that crap, because this message's parent is at +3. I don't know where I ever got the idea that this was a Linux & Open-Source oriented forum. Now I guess it's a safe haven for Astroturfers....
Go get a legitimate browser. Or go make a pilgrimage to the sacred city of Redmond where you can suck Bill Gates' ass. Or just go away.
There's very little of such support available in the world of Linux right now. RedHat is getting there, and LinuxCare used to be on its way. (they're gone now, right?)
Probably because they _already_ have a 500MHz PIII, which is WAY more than they really need.
Unless you find a way to educate them, you won't sell anything:(
The only way Intel continues to sell its new technology is by "educating" consumers with bald-faced lies. And, of course, by the OEMs bundling each new generation of hardware with the next generation of bloatware, so nothing ever actually _goes_ any faster.
I supppose you could always take a new 1500 MHz P4 and underclock it at about 500 MHz. That might actually not need any CPU fan, but it probably would not sell.
It wouldn't be the first time whole industries got brushed aside by advancing technology, either.
You should have heard the way the buggy-whip consortium bitched when those damn horseless carriages came out. Man, there was gnashing of teeth.
And the telegraph industry is now a mere shell of the monolith that it constituted before AGBell came around with his damn telephones.
Look at the passenger train industry, if you can find it. Those Wright brothers and their damn airplanes stuck a stake into its heart.
Do you expect me to mourn the passage of RSA when something better blows them away?
And what about the Borg? Proprietary OS software doesn't have a prayer against Open Source Development, yet the Monopolist refuses to give up.
I guess all these guys are to be admired for their tenacity, but you have to understand that it's their livliehood that's at stake. Of course they aren't going to give up without a fight!
Really, READ the EULA, any EULA.
As things stand now it's totally one-sided:
You have the right to PAY for "the software". That's all. Don't expect it to run. You're responsible for installing it correctly and making it work for you, but you're not allowed to reverse engineer the program and fix it if it doesn't work right. You also have the right to pay for the lawyers if the developer decides to come after you for any reason, no matter what the outcome of the action. The developer has the right to snoop around your system to make sure you have a legitimate license and disable any of his software which he thinks you haven't legally obtained. If this shuts down your business and you lose $100,000/diem for the 2 days it takes you to cut a deal with his salesman and the 3 days it takes to reinstall his software, too bad. If you can come up with the receipts to PROVE you've paid, you still have no legal recourse against the developer. If you badmouth the developer because he shut down your paid-for software until you exercised your right to PAY a second time, or because his crapware is a piece of shit, you're in violation of the EULA, and you're paying for the lawyers he'll send after you!
</RANT>
If the goalies & the pitchers got to make up ALL the rules, no one would ever score!
We need some middle ground.
Maybe if the developers were responsible for treble the retail price of their software. A little guy wouldn't be burned at the stake if somebody's business went down the drain, FREE software would be left out because it's retail price is $0, but the Empire might take a hit in the class-action suits that vulnerabilities of the magnitude being discussed here would cause.
Imagine the Empire being made to refund $550/copy for a million copies of software that were found vulnerable to a virus that deleted all data from the customers' disks. That might put a crimp in their monopoly. It would _certainly_ give FREE software a chance on the desktop!
Microsoft may not have won the browser market fairly, but that doesnt take away from IE's strength.
Yes, it does. Certainly in my opinion at least.
You cannot claim victory when the referees have thrown down the penalty flags against you.
And IE has NO "strength" whatsoever on the Linux platform since it does not run there. In order to even be eligible for the distinction "WWW's Greatest Browser(tm)" you simply _have_ to be cross-platform. Cross-platform functionality is the foundation of the Internet.
IE violates this. It is therefore NOT the Web's Greatest Browser no matter how many people buy computers with it preinstalled.
"not being held hostage by the business requirements of your single vendor"
Believe it or not, that's actually one of the criticisms they try to bring _against_ Embedded Linux!
"Many OEMs find that to get the functionality they need, they must piece together Linux technology components themselves. Such an approach leaves the OEM to either self-support its "unique" version of Linux, or contract support from the commercial Linux vendor who may have helped build it. This defeats one of the OEM's key objectives in moving to a general purpose OS-to free up resources from ongoing OS support and maintenance. This "tie" to a particular Linux vendor, in turn, leaves the OEM exposed to the long-term financial viability of that vendor. Source code access may make the code available, but it does not solve the challenge of finding, keeping and paying for the expertise to maintain it."
They've obviously had so many accept their lies for so long that they now sincerely believe that they can pull just any thing out of their ass, post it on their website, and expect it to be accepted as truth!
The sad part is that the PHBs of even large tech corporations - people who should know better than to rely on a single source for information - apparently are ready to believe The Big Lie(tm)
The state of the art of PCB manufacture has advanced considerably since the days when the Apple1 was designed and built in a garage. If you don't believe me, disassemble an Apple][ or a Commode64 or any other computer from the 70's and put its innards next to those of a modern laptop. The first thing you'll notice is that the laptop parts are much smaller and _much_ closer together. Also the traces on the board are narrower and _much_ closer together. What you'll _not_ see is that while the Apple][ PCB is probably a two-layer deal (traces on both sides) the laptop PCB (or any modern PC motherboard, really) has at least 5 or 7 layers of traces and possibly more like a dozen. This takes its fabrication out of the scope of the casual experimenter and into the realm of professional printed circuit fab facilities, whose setup charges alone will give you a massive coronary. As has also been mentioned, many of the parts are available only in reels of 1000 pieces. Designing and building a custom PCB the size and complexity of a laptop computer is something only the big boys of the consumer electronics industry (Sony, Toshiba & Hitachi, IIRC) can attempt to make money at. Lesser outfits like IBM, Dell & Compaq farm this stuff out, or find an OEM.
Then you get to start on the case. It's my understanding that a plastic mold for something the size of a laptop case co$t$ something upwards of 30 or 50 thousand dollars to machine, and you'll need at least 4 big plastic pieces (top & bottom of case & lid) The setup charges of an injection molder (once you have a mold!) will also give you a fainting feeling.
Please, don't call it 'Rolling' a laptop the same way you call it rolling a blunt. Let's not promote any more drugs. Drugs are bad, mmkay?
Aside from the obvious debatability of that last statement, the expression "roll yer own" predates the use of "blunt" by at least two generations, at least among white people. I do NOT know when machine-assembled (they're really not "rolled"), commercially-prepared cigarettes were introduced, but prior to that time _all_ cigarettes were constructed by rolling up bulk tobacco in special papers, generally by hand. The introduction of machine-assembled cigarettes quickly wiped this practice out for the 85%, with the exception of a few holdouts like my Grandfather. I remember he would sit in his Layzee-boy in front of the TV by the hour, rolling & smoking these homemade cigarettes despite the presence of perfectly good Lucky Strikes in his shirt pocket. YES, I'm SURE the filling inside them was brown, NOT the green stuff. His skill was incredible. He had a special pouch for the tobacco with a spring-loaded mouth that was just the right size to perfectly fill a rolling paper. He'd roll it back and forth in his fingers a bit, give it a lick on the edge and a quick twist, and have a nearly perfect cigarette every time. All I can figure is that the tobacco was cut into relatively long thin strips (about 1mm by 15) that leant themselves to easy rolling and had no tendancy to come out the ends (hence no twisting of the ends characteristic of a joint) You can still buy the bulk tobacco ("Have you got Prince Albert in a can? Well, you better let him out!") and this is, of course, the only _legal_ use for those little thin papers with the gummed edge.....
...there have been so many bugs reported in MS software not only because MS releases naturally buggy software, but because the user-base is so huge...
That's not gonna play.
The reason so many bugs are reported in M$ "software" is because there are lots of bugs, period.
Bugs in software are discovered in about three ways: systematic testing, random chance, and inspection (of the source code).
Just as many people (indeed, many of the same security professionals) systematically test Open Source software (and for basically the same vulnerabilities) as M$, and they find many more bugs in M$. This implies that there are many more bugs in M$
Admittedly, the random chance bug discovery technique is pursued with far greater magnitude on M$, and we would expect it to find more bugs there than in OSS. But random chance is a piss poor way to find anything.
Inspection of the source code is a far superior mechanism for finding bugs than random chance, and this shifts the balance into OSS's favor since this does not occur with M$ (I neglect M$' own inspection of its code, as bugs discovered thus are seldom reported). A FAR higher fraction of the bugs in OSS are discovered and reported - quickly - by inspection, than may be reasonably expected to be found in M$ "software" by random chance.
And, of course, the total number of reported bugs in M$ "software" dwarfs the number found in OSS. This suggests that the total number of bugs in M$ "software" _more_ than dwarfs the number in OSS software, since M$ "software" is excluded from a more effective bug discovery method (inspection) than the random chance which OSS is (supposedly) less exposed to than M$.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of these reported bugs by discovery method.
We'll never have a meaningful comparison of the numbers of bugs in M$ and OSS code until we _see_ the M$ code. Until then, the only metric that is anywhere near comparable between the two types is the number of bugs found by systematic, controlled testing. And my understanding is that many more M$ bugs are found in this manner than OSS bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
You guys make me want to puke.
I'm seriously tired of hearing about "What A Great Browser IE Is".
This story is supposed to be about "How Great Samba Is" for managing to survive despite the Empire's best efforts to break it.
Once again, for the record:
IE IS NOT A BROWSER. IE IS NOT "SOFTWARE".
IE IS A CRIMINAL TOOL OF AN ANTICOMPETITIVE MONOPOLY. _NO_ONE_ SHOULD USE IE!!!
Those Of Us Who Use Other Browsers(tm), especially on Other OSen(tm) are fed up with M$IE and its invasion of the Internet on bahalf of the Evil Empire(tm). We've now come to a point where we must actively hide the real identity of our browsers and state that we're using IE in order to gain admittance to an increasing number of web sites. These web sites then claim that, since no one but IE users hit their site, no one is using anything besides IE and they better soup up their websites with tons of M$ proprietary "content" that only works in IE. This has reached critical mass, and soon we'll _have_ to have M$ and IE in order to browse the web at all. As a Linux user, this bothers me.
Kids, that isn't what the Internet is about, at all. The Internet is about open standards, interoperatbility, and easy communication between different systems and even hardware. IE's purpose is to break all that, and it is therefore evil.
And I _REALLY_ don't care about "How Great IE Works", or "How Much Cool Innovation IE Has Brought To The Internet", or any of that.
I'll probably get modded down for ragging on "The Internet's Greatest Browser", you moderators on crack obviously love to hear that crap, because this message's parent is at +3. I don't know where I ever got the idea that this was a Linux & Open-Source oriented forum. Now I guess it's a safe haven for Astroturfers....
Go get a legitimate browser. Or go make a pilgrimage to the sacred city of Redmond where you can suck Bill Gates' ass. Or just go away.
The Vulcans have been watching us for years...
..reinstalling TCP/IP is often the best solution to fix connection problems, and nobody seems to know why...apparently not even the Microsoft techs!
That's because they "borrowed" that TCP stack from BSD. They probably don't fully understand what all the code does!
Am I missing something? RTFM means "Read Those Fine Manuals", right?
Absolutely.
There's very little of such support available in the world of Linux right now. RedHat is getting there, and LinuxCare used to be on its way. (they're gone now, right?)
So I guess that only leaves IBM.
Nobody will buy it, unfortunately....
:(
Probably because they _already_ have a 500MHz PIII, which is WAY more than they really need.
Unless you find a way to educate them, you won't sell anything
The only way Intel continues to sell its new technology is by "educating" consumers with bald-faced lies. And, of course, by the OEMs bundling each new generation of hardware with the next generation of bloatware, so nothing ever actually _goes_ any faster.
I supppose you could always take a new 1500 MHz P4 and underclock it at about 500 MHz. That might actually not need any CPU fan, but it probably would not sell.
which is a Good Thing(tm).
With 5 boxen in the corner of the Dining Room, I'm under significant pressure from the SO to keep the sound pressure levels down.
"Battle (that's really my name), It looks like the bridge of the Star Trek in there!!"
and let the chips fall where they may.
Information wants to be free.
It wouldn't be the first time whole industries got brushed aside by advancing technology, either.
You should have heard the way the buggy-whip consortium bitched when those damn horseless carriages came out. Man, there was gnashing of teeth.
And the telegraph industry is now a mere shell of the monolith that it constituted before AGBell came around with his damn telephones.
Look at the passenger train industry, if you can find it. Those Wright brothers and their damn airplanes stuck a stake into its heart.
Do you expect me to mourn the passage of RSA when something better blows them away?
And what about the Borg? Proprietary OS software doesn't have a prayer against Open Source Development, yet the Monopolist refuses to give up.
I guess all these guys are to be admired for their tenacity, but you have to understand that it's their livliehood that's at stake. Of course they aren't going to give up without a fight!
Really, READ the EULA, any EULA.
As things stand now it's totally one-sided:
You have the right to PAY for "the software". That's all. Don't expect it to run. You're responsible for installing it correctly and making it work for you, but you're not allowed to reverse engineer the program and fix it if it doesn't work right. You also have the right to pay for the lawyers if the developer decides to come after you for any reason, no matter what the outcome of the action. The developer has the right to snoop around your system to make sure you have a legitimate license and disable any of his software which he thinks you haven't legally obtained. If this shuts down your business and you lose $100,000/diem for the 2 days it takes you to cut a deal with his salesman and the 3 days it takes to reinstall his software, too bad. If you can come up with the receipts to PROVE you've paid, you still have no legal recourse against the developer. If you badmouth the developer because he shut down your paid-for software until you exercised your right to PAY a second time, or because his crapware is a piece of shit, you're in violation of the EULA, and you're paying for the lawyers he'll send after you!
</RANT>
If the goalies & the pitchers got to make up ALL the rules, no one would ever score!
We need some middle ground.
Maybe if the developers were responsible for treble the retail price of their software. A little guy wouldn't be burned at the stake if somebody's business went down the drain, FREE software would be left out because it's retail price is $0, but the Empire might take a hit in the class-action suits that vulnerabilities of the magnitude being discussed here would cause.
Imagine the Empire being made to refund $550/copy for a million copies of software that were found vulnerable to a virus that deleted all data from the customers' disks. That might put a crimp in their monopoly. It would _certainly_ give FREE software a chance on the desktop!
This sensationalized story is nothing more than Microsoft-bashing.
Microsoft may not have won the browser market fairly, but that doesnt take away from IE's strength.
Yes, it does. Certainly in my opinion at least.
You cannot claim victory when the referees have thrown down the penalty flags against you.
And IE has NO "strength" whatsoever on the Linux platform since it does not run there. In order to even be eligible for the distinction "WWW's Greatest Browser(tm)" you simply _have_ to be cross-platform. Cross-platform functionality is the foundation of the Internet.
IE violates this. It is therefore NOT the Web's Greatest Browser no matter how many people buy computers with it preinstalled.
I guess the statement "me, too!"
is regarded as 'lame', but my story is the same.
I've wasted too much time and energy attempting to follow and support their poorly documented, poorly running, oppressively licensed proprietary crap.
I have Open Source(tm) and FREE(tm) software now, and will never consider looking back.
...it's difficult to get compatable worm development in heterogeneous enironments that seldom have compatible, redundant, overlapping bugs....
But why can't they just _state_ it in those terms in the first place, and spare us all that confusion!
"not being held hostage by the business requirements of your single vendor"
Believe it or not, that's actually one of the criticisms they try to bring _against_ Embedded Linux!
"Many OEMs find that to get the functionality they need, they must piece together Linux technology components themselves. Such an approach leaves the OEM to either self-support its "unique" version of Linux, or contract support from the commercial Linux vendor who may have helped build it. This defeats one of the OEM's key objectives in moving to a general purpose OS-to free up resources from ongoing OS support and maintenance. This "tie" to a particular Linux vendor, in turn, leaves the OEM exposed to the long-term financial viability of that vendor. Source code access may make the code available, but it does not solve the challenge of finding, keeping and paying for the expertise to maintain it."
They've obviously had so many accept their lies for so long that they now sincerely believe that they can pull just any thing out of their ass, post it on their website, and expect it to be accepted as truth!
The sad part is that the PHBs of even large tech corporations - people who should know better than to rely on a single source for information - apparently are ready to believe The Big Lie(tm)
And it works fine. Rock solid.
Read it and weep. It's _totally_ lame.
"Nothing in this document shall prohibit Micro$oft from....."
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f9400/9495.htm
The state of the art of PCB manufacture has advanced considerably since the days when the Apple1 was designed and built in a garage. If you don't believe me, disassemble an Apple][ or a Commode64 or any other computer from the 70's and put its innards next to those of a modern laptop. The first thing you'll notice is that the laptop parts are much smaller and _much_ closer together. Also the traces on the board are narrower and _much_ closer together. What you'll _not_ see is that while the Apple][ PCB is probably a two-layer deal (traces on both sides) the laptop PCB (or any modern PC motherboard, really) has at least 5 or 7 layers of traces and possibly more like a dozen. This takes its fabrication out of the scope of the casual experimenter and into the realm of professional printed circuit fab facilities, whose setup charges alone will give you a massive coronary. As has also been mentioned, many of the parts are available only in reels of 1000 pieces. Designing and building a custom PCB the size and complexity of a laptop computer is something only the big boys of the consumer electronics industry (Sony, Toshiba & Hitachi, IIRC) can attempt to make money at. Lesser outfits like IBM, Dell & Compaq farm this stuff out, or find an OEM.
Then you get to start on the case. It's my understanding that a plastic mold for something the size of a laptop case co$t$ something upwards of 30 or 50 thousand dollars to machine, and you'll need at least 4 big plastic pieces (top & bottom of case & lid) The setup charges of an injection molder (once you have a mold!) will also give you a fainting feeling.
Please, don't call it 'Rolling' a laptop the same way you call it rolling a blunt. Let's not promote any more drugs. Drugs are bad, mmkay?
Aside from the obvious debatability of that last statement, the expression "roll yer own" predates the use of "blunt" by at least two generations, at least among white people. I do NOT know when machine-assembled (they're really not "rolled"), commercially-prepared cigarettes were introduced, but prior to that time _all_ cigarettes were constructed by rolling up bulk tobacco in special papers, generally by hand. The introduction of machine-assembled cigarettes quickly wiped this practice out for the 85%, with the exception of a few holdouts like my Grandfather. I remember he would sit in his Layzee-boy in front of the TV by the hour, rolling & smoking these homemade cigarettes despite the presence of perfectly good Lucky Strikes in his shirt pocket. YES, I'm SURE the filling inside them was brown, NOT the green stuff. His skill was incredible. He had a special pouch for the tobacco with a spring-loaded mouth that was just the right size to perfectly fill a rolling paper. He'd roll it back and forth in his fingers a bit, give it a lick on the edge and a quick twist, and have a nearly perfect cigarette every time. All I can figure is that the tobacco was cut into relatively long thin strips (about 1mm by 15) that leant themselves to easy rolling and had no tendancy to come out the ends (hence no twisting of the ends characteristic of a joint) You can still buy the bulk tobacco ("Have you got Prince Albert in a can? Well, you better let him out!") and this is, of course, the only _legal_ use for those little thin papers with the gummed edge.....
Shipstones?
From Robert Heinlein's "Friday", IIRC. They're fictional batteries with excellent power/mass capability, used to power starships.
You'll probably find it in Lazarus Long's "notebooks".
...there have been so many bugs reported in MS software not only because MS releases naturally buggy software, but because the user-base is so huge...
That's not gonna play.
The reason so many bugs are reported in M$ "software" is because there are lots of bugs, period.
Bugs in software are discovered in about three ways: systematic testing, random chance, and inspection (of the source code).
Just as many people (indeed, many of the same security professionals) systematically test Open Source software (and for basically the same vulnerabilities) as M$, and they find many more bugs in M$. This implies that there are many more bugs in M$
Admittedly, the random chance bug discovery technique is pursued with far greater magnitude on M$, and we would expect it to find more bugs there than in OSS. But random chance is a piss poor way to find anything.
Inspection of the source code is a far superior mechanism for finding bugs than random chance, and this shifts the balance into OSS's favor since this does not occur with M$ (I neglect M$' own inspection of its code, as bugs discovered thus are seldom reported). A FAR higher fraction of the bugs in OSS are discovered and reported - quickly - by inspection, than may be reasonably expected to be found in M$ "software" by random chance.
And, of course, the total number of reported bugs in M$ "software" dwarfs the number found in OSS. This suggests that the total number of bugs in M$ "software" _more_ than dwarfs the number in OSS software, since M$ "software" is excluded from a more effective bug discovery method (inspection) than the random chance which OSS is (supposedly) less exposed to than M$.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of these reported bugs by discovery method. We'll never have a meaningful comparison of the numbers of bugs in M$ and OSS code until we _see_ the M$ code. Until then, the only metric that is anywhere near comparable between the two types is the number of bugs found by systematic, controlled testing. And my understanding is that many more M$ bugs are found in this manner than OSS bugs.
Do we _really_ have to let astroturfer ACs with IE post to "NS vs IE" discussions?
'Cuz this is the level of crap that we get from it.
And we should NOT give IE lusers moderator points, either.
I have seen plenty of websites telling me that I cannot access their pages because I was using IE.
As well they should.
ALL serious websites should block IE. IE is EVIL, the immoral tool of an anticompetitive monopoly.
No, I'm not.
Go read the documents in evidence and the decision of the Court.
If you can still use IE after reading that stuff, you have NO conscience.
And who gave that M$ luser moderator points?
Oh, get outta here
mov ax,#$F00F ; Certainly won't lock up the CPU...
Nor would
mov ax,#$F000
add ax,#$000F