I mean, of course this idea is an absolute trashing of the intent of TCP/IP and all, but inefficient? Anyone ever try to load and run a Java applet on a windoze machine? I can't imagine much worse...
Where I live, residential customers and businesses have two options for cable modem service, which is fabulous for a town of 20,000. The first option is provided by the city public utilities dept., which has run fiber rings throughout the town, and then coax to the curb. The city then contracts with local isps for residential service. The other option is the local cable company, which has contracted with @home to provide service. Each costs about $25 a month, although the bandwidth is with the city service, not surprisingly (I can look out my window and see the fiber node nearby).
The biggest difference is less obvious: people I know who are using the @home get constant scans (not just one or two ports, either) from IP addresses which resolve themselves to something like portscan022.foo.home.com (obfuscated to avoid implicating the cable company, which I believe to be innocent to this activity). When I look at my logs, what do I get? A chron job from the city DHCP server polling every five minutes on port 68. And a bunch of port 80 requests from who knows where:)
What don't I get? Why on earth @home seems to think it's ok to portscan its customers like they do. The article seems indicative of just how paternalistic they are: "We are the arbitraters of what you can and can't download. If you are running open ports, we need to know why. What? You don't like it? Read the (revised) terms of service, dodo." I consider myself lucky to have the option of broadband without @home as a provider. It's apparent that most people don't have that choice. We all know what happens when a monopoly goes unchecked.
... said Vincent Gullatto, senior researcher at McAfee, in Santa Clara, Calif. "We anticipate this problem will only get worse, especially since people seem to be resistant to updating their systems for some reason."
Considering the fact that: the majority of internet users are using Windows, which has the tendancy to crash horribly whenever something new, particularly security-related, is installed, is it really any wonder? Not to mention the fact that that operating system caters to a mentality where, apparently, security "doesn't really matter." A little user education would go a long way in preventing zombies, but somehow Redmond won't take the initiative, and the rest of the net suffers. This isn't to say that there aren't vulnerabilities on every operating system, just that the total number of unsecured windows machines increases the risk to the population as a whole.
After various experiences with client-side yohoo (java, flash, etc. ad nauseistic download and install), I just can't support another client-side app for the Internet. Not to say that these things don't sometimes have their good points, but until workstation computers get a whole lot faster, it just makes a lot more sense to me to deal with things server-side, and even when computing speed increases, I'd expect to see a lot more complexity in what the computer is expected to handle. Unfortunately, this includes the reluctant assumption that, for the next decade or so, windoze is probably going to be the dominant OS for the majority of users, and given their track record, I don't expect clock times to be freed up by increases in hardware. Here's my proposal (the same one I made to my CS prof once upon a time): There are only about a half dozen or so operating systems which spend much time browsing. If we're really going to develop a language that is usable for high-level internet functionality, have it be one which automatically runs make for all these operating systems at once.(Of course, this will require it to be architecture-independant, which will be some fancy juju) Then, when the server gets a request, it sends back the "correct" code for the machine which sent the request. Since it's already compiled, there's no time-wasting disk spinning on somebody's celeron, and the server handles it just like any other request. The page loads as it always would. Sort of like a muscular CGI, I suppose. Just promise not to flame me too hard:P
It's called "Don't buy the fscking software!" I take every opportunity to encourage people to do the same. Right now, my winbox runs only those programs I haven't had the time to port (yet). I see no need to buy a piece of software which breaks my firewall.
I dunno ?genius. I guess if you weren't so hastily blasting out hard-nosed apology for the Redmond team, at least two things would have happened: first of all, you would have seen my comment which I posted when someone pointed out that the ZoneAlarm port is already out. Second, you wouldn't have run into the Cowboy speech, which considering how much you appear to be missing, probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
My beef is with the Big Picture of what M$ is and has done. The beef you attempted with a later post is yet another example of this. No, Microsoft wasn't opposing DR-DOS because it was screwing it up: they deliberately set 3.1 up so that bogus errors would appear if a user wasn't using MS DOS, which IMHO was and is inferior. No, the problem is trust. Microsoft has done just about everything possible to ensure that they don't have mine. Remember the truism: fuck me once, fuck you. Fuck me twice, fuck me! Bill can go find another hunny to take from. He can't have any more of mine.
Microsoft is simply doing what it has done for years: describe anybody who has a chance of competing with them, ususally due to a better product, as "troublesome" or "incompatable" or "unstable" and then rewriting critical parts of the operating system to, er... prove their point. I liked DR DOS, and still haven't forgiven M$ for their treatment of it back in the day.
Still no reason to buy Bill's Bogus Journey, though. Although the idea of using ZoneAlarm to prevent Microsoftware from phoning home every time I crashed it (by using java?) does have some appeal:)
After about the umpteenth million time that I've successfully used ZoneAlarm to block out some adware, or some s'kiddie trying to r00t my winbox, I'm what you'd call satisfied. Sure, That program causes some instability, but that's nothing compared to what would happen if my computer were a zombie. Presumably Microsoft expects me to trust their firewall to block out adware? Or to actually be secure? No thanks. XP is one "upgrade" this user won't be wasting time/money on.
I think cringely needs to quit posting while stoned. After reading his rant, which admittedly does bring up a couple of interesting points (although the idea of M$ trying an Embrace and Extinguish on TCP/IP strikes me as one which, if attempted, would be laughable in its arrogance and stupidity), I think overall Cringely contradicts himself. First he talks like setting a GUID for everyone on the internet is a Good Idea, and then later on in the article, he attributes the same idea to the Evil Software branch of Microsoft. So, which is it? On one point I totally agree, however. The current rash of email worms are entirely due to a business decision on the part of Microsoft, and they are culpable. The best, simplest, and most obvious way to fix a good part of this would indeed be to prevent email software promiscuous access to attachments embedded in email messages. No amount of restating the obvious, it seems, is able to either convince institutions to quit sending these (which are often, most unneccessarily and foolishly, in Word format), or to convince mom and pop users to not open them, or at least scan them for viruses before opening. And I'm sorry, but if you open a file sent from someone you've never heard of promising to display a naked celebrity, you get what's coming.
It is definately getting interesting on the discussion thread mentioned at the top of this article. I think the kakaA folks are now realizing just how badly they have screwed up:)
Since you post as ACoward, my first impulse is to ignore you and wait for you to be modded down. But here's the deal: you (presumably) and I (most assuredly) actually pay attention to the screens which appear after each click of the "Next" button. For us, then, that's not a problem. What is an issue is the vast majority (care to argue this point?) of windoze users, many of whom are no more than kids, who simply click "next" until a program installs. Yet I believe that most of these people wouldn't want anything to do with some of the spyware which comes with kaZaa. As for the checkboxes option, how many pieces of software (any commercial word processing app, for example) have you installed which had such a checkbox window with about ten options, some of which you didn't know too much about, and you accepted because that's the default install. Face it, it should be a reasonable expectation that when you install a piece of software advertised to perform a given task, that software isn't going to do a number of completely unrelated tasks which have the further effect of telling a complete stranger what websites you choose to browse?
I mean, at least BearShare practices disclosure when it wants to install garbage on your machine. And (although I've never felt the need to bother with this one) I'm sure that if you complained to BearShare folks, you'd get a more coherent response than "How dare you!... blah blah advertisments and buisness..." OK, maybe the writer wasn't a native speaker of English, but I mean, come on. When I deal with anyone, even via email, I at least attempt to make an effort to sound and act like a professional (which, if you met me, is by no means assured). These guys look like a bunch of baked s'kiddies and halfwit marketers to me. If they aren't, then their behavior needs to adapt to what are really reasonable expectations from the consumer which aren't that hard to meet. Picking adware more carefully and clearly stating in the installation what each program is, and why it is installed would be a good start.
Can't you just imagine it? The opportunity to work for yourself! Create your own hours! Never work for a boss again. All you have to do is sift through the sludge coming out of the local sewage reclamation facility, fish out these lil' cameras, wipe 'em off, put new batteries in them, and sell them back to the doctors! Who'd balk at such an opportunity?
Having watched someone fight along and often hopeless fight with cancer, I extend deepest condolences to the Anderson family. I can only hope that their loss will be made more bearable by the great legacy that Poul left behind.
Like (I'm sure) many slashdotters, I grew up reading as much science fiction as I could get my hands on. Poul Anderson was one of those who produced a great deal of the best work which I so eagerly digested, along with the likes of Heinlein, Asimov, Foster, and Bradbury. (antiflame: this list is by no means intended to be complete) Lately, it seems that there are fewer and fewer such bright lights in this trade. If Orson Scott Card quits writing, I don't know what I'll do:-(
That's one of the better ones I've heard in a while. I mean, we've got these attorneys who go on fishing expiditions for prior art, and they're patent trolls, right? So, what do you call the dude who insists upon doing his jumping jacks in the middle of the park? A lawn shark!!! Get it?! Oh, god, I slay myself. And anyone who's ever walked near a server room knows about bridge trolls:) What about the people who post/. messages consisting entirely of epithets? PudTrolls!
OK, I'd better stop now. The embarassment quotient is becoming too much to bear. This article is actually about a topic so utterly serious (Once upon a time, the patent system was a noble and good thing, but now it is in dire danger of running amok) that the only way to deal with it is to laugh. Make stupid jokes. And fight the good fight. Or else, who knows? Some company might just make you pay licensing fees for the genome your parents gave you one starry night...
Here we've got a double post: one interesting, gee-whiz feat of solar engineering, totally with merit, and well worth reading about (even if a better link to story could have been found). Unfortunately, this story will be buried under an avalanche of comments posted in response to another feat of engineering, with much more heat attached to it, if you will forgive my rotten play on words. Perhaps we could split this into two seperate stories? Congrats to the NASA team on their accomplishment.
Sorry about the above post - I just can't help slapping ignorance upside da head. Anyhow, what I'm advocating is caution: we should do the thing most likely to increase our survival, not the thing most likely to make more $$ flow through the stock exchange. I feel that anything else is no less than sticking our heads in the sand and hoping the problem will just go away. The problem may kill us, and that is the part that is totally unneccessary.
We aren't puny anymore. Have you seen the image that shows the earth at night (with all the city lights)? It's pretty impressive. The fact is, there are enough of us to make a difference. As to the people who say there are many different studies leading to a number of different conclusions, that's the scientific process. Each study, taken on it's own, is dissected and looked at individually. The ones which are debunked, by the way, are most often industry-sponsored. Why? Because they percieve that they have the most to lose, and will do anything to stop it. It just blows me away how many people in the US will buy the industry line lock, stock, and barrel. We really should know better.
So far as I can see, the bulk of the evidence suggests the following:
Global warming is occurring, but we don't really know how fast.
Human activity appears to be a contributing factor. Some of the waste we produce will contribute to a warming of the atmosphere, but we don't know how much.
We have a lot to learn.My question is: why are we all standing around picking our butts? Either we are contributing to global warming or we aren't. Why take the chance? We have the technology to at least avoid screwing things up if the science proves correct. It's a nasty game of Russian Roulette, with potentially devastating global consequences. The worst part is, there is absolutely no need whatsoever for us to be playing this game (unless we believe Shell Oil, in which case we are damned fools for doing so).
After all the schmaltz about "potentially viral" software up near the top of the eula (where it is more likely to be read, I suppose), there was this little gem:
"Recipient agrees (i) to promptly upgrade to and obtain a license for the commercially released version of the Software when it becomes generally available to the public; (ii) to install all updates as ?mandatory updates? by Microsoft within 2 business days of receipt of such updates (all updates delivered to Recipient by Microsoft shall be subject to this Agreement);"
So, GNU software is potentially viral, but you'd damn well better install our updates.Right.
I wonder how long it takes for Microsoft to start hiring guys to work for them wearing white plastic body suits. I admit that I prefer most of Office to most comparable software, but these people are acting less and less like a software company - and more and more like a government. It needs to stop. By the way - did anyone else try to read that eula using Mozilla? Talk about sphagetti code!
Thank you for the correction. I thought the same about that particular ex-prez, and while what he said didn't address the issue then, I did think it works here. 'Course, it's hard to beat the current US president when it comes to being a moron... the new guy makes Dan Quayle seem intelligent!
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I mean, of course this idea is an absolute trashing of the intent of TCP/IP and all, but inefficient? Anyone ever try to load and run a Java applet on a windoze machine? I can't imagine much worse...
Where I live, residential customers and businesses have two options for cable modem service, which is fabulous for a town of 20,000. The first option is provided by the city public utilities dept., which has run fiber rings throughout the town, and then coax to the curb. The city then contracts with local isps for residential service. The other option is the local cable company, which has contracted with @home to provide service. Each costs about $25 a month, although the bandwidth is with the city service, not surprisingly (I can look out my window and see the fiber node nearby).
:)
The biggest difference is less obvious: people I know who are using the @home get constant scans (not just one or two ports, either) from IP addresses which resolve themselves to something like portscan022.foo.home.com (obfuscated to avoid implicating the cable company, which I believe to be innocent to this activity). When I look at my logs, what do I get? A chron job from the city DHCP server polling every five minutes on port 68. And a bunch of port 80 requests from who knows where
What don't I get? Why on earth @home seems to think it's ok to portscan its customers like they do. The article seems indicative of just how paternalistic they are: "We are the arbitraters of what you can and can't download. If you are running open ports, we need to know why. What? You don't like it? Read the (revised) terms of service, dodo." I consider myself lucky to have the option of broadband without @home as a provider. It's apparent that most people don't have that choice. We all know what happens when a monopoly goes unchecked.
After various experiences with client-side yohoo (java, flash, etc. ad nauseistic download and install), I just can't support another client-side app for the Internet. Not to say that these things don't sometimes have their good points, but until workstation computers get a whole lot faster, it just makes a lot more sense to me to deal with things server-side, and even when computing speed increases, I'd expect to see a lot more complexity in what the computer is expected to handle. Unfortunately, this includes the reluctant assumption that, for the next decade or so, windoze is probably going to be the dominant OS for the majority of users, and given their track record, I don't expect clock times to be freed up by increases in hardware. :P
Here's my proposal (the same one I made to my CS prof once upon a time): There are only about a half dozen or so operating systems which spend much time browsing. If we're really going to develop a language that is usable for high-level internet functionality, have it be one which automatically runs make for all these operating systems at once.(Of course, this will require it to be architecture-independant, which will be some fancy juju) Then, when the server gets a request, it sends back the "correct" code for the machine which sent the request. Since it's already compiled, there's no time-wasting disk spinning on somebody's celeron, and the server handles it just like any other request. The page loads as it always would. Sort of like a muscular CGI, I suppose.
Just promise not to flame me too hard
Err... looks like I forgot to close the tag. D'oh!
Click on "Reply to this" just below the story. If you are wanting to submit a story, well... good luck!
It's called "Don't buy the fscking software!" I take every opportunity to encourage people to do the same. Right now, my winbox runs only those programs I haven't had the time to port (yet). I see no need to buy a piece of software which breaks my firewall.
I dunno ?genius. I guess if you weren't so hastily blasting out hard-nosed apology for the Redmond team, at least two things would have happened: first of all, you would have seen my comment which I posted when someone pointed out that the ZoneAlarm port is already out. Second, you wouldn't have run into the Cowboy speech, which considering how much you appear to be missing, probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
My beef is with the Big Picture of what M$ is and has done. The beef you attempted with a later post is yet another example of this. No, Microsoft wasn't opposing DR-DOS because it was screwing it up: they deliberately set 3.1 up so that bogus errors would appear if a user wasn't using MS DOS, which IMHO was and is inferior.
No, the problem is trust. Microsoft has done just about everything possible to ensure that they don't have mine. Remember the truism: fuck me once, fuck you. Fuck me twice, fuck me! Bill can go find another hunny to take from. He can't have any more of mine.
Microsoft is simply doing what it has done for years: describe anybody who has a chance of competing with them, ususally due to a better product, as "troublesome" or "incompatable" or "unstable" and then rewriting critical parts of the operating system to, er... prove their point. I liked DR DOS, and still haven't forgiven M$ for their treatment of it back in the day.
Still no reason to buy Bill's Bogus Journey, though. Although the idea of using ZoneAlarm to prevent Microsoftware from phoning home every time I crashed it (by using java?) does have some appeal :)
After about the umpteenth million time that I've successfully used ZoneAlarm to block out some adware, or some s'kiddie trying to r00t my winbox, I'm what you'd call satisfied. Sure, That program causes some instability, but that's nothing compared to what would happen if my computer were a zombie. Presumably Microsoft expects me to trust their firewall to block out adware? Or to actually be secure? No thanks. XP is one "upgrade" this user won't be wasting time/money on.
I think cringely needs to quit posting while stoned.
After reading his rant, which admittedly does bring up a couple of interesting points (although the idea of M$ trying an Embrace and Extinguish on TCP/IP strikes me as one which, if attempted, would be laughable in its arrogance and stupidity), I think overall Cringely contradicts himself. First he talks like setting a GUID for everyone on the internet is a Good Idea, and then later on in the article, he attributes the same idea to the Evil Software branch of Microsoft. So, which is it?
On one point I totally agree, however. The current rash of email worms are entirely due to a business decision on the part of Microsoft, and they are culpable. The best, simplest, and most obvious way to fix a good part of this would indeed be to prevent email software promiscuous access to attachments embedded in email messages. No amount of restating the obvious, it seems, is able to either convince institutions to quit sending these (which are often, most unneccessarily and foolishly, in Word format), or to convince mom and pop users to not open them, or at least scan them for viruses before opening. And I'm sorry, but if you open a file sent from someone you've never heard of promising to display a naked celebrity, you get what's coming.
It is definately getting interesting on the discussion thread mentioned at the top of this article. I think the kakaA folks are now realizing just how badly they have screwed up :)
Kill Smart Tags:
Since you post as ACoward, my first impulse is to ignore you and wait for you to be modded down. But here's the deal: you (presumably) and I (most assuredly) actually pay attention to the screens which appear after each click of the "Next" button. For us, then, that's not a problem. What is an issue is the vast majority (care to argue this point?) of windoze users, many of whom are no more than kids, who simply click "next" until a program installs. Yet I believe that most of these people wouldn't want anything to do with some of the spyware which comes with kaZaa.
As for the checkboxes option, how many pieces of software (any commercial word processing app, for example) have you installed which had such a checkbox window with about ten options, some of which you didn't know too much about, and you accepted because that's the default install. Face it, it should be a reasonable expectation that when you install a piece of software advertised to perform a given task, that software isn't going to do a number of completely unrelated tasks which have the further effect of telling a complete stranger what websites you choose to browse?
Kill Smart Tags:
I mean, at least BearShare practices disclosure when it wants to install garbage on your machine. And (although I've never felt the need to bother with this one) I'm sure that if you complained to BearShare folks, you'd get a more coherent response than "How dare you! ... blah blah advertisments and buisness..." OK, maybe the writer wasn't a native speaker of English, but I mean, come on. When I deal with anyone, even via email, I at least attempt to make an effort to sound and act like a professional (which, if you met me, is by no means assured). These guys look like a bunch of baked s'kiddies and halfwit marketers to me. If they aren't, then their behavior needs to adapt to what are really reasonable expectations from the consumer which aren't that hard to meet. Picking adware more carefully and clearly stating in the installation what each program is, and why it is installed would be a good start.
Kill Smart Tags:
Can't you just imagine it? The opportunity to work for yourself! Create your own hours! Never work for a boss again.
All you have to do is sift through the sludge coming out of the local sewage reclamation facility, fish out these lil' cameras, wipe 'em off, put new batteries in them, and sell them back to the doctors! Who'd balk at such an opportunity?
Kill Smart Tags:
Having watched someone fight along and often hopeless fight with cancer, I extend deepest condolences to the Anderson family. I can only hope that their loss will be made more bearable by the great legacy that Poul left behind.
:-(
Like (I'm sure) many slashdotters, I grew up reading as much science fiction as I could get my hands on. Poul Anderson was one of those who produced a great deal of the best work which I so eagerly digested, along with the likes of Heinlein, Asimov, Foster, and Bradbury. (antiflame: this list is by no means intended to be complete) Lately, it seems that there are fewer and fewer such bright lights in this trade. If Orson Scott Card quits writing, I don't know what I'll do
Take care, Poul.
Kill Smart Tags:
That's one of the better ones I've heard in a while. I mean, we've got these attorneys who go on fishing expiditions for prior art, and they're patent trolls, right? So, what do you call the dude who insists upon doing his jumping jacks in the middle of the park? A lawn shark!!! Get it?! Oh, god, I slay myself. And anyone who's ever walked near a server room knows about bridge trolls :) What about the people who post /. messages consisting entirely of epithets? PudTrolls!
OK, I'd better stop now. The embarassment quotient is becoming too much to bear. This article is actually about a topic so utterly serious (Once upon a time, the patent system was a noble and good thing, but now it is in dire danger of running amok) that the only way to deal with it is to laugh. Make stupid jokes. And fight the good fight. Or else, who knows? Some company might just make you pay licensing fees for the genome your parents gave you one starry night...
Here we've got a double post: one interesting, gee-whiz feat of solar engineering, totally with merit, and well worth reading about (even if a better link to story could have been found). Unfortunately, this story will be buried under an avalanche of comments posted in response to another feat of engineering, with much more heat attached to it, if you will forgive my rotten play on words.
Perhaps we could split this into two seperate stories?
Congrats to the NASA team on their accomplishment.
Sorry about the above post - I just can't help slapping ignorance upside da head. Anyhow, what I'm advocating is caution: we should do the thing most likely to increase our survival, not the thing most likely to make more $$ flow through the stock exchange. I feel that anything else is no less than sticking our heads in the sand and hoping the problem will just go away. The problem may kill us, and that is the part that is totally unneccessary.
"Facism is corporatism" - Mussolini
So far as I can see, the bulk of the evidence suggests the following:
Global warming is occurring, but we don't really know how fast.
Human activity appears to be a contributing factor. Some of the waste we produce will contribute to a warming of the atmosphere, but we don't know how much.
We have a lot to learn.My question is: why are we all standing around picking our butts? Either we are contributing to global warming or we aren't. Why take the chance? We have the technology to at least avoid screwing things up if the science proves correct. It's a nasty game of Russian Roulette, with potentially devastating global consequences. The worst part is, there is absolutely no need whatsoever for us to be playing this game (unless we believe Shell Oil, in which case we are damned fools for doing so).
I wonder how long it takes for Microsoft to start hiring guys to work for them wearing white plastic body suits. I admit that I prefer most of Office to most comparable software, but these people are acting less and less like a software company - and more and more like a government. It needs to stop.
By the way - did anyone else try to read that eula using Mozilla? Talk about sphagetti code!
What!!!!!?
Somebody set us up
the bomb!!!
Thank you for the correction. I thought the same about that particular ex-prez, and while what he said didn't address the issue then, I did think it works here. 'Course, it's hard to beat the current US president when it comes to being a moron... the new guy makes Dan Quayle seem intelligent!