I wish you would apply your moral panic to causes that could actually help people.
This. I don't get the outrage of stem cells for this reason. I can understand how religious people can feel harvesting embryos or whatever is wrong. But if it's wrong, it's a wrong done with at least good intentions, that harms no one (abortions are not going to stop, stem cell research or not). There's so much going on thats wrong in this world, even in this country. Ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, etc. In our country alone, the government steals from the poor and gives to the rich, imprisons millions for drugs and puts them in a prison system that is completely overrun with racism, violence, drugs, sexual abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. For a religon based on teachings of tolerance, love for your enemy, forgiveness, and redemption, you would think the state of our for-profit-prisons would have the "religious right" outraged! Somehow I think Christ would be more concerned about helping those on the very bottom of our society, then condemning Doctors bending their ethics to potentially help make the lame walk again (in fact I hear he was a big fan of healing cripples).
It seems to me you could easily spend your entire life fighting whats wrong in this world, and never even get around to stem cells. It's a small, pathetic issue to crusade against. But I suppose because it is small, it is easy to divert your attention to, easy to cope with. After all, the big issues would require you to look with open eyes, and maybe admit you were wrong. That would take humility, and I'm pretty sure Jesus was strongly against that, if the leaders of the religious right are any example.
Thats really the problem with UAC. It comes up so often for no good reason, and gives no information to the user why it even came up. The only people with the technical skill to make intelligent choices about it don't need it. Of course, the problem in some ways is not even MS's fault. The reality is most Windows programs are doing things that trigger UAC prompts for no good reason. In the linux world, if an text editor or card game or whatever app required you to su every time you ran it, even when it didn't perform any functions that actually needed su level privileges, people would be pissed. But there's a lot of Windows apps that need to run as admin, even when their primary function has no need for admin level privileges. Their coders were just lazy, and instead of doing things following MS's guidelines, they take shortcuts that lead to big headaches for everyone down the line. Most apps don't handle a deny in UAC gracefully either, they either completely crash or have wildly unpredictable behavior. When they should be telling the user why they need a UAC ok, and giving an option to gracefully quit or retry, they seem to prefer to pretend it doesn't exist.
I think everyone agrees, UAC as it stands is a clusterfuck. But I think MS deserves a little slack. They are fighting a major battle, trying to reign in the thousands of terrible windows coders and get them to finally play nice not being admin all the time. Granted it would not be as big a problem if they had not ignored it for so long, but 2000 and xp both prove that simply offering and recommending that users don't run as admin, and programs not require it, is not enough. Hopefully MS will keep working and improving it, and app designers will get tired of their users complaining about UAC prompts and design their apps to only need admin(and thus an UAC prompt) at install.
Please tell me which organization claims the authority to definitively define the name of the sun and the moon. We need to make sure they never get put in charge of anything important.
Granted MS did not actually make it, but the free program Nlite actually makes slipstreaming and customizing your install cd extremely easy. Also, both Dell and HP provide cd/dvd's with all the drivers that will manage the install (and make for a completely unattended install once you get it started). I don't know about the other major server vendors, but I imagine they have similar. If the drivers are an issue for you you probably are not qualified to be setting up a production server anyways.
Unfortunately many p2p apps include features designed to circumvent firewalls, and make their traffic look like http traffic. I remember running p2p apps through a http tunnel back in high school because most of us still had dial up connections. More advanced firewalls that do deep packet inspection help, but they are far from foolproof.
At the end of the day, it's the admin's job to 1. Educate users about security, and make it clear there are severe consequences for violating it. 2. Monitor traffic and computers closely for violations.
In my opinion, it is next to impossible to maintain security with your users actively undermining it. It is definitely impossible to do it if you don't want to lockdown the computers so hard it is difficult to do any work (Especially in technical fields).
Of course, it all relies on management backing up the admins and security policies. All to often it seems executives do not take security seriously, even when they are paying big bucks for it, and want exceptions for themselves, or for their son in law down in accounting who breaks all the rules with impunity. If you work in an environment like that, I recommend moving on as soon as possible, because even if you did them a "favor" letting it slide, they will not think twice about making you sure you take the fall when something like this happens.
Have to agree. Every Windows upgrade has been a mess. Attempting a major OS upgrade without a good backup would be retarded, even in the Linux world. And once you have backed up your important data, a fresh install is the same amount of effort for considerably better results. In my mind, MS needs to forget about the idea of selling upgrades to consumers. Consumers don't buy Windows, they use what their pc came with. If they have the technical skill to both desire the upgrade and know how to do it, they will know how to pirate it.
The real market for Windows is OEM's and business and MS should know that. MS already dominates the OEM world, so there's not a lot of additional sales to be had, although if they can offer a substantially better experience it might drive pc sales overall.
The business world is both willing and able to upgrade, if they actually do things they need/want without breaking all their legacy apps. Unfortunately for MS the intermittent large updates strategy is the exact opposite of what businesses want, they would much rather have frequent small updates they can roll out on their schedule. Completely re-imaging thousands of pc's in the field is a huge task, and because the versions are so different as to require different training, making only upgrading some computers and not others very difficult.
MS is clinging to a release model that has been made antiquated by the internet. The pc is just part of a much larger overall infrastructure, and incremental change is much easier to swallow.
Just make sure you don't let it install that obnoxious ask.com browser bar (in IE and Firefox). I made the mistake of including it in a slipstreamed xp disk and the silent installer took all defaults (browser bar and all).
There is no evidence this actually helps with real world performance, it just preloads the JRE into memory. In effect you are trading performance every time you load your browser for performance the first time you need Java. Pretty harmless, but it is in essence a smokescreen move to make Java look better while making the overall system worse. The JRE by itself doing this is not a big deal, but we don't need apps getting into some sort of resource war to be the fastest launching with no regard to the rest of the system. It's a move straight out of MS's playbook, they did the exact same thing with IE to make it "load faster" then the competition. In reality it was just slowing down startup to give the appearance of loading faster.
If this is a truly beneficial feature, what harm would there have been in asking permission? A note in the installer that this update includes an optional Firefox extension to improve Java load times and there would be no fuss. With all the nonsense that goes on in the world of IE and spy-ware toolbars, Active-X controls that cause all sorts of problems, etc. People are justifiably wary of anything installing in their browser that is not upfront and honest about it's purpose.
I was not aware of that, but it is still a lot of hassle. Time spent researching a security flaw affecting your device and contacting Cisco about it is time you could be doing other things. I know when we had an issue with some old gear acquired off eBay for a test network, getting Cisco to even acknowledge that we were now the legit owners of the device was a pain.
Updating your IOS is seldom a quick and easy task, especially if your predecessors were less then diligent.
Nice flame jackass. Popping up in an extensions list is way different from warning BEFORE it is actually installed.
Obviously a corporate environment is different, but Firefox has next to no real enterprise management tools to control what plug-ins you can't and can install anyways so the point is moot. I guess I was wrong in making an absolute statement. I'll correct it.
All extensions need to be uninstallable by the administrator of the system, they need to remove all options otherwise.
There.
Ideally, it would be able to verify the integrity of all browser files from a secure source and delete anything that did not follow the "rules" (I.e. can be uninstalled at any time).
You are obviously very young and naive. Its practically impossible. And even if it were possible, if they did this, then you would bitch that they were controlling what extensions could be installed (like apple and the app store). If they don't do it you bitch that they should.
Thats why I said "Ideally". As in an ideal that may not be technically possible. I;m not talking about the app store, where Mozilla would approve all extensions. Rather, I am talking about a way to prevent/disable plug-ins with malicious intent, that intentionally mislead the user. Is it technically challenging? Yes. But the alternative is the MS way, to just turn a blind eye to a real security problem and blame everyone else. If you didn't want the functionality, I'm sure a branch without it would be made.
Mozilla foundation needs to keep in mind it is YOUR computer, and YOUR browser, and it should only do the things you want it to, regardless of what other companies want.
You need to keep in mind that no one cares what you do on your little home PC, and that there are far more reasons to use a PC that don't involve you, and many of those reasons probably don't fall into your little view of what would be perfect for YOU. There are many times when its NOT YOUR computer, so you DON'T get to do whatever you want with it. You are not entitled to have things your way just because you are alive.
Personal attacks aside, isn't it obvious when I said YOUR computer I meant the owner? If the owner is a company, isn't it there right to control the browser? if it is a personal computer, it is that person's right? That is my point. A company benefits from having total control over their browser and what is installed in it as much (possibly more) as the home user. The point being that just because MS feels like they should get to install their extension, and Sun theirs, and Program X gets to install theirs, doesn't mean it should happen. In an ideal world we would avoid any app that tries, but in reality it is not possible to do so and still be productive.
Do you think the majority of malicious code is written for Windows and IE just because it is easier? Do you think if Firefox takes over they will just give up? Firefox is more secure by design, there is no doubt, but it still has security flaws being discovered all the time. The more successful it is the more it will be targeted, and in my opinion allowing any and every app the wants to install an extension is a gaping hole. There are already malicious sites out there that try to trick you into installing an extension, I have seen them.
You're going to be ignorant and bitch regardless, so Mozilla really could give a flying fuck what you think
It is because I like Firefox that I care about what they do moving forward. I suppose "better then IE" should be good enough forever? I'd rather Firefox did not follow IE's footsteps of achieving dominance then ignoring any problems from then on.
You have to have a support agreement with Cisco to get the latest IOS. They won't even give you the last version when your support contract ran out. Also, older routers do not always have upgrades available for various reasons, either they do not have enough space or hardware limitations or Cisco End-of-Lifed it and hasn't bothered.
There's also the "if it isn't broke don't fix it" mentality in the networking world. A new version may fix some bugs but it might add some bugs as well. An upgrade, even if minor, generally means a lot of work testing and reconfiguring before you roll it out. Network engineers are expensive and that time isn't free. Sometimes the devil you know is better then the devil you don't.
In an ideal world it wouldn't be an issue, but when it comes to networking it's NEVER an ideal world. There's always too much to do and never enough budget/manpower to do it. Every network admin probably has 10 things on his mental wishlist right now, upgrades he would like to make, redundant hardware he would like to purchase, failover contingencies he needs to test, etc. Upgrading IOS on an old router in a rack somewhere (and hoping it doesn't blow up in your face) can be pretty far down the list.
Any sort of installer on linux will require root access to my knowledge, which means it could be just as sneaky. I realize repositories help alleviate this, because it is a trusted central source, but if Linux was as popular as Windows you would see a lot more of this kind of thing. If Ubuntu was the desktop of the masses, you think there would not be a lot of financial temptation for the maintainers to let this kind of thing slide?
Besides, the reality is Windows is the OS used by the vast majority of Firefox users. If you want Firefox to stay an example of how great open source can be, then they need to take steps to protect it from all the sleaze who will see it as an unexploited market.
How many IE installs have you seen with a dozen ugly search bar below the title bar? It seems like every app installs one, if you are lucky they hide a little checkbox and disclaimer in the installer to avoid it. it's one of peoples big annoyances with IE, even if at it's core it's not IE's fault. I installed Foxit Reader on my laptop the other day, and did not read all the options. To my surprise I had some ridiculous Ask.com toolbar in my firefox install.
Currently if you try to install an extension, Firefox pops a warning up. It needs to do the same if another app installs one. All extensions need to be uninstallable, they need to remove all options otherwise. Ideally, it would be able to verify the integrity of all browser files from a secure source and delete anything that did not follow the "rules" (I.e. can be uninstalled at any time).
All extensions not installed by direct user action (ie going to the firefox addons menu and choosing to install it) should start disabled and have to be manually enabled before they can work.
Firefox is gaining ground in the browser wars, and that means it is going to be targeted. Already malicious sites that attempt to exploit flaws in Firefox exist and are growing in number. I expect it's just a matter of time before spyware extensions start showing up, claiming to do something useful while reporting your browsing habits.
Mozilla foundation needs to keep in mind it is YOUR computer, and YOUR browser, and it should only do the things you want it to, regardless of what other companies want.
Ive been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, and despite the many improvements, it will be a victim of it's own success if it is not careful.
Please. Even ardent abolitionists of the era would be considered racist by today's standards. Lincoln would have been raised and taught by both the scientists and the clergy of the day that blacks were inherently inferior, incapable of existing in civilized society without the firm guidance of whites. It's not fair to single him out and apply today's standards and expect him to measure up. You can't argue that he was considerably more progressive on the issue then most of his peers. Like all politicians, his actions and public words would be 5% rooted in his personal beliefs of right and wrong and 95% in the political reality of what he could actually hope to achieve. Ending slavery was a first step in a process that is still going on today. You can't change an entire society in a lifetime, especially when its cut short by an asassin.
That's actually a good argument. Anti-drug propaganda completely fails kids because it relies on scare tactics and overblown claims. Kids can clearly see that just like chocolate, people seem to use drugs and be fine. An honest discussion would include the fact that drugs can be used with no immediate ill effects, and a realistic discussion of the risks. That would require parents to educate themselves though, so it's easier to say "drugs are bad".
Appeals to authority is a shitty argument, don't expect it to convince a five year old, much less a teenager.
Looks like the pathetic one is you, and the Submitter. If you RTFA, it clearly says
He said the result was "effectively a denial of service as e-mail queues, especially between posts, back up while processing the extra volume of e-mails.
Never says the actually crashed, merely that the high volume generated large queues, exactly what you would expect to happen in a properly engineered system. But hey, this is Slashdot, so making up reasons to hate Exchange (and there are plenty of LEGITIMATE reasons to hate exchange) is the norm.
I love the ridiculous claims of the CW story and how it's going to hurt the IT economy. The entirety of IT exists because it introduces efficiencies that reduce labor costs. We didn't cry when our fancy computers put filing clerks out of a job? Or when the internet put message couriers out of a job? If anyone should have learned to not fear efficiency it should be IT workers. Someone has to run and engineer the cloud, someone will still need to connect the users to the cloud, etc. If you think you can work in IT, and do the same thing for your entire career, you are a fool. In the same way that broadband allowed the net to offer services we never would have dreamed of in the days of 56k, it's very possible that these services will allow the role of IT to expand in new ways, and be even MORE important to businesses. If your really scared of the big bad cloud, learn the skills needed to become a specialist in helping businesses transition to cloud based services.
Then again, maybe you got comfortable in your current position, and sat on your laurels, and some engineers with bigger ideas and superior skills just reduced your job to a very simple script.
Conspiracy theories of mythical "pirate" rootkits aside, the source of these installations that require no activation or cd key is from Microsoft themselves. They released this version to Universities who have licensed with MS to provide copies of Windows to all their students. They couldn't be bothered to make a system to issue/track cd keys so they released it without a need for any.
Dual power supplies are your friend. 1 plug goes to the UPS, the other to an independent UPS or the wall. That said, UPS failures are rare if you perform regular maintenance (AKA replace batteries etc BEFORE they fail on you). I suppose it depends a lot on the individual area, but in an are alike mine where severe thunderstorms are common, power outages happen a couple times a year minimum, vs UPS failure that are very rare. Not to mention, you get what you pay for. Office Supply store brand UPS are not going to be reliable.
You can not just stop at any point and say "we just saved all the money we would have spent". There are costs associated with stopping the project. Prototype rockets don't just disappear. Neither do employees. You have to look at how much it will cost you to get rid of the equipment/material no longer needed, relocate/severance employees, break contracts with suppliers/subcontractors, sell/lease/repurpose office and lab space, etc. Add in the fact this is government work, so all those things will require 3 times as much paper work and effort to accomplish.
Couldn't agree more. In middle school(aka Junior high), I had the pleasure of going to a brand new school, part of a pilot project that gave it a massive budget for technology compared to the rest of the district. Each classroom had 4 state of the art computers, and we had multiple computer labs with 30+ brand new computers. The buildings were linked with fiber and a "state of the art" network. A computer "expert" was hired, at a salary large enough to hire 2-3 teachers, to administrate it.
What was the result of all of this? The cabling for the network was done so poorly it had to be completely torn out and redone 3 months after the school opened (creating headaches and disruptions for teachers actually trying to teach). The computers sat in classrooms still in boxes, waiting for lawsuits with the company contracted to install and set them up to be resolved (they charged the district 2x the market value of the computers, did not deliver all the computers they charged for, and never fulfilled their contractual obligation to set them up).
The computer "expert" was a blowhard without a clue. He was unable to solve simple problems, and was completely clueless. As the resident "computer kid", I wound up fixing and troubleshooting most of the computers, and doing his job. They let me take computer apps as my elective every semester, and I would go around fixing computers and helping the handful of teachers who attempted to use them for various projects. While I was gone on a multi-day field trip, the "expert" (who claimed to have a Doctorate in C.S.) tried to setup a new computer lab without me, and hooked all the brand new iMacs up to the ethernet network with the phone cables included in the box.
Things came to a head my 8th and final year at that school. The expert had been forced to arrange a training class on a weekend for a group of administrators in the school system. This class included top people in the county school system. When, in front of all these people he could not get the very software he was supposed to be training them on to work, he was very embarrassed. He needed a scapegoat, so he claimed to have evidence the presentation was "hacked" and the attack came from a computer I used to host various repair software on the network. Although he provided 0 evidence, I was hauled into the office the following day. A sheriff's deputy was brought in and told me I had committed computer crimes and could be arrested. I was suspended 7 days and expulsion proceedings started.
Several teachers and guidance counselors came to my defense, and my parent's began consulting with an attorney (because there was no evidence to support his claims). Eventually they realized they had 0 proof I had done anything wrong, besides the word of said expert, and the expulsion was dropped and the suspension purged from my permanent record.
So, in trying to be helpful, and learn about computers, I wound up framed by the professional they hired (making in excess of $100k a year) to cover his own incompetence. In their ignorance about all things technology, the administration over reacted, then tried to cover-up, then lied about the entire incident.
From there I moved on to a high school that had a special magnet program for computers. There we used the computers to hone our Quake and Starcraft skills, and not much else.
I graduated HS in 2003, so the average level of computer knowledge has greatly increased since then, but the reality is giving school systems computers accomplishes nothing. In order to make them effective at all as learning tools, you need to build an infrastructure from top to bottom. That means you A. Need kids that can read well, do basic math, and exercise critical thinking and problem solving. Without these skills, computer use is an exercise in rote memorization, which accomplishes nothing. Most public schools do not impart these skills on a majority of their students.
B. Need an administration aware of the advantages and disadvantages of t
No, they make money fixing it. Gears of War 2 sold as well as it has because people like Gears of War 1. They supported the Gears of War 1 community, and those people were lined up to buy the sequel the day it came out, because they trusted the developer would give them another good experience. If they don't fix this, and say screw it, that community won't be there for their next game.
Theres a reason a lot of gamers will buy anything Blizzard puts out (well non-mmo related anyways). They still patch Starcraft, and Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3. They still keep battlenet up and running. Yeah to the first year business grad, that must look terrible on the books, a big expense with no financial reward. Yet they realize that expense will garuntee d3 and Starcraft 2 will sell a shitload of copies the first week.
Saying fuck it and moving on is how you become EA. Hated by gamers, who avoid their games like the plague. Sure they make their money off casual players who don't know EA from Valve, but as they have seen that's a fickle audience.
Theres 2 basic strategies in game development, community development (Valve, Blizzard, Epic, Bunjie) and shovelware development (EA, a ton of others). The difference is the former produces fewer games, but those games are almost always runaway successes. Shovelware devs make a ton of titles cheaply, test them poorly, and shove them out the door, hoping well-meaning parents will buy them for their kids. Considering the amount of money and time Epic puts into their games, and the huge size of CliffyB's ego, I think they want to be in the former category. If they want to do that, patching the game and fixing these issues IS mandatory.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish you would apply your moral panic to causes that could actually help people.
This. I don't get the outrage of stem cells for this reason. I can understand how religious people can feel harvesting embryos or whatever is wrong. But if it's wrong, it's a wrong done with at least good intentions, that harms no one (abortions are not going to stop, stem cell research or not). There's so much going on thats wrong in this world, even in this country. Ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, etc. In our country alone, the government steals from the poor and gives to the rich, imprisons millions for drugs and puts them in a prison system that is completely overrun with racism, violence, drugs, sexual abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. For a religon based on teachings of tolerance, love for your enemy, forgiveness, and redemption, you would think the state of our for-profit-prisons would have the "religious right" outraged! Somehow I think Christ would be more concerned about helping those on the very bottom of our society, then condemning Doctors bending their ethics to potentially help make the lame walk again (in fact I hear he was a big fan of healing cripples).
It seems to me you could easily spend your entire life fighting whats wrong in this world, and never even get around to stem cells. It's a small, pathetic issue to crusade against. But I suppose because it is small, it is easy to divert your attention to, easy to cope with. After all, the big issues would require you to look with open eyes, and maybe admit you were wrong. That would take humility, and I'm pretty sure Jesus was strongly against that, if the leaders of the religious right are any example.
Thats really the problem with UAC. It comes up so often for no good reason, and gives no information to the user why it even came up. The only people with the technical skill to make intelligent choices about it don't need it. Of course, the problem in some ways is not even MS's fault. The reality is most Windows programs are doing things that trigger UAC prompts for no good reason. In the linux world, if an text editor or card game or whatever app required you to su every time you ran it, even when it didn't perform any functions that actually needed su level privileges, people would be pissed. But there's a lot of Windows apps that need to run as admin, even when their primary function has no need for admin level privileges. Their coders were just lazy, and instead of doing things following MS's guidelines, they take shortcuts that lead to big headaches for everyone down the line.
Most apps don't handle a deny in UAC gracefully either, they either completely crash or have wildly unpredictable behavior. When they should be telling the user why they need a UAC ok, and giving an option to gracefully quit or retry, they seem to prefer to pretend it doesn't exist.
I think everyone agrees, UAC as it stands is a clusterfuck. But I think MS deserves a little slack. They are fighting a major battle, trying to reign in the thousands of terrible windows coders and get them to finally play nice not being admin all the time. Granted it would not be as big a problem if they had not ignored it for so long, but 2000 and xp both prove that simply offering and recommending that users don't run as admin, and programs not require it, is not enough.
Hopefully MS will keep working and improving it, and app designers will get tired of their users complaining about UAC prompts and design their apps to only need admin(and thus an UAC prompt) at install.
Please tell me which organization claims the authority to definitively define the name of the sun and the moon. We need to make sure they never get put in charge of anything important.
Granted MS did not actually make it, but the free program Nlite actually makes slipstreaming and customizing your install cd extremely easy. Also, both Dell and HP provide cd/dvd's with all the drivers that will manage the install (and make for a completely unattended install once you get it started). I don't know about the other major server vendors, but I imagine they have similar. If the drivers are an issue for you you probably are not qualified to be setting up a production server anyways.
Unfortunately many p2p apps include features designed to circumvent firewalls, and make their traffic look like http traffic. I remember running p2p apps through a http tunnel back in high school because most of us still had dial up connections. More advanced firewalls that do deep packet inspection help, but they are far from foolproof.
At the end of the day, it's the admin's job to
1. Educate users about security, and make it clear there are severe consequences for violating it.
2. Monitor traffic and computers closely for violations.
In my opinion, it is next to impossible to maintain security with your users actively undermining it. It is definitely impossible to do it if you don't want to lockdown the computers so hard it is difficult to do any work (Especially in technical fields).
Of course, it all relies on management backing up the admins and security policies. All to often it seems executives do not take security seriously, even when they are paying big bucks for it, and want exceptions for themselves, or for their son in law down in accounting who breaks all the rules with impunity. If you work in an environment like that, I recommend moving on as soon as possible, because even if you did them a "favor" letting it slide, they will not think twice about making you sure you take the fall when something like this happens.
Have to agree. Every Windows upgrade has been a mess. Attempting a major OS upgrade without a good backup would be retarded, even in the Linux world. And once you have backed up your important data, a fresh install is the same amount of effort for considerably better results. In my mind, MS needs to forget about the idea of selling upgrades to consumers. Consumers don't buy Windows, they use what their pc came with. If they have the technical skill to both desire the upgrade and know how to do it, they will know how to pirate it.
The real market for Windows is OEM's and business and MS should know that. MS already dominates the OEM world, so there's not a lot of additional sales to be had, although if they can offer a substantially better experience it might drive pc sales overall.
The business world is both willing and able to upgrade, if they actually do things they need/want without breaking all their legacy apps. Unfortunately for MS the intermittent large updates strategy is the exact opposite of what businesses want, they would much rather have frequent small updates they can roll out on their schedule. Completely re-imaging thousands of pc's in the field is a huge task, and because the versions are so different as to require different training, making only upgrading some computers and not others very difficult.
MS is clinging to a release model that has been made antiquated by the internet. The pc is just part of a much larger overall infrastructure, and incremental change is much easier to swallow.
Just make sure you don't let it install that obnoxious ask.com browser bar (in IE and Firefox). I made the mistake of including it in a slipstreamed xp disk and the silent installer took all defaults (browser bar and all).
There is no evidence this actually helps with real world performance, it just preloads the JRE into memory. In effect you are trading performance every time you load your browser for performance the first time you need Java. Pretty harmless, but it is in essence a smokescreen move to make Java look better while making the overall system worse. The JRE by itself doing this is not a big deal, but we don't need apps getting into some sort of resource war to be the fastest launching with no regard to the rest of the system. It's a move straight out of MS's playbook, they did the exact same thing with IE to make it "load faster" then the competition. In reality it was just slowing down startup to give the appearance of loading faster.
If this is a truly beneficial feature, what harm would there have been in asking permission? A note in the installer that this update includes an optional Firefox extension to improve Java load times and there would be no fuss. With all the nonsense that goes on in the world of IE and spy-ware toolbars, Active-X controls that cause all sorts of problems, etc. People are justifiably wary of anything installing in their browser that is not upfront and honest about it's purpose.
I was not aware of that, but it is still a lot of hassle. Time spent researching a security flaw affecting your device and contacting Cisco about it is time you could be doing other things. I know when we had an issue with some old gear acquired off eBay for a test network, getting Cisco to even acknowledge that we were now the legit owners of the device was a pain.
Updating your IOS is seldom a quick and easy task, especially if your predecessors were less then diligent.
Nice flame jackass.
Popping up in an extensions list is way different from warning BEFORE it is actually installed.
Obviously a corporate environment is different, but Firefox has next to no real enterprise management tools to control what plug-ins you can't and can install anyways so the point is moot. I guess I was wrong in making an absolute statement. I'll correct it.
All extensions need to be uninstallable by the administrator of the system, they need to remove all options otherwise.
There.
Ideally, it would be able to verify the integrity of all browser files from a secure source and delete anything that did not follow the "rules" (I.e. can be uninstalled at any time).
You are obviously very young and naive. Its practically impossible. And even if it were possible, if they did this, then you would bitch that they were controlling what extensions could be installed (like apple and the app store). If they don't do it you bitch that they should.
Thats why I said "Ideally". As in an ideal that may not be technically possible. I;m not talking about the app store, where Mozilla would approve all extensions. Rather, I am talking about a way to prevent/disable plug-ins with malicious intent, that intentionally mislead the user. Is it technically challenging? Yes. But the alternative is the MS way, to just turn a blind eye to a real security problem and blame everyone else. If you didn't want the functionality, I'm sure a branch without it would be made.
Mozilla foundation needs to keep in mind it is YOUR computer, and YOUR browser, and it should only do the things you want it to, regardless of what other companies want.
You need to keep in mind that no one cares what you do on your little home PC, and that there are far more reasons to use a PC that don't involve you, and many of those reasons probably don't fall into your little view of what would be perfect for YOU. There are many times when its NOT YOUR computer, so you DON'T get to do whatever you want with it. You are not entitled to have things your way just because you are alive.
Personal attacks aside, isn't it obvious when I said YOUR computer I meant the owner? If the owner is a company, isn't it there right to control the browser? if it is a personal computer, it is that person's right? That is my point. A company benefits from having total control over their browser and what is installed in it as much (possibly more) as the home user. The point being that just because MS feels like they should get to install their extension, and Sun theirs, and Program X gets to install theirs, doesn't mean it should happen. In an ideal world we would avoid any app that tries, but in reality it is not possible to do so and still be productive.
Do you think the majority of malicious code is written for Windows and IE just because it is easier? Do you think if Firefox takes over they will just give up? Firefox is more secure by design, there is no doubt, but it still has security flaws being discovered all the time. The more successful it is the more it will be targeted, and in my opinion allowing any and every app the wants to install an extension is a gaping hole. There are already malicious sites out there that try to trick you into installing an extension, I have seen them.
You're going to be ignorant and bitch regardless, so Mozilla really could give a flying fuck what you think
It is because I like Firefox that I care about what they do moving forward. I suppose "better then IE" should be good enough forever? I'd rather Firefox did not follow IE's footsteps of achieving dominance then ignoring any problems from then on.
You have to have a support agreement with Cisco to get the latest IOS. They won't even give you the last version when your support contract ran out. Also, older routers do not always have upgrades available for various reasons, either they do not have enough space or hardware limitations or Cisco End-of-Lifed it and hasn't bothered.
There's also the "if it isn't broke don't fix it" mentality in the networking world. A new version may fix some bugs but it might add some bugs as well. An upgrade, even if minor, generally means a lot of work testing and reconfiguring before you roll it out. Network engineers are expensive and that time isn't free. Sometimes the devil you know is better then the devil you don't.
In an ideal world it wouldn't be an issue, but when it comes to networking it's NEVER an ideal world. There's always too much to do and never enough budget/manpower to do it. Every network admin probably has 10 things on his mental wishlist right now, upgrades he would like to make, redundant hardware he would like to purchase, failover contingencies he needs to test, etc. Upgrading IOS on an old router in a rack somewhere (and hoping it doesn't blow up in your face) can be pretty far down the list.
Any sort of installer on linux will require root access to my knowledge, which means it could be just as sneaky. I realize repositories help alleviate this, because it is a trusted central source, but if Linux was as popular as Windows you would see a lot more of this kind of thing. If Ubuntu was the desktop of the masses, you think there would not be a lot of financial temptation for the maintainers to let this kind of thing slide?
Besides, the reality is Windows is the OS used by the vast majority of Firefox users. If you want Firefox to stay an example of how great open source can be, then they need to take steps to protect it from all the sleaze who will see it as an unexploited market.
How many IE installs have you seen with a dozen ugly search bar below the title bar? It seems like every app installs one, if you are lucky they hide a little checkbox and disclaimer in the installer to avoid it. it's one of peoples big annoyances with IE, even if at it's core it's not IE's fault. I installed Foxit Reader on my laptop the other day, and did not read all the options. To my surprise I had some ridiculous Ask.com toolbar in my firefox install.
Currently if you try to install an extension, Firefox pops a warning up. It needs to do the same if another app installs one. All extensions need to be uninstallable, they need to remove all options otherwise. Ideally, it would be able to verify the integrity of all browser files from a secure source and delete anything that did not follow the "rules" (I.e. can be uninstalled at any time).
All extensions not installed by direct user action (ie going to the firefox addons menu and choosing to install it) should start disabled and have to be manually enabled before they can work.
Firefox is gaining ground in the browser wars, and that means it is going to be targeted. Already malicious sites that attempt to exploit flaws in Firefox exist and are growing in number. I expect it's just a matter of time before spyware extensions start showing up, claiming to do something useful while reporting your browsing habits.
Mozilla foundation needs to keep in mind it is YOUR computer, and YOUR browser, and it should only do the things you want it to, regardless of what other companies want.
Ive been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, and despite the many improvements, it will be a victim of it's own success if it is not careful.
Please. Even ardent abolitionists of the era would be considered racist by today's standards. Lincoln would have been raised and taught by both the scientists and the clergy of the day that blacks were inherently inferior, incapable of existing in civilized society without the firm guidance of whites. It's not fair to single him out and apply today's standards and expect him to measure up. You can't argue that he was considerably more progressive on the issue then most of his peers. Like all politicians, his actions and public words would be 5% rooted in his personal beliefs of right and wrong and 95% in the political reality of what he could actually hope to achieve. Ending slavery was a first step in a process that is still going on today. You can't change an entire society in a lifetime, especially when its cut short by an asassin.
That's actually a good argument. Anti-drug propaganda completely fails kids because it relies on scare tactics and overblown claims. Kids can clearly see that just like chocolate, people seem to use drugs and be fine. An honest discussion would include the fact that drugs can be used with no immediate ill effects, and a realistic discussion of the risks. That would require parents to educate themselves though, so it's easier to say "drugs are bad".
Appeals to authority is a shitty argument, don't expect it to convince a five year old, much less a teenager.
He never specified which OS. Windows 2000 is on SP4. So while he probably meant SP3, he could technically correct.
Looks like the pathetic one is you, and the Submitter. If you RTFA, it clearly says
He said the result was "effectively a denial of service as e-mail queues, especially between posts, back up while processing the extra volume of e-mails.
Never says the actually crashed, merely that the high volume generated large queues, exactly what you would expect to happen in a properly engineered system. But hey, this is Slashdot, so making up reasons to hate Exchange (and there are plenty of LEGITIMATE reasons to hate exchange) is the norm.
Worthless blogspam contributor dies, Slashdot editors mourn having to read submissions again, rather then blindly posting everything he submits.
I love the ridiculous claims of the CW story and how it's going to hurt the IT economy. The entirety of IT exists because it introduces efficiencies that reduce labor costs. We didn't cry when our fancy computers put filing clerks out of a job? Or when the internet put message couriers out of a job? If anyone should have learned to not fear efficiency it should be IT workers. Someone has to run and engineer the cloud, someone will still need to connect the users to the cloud, etc. If you think you can work in IT, and do the same thing for your entire career, you are a fool. In the same way that broadband allowed the net to offer services we never would have dreamed of in the days of 56k, it's very possible that these services will allow the role of IT to expand in new ways, and be even MORE important to businesses. If your really scared of the big bad cloud, learn the skills needed to become a specialist in helping businesses transition to cloud based services.
Then again, maybe you got comfortable in your current position, and sat on your laurels, and some engineers with bigger ideas and superior skills just reduced your job to a very simple script.
Conspiracy theories of mythical "pirate" rootkits aside, the source of these installations that require no activation or cd key is from Microsoft themselves. They released this version to Universities who have licensed with MS to provide copies of Windows to all their students. They couldn't be bothered to make a system to issue/track cd keys so they released it without a need for any.
No, it will just be used as an excuse to make the governor and other politicians exempt from the law.
Dual power supplies are your friend. 1 plug goes to the UPS, the other to an independent UPS or the wall. That said, UPS failures are rare if you perform regular maintenance (AKA replace batteries etc BEFORE they fail on you). I suppose it depends a lot on the individual area, but in an are alike mine where severe thunderstorms are common, power outages happen a couple times a year minimum, vs UPS failure that are very rare. Not to mention, you get what you pay for. Office Supply store brand UPS are not going to be reliable.
You can not just stop at any point and say "we just saved all the money we would have spent". There are costs associated with stopping the project. Prototype rockets don't just disappear. Neither do employees. You have to look at how much it will cost you to get rid of the equipment/material no longer needed, relocate/severance employees, break contracts with suppliers/subcontractors, sell/lease/repurpose office and lab space, etc. Add in the fact this is government work, so all those things will require 3 times as much paper work and effort to accomplish.
Couldn't agree more. In middle school(aka Junior high), I had the pleasure of going to a brand new school, part of a pilot project that gave it a massive budget for technology compared to the rest of the district. Each classroom had 4 state of the art computers, and we had multiple computer labs with 30+ brand new computers. The buildings were linked with fiber and a "state of the art" network. A computer "expert" was hired, at a salary large enough to hire 2-3 teachers, to administrate it.
What was the result of all of this?
The cabling for the network was done so poorly it had to be completely torn out and redone 3 months after the school opened (creating headaches and disruptions for teachers actually trying to teach). The computers sat in classrooms still in boxes, waiting for lawsuits with the company contracted to install and set them up to be resolved (they charged the district 2x the market value of the computers, did not deliver all the computers they charged for, and never fulfilled their contractual obligation to set them up).
The computer "expert" was a blowhard without a clue. He was unable to solve simple problems, and was completely clueless. As the resident "computer kid", I wound up fixing and troubleshooting most of the computers, and doing his job. They let me take computer apps as my elective every semester, and I would go around fixing computers and helping the handful of teachers who attempted to use them for various projects. While I was gone on a multi-day field trip, the "expert" (who claimed to have a Doctorate in C.S.) tried to setup a new computer lab without me, and hooked all the brand new iMacs up to the ethernet network with the phone cables included in the box.
Things came to a head my 8th and final year at that school. The expert had been forced to arrange a training class on a weekend for a group of administrators in the school system. This class included top people in the county school system. When, in front of all these people he could not get the very software he was supposed to be training them on to work, he was very embarrassed. He needed a scapegoat, so he claimed to have evidence the presentation was "hacked" and the attack came from a computer I used to host various repair software on the network. Although he provided 0 evidence, I was hauled into the office the following day. A sheriff's deputy was brought in and told me I had committed computer crimes and could be arrested. I was suspended 7 days and expulsion proceedings started.
Several teachers and guidance counselors came to my defense, and my parent's began consulting with an attorney (because there was no evidence to support his claims). Eventually they realized they had 0 proof I had done anything wrong, besides the word of said expert, and the expulsion was dropped and the suspension purged from my permanent record.
So, in trying to be helpful, and learn about computers, I wound up framed by the professional they hired (making in excess of $100k a year) to cover his own incompetence. In their ignorance about all things technology, the administration over reacted, then tried to cover-up, then lied about the entire incident.
From there I moved on to a high school that had a special magnet program for computers. There we used the computers to hone our Quake and Starcraft skills, and not much else.
I graduated HS in 2003, so the average level of computer knowledge has greatly increased since then, but the reality is giving school systems computers accomplishes nothing. In order to make them effective at all as learning tools, you need to build an infrastructure from top to bottom. That means you
A. Need kids that can read well, do basic math, and exercise critical thinking and problem solving. Without these skills, computer use is an exercise in rote memorization, which accomplishes nothing. Most public schools do not impart these skills on a majority of their students.
B. Need an administration aware of the advantages and disadvantages of t
No, they make money fixing it. Gears of War 2 sold as well as it has because people like Gears of War 1. They supported the Gears of War 1 community, and those people were lined up to buy the sequel the day it came out, because they trusted the developer would give them another good experience. If they don't fix this, and say screw it, that community won't be there for their next game.
Theres a reason a lot of gamers will buy anything Blizzard puts out (well non-mmo related anyways). They still patch Starcraft, and Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3. They still keep battlenet up and running. Yeah to the first year business grad, that must look terrible on the books, a big expense with no financial reward. Yet they realize that expense will garuntee d3 and Starcraft 2 will sell a shitload of copies the first week.
Saying fuck it and moving on is how you become EA. Hated by gamers, who avoid their games like the plague. Sure they make their money off casual players who don't know EA from Valve, but as they have seen that's a fickle audience.
Theres 2 basic strategies in game development, community development (Valve, Blizzard, Epic, Bunjie) and shovelware development (EA, a ton of others). The difference is the former produces fewer games, but those games are almost always runaway successes. Shovelware devs make a ton of titles cheaply, test them poorly, and shove them out the door, hoping well-meaning parents will buy them for their kids. Considering the amount of money and time Epic puts into their games, and the huge size of CliffyB's ego, I think they want to be in the former category. If they want to do that, patching the game and fixing these issues IS mandatory.