I have a lot of respect for Nader (I even voted for him), but I don't think he knows much about computers or software. MS is an easy target and Nader hasn't had been particularly effective at protecting consumers in recent years. I wish he would do more to break the Ticketmaster monopoly which is far more comprehensive than Microsoft's and has measurably harmed consumers financially.
The poster you're responding to said "They usually notify of new security issues and fixes within a day or so." So you counter "MS has known about this bug for days". I don't understand your argument.
It's more likely that tech companies in these states have been significant contributors to the attorneys general political campaigns. The money has already been received.
My point is that legal status of a punished monopoly company is not all that different from a "normal" company; presumption of innocence is not suspended.
As far as further investigations are concerned, the question is whether there will be the political will to carry them out. The justice dept has more important issues to deal with these days than which browser can access msn.com
"Since Microsoft has been ruled a monopoly, special rules apply to them which don't apply generally in the marketplace."
I read about this all the time on slashdot. What exactly are these "special rules"? I suspect that if the case against MS stands, there will be some very specific remedies. As long as MS complies with the remedies, they can pretty much do what they want. I don't think the government is likely to start another action once the current case is resolved.
"Steve and Steve wrote the game "Breakout" for Atari."
This is a nit, but I'm not sure that "wrote" is the right verb. I think arcade games of that era didn't use microprocessors. They had to create it using digital logic.
"Apache for Windows version 1.3 series is implemented in synchronous calls. This poses an enormous problem for CGI authors, who won't see unbuffered results sent immediately to the browser. This is not the behavior described for CGI in Apache, but it is a side-effect of the Windows port. Apache 2.0 is making progress to implement the expected asynchronous behavior, and we hope to discover that the NT/2000 implementation allows CGI's to behave as documented"
Did you not find this a problem or did the IBM version have this fixed? Or perhaps you don't use CGI.
The fact that they say "we hope to discover that the NT/2000 implementation allows CGI's to behave as documented" doesn't suggest that they are very serious about making the Windows version work correctly.
Re:So .NET = selling CORBA to suits?
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Here is a link to a whitepaper that describes the problems creating web services using COM or CORBA.
"Document all future API's, protocols, and file formats as well"
I think the courts may have a problem with imposing penalties that are open-ended like this. If MS lost their monopoly, this could be considered an anticompetitive solution in the long term.
I think RTFM is entirely about ego and always has been. There are two kinds people: those who want to help other people learn and those that who want to feel superior by pretending to be too busy or important to answer a question. I suggest that anyone who is tempted to respond to a question with RTFM - don't bother to respond at all. A RTFM response is content-free anyway.
Funny. When third-party programs cause problems in Windows it's the OS's fault not the third-party vendor. But when MS is the third-party, it's not the OS's fault but MS's. Bottom line - it's MS's fault no matter what.
My only question is: If a non-MS application causes a problem on a non-MS OS, is anyone at fault?
Any company that is still using Windows 95 as their standard client OS weren't going to upgrade until their machines died anyway. If at that point they want to remove XP from their new machines and reinstall Windows 95 (assuming they have the CDs) that's their choice.
Sorry about your stuttering disablity - it must be serious if it affects your typing as well.
I was responding to a post that was about blame, so naturally I was going to talk about it. I think that many slashdotters are willing to forgive any crime as long as it only hurts MS and MS users. What they should realize is that the indirect effects hurt everyone. If they wanted to do something constructive, they should try to change the programmer sub-culture that says that the only crime is getting caught.
If a kid was defacing a window and it broke, he would be 100% responsible. Products that don't protect against malacious attacks are not "defective", not unless they're stated purpose is to protect against an attack.
When I visited the apache web site 2 weeks ago the documentation for the Win32 version said that it was "experimental" and that it might not run as described in the documentation "or at all".
I wasn't able to find that disclaimer tonight. In any case, it doesn't give me a lot of confidence in Apache on Windows if the implementors don't stand behind it.
"I think the point is that the spellchecker is constantly loaded (you know, underlining all of your misspelled words while you type) and is eating up RAM and CPU time."
Actually, spell-checking as you type is an option in Word. If you turn it off, it won't use extra CPU time.
So you're saying the beauty of Unix is that if you know how to handle files including knowing how to use standard tools like awk, grep, sed, vi, cut, paste, join, split, tee, etc. then you know everthing.
"I say the message should be to the scriptkiddies who obviously don't know how to cover their tracks, to at least learn to do so before they download malicious software."
So you don't have a problem with the crime, just with the training of the criminals?
Slashdot Mirror
I have a lot of respect for Nader (I even voted for him), but I don't think he knows much about computers or software. MS is an easy target and Nader hasn't had been particularly effective at protecting consumers in recent years. I wish he would do more to break the Ticketmaster monopoly which is far more comprehensive than Microsoft's and has measurably harmed consumers financially.
The poster you're responding to said "They usually notify of new security issues and fixes within a day or so." So you counter "MS has known about this bug for days". I don't understand your argument.
It's more likely that tech companies in these states have been significant contributors to the attorneys general political campaigns. The money has already been received.
My point is that legal status of a punished monopoly company is not all that different from a "normal" company; presumption of innocence is not suspended.
As far as further investigations are concerned, the question is whether there will be the political will to carry them out. The justice dept has more important issues to deal with these days than which browser can access msn.com
"Since Microsoft has been ruled a monopoly, special rules apply to them which don't apply generally in the marketplace."
I read about this all the time on slashdot. What exactly are these "special rules"? I suspect that if the case against MS stands, there will be some very specific remedies. As long as MS complies with the remedies, they can pretty much do what they want. I don't think the government is likely to start another action once the current case is resolved.
"Steve and Steve wrote the game "Breakout" for Atari."
This is a nit, but I'm not sure that "wrote" is the right verb. I think arcade games of that era didn't use microprocessors. They had to create it using digital logic.
"Did a malicious worm get released and wreaked havoc on the Internet?"
You forget the political context. I suspect there's little interest in exploiting Linux bugs because the people writing worms are probably pro-linux.
That's not Gartner's MO. Otherwise, they would have advised IIS users to install the available patches rather than change servers.
I guess Sun has changed it's policy. A few years ago Sun's president said he couldn't imagine why anyone would want to use a word processor.
What about this note from the Apache website:
"Apache for Windows version 1.3 series is implemented in synchronous calls. This poses an enormous problem for CGI authors, who won't see unbuffered results sent immediately to the browser. This is not the behavior described for CGI in Apache, but it is a side-effect of the Windows port. Apache 2.0 is making progress to implement the expected asynchronous behavior, and we hope to discover that the NT/2000 implementation allows CGI's to behave as documented"
Did you not find this a problem or did the IBM version have this fixed? Or perhaps you don't use CGI.
The fact that they say "we hope to discover that the NT/2000 implementation allows CGI's to behave as documented" doesn't suggest that they are very serious about making the Windows version work correctly.
Here is a link to a whitepaper that describes the problems creating web services using COM or CORBA.
1 05 _whitepaper.cfm
http://www.orchestranetworks.com/us/solutions/0
"Document all future API's, protocols, and file formats as well"
I think the courts may have a problem with imposing penalties that are open-ended like this. If MS lost their monopoly, this could be considered an anticompetitive solution in the long term.
I think RTFM is entirely about ego and always has been. There are two kinds people: those who want to help other people learn and those that who want to feel superior by pretending to be too busy or important to answer a question. I suggest that anyone who is tempted to respond to a question with RTFM - don't bother to respond at all. A RTFM response is content-free anyway.
Funny. When third-party programs cause problems in Windows it's the OS's fault not the third-party vendor. But when MS is the third-party, it's not the OS's fault but MS's. Bottom line - it's MS's fault no matter what.
My only question is: If a non-MS application causes a problem on a non-MS OS, is anyone at fault?
"Now you just have to convince a few 100,000 idiots^W office managers .."
No, we don't. Let them make their own choices. They're not asking slashdotters to be their keepers.
Any company that is still using Windows 95 as their standard client OS weren't going to upgrade until their machines died anyway. If at that point they want to remove XP from their new machines and reinstall Windows 95 (assuming they have the CDs) that's their choice.
Sorry about your stuttering disablity - it must be serious if it affects your typing as well.
I was responding to a post that was about blame, so naturally I was going to talk about it. I think that many slashdotters are willing to forgive any crime as long as it only hurts MS and MS users. What they should realize is that the indirect effects hurt everyone. If they wanted to do something constructive, they should try to change the programmer sub-culture that says that the only crime is getting caught.
You're right, it is a no brainer.
If a kid was defacing a window and it broke, he would be 100% responsible. Products that don't protect against malacious attacks are not "defective", not unless they're stated purpose is to protect against an attack.
When I visited the apache web site 2 weeks ago the documentation for the Win32 version said that it was "experimental" and that it might not run as described in the documentation "or at all".
I wasn't able to find that disclaimer tonight. In any case, it doesn't give me a lot of confidence in Apache on Windows if the implementors don't stand behind it.
Aren't these the same guys that said you could save a ton of money by switching from PCs to Sun's Java Network Computer.
Gee, I thought geeks were the unwashed ones.
"I think the point is that the spellchecker is constantly loaded (you know, underlining all of your misspelled words while you type) and is eating up RAM and CPU time."
Actually, spell-checking as you type is an option in Word. If you turn it off, it won't use extra CPU time.
So you're saying the beauty of Unix is that if you know how to handle files including knowing how to use standard tools like awk, grep, sed, vi, cut, paste, join, split, tee, etc. then you know everthing.
"Word isn't an editor that calls up a spell-checker when needed .."
Wrong, that's exactly what Word does. The spell-checker is a COM component. You can easily write a program that uses it too.
"I say the message should be to the scriptkiddies who obviously don't know how to cover their tracks, to at least learn to do so before they download malicious software."
So you don't have a problem with the crime, just with the training of the criminals?