they just haven't figured out how to kill competition from FOSS.
What competition? 'FOSS' has just barely begun making a small dent in some Microsoft markets. Or would you care to list some? I don't see people migrating to Linux/KDE/GNOME on the desktop en masse, I don't see OOo actually competing in any meaningful way with Office, there are no 'FOSS' games of any consequence, no high-end development tools with the exception of Eclipse, no... well, you get the idea. In the server space Linux is taking more market away from Unix (Solaris, HP) than Windows - if anything Windows is growing there as well.
And all of these modest advances are happening only because big companies (IBM, Novell, Sun, Apple) are experimenting with open source.
So where is this 'competition' that Microsoft has to fear?
And maybe The US government can talk to Airbus about releasing some of their proprietary secrets to Boeing. Sounds like that would be a good deal.
Whatever else, this stupid meddling and back and forth by the EU (give us your netowrking protocols, IP be dammed! no, you can't ship an OS with a media player, RealNetworks will get an ulcer! we rock!) is going to come back and bite them one of these days.
do all the R&D and find out what the "must-haves" are and what is fluff, then tag along
Hey, that's a great idea! But apparently the KDE and GNOME folks figured this out a bit before you did, since they've been doing that the other way around for five years and counting.
This is obviously flamebait (ooooh, teh bigestest dissasster evar!!1!) but I have to chuckle at how this fine, fine publication is considered an authority when it happens to bash Microsoft, but a pack of retarded corporate shills whenever it utters anything that is remotely critical of anything related to open source.
Either upgrade your machine (and give us money) or you are going to be vulnerable to a slew of attacks that we won't patch
Please provide a link to some press release or support policy document where Microsoft categorically states they will not patch W2K security vulnerabilities, either for the core OS itself or for its components. I'd really like to see it.
Wait, never mind. Why waste time and Google for that? Here's the lifecycle support dates for all three versions of Windows 2000. You'll notice the "extended support retired" column lists 2010 as the year. That means that Microsoft will stop patching the OS in five years. 10 years after it was first released. The RedHat upgrade train is what, 3 years now? And let's see what Novell does as well.
how support for linux will not "expire" like this.
If you are basing your business on a 10 year-old operating system in this day and age and that OS does not have the "IBM" trademark behind it you probably need a cat scan, open source or not.
There's more talk about Winamp 5.x here but I noticed a few people mentioning there were forks of WA 2.x around? Was the source to 2.x released at some point and I missed it?? I'd love to get my hands on that!
Interesting. This is the entire body of this post. All the other offtopic (Europe, library cards) posts here seem to be coming from +2 and up comments in articles posted today.
Looks like Splashdork is in for another bot attack.
Part of the problem is that cops don't have all the weapons they need to fight back. They clearly lack the financial resources to match their adversaries' technical skills and global reach. The FBI will spend just $150 million of a $5 billion fiscal 2005 budget on cybercrime -- not including personnel -- in spite of its being given the third-highest priority.
Maybe I'm being naive here, but it seems that these people are getting away with whatever they're doing and incurring much lower costs in the process.
Law enforcement needs to stop worrying about (and identifying as such) the average script kiddie and focus on the large mob-like operations. I'm guessing they'll get much more bang for their buck that way. I can't see how 150 million dollars is not enough to take down at least a couple of the big rings given that they operate on Jolt and Hot Pockets (or whatever passes for that in Romania).
Google just recently started giving lip service to open source, after some people noticed they had really given nothing back to the Movement given that their infrastructure is largely built on free software (or open source or whatever it's called this week).
What's the point of this, really? Why is Google suddenly so interested in fostering open source? And why only students? More pliable to the idea of giving your work away?
Do me a favor and shut the fuck up unless you have something more tangible to stand on than the usual "this is my designated commodity of the week and fair use constitutes whatever I see fit" mind-numbing retarded slashbot mantra.
You have no "right" to do anything. This is not an enumerated (or not) right in a constitutional charter. The CD you hold in your hand is the result of a commercial transaction and as such is subject to a binding "contract" between the source of the goods and yourself.
I'm not going to make a point about whether or not this constitutes a barrier for fair use, which is just about the only recognized quasi-legal issue that comes into play (no pun intended) when we talk about piracy, distribution and digital/analog media.
But please don't equate this with a "right", as in the right to free speech or the right to free assembly or whatever.
It's interesting to see these articles along with Mozilla blog posts and trade rags and the like about how there is "no safe browser" and "it's the user's responsibility" to stay safe.
Before Firefox was released preceded by a veritable sea of never-ending hype it was going to be "perfect" and if you didn't exchange it for IE then you were most certainly dumb. Check out your brain at the tabs, kthx.
Now that a few million people outside of the geek circles have downloaded and installed Firefox, suddenly "there is no safe browser" and "just be careful" and if you get 0w3nd it's because you were stupid or careles or didn't patch when you were supposed to, not because the Mozilla developers shipped a browser with a vulnerability, much like Microsoft tends to do. My, how times change. Now we actually need to make excuses and hope that millions of clueless users suddenly educate themselves. No silver bullet, here. Apparently.
People who use IE and have never been affected by a vulnerability (like me) and people who use Firefox or whatever and are in the same situation are safe because they know what they're doing and have a fairly good understanding of how this inherently unsafe interface between my computer and the evil outside world works. You can use the most insecure, unpatched crappy browser in the world and still never get nailed. But now there are people using this wonder of a browser who will get nailed because they are ignorant. It doesn't matter what browser or OS they use. This was true before and after FF, and it will continue to be true until the computer truly becomes an appliance.
Good for you! I mean, I'd be hard pressed to come up with some other documentation from some other company that has any errors or omissions! Totally right on!
And this is just a thought really, but how about not allowing the spyware to get to the computer to begin with? Yeah, there's an idea.
People who complain about these things are indeed too stupid to use a computer, or simply ignorant, in which case using an operating system that is not so massively targeted will work better for them.
OS X does not automatically increase people's IQ by a 100 points, despite claims to the contrary.
Just wait until there's Gator and Super Cursors (or whatever) for OS X. Then we'll see what the difference is between Windows and other operating systems. If the only thing standing between malware and some kid's computer is a dialog asking the root password then I'm really not inclined to feel any safer.
Oh, you mean you have 3 gigs of free space just lying around? COOL. Can I use your computer as a server?
LOL, that's rich. The most crappy underpowered box you can buy today comes with a 40GB HDD. How much space do you need? 3GB is peanuts. Unless you don't see the value in utilizing those 3GB for this particular purpose, but that's just your personal preference.
I use firefox and "find as you type" coupled with the lightweight, well explained, very detailed Java documetation
That's nice. I mean, wow, I can't get anything done with MSDN. Never could. Your logic is inescapable.
Most of the friends I have from Microsoft work in EMacs
Microsoft allows their employees to use whatever tools they want. Don Box famously uses XEmacs to do his.NET development. Fine. It's called 'choice'. Your "dozen friends at Microsoft" are hardly a meaningful data point. I guess I've just hallucinated every time I've seen people using Visual Studio at Microsoft. Yes, that must be it. No one at Microsoft uses VS.NET for anything. It must be true because you say so.
Microsoft has been dogfooding their IDEs and compilers since the very first version of MS C 6.0 and VC++ 1.0, and you have no bleeping clue what you're talking about.
The best trackball ever made was, IMO, the Logitech TrackMan Marble FX. It's just incredible. Unfortunately the geniuses at Logitech discontinued it for some reason. Nowadays you can get an in-the-box one on eBay for around ~$200.
Last year before the craze I bought 4 and I've been cannibalizing them for button switches mostly. The downside to the FX is that it doesn't have a scroll wheel, though most applications will recognize the third button as a sort of "scroll lock" action.
A close second would be the Kensington ones. The older models had HUGE balls - so much so that you could safely replace them with a pool ball. They were actually the same size. The only problem with those is that they were completely unergonomic.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, Microsoft loses a ton of business to Firefox.
What competition? 'FOSS' has just barely begun making a small dent in some Microsoft markets. Or would you care to list some? I don't see people migrating to Linux/KDE/GNOME on the desktop en masse, I don't see OOo actually competing in any meaningful way with Office, there are no 'FOSS' games of any consequence, no high-end development tools with the exception of Eclipse, no... well, you get the idea. In the server space Linux is taking more market away from Unix (Solaris, HP) than Windows - if anything Windows is growing there as well.
And all of these modest advances are happening only because big companies (IBM, Novell, Sun, Apple) are experimenting with open source.
So where is this 'competition' that Microsoft has to fear?
Whatever else, this stupid meddling and back and forth by the EU (give us your netowrking protocols, IP be dammed! no, you can't ship an OS with a media player, RealNetworks will get an ulcer! we rock!) is going to come back and bite them one of these days.
This must be depressing for him.
Hey, that's a great idea! But apparently the KDE and GNOME folks figured this out a bit before you did, since they've been doing that the other way around for five years and counting.
I'm sorry - I'm sure you said something very insightful back there but I got lost after the fourth or fifth 'M$'.
Too funny.
You misspelled 'israelies'. Funny how that works, mmm?
Please provide a link to some press release or support policy document where Microsoft categorically states they will not patch W2K security vulnerabilities, either for the core OS itself or for its components. I'd really like to see it.
Wait, never mind. Why waste time and Google for that? Here's the lifecycle support dates for all three versions of Windows 2000. You'll notice the "extended support retired" column lists 2010 as the year. That means that Microsoft will stop patching the OS in five years. 10 years after it was first released. The RedHat upgrade train is what, 3 years now? And let's see what Novell does as well.
how support for linux will not "expire" like this.
If you are basing your business on a 10 year-old operating system in this day and age and that OS does not have the "IBM" trademark behind it you probably need a cat scan, open source or not.
Not really. Not during monsoon season.
It's not as bad as Houston of course.
There's more talk about Winamp 5.x here but I noticed a few people mentioning there were forks of WA 2.x around? Was the source to 2.x released at some point and I missed it?? I'd love to get my hands on that!
Looks like Splashdork is in for another bot attack.
Law enforcement needs to stop worrying about (and identifying as such) the average script kiddie and focus on the large mob-like operations. I'm guessing they'll get much more bang for their buck that way. I can't see how 150 million dollars is not enough to take down at least a couple of the big rings given that they operate on Jolt and Hot Pockets (or whatever passes for that in Romania).
What's the point of this, really? Why is Google suddenly so interested in fostering open source? And why only students? More pliable to the idea of giving your work away?
Thanks.
I'm not going to make a point about whether or not this constitutes a barrier for fair use, which is just about the only recognized quasi-legal issue that comes into play (no pun intended) when we talk about piracy, distribution and digital/analog media.
But please don't equate this with a "right", as in the right to free speech or the right to free assembly or whatever.
Wait... are you saying Mozilla invented tabbed browsing? Surely you jest. What exactly is MS "ripping off" here?
Plus, IE will forever have a faster start-up time (by cheating)
Cheating how?
Before Firefox was released preceded by a veritable sea of never-ending hype it was going to be "perfect" and if you didn't exchange it for IE then you were most certainly dumb. Check out your brain at the tabs, kthx.
Now that a few million people outside of the geek circles have downloaded and installed Firefox, suddenly "there is no safe browser" and "just be careful" and if you get 0w3nd it's because you were stupid or careles or didn't patch when you were supposed to, not because the Mozilla developers shipped a browser with a vulnerability, much like Microsoft tends to do. My, how times change. Now we actually need to make excuses and hope that millions of clueless users suddenly educate themselves. No silver bullet, here. Apparently.
People who use IE and have never been affected by a vulnerability (like me) and people who use Firefox or whatever and are in the same situation are safe because they know what they're doing and have a fairly good understanding of how this inherently unsafe interface between my computer and the evil outside world works. You can use the most insecure, unpatched crappy browser in the world and still never get nailed. But now there are people using this wonder of a browser who will get nailed because they are ignorant. It doesn't matter what browser or OS they use. This was true before and after FF, and it will continue to be true until the computer truly becomes an appliance.
But my, how times change.
Good for you! I mean, I'd be hard pressed to come up with some other documentation from some other company that has any errors or omissions! Totally right on!
*snort*
People who complain about these things are indeed too stupid to use a computer, or simply ignorant, in which case using an operating system that is not so massively targeted will work better for them.
OS X does not automatically increase people's IQ by a 100 points, despite claims to the contrary.
Just wait until there's Gator and Super Cursors (or whatever) for OS X. Then we'll see what the difference is between Windows and other operating systems. If the only thing standing between malware and some kid's computer is a dialog asking the root password then I'm really not inclined to feel any safer.
Security is not a product, it's a state of mind.
LOL, that's rich. The most crappy underpowered box you can buy today comes with a 40GB HDD. How much space do you need? 3GB is peanuts. Unless you don't see the value in utilizing those 3GB for this particular purpose, but that's just your personal preference.
I use firefox and "find as you type" coupled with the lightweight, well explained, very detailed Java documetation
That's nice. I mean, wow, I can't get anything done with MSDN. Never could. Your logic is inescapable.
Most of the friends I have from Microsoft work in EMacs
Microsoft allows their employees to use whatever tools they want. Don Box famously uses XEmacs to do his .NET development. Fine. It's called 'choice'. Your "dozen friends at Microsoft" are hardly a meaningful data point. I guess I've just hallucinated every time I've seen people using Visual Studio at Microsoft. Yes, that must be it. No one at Microsoft uses VS.NET for anything. It must be true because you say so.
Microsoft has been dogfooding their IDEs and compilers since the very first version of MS C 6.0 and VC++ 1.0, and you have no bleeping clue what you're talking about.
Peanuts.
Specifics, please. What "other" IDEs would those be?
I have yet to see a POORER documentation for a language than the MSDN documentation.
ROFL, compared to what?
The site design sucks, it's slow,
Download the SDK and the documentation along with it, run it locally on your machine.
Ignorance is not an excuse for stupidity, or lame attempts at FUD.
Last year before the craze I bought 4 and I've been cannibalizing them for button switches mostly. The downside to the FX is that it doesn't have a scroll wheel, though most applications will recognize the third button as a sort of "scroll lock" action.
A close second would be the Kensington ones. The older models had HUGE balls - so much so that you could safely replace them with a pool ball. They were actually the same size. The only problem with those is that they were completely unergonomic.
Or they could maybe listen to Bruce Scheider, who says essentially the same thing in a recent article I saw on news.com (IIRC).
Or they could buy an input device with a built-in fingerprint scanner.
In short, they could do many things. Instead of making snide remarks about topics they really don't understand, even though they think they do.