What suprises me is that we hold products that include hardware to such high standards, but don't demand (or are prepared to pay for) quality in software-only products.
Last year Toshibaconfounded the industry by settling a class action law suit for over a billion. That was $210 to $433 in cash to owners of
5,000,000 Toshiba laptop or notebook computers
as well as hundreds of dollars in coupons
for more Toshiba products.
I myself received $398.70 in cash, plus a coupon for $225
as well as a software patch
for a notebook computer that was
only bought for a $1,299.99 retail price.
And this was all over a theoretical floppy disk controller microcode bug that was never
claimed to have been seen in normal use,
and never now since floppys are obsolete.
Even if Toshiba acted improperly in the handling
of such a bug (it still denies this)
I think this payout to be extremely unreasonable
and leaves other hardware manufacturers having to
insure against such litigation.
On the other hand when a software company puts
out a product that will fail in 5 years due to a millenium bug, leaves the default security settings open to a virus or crashes unexpectedly, the best you could expect is a
software patch (sometimes an upgrade at your cost), but never compensation.
I know software would be more expensive and slower
to come out if it
had fewer bugs. And I know those as is license agreements that effectively mean use at your own risk. But couldn't we all benefit
os much from more quality in software or conversely less litigation over hardware?
BTW, don't feel bad if you didn't make your claim
from Toshiba (it's too late now). Any uncollected money is meant to go to charity.
The
www.mirreentry.com folks who chased Mir in
a plane got a different (but less interesting) video of it.
Re:Please consider the power shortage
on
World Wide Cluster
·
· Score: 1
I pay for my power
I wholeheartedly agree with the capitalistic system, but I doubt the total environmental
costs are in your electric bill. Future generations will be paying for our present
power usage as well.
And for those who say their house needs to be heated anyway, I hope they are using something
more efficent than electric for heat.
tbo writes: Web bugs are more evil than
your average
URL link because you have to click on the link,
whereas a web bug (and the potential attached
evil code) gets loaded automatically
if you have an HTML-enabled mail viewer
Yes, downloading URLs without user involvement
is evil. Part of the problem are the email
clients that default to rendering message bodies
of the first unread message and not
asking the user to confirm remote image downloads.
(E.g., Netscape Messaenger and MS Outlook,
but - I think - not AOL 6.0 and others reported by
other slashdot posters.)
Again this is a security vs convinence tradeoff.
2) Automatically executing code from a remote,
untrusted source is bad, kids.
I haven't seen a web bug that actually executes
remote code on the local client machine unless
you consider JavaScript code to be unsafe.
Sure JavaScript can be unsafe if your browser's
intepreter has an implementation bug
or you consider certain information like screen
resolution, local timezone and other browser options
to be private, but we are not talking virus risk here.
The
Web Bug FAQ for more information.
In particular note that it does list some non-evil
uses for web bugs:
Another use of Web bugs is to provide an
independent accounting of how many people
have visited a particular Web site.
Web bugs are also used to gather statistics
about Web browser usage at different places
on the Internet.
E.g., If you want your site to run at the fastest posible
speed, you might host static HTML with a globaly
traffic managed web caching or hosting company like
Akamai or
Speedera
But you still would like to get logs directly
for anaylzing traffic to your site and comparing
with the web hosting company's bills.
So you place a web bug on your pages directly back
to your origin site (or third party like
LiveStat).
The user experence is still
fast if done right, because the slow logging to
your server occurs after the page is rendered.
On June 3, 1998
Larry Wall, creator of the Perl language,
spoke at the Silicon Valley Users Group about how he automated his house - using perl of course.
It also included audio output to his house sound system.
Amoung other things he described how it emitted submarine-like acoustic "pings" for proximity sensors on his lawn and very detailed Caller ID
identification of incoming phone calls.
It had different sounds or music for common
people (e.g., Tom Christiansen, or Randal Schwartz), the city or state of unrecognised calls where spoken.
I know the break-in was by someone much more
likely to have a malicious motive, but surely
there are plenty of ex-Microsoft employees
which also have motive and have had much more access to the source. Either to take a copy or
accidentally leave a buffer overflow in the code.
So in a pessimistic way I don't see this break-in
as making the situation worse. Just more discussed.
Since Akamai's load balancing is done by the
DNS system you will get all the load balancing benefits by using the Akamai URL - unless you replace
the a123.g.akamai.net hostname
with the IP address that it resolves for you
at one particular time.
Slashdot Mirror
What suprises me is that we hold products that include hardware to such high standards, but don't demand (or are prepared to pay for) quality in software-only products.
Last year Toshiba confounded the industry by settling a class action law suit for over a billion. That was $210 to $433 in cash to owners of 5,000,000 Toshiba laptop or notebook computers as well as hundreds of dollars in coupons for more Toshiba products. I myself received $398.70 in cash, plus a coupon for $225 as well as a software patch for a notebook computer that was only bought for a $1,299.99 retail price.
And this was all over a theoretical floppy disk controller microcode bug that was never claimed to have been seen in normal use, and never now since floppys are obsolete. Even if Toshiba acted improperly in the handling of such a bug (it still denies this) I think this payout to be extremely unreasonable and leaves other hardware manufacturers having to insure against such litigation.
On the other hand when a software company puts out a product that will fail in 5 years due to a millenium bug, leaves the default security settings open to a virus or crashes unexpectedly, the best you could expect is a software patch (sometimes an upgrade at your cost), but never compensation.
I know software would be more expensive and slower to come out if it had fewer bugs. And I know those as is license agreements that effectively mean use at your own risk. But couldn't we all benefit os much from more quality in software or conversely less litigation over hardware?
BTW, don't feel bad if you didn't make your claim from Toshiba (it's too late now). Any uncollected money is meant to go to charity.
The www.mirreentry.com folks who chased Mir in a plane got a different (but less interesting) video of it.
And for those who say their house needs to be heated anyway, I hope they are using something more efficent than electric for heat.
2) Automatically executing code from a remote, untrusted source is bad, kids. I haven't seen a web bug that actually executes remote code on the local client machine unless you consider JavaScript code to be unsafe. Sure JavaScript can be unsafe if your browser's intepreter has an implementation bug or you consider certain information like screen resolution, local timezone and other browser options to be private, but we are not talking virus risk here.
The Web Bug FAQ for more information. In particular note that it does list some non-evil uses for web bugs:
Another use of Web bugs is to provide an independent accounting of how many people have visited a particular Web site.
Web bugs are also used to gather statistics about Web browser usage at different places on the Internet.
E.g., If you want your site to run at the fastest posible speed, you might host static HTML with a globaly traffic managed web caching or hosting company like Akamai or Speedera But you still would like to get logs directly for anaylzing traffic to your site and comparing with the web hosting company's bills. So you place a web bug on your pages directly back to your origin site (or third party like LiveStat). The user experence is still fast if done right, because the slow logging to your server occurs after the page is rendered.
Amoung other things he described how it emitted submarine-like acoustic "pings" for proximity sensors on his lawn and very detailed Caller ID identification of incoming phone calls. It had different sounds or music for common people (e.g., Tom Christiansen, or Randal Schwartz), the city or state of unrecognised calls where spoken.
So in a pessimistic way I don't see this break-in as making the situation worse. Just more discussed.
Since Akamai's load balancing is done by the DNS system you will get all the load balancing benefits by using the Akamai URL - unless you replace the a123.g.akamai.net hostname with the IP address that it resolves for you at one particular time.