... what Marcus Ranum suggests is exactly what is used to secure the DRM core - a "list" of allowed apps.
Well, yeah, but there's an important point about DRM that seems to be missing here: With DRM, I am not permitted to modify the list of allowed apps on my own computer. The corporation that sold me the DRM'd CD, DVD or downloaded file determines what is permitted on my machine. They've tried legal actions to prevent us from determining permissions with things we've paid for, and that doesn't work. Now they're trying to embed in our machines low-level DRM code that asks a remote authority for my permission settings.
This is, in fact, the exact opposite of what we're suggesting here. If an outsider can, without my knowledge or control, determine permissions on my machine, then I have no control over my own machine, and outsiders can allow or deny things as they wish. This is the intent of DRM, and it's the antithesis of security. It's an open invitation to crackers who have found ways to penetrate the DRM system; it allows them to install things on my machine in a way that I can't block or fix without permission from remote strangers.
And note that this isn't a bug; it's the primary design goal of DRM.
Actually, I think the basic problem is more complex than users execing files unpacked from a tar or zip file. The major reason for so many "accidental" execution of outside software on Windows systems is that many Windows programs execute things without the user being aware that this is happening. The most obvious culprits are mail GUIs, where you "open" an attachment by merely clicking on its icon. There's nothing in the word "open" that implies executing a program, but if the attachment is labelled as executable, that's what happens. So the user may know better than to execute a strange program, but they think they're just opening (i.e., viewing) a document.
This problem did pop up in unix software in the early 80's. Several mail readers (usually also editors) got a new "feature" of being able to automatically execute scripts embedded in messages. The user communities' reactions to this were immediate: They understood right off the danger, and insisted very loudly that this misfeature would be fixed right now. Companies found their sales on hold until this serious security breach was fixed. The problem was fixed in weeks, and whenever someone reintroduces such clever features, the same sort of blowup occurs until the vendor understands and repairs the damage.
The Windows user community is a different culture. They have accepted such misfeatures, because they don't understand the problem. Microsoft sees no reason to fix such problems, because few users are objecting (and it's not Microsoft's problem;-). Usually such features are controlled by an on/off option setting, but the default is "on", because that's more powerful and convenient for users.
It really does come down to ignorant vs. knowledgeable users, of course. Unix users tend to know a lot more about their computers than Windows users do. No surprise there; we've always had that divide in the computer field. But I wouldn't call Windows users "stupid". Many of them are quite smart - in some other subject areas. The word is "ignorant", and we're all ignorant in most subject areas. There simply isn't time to become knowledgeable in all subjects.
You don't have a spare college degree you don't need, do you?
Y'know, I've often wondered about that. I've never used my high-school degree or my B.A. (math) from college. Nobody ever asks you about any degree except the highest one. The rest are sitting there unused. So why not sell them to someone who needs one? I'd think that the "market" people, from whom we hear a lot these days, would strongly approve of this.
OTOH, I suppose one could argue that this is "Intellectual Property", and as such, there's a strong move afoot to outlaw resale of all IP items. The recording industry doesn't want you to be able to resell your old recordings. The movie industry is getting the same idea. Microsoft's EULA alread outlaws resale of the software that you bought with your computer, so if you donate your computer to charity, the license for the software doesn't go along with it, and your charity org has to pay for the software again. Similarly, you can't resell old degrees that you're no longer using.
So why shouldn't all of these be resellable on the Open Market?;-)
Well, I keep getting hung up trying to get past his absurd statement in point 1:
The default is to permit anything on your machine to execute if you click on it, unless its execution is denied by something like an antivirus program or a spyware blocker.
Um... I ran a couple of finds on several machines I'm responsible for, to count the executable files and the total files. Far fewer than 1/1000 of the files have the execute bit set. So he is overwhelmingly wrong on all these machines. And this isn't even looking at antivirus or spyware-blocking software; it's just looking at basic file permissions. If you attempt to execute almost any file on these machine, you'll simply be told that "Permission denied".
So how credible can the rest of an article be, when it contains a howler like this near the beginning?
I'll take a look at point 5. (And yes, IAAM - I Am A Mathematician. At least that's what it says on several of my college degrees, so I guess I must be one.;-)
The bottom line is that there are probably a couple of guys who make decisions high up in the FEMA IT department who - for whatever reason - just don't understand the fact that not everyone "lives in a Microsoft world" with them.
On the contrary, the evidence is that they understand this very well.
Consider that the FEMA site gives an explicit message saying that your browser isn't IE and isn't supported. However, tests with firefox and opera sending an IE 6.0 id string shows that it works with them.
Now, web servers don't send out such messages by accident. Someone has to write the code that tests the id string and generates such messages.
So the only explanation here is that the FEMA people know very well that some of us use other browsers. Otherwise, why would they bother writing code to test for the browser type? And they explicitly block access by other browsers. They wouldn't do this if they didn't understand that people are going to use other browsers.
If they were simply stupid and assume a Microsoft-only world, then their code wouldn't test for the browser type. Their site would just send pages to everyone, and some pages wouldn't work as well with non-IE browsers. But they actually spent time writing the code to exclude non-IE browsers. (Not very well, though. They apparently didn't know how easy it is to spoof the id string.;-)
No; they're a gang of Microsoft fanboys who have decided quite consciously to block non-IE access, and wrote code explicitly to do that. The evidence is all there.
Personally, I wonder how much Microsoft paid them (i.e., paid selected FEMA managers) to do this. If you think this is cynical, well, yes it is, but it's based on knowledge of how government agencies work in the real world. If you're not cynical about this, you're naive.
People do understand (hopefully) that dinos, including pteros, are not lizards... right?... they are more closed related to mammals than to reptiles.
Actually, the exact relation between mammals/dinosaurs/reptiles is still a matter of ongoing discussion. One of the common suggestions is that the evidence is not yet good enough to resolve this split. Some paleontoligists argue that dinosaurs are closer to mammals; others argue that dinosaurs are closer to reptiles. But others simply say that the evidence isn't convincing, and further research is needed.
OTOH, lizards are definitely reptiles.
The articles on pterosaurs do generally suggest that they are probably an early split from dinosaurs. But again, the evidence is somewhat weak, mostly it's just the similarity in the ankles. Perhaps we should be skeptics, and list the pteros as a fourth branch of the vertebrates, unresolvable from those other three. Further research is needed.
The fossil record doesn't have to have recorded all the details for everything we want to know. It's entirely possible that the evidence needed to resolve the mammal/dino/ptero/reptile splits might not exist anywhere in the planet any more.
And just think about the ongoing waste for having metric and non-metric bolts and screws (and tools to work them).
Part of the problem here in the US is that in most hardware stores, these are labelled "metric" and "standard".
(To non-USians: I'm not at all kidding. That's what US vendors do. And the population falls for it. Most Americans think "standard" means whatever they see for sale most often. This explains why they think that MS Word format is "standard".;-)
Lets all call our congress critters and tell them to help the people, but NOT help rebuild New Orleans.
Heh. Sounds reasonable. But lots of people have already explained why this is quite unlikely.
In particular, New Orleans and suburbs make up the highest-volume American seaport. For very good reason. It's at the mouth of the Mississippi, which drains nearly half the area of the "lower 48" states. One of the effects of the flooding is that a large portion of the Midwest grain is now on hold, because it was scheduled to be shipped out via the Mississippi, usually being reloaded onto large ships in New Orleans. A good number of analyses have shown this to be the most practical spot for the port that will be in the general area. And, flooded as it may be, New Orleans will be far cheaper to reconstruct than building a new port somewhere else.
The obvious long-term plan would be to expand a port further upstream. Baton Rouge comes to mind. That could be done, of course, and could have been done 200 years ago. In fact, it was done; the result is called Baton Rouge. But there are practical business reasons why shipping companies have preferred to build in New Orleans. Those reasons are still valid.
There are probably several hundred corporate lobbyists in Washington right now pushing hard for rebuilding in place. The alternative is that the corporate world will have to pay for the rebuilding, and they're not gonna do that. Not as long as bribing, uh, I mean making campaing contributions to a few congressmen is several orders of magnitude cheaper.
Nope; Congress isn't going to turn those companies down. Congress is going to talk to the lobbyists, and is going to fund rebuilding the New Orleans infrastructure. You can bet that the Corps of Engineers are now going to get much of the money that they requested for levee maintenance (and which Bush's people cut by 80%).
Not that this will much help the poor folks who lived there.
This is who we have evangalizing for us? I quit...
Hmmm... Imagine if people in general applied this approach to their religions. Christianity, Islam and possibly Judaism would quickly vanish from the face of the Earth.
(We have been hearing from a lot of people lately that God has punished the people of New Orleans for their sinful ways. But I wonder. If this is true, why did He spare the French Quarter?;-)
But the American people on the whole are not ashamed of the disgraceful actions of their government.
This is because the American people on the whole have no thoughts whatsoever about anything. Groups of people don't really have thoughts; only individual people do. And you can expect individuals to each have their own thoughts on any topic.
There are plenty of Americans who are ashamed of many of the recent actions of our government. There are plenty of other Americans who support all (or some) of the Bush gang's actions. And there's the majority, who aren't paying much attention.
I've long been dubious about claims about the rest of the world blaming the American population for the government's deeds. In my experience, most of the people I've ever met from anywhere understand quite well that citizens are rarely responsible for the actions of their government, even if it's a democratic government. They understand without being told, for example, that I've never seen any ballot that mentioned Iraq, and that I've never had the opportunity to vote on whether the US government can torture captives. I've never voted on (or seen) any referendum that dealt with funding of levee maintenance in the Mississippi delta, and to my knowledge, the topic never came up in any election campaign.
I'm aware that there are a few radical extremists scattered around the world that will hold me responsible for George Bush's misdeeds. I'm also aware that most people are smarter than this.
What's weird is that so many Americans are defensive about the topic. I'd just say "I didn't vote for the jerk" and be done with it. You can say this even if you did vote for him. Most people will understand. (Or you can say "I was conned into voting for him, but I never thought he'd be this evil.";-)
Bush doesn't use a Mac. The only evidence of that is a pic of him with a Powerbook in the background. Hardly convincing.
Well, I was wondering about that. Bush strikes me as the poster boy for your classic Upper-Class Twit who is almost certainly keyboard-averse. To people with his background, things with keyboards are for the hired help. He'd lose serious face if he was caught actually using one.
So does anyone have evidence that Dubya can actually use a computer for anything other than background decoration in a photo-op? I've never seen such evidence. But I could easily have missed it; I don't spend a lot of time following his daily doings.
3. If you purchase a used PC, it almost certainly will come with Windows (of some vintage) pre-loaded. Thus, if you can afford the PC, you can afford Windows.
Actually, if you read the Windows EULA, you'll find that the license for that used PC wasn't transferred to you, so it's illegal for you to run it. The license is only valid for the original purchaser.
Microsoft has done a bit of PR lately about cracking down on people running such unlicensed copies of Windows. Dunno how successful they've actually been with enforcing this, though.
But still, you're openly encouraging software piracy here. Maybe you should be more careful about such things in a public forum like this.
[Bush] should resign, step down or be impeached for fucking the country until it can't respond to a simple natural disaster that everyone saw coming hours or days (weeks?) away.
More than a year, actually. Google for "Hurricane Pam" to read all about it. Over 17,000 hits right now.
For those who aren't familiar with the term, Pam was the name of a simulated hurricane in an emergency-planning exercise that was done by a long list of government agencies in 2004. One recent summary that I read was that they predicted nearly everything that has happened in the last couple weeks; the only major thing they missed was the looting.
Also, the Army Corps of Engineers has done ongoing studies of the situation. You know that 17th-Street Canal whose broken levee was the main reason for the flooding? Repairing and strengthening that section of levee was the top item in the Corps' recommendations for the past couple years.
What happened in New Orleans is exactly in line with the predictions of hordes of engineers who have studied the situation in detail.
Yeah, the Windows EULA also has a disclaimer saying that it's not guaranteed to be any good for anything (and is often correct;-).
But there's an important difference: If you've paid for something, the courts have a long history of declaring such disclaimers invalid. Something you buy should be good for the task that it's advertised for. Lots of companies have learned, to their dismay, that courts can and do enforce this legal principle.
OTOH, if I give you something and you didn't pay me anything, you're going to have a lot of trouble claiming that I've defrauded you. I've just given you a gift that turned out to be not something that you wanted, but that's hardly illegal.
The fact that something is written in a EULA doesn't mean that it has any legal standing. Companies write illegal conditions all the time, with the expectation that most of their customers won't know their legal rights.
Of coure, if you don't have the funds for a courts case, you really may not have many rights...
If I buy a bike lock that can be picked with an ordinary pen do I want to know about it?
Some years ago, I heard an interesting interview on the radio with a fellow who was an ex-burglar. He had written a book explaining locks and how to test them for ease of picking. He also named a bunch of brands that were inherently weak. His argument for publishing all this was the obvious one: The pro criminals know this, or have ways of learning it. Don't you want to know whether your own locks are any good? And just maybe, this will prod some of the shoddier lock manufacturers into improving their product; at least it might warn a few readers not to buy those locks.
Somehow the computer industry seems especially illogical about this topic. If there's an insecurity in one of my computers, I'd sure like to know about it. Preferably before the pro criminal types learn about it. And, since I'm a programmer, maybe I can fix it.
An incident from quite a few years ago might illustrate: I went to a meeting being held at the campus Jewish (Hillel) center, and found a crowd standing around outside a dark building. The person with the key hadn't shown up (and it turned out she was having car troubles). I walked up to the door, glanced at it, reached into my pocket and pulled out my pocketknife, opened a blade, stuck it in next to the door, and pulled the door open. It all took maybe 3-5 seconds, and we were in.
I dropped by the next day to tell the rabbi about it, and suggest he call a locksmith. As it happened, he'd heard the story, and had called the locksmith, who showed up later and made a simple change - adding a pair of metal plates that made what I did impossible.
Now, there was an obvious possibility here that I could have been charged with something. But I knew the rabbi, and he acted as I expected. He grinned and thanked me for noticing the problem (and for letting the group in). He was obviously happy that someone with a bit of knowledge (not much in this case) had exposed the problem before someone with less benign intent noticed how easy it was to get into the building.
I don't know if he complained to the maker of the lock. I hope he did. Not that it would necessarily do much good. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any public repository of this sort of information. Or maybe there is, and I just don't know about it.
Anyway, I'd consider anyone who wants security holes kept secret to be either a fool or a (potential) criminal. Yeah, tell the maker about the problem, and give them a month or two to fix it. But then all their customers should be told about the problem. It's the only way we'll ever get the big (i.e., shoddy) software vendors to clean up their acts.
But I like to tell people that they should suspect the motives of anyone who wants security holes kept quiet. There's a good chance that their motives are exactly what you think they are.
What I'm waiting for, actually, is a PDA running linux that has cellphone (including IP), wi-fi and GPS capability in the hardware. And maybe Bluetooth, so I only have to plug it in to charge its battery.
Yeah I know; such a dreamer. And the corporate world isn't about to provide something so utterly useful. How would they get me to buy N different devices then?
A public traded company, must (yes must) maximize the profit of its shareholders.
People keep saying, but I don't believe it's true, in the US or any other country.
Has any public company anywhere ever been sued for "not maximizing the profit of its shareholders"?
Now, I do know of cases where stockholder groups have sued a company's officers for taking actions that seriously damaged a company. But that wasn't the claim. The claim was that a public company "must maximize the profit of its shareholders". That's something very different from running the company into the ground. I'm looking for a case in which a company was successfully prosecuted for actions that didn't maximize stockholder profit.
If there were actually a case to be made here, I'd think that there would be plenty of opportunity. For example, last week both Wal-Mart and Anheuser-Busch sent truckloads of bottled/canned water and food to New Orleans, and handed the food and water out without charge. At least one cell-phone company sent trucks with phones, generators and APs to New Orleans to help with the communication problems. Such actions were very clearly was at the expense of the stockholders. While the DHS may have interfered with these trucks, I'll bet that neither company will be sued by stockholders. Similar cases abound. Every time there's some sort of local emergency, there are always a few companies that start sending aid, at the expense of their stockholders.
But I've never read of a lawsuit over this.
Anyone know of any cases that were settled against the company? Anyone know of any cases at all of such a suit even being filed?
I suspect that short of radical malfeasance, a public company can in fact do as it wishes with its money without fear of being dragged into court by the stockholders. But I'd be interested in reading of evidence to the contrary.
Wow, that mean that governments can actually move away from the days when every department used its own forms/formats,...
Heh. Fat chance of that happening. Government agencies have centuries of requiring a very specific format (often on paper of some unique size) for every document. If Microsoft thinks they can impose their document formats on governments, they are in for a serious surprise as they discover the limits of their powers.
Or maybe they can. Maybe we've found a force more powerful than a government bureaucracy.
I can say as a lab admin for a university, if we had to deal with a similar situation, there would be criminal charges as well.
And I can say, as a parent with kids who have learned about computers, that I'd advise any child to refuse the loan of a computer from any school. To any other parent of school-age children, I'd say: Teach your children to turn down offers of the use of school computers.
This case is an excellent example why. Yes, you want your children to learn to use computers. The only way to do this is to experiment with the computers.
But we seem to have an "educational" culture now that, rather than encouraging the kids to do the usual thing of playing with the gadgets, instead offers the kids enticing toys and then punishes them for attempting to study and learn from them.
So if you want your kids to learn about computers, buy them their own computer. Tell them that they can experiment and learn on their computer all they like, but beware of any school-owned computer. Attempting to learn anything on a school computer without explicit "authorization" may be dangerous to your safety and your school (and police) record. Don't trust your teachers on this; the school admins can overrule them and call the police on you if you try to learn something that they haven't authorized.
Either that, or send your kids to a school that's seriously interested in educating their students. Asking the admins about their take on this story could be a useful interview approach. If they support the school's actions against the students, don't let your kids anywhere near them.
Those of you without kids, or who don't want your kids learning about how computers work, please ignore this advice.
Remove the ability of government to bar competitors from the market and it isn't possible for any corporation to enforce a monopoly position.
Not really true, as has been demoed in the "free market economy" of Russian in recent years. The big guys there have a very effective way to enforce a monopoly: a bullet through the heads of a few of a competitor's officers. Or sometimes their childrens' heads. And note that Russia isn't the only country where such a free market exists.
One primary difference in the US so far is that "government regulation" here still includes regulations against homicide. A corporate charter doesn't protect corporate officers from personal liability for deaths that they cause.
But it is natural that some businessmen view this as unnecessary government regulation. If we truly eliminated such regulation, you can bet that some businessmen would stop using "kill" as a metaphor and start using the term literally. We don't actually know whether Ballmer is one of these, but I wouldn't want to gamble my life on the outcome of such deregulation.
Since Microsoft is international, this is just nonsense. Although they may have to use different tactics for different companies, they'll find it just as easy (if not easier) to squash an international competitor as they do a U.S.-based one. Whether it's a straight-forward "inducement" (bribe or something more subtle like lowered software prices), co-operation with another national monopolist (their deal with China to limit access to dangerous concepts on their MSN service) or something else, they've got the cash to do whatever they can get away with...
Jeez; you're even more pessimistic than I am. I hope you're not right. But I wouldn't put any money on it, because I'm afraid you might be right.
Yeah; I was somewhat oversimplifying. Actually, it would be better to describe it as the httpd/mosaic project, which was primarily produced by several people at UI and CERN, with more than a bit of help by assorted colleagues (grad students;-) scattered around the world. So it was really yet another international internet-based project.
The interesting part, for this discussion, is that the attempt by a few Americans to take the browser part commercial was soundly squashed by Microsoft. But before Netscape was devoured by AOL, they freed the source, leading to the mozilla/firefox branch. So the American branch was destroyed by MS, but the international branch has thrived (and recolonized the netscape branch).
Netscape is, of course, the poster child for the subject of small startups being destroyed by Microsoft. The way that this was just the American branch of a distributed, international development is interesting for this discussion, but probably not too significant in the long term.
The future of sortware development is probably more and more international and internet-based. If MS can squash the American branch of a development, well, that really has little overall impact. It just means pressure to base a project somewhere else, preferably some place where there is some protection from rapacious giants.
But this is hurting the market, in the most direct way possible: Microsoft's expansion strategy is based not on finding the next big thing, but on stopping it before it starts.
Well, maybe, maybe not. Perhaps it's only hurting the American portion of the industry.
Consider the origins of the things that Microsoft is trying to kill. Google is a bit unusual, in that it started in the US. How many other real innovations lately have come from the US?
The "browser war"? Netscape was a commercialization of Mosaic, which was developed in Switzerland. Its descendants, mozilla and firefox, are completely international developments (and are finally starting to solve the "internationalization" problem.) The most notable independently-developed browser is opera, from Norway.
Startup OSs? Linux was started in Finland, and was in part a spinoff of minix, which came from the Netherlands. Linus himself now lives in the US, but linux development is rather evenly distributed around the world. We've recently read here of iTron, developed in Japan, in use as an embedded kernel in billions of devices built around the world, but still nearly unknown in the US. (Why is this?)
Much of Microsoft's clout is restricted to the US. There are serious signals that governments all over are getting very nervous about them, and are starting to take steps to limit their power. In the US, Microsoft was one of the biggest contributors to George Bush's two campaigns, which bought them the effective dismissal of the Justice Dept's attempt to reign them in, and an "agreement" that effectively indemnifies them against further charges in US courts.
As a result, they are effectively free to take any actions, legal or not, against US competitors. But they are having little success at reigning in new developments outside the US.
Google should just slowly shift their operation to a non-US base, preferably a widely-distributed one not under the control of any one government, as many big corporations are doing. And the rest of the US computer industry should continue moving its R&D to other countries, beyond the reach of Microsoft.
American computer geeks might seriously consider learning a couple of languages other than English. (No, I don't mean Java or Ruby.;-) If you want to continue developing new ideas, there might be safer places to do so.
Hey, there's a good idea. Then we'll be rid of those pesky kids who somehow think that being handed a computer in school means that they should dig into it and get busy learning how it works.
Here in the US, we don't want any inquisitive kids that want to take the initiative and learn about things. We want kids that understand at an early age that they shouldn't touch anything unless they are first explicitly authorized to do so. If they get away with this, before you know, they'll be checking out library books that they weren't authorized to read, instead of waiting for teachers to tell them what to read. You can imagine what sort of adults they're likely to turn into, unless they're punished severely.
I mean can you imagine what would happen to the US computer industry if the schools started turning out kids who respond to new things by trying to get inside them and learn about how they work? Much better that we send these types off to some place like Australia, to work in the industry there.
(An I the only one here who thinks that the school, as a purported "educational institution', should be putting these kids in charge of the computer setup, instead of the apparent incompetents who are running it now?;-)
That seems to indicate that Neanderthals simply interbreeded into the Caucasians, which would explain why we are so big, bony and fierce,...
Then there's the observation that if you were to transport an average Neanderthal in your time machine to the present day, give him a shave and a haircut, dress him in modern clothes, and drop him off anywhere in Europe, nobody would give him a second glance.
This isn't necessarily convincing of anything. Neanderthals and Europeans are both adapted to European conditions. Their physical similarities could be from interbreeding, or from adaptation to the climate. It's not easy to get the evidence.
But it is kinda fun to think that we may be in part descended from Neanderthals.
There has been a lot of science fiction written on the topic.
Slashdot Mirror
... what Marcus Ranum suggests is exactly what is used to secure the DRM core - a "list" of allowed apps.
Well, yeah, but there's an important point about DRM that seems to be missing here: With DRM, I am not permitted to modify the list of allowed apps on my own computer. The corporation that sold me the DRM'd CD, DVD or downloaded file determines what is permitted on my machine. They've tried legal actions to prevent us from determining permissions with things we've paid for, and that doesn't work. Now they're trying to embed in our machines low-level DRM code that asks a remote authority for my permission settings.
This is, in fact, the exact opposite of what we're suggesting here. If an outsider can, without my knowledge or control, determine permissions on my machine, then I have no control over my own machine, and outsiders can allow or deny things as they wish. This is the intent of DRM, and it's the antithesis of security. It's an open invitation to crackers who have found ways to penetrate the DRM system; it allows them to install things on my machine in a way that I can't block or fix without permission from remote strangers.
And note that this isn't a bug; it's the primary design goal of DRM.
Actually, I think the basic problem is more complex than users execing files unpacked from a tar or zip file. The major reason for so many "accidental" execution of outside software on Windows systems is that many Windows programs execute things without the user being aware that this is happening. The most obvious culprits are mail GUIs, where you "open" an attachment by merely clicking on its icon. There's nothing in the word "open" that implies executing a program, but if the attachment is labelled as executable, that's what happens. So the user may know better than to execute a strange program, but they think they're just opening (i.e., viewing) a document.
;-). Usually such features are controlled by an on/off option setting, but the default is "on", because that's more powerful and convenient for users.
;-)
This problem did pop up in unix software in the early 80's. Several mail readers (usually also editors) got a new "feature" of being able to automatically execute scripts embedded in messages. The user communities' reactions to this were immediate: They understood right off the danger, and insisted very loudly that this misfeature would be fixed right now. Companies found their sales on hold until this serious security breach was fixed. The problem was fixed in weeks, and whenever someone reintroduces such clever features, the same sort of blowup occurs until the vendor understands and repairs the damage.
The Windows user community is a different culture. They have accepted such misfeatures, because they don't understand the problem. Microsoft sees no reason to fix such problems, because few users are objecting (and it's not Microsoft's problem
It really does come down to ignorant vs. knowledgeable users, of course. Unix users tend to know a lot more about their computers than Windows users do. No surprise there; we've always had that divide in the computer field. But I wouldn't call Windows users "stupid". Many of them are quite smart - in some other subject areas. The word is "ignorant", and we're all ignorant in most subject areas. There simply isn't time to become knowledgeable in all subjects.
You don't have a spare college degree you don't need, do you?
Y'know, I've often wondered about that. I've never used my high-school degree or my B.A. (math) from college. Nobody ever asks you about any degree except the highest one. The rest are sitting there unused. So why not sell them to someone who needs one? I'd think that the "market" people, from whom we hear a lot these days, would strongly approve of this.
OTOH, I suppose one could argue that this is "Intellectual Property", and as such, there's a strong move afoot to outlaw resale of all IP items. The recording industry doesn't want you to be able to resell your old recordings. The movie industry is getting the same idea. Microsoft's EULA alread outlaws resale of the software that you bought with your computer, so if you donate your computer to charity, the license for the software doesn't go along with it, and your charity org has to pay for the software again. Similarly, you can't resell old degrees that you're no longer using.
So why shouldn't all of these be resellable on the Open Market?
It seemed pretty good to me apart from point 5.
... I ran a couple of finds on several machines I'm responsible for, to count the executable files and the total files. Far fewer than 1/1000 of the files have the execute bit set. So he is overwhelmingly wrong on all these machines. And this isn't even looking at antivirus or spyware-blocking software; it's just looking at basic file permissions. If you attempt to execute almost any file on these machine, you'll simply be told that "Permission denied".
;-)
Well, I keep getting hung up trying to get past his absurd statement in point 1:
The default is to permit anything on your machine to execute if you click on it, unless its execution is denied by something like an antivirus program or a spyware blocker.
Um
So how credible can the rest of an article be, when it contains a howler like this near the beginning?
I'll take a look at point 5. (And yes, IAAM - I Am A Mathematician. At least that's what it says on several of my college degrees, so I guess I must be one.
The bottom line is that there are probably a couple of guys who make decisions high up in the FEMA IT department who - for whatever reason - just don't understand the fact that not everyone "lives in a Microsoft world" with them.
;-)
On the contrary, the evidence is that they understand this very well.
Consider that the FEMA site gives an explicit message saying that your browser isn't IE and isn't supported. However, tests with firefox and opera sending an IE 6.0 id string shows that it works with them.
Now, web servers don't send out such messages by accident. Someone has to write the code that tests the id string and generates such messages.
So the only explanation here is that the FEMA people know very well that some of us use other browsers. Otherwise, why would they bother writing code to test for the browser type? And they explicitly block access by other browsers. They wouldn't do this if they didn't understand that people are going to use other browsers.
If they were simply stupid and assume a Microsoft-only world, then their code wouldn't test for the browser type. Their site would just send pages to everyone, and some pages wouldn't work as well with non-IE browsers. But they actually spent time writing the code to exclude non-IE browsers. (Not very well, though. They apparently didn't know how easy it is to spoof the id string.
No; they're a gang of Microsoft fanboys who have decided quite consciously to block non-IE access, and wrote code explicitly to do that. The evidence is all there.
Personally, I wonder how much Microsoft paid them (i.e., paid selected FEMA managers) to do this. If you think this is cynical, well, yes it is, but it's based on knowledge of how government agencies work in the real world. If you're not cynical about this, you're naive.
People do understand (hopefully) that dinos, including pteros, are not lizards... right? ... they are more closed related to mammals than to reptiles.
Actually, the exact relation between mammals/dinosaurs/reptiles is still a matter of ongoing discussion. One of the common suggestions is that the evidence is not yet good enough to resolve this split. Some paleontoligists argue that dinosaurs are closer to mammals; others argue that dinosaurs are closer to reptiles. But others simply say that the evidence isn't convincing, and further research is needed.
OTOH, lizards are definitely reptiles.
The articles on pterosaurs do generally suggest that they are probably an early split from dinosaurs. But again, the evidence is somewhat weak, mostly it's just the similarity in the ankles. Perhaps we should be skeptics, and list the pteros as a fourth branch of the vertebrates, unresolvable from those other three. Further research is needed.
The fossil record doesn't have to have recorded all the details for everything we want to know. It's entirely possible that the evidence needed to resolve the mammal/dino/ptero/reptile splits might not exist anywhere in the planet any more.
And just think about the ongoing waste for having metric and non-metric bolts and screws (and tools to work them).
;-)
Part of the problem here in the US is that in most hardware stores, these are labelled "metric" and "standard".
(To non-USians: I'm not at all kidding. That's what US vendors do. And the population falls for it. Most Americans think "standard" means whatever they see for sale most often. This explains why they think that MS Word format is "standard".
Lets all call our congress critters and tell them to help the people, but NOT help rebuild New Orleans.
Heh. Sounds reasonable. But lots of people have already explained why this is quite unlikely.
In particular, New Orleans and suburbs make up the highest-volume American seaport. For very good reason. It's at the mouth of the Mississippi, which drains nearly half the area of the "lower 48" states. One of the effects of the flooding is that a large portion of the Midwest grain is now on hold, because it was scheduled to be shipped out via the Mississippi, usually being reloaded onto large ships in New Orleans. A good number of analyses have shown this to be the most practical spot for the port that will be in the general area. And, flooded as it may be, New Orleans will be far cheaper to reconstruct than building a new port somewhere else.
The obvious long-term plan would be to expand a port further upstream. Baton Rouge comes to mind. That could be done, of course, and could have been done 200 years ago. In fact, it was done; the result is called Baton Rouge. But there are practical business reasons why shipping companies have preferred to build in New Orleans. Those reasons are still valid.
There are probably several hundred corporate lobbyists in Washington right now pushing hard for rebuilding in place. The alternative is that the corporate world will have to pay for the rebuilding, and they're not gonna do that. Not as long as bribing, uh, I mean making campaing contributions to a few congressmen is several orders of magnitude cheaper.
Nope; Congress isn't going to turn those companies down. Congress is going to talk to the lobbyists, and is going to fund rebuilding the New Orleans infrastructure. You can bet that the Corps of Engineers are now going to get much of the money that they requested for levee maintenance (and which Bush's people cut by 80%).
Not that this will much help the poor folks who lived there.
This is who we have evangalizing for us? I quit...
... Imagine if people in general applied this approach to their religions. Christianity, Islam and possibly Judaism would quickly vanish from the face of the Earth.
;-)
Hmmm
(We have been hearing from a lot of people lately that God has punished the people of New Orleans for their sinful ways. But I wonder. If this is true, why did He spare the French Quarter?
But the American people on the whole are not ashamed of the disgraceful actions of their government.
;-)
This is because the American people on the whole have no thoughts whatsoever about anything. Groups of people don't really have thoughts; only individual people do. And you can expect individuals to each have their own thoughts on any topic.
There are plenty of Americans who are ashamed of many of the recent actions of our government. There are plenty of other Americans who support all (or some) of the Bush gang's actions. And there's the majority, who aren't paying much attention.
I've long been dubious about claims about the rest of the world blaming the American population for the government's deeds. In my experience, most of the people I've ever met from anywhere understand quite well that citizens are rarely responsible for the actions of their government, even if it's a democratic government. They understand without being told, for example, that I've never seen any ballot that mentioned Iraq, and that I've never had the opportunity to vote on whether the US government can torture captives. I've never voted on (or seen) any referendum that dealt with funding of levee maintenance in the Mississippi delta, and to my knowledge, the topic never came up in any election campaign.
I'm aware that there are a few radical extremists scattered around the world that will hold me responsible for George Bush's misdeeds. I'm also aware that most people are smarter than this.
What's weird is that so many Americans are defensive about the topic. I'd just say "I didn't vote for the jerk" and be done with it. You can say this even if you did vote for him. Most people will understand. (Or you can say "I was conned into voting for him, but I never thought he'd be this evil."
1)Macs are for Democrats and Commies.
Hey, Macs are also for gays!
Bush doesn't use a Mac. The only evidence of that is a pic of him with a Powerbook in the background. Hardly convincing.
Well, I was wondering about that. Bush strikes me as the poster boy for your classic Upper-Class Twit who is almost certainly keyboard-averse. To people with his background, things with keyboards are for the hired help. He'd lose serious face if he was caught actually using one.
So does anyone have evidence that Dubya can actually use a computer for anything other than background decoration in a photo-op? I've never seen such evidence. But I could easily have missed it; I don't spend a lot of time following his daily doings.
3. If you purchase a used PC, it almost certainly will come with Windows (of some vintage) pre-loaded. Thus, if you can afford the PC, you can afford Windows.
Actually, if you read the Windows EULA, you'll find that the license for that used PC wasn't transferred to you, so it's illegal for you to run it. The license is only valid for the original purchaser.
Microsoft has done a bit of PR lately about cracking down on people running such unlicensed copies of Windows. Dunno how successful they've actually been with enforcing this, though.
But still, you're openly encouraging software piracy here. Maybe you should be more careful about such things in a public forum like this.
[Bush] should resign, step down or be impeached for fucking the country until it can't respond to a simple natural disaster that everyone saw coming hours or days (weeks?) away.
More than a year, actually. Google for "Hurricane Pam" to read all about it. Over 17,000 hits right now.
For those who aren't familiar with the term, Pam was the name of a simulated hurricane in an emergency-planning exercise that was done by a long list of government agencies in 2004. One recent summary that I read was that they predicted nearly everything that has happened in the last couple weeks; the only major thing they missed was the looting.
Also, the Army Corps of Engineers has done ongoing studies of the situation. You know that 17th-Street Canal whose broken levee was the main reason for the flooding? Repairing and strengthening that section of levee was the top item in the Corps' recommendations for the past couple years.
What happened in New Orleans is exactly in line with the predictions of hordes of engineers who have studied the situation in detail.
Try reading the Windows EULA some time...
;-).
...
Yeah, the Windows EULA also has a disclaimer saying that it's not guaranteed to be any good for anything (and is often correct
But there's an important difference: If you've paid for something, the courts have a long history of declaring such disclaimers invalid. Something you buy should be good for the task that it's advertised for. Lots of companies have learned, to their dismay, that courts can and do enforce this legal principle.
OTOH, if I give you something and you didn't pay me anything, you're going to have a lot of trouble claiming that I've defrauded you. I've just given you a gift that turned out to be not something that you wanted, but that's hardly illegal.
The fact that something is written in a EULA doesn't mean that it has any legal standing. Companies write illegal conditions all the time, with the expectation that most of their customers won't know their legal rights.
Of coure, if you don't have the funds for a courts case, you really may not have many rights
If I buy a bike lock that can be picked with an ordinary pen do I want to know about it?
Some years ago, I heard an interesting interview on the radio with a fellow who was an ex-burglar. He had written a book explaining locks and how to test them for ease of picking. He also named a bunch of brands that were inherently weak. His argument for publishing all this was the obvious one: The pro criminals know this, or have ways of learning it. Don't you want to know whether your own locks are any good? And just maybe, this will prod some of the shoddier lock manufacturers into improving their product; at least it might warn a few readers not to buy those locks.
Somehow the computer industry seems especially illogical about this topic. If there's an insecurity in one of my computers, I'd sure like to know about it. Preferably before the pro criminal types learn about it. And, since I'm a programmer, maybe I can fix it.
An incident from quite a few years ago might illustrate: I went to a meeting being held at the campus Jewish (Hillel) center, and found a crowd standing around outside a dark building. The person with the key hadn't shown up (and it turned out she was having car troubles). I walked up to the door, glanced at it, reached into my pocket and pulled out my pocketknife, opened a blade, stuck it in next to the door, and pulled the door open. It all took maybe 3-5 seconds, and we were in.
I dropped by the next day to tell the rabbi about it, and suggest he call a locksmith. As it happened, he'd heard the story, and had called the locksmith, who showed up later and made a simple change - adding a pair of metal plates that made what I did impossible.
Now, there was an obvious possibility here that I could have been charged with something. But I knew the rabbi, and he acted as I expected. He grinned and thanked me for noticing the problem (and for letting the group in). He was obviously happy that someone with a bit of knowledge (not much in this case) had exposed the problem before someone with less benign intent noticed how easy it was to get into the building.
I don't know if he complained to the maker of the lock. I hope he did. Not that it would necessarily do much good. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any public repository of this sort of information. Or maybe there is, and I just don't know about it.
Anyway, I'd consider anyone who wants security holes kept secret to be either a fool or a (potential) criminal. Yeah, tell the maker about the problem, and give them a month or two to fix it. But then all their customers should be told about the problem. It's the only way we'll ever get the big (i.e., shoddy) software vendors to clean up their acts.
But I like to tell people that they should suspect the motives of anyone who wants security holes kept quiet. There's a good chance that their motives are exactly what you think they are.
So how long before we can put linux on it?
What I'm waiting for, actually, is a PDA running linux that has cellphone (including IP), wi-fi and GPS capability in the hardware. And
maybe Bluetooth, so I only have to plug it in to charge its battery.
Yeah I know; such a dreamer. And the corporate world isn't about to provide something so utterly useful. How would they get me to buy N different devices then?
A public traded company, must (yes must) maximize the profit of its shareholders.
People keep saying, but I don't believe it's true, in the US or any other country.
Has any public company anywhere ever been sued for "not maximizing the profit of its shareholders"?
Now, I do know of cases where stockholder groups have sued a company's officers for taking actions that seriously damaged a company. But that wasn't the claim. The claim was that a public company "must maximize the profit of its shareholders". That's something very different from running the company into the ground. I'm looking for a case in which a company was successfully prosecuted for actions that didn't maximize stockholder profit.
If there were actually a case to be made here, I'd think that there would be plenty of opportunity. For example, last week both Wal-Mart and Anheuser-Busch sent truckloads of bottled/canned water and food to New Orleans, and handed the food and water out without charge. At least one cell-phone company sent trucks with phones, generators and APs to New Orleans to help with the communication problems. Such actions were very clearly was at the expense of the stockholders. While the DHS may have interfered with these trucks, I'll bet that neither company will be sued by stockholders. Similar cases abound. Every time there's some sort of local emergency, there are always a few companies that start sending aid, at the expense of their stockholders.
But I've never read of a lawsuit over this.
Anyone know of any cases that were settled against the company? Anyone know of any cases at all of such a suit even being filed?
I suspect that short of radical malfeasance, a public company can in fact do as it wishes with its money without fear of being dragged into court by the stockholders. But I'd be interested in reading of evidence to the contrary.
Wow, that mean that governments can actually move away from the days when every department used its own forms/formats, ...
Heh. Fat chance of that happening. Government agencies have centuries of requiring a very specific format (often on paper of some unique size) for every document. If Microsoft thinks they can impose their document formats on governments, they are in for a serious surprise as they discover the limits of their powers.
Or maybe they can. Maybe we've found a force more powerful than a government bureaucracy.
I can say as a lab admin for a university, if we had to deal with a similar situation, there would be criminal charges as well.
And I can say, as a parent with kids who have learned about computers, that I'd advise any child to refuse the loan of a computer from any school. To any other parent of school-age children, I'd say: Teach your children to turn down offers of the use of school computers.
This case is an excellent example why. Yes, you want your children to learn to use computers. The only way to do this is to experiment with the computers.
But we seem to have an "educational" culture now that, rather than encouraging the kids to do the usual thing of playing with the gadgets, instead offers the kids enticing toys and then punishes them for attempting to study and learn from them.
So if you want your kids to learn about computers, buy them their own computer. Tell them that they can experiment and learn on their computer all they like, but beware of any school-owned computer. Attempting to learn anything on a school computer without explicit "authorization" may be dangerous to your safety and your school (and police) record. Don't trust your teachers on this; the school admins can overrule them and call the police on you if you try to learn something that they haven't authorized.
Either that, or send your kids to a school that's seriously interested in educating their students. Asking the admins about their take on this story could be a useful interview approach. If they support the school's actions against the students, don't let your kids anywhere near them.
Those of you without kids, or who don't want your kids learning about how computers work, please ignore this advice.
Remove the ability of government to bar competitors from the market and it isn't possible for any corporation to enforce a monopoly position.
Not really true, as has been demoed in the "free market economy" of Russian in recent years. The big guys there have a very effective way to enforce a monopoly: a bullet through the heads of a few of a competitor's officers. Or sometimes their childrens' heads. And note that Russia isn't the only country where such a free market exists.
One primary difference in the US so far is that "government regulation" here still includes regulations against homicide. A corporate charter doesn't protect corporate officers from personal liability for deaths that they cause.
But it is natural that some businessmen view this as unnecessary government regulation. If we truly eliminated such regulation, you can bet that some businessmen would stop using "kill" as a metaphor and start using the term literally. We don't actually know whether Ballmer is one of these, but I wouldn't want to gamble my life on the outcome of such deregulation.
Since Microsoft is international, this is just nonsense. Although they may have to use different tactics for different companies, they'll find it just as easy (if not easier) to squash an international competitor as they do a U.S.-based one. Whether it's a straight-forward "inducement" (bribe or something more subtle like lowered software prices), co-operation with another national monopolist (their deal with China to limit access to dangerous concepts on their MSN service) or something else, they've got the cash to do whatever they can get away with...
Jeez; you're even more pessimistic than I am. I hope you're not right. But I wouldn't put any money on it, because I'm afraid you might be right.
Yeah; I was somewhat oversimplifying. Actually, it would be better to describe it as the httpd/mosaic project, which was primarily produced by several people at UI and CERN, with more than a bit of help by assorted colleagues (grad students ;-) scattered around the world. So it was really yet another international internet-based project.
The interesting part, for this discussion, is that the attempt by a few Americans to take the browser part commercial was soundly squashed by Microsoft. But before Netscape was devoured by AOL, they freed the source, leading to the mozilla/firefox branch. So the American branch was destroyed by MS, but the international branch has thrived (and recolonized the netscape branch).
Netscape is, of course, the poster child for the subject of small startups being destroyed by Microsoft. The way that this was just the American branch of a distributed, international development is interesting for this discussion, but probably not too significant in the long term.
The future of sortware development is probably more and more international and internet-based. If MS can squash the American branch of a development, well, that really has little overall impact. It just means pressure to base a project somewhere else, preferably some place where there is some protection from rapacious giants.
But this is hurting the market, in the most direct way possible: Microsoft's expansion strategy is based not on finding the next big thing, but on stopping it before it starts.
;-) If you want to continue developing new ideas, there might be safer places to do so.
Well, maybe, maybe not. Perhaps it's only hurting the American portion of the industry.
Consider the origins of the things that Microsoft is trying to kill. Google is a bit unusual, in that it started in the US. How many other real innovations lately have come from the US?
The "browser war"? Netscape was a commercialization of Mosaic, which was developed in Switzerland. Its descendants, mozilla and firefox, are completely international developments (and are finally starting to solve the "internationalization" problem.) The most notable independently-developed browser is opera, from Norway.
Startup OSs? Linux was started in Finland, and was in part a spinoff of minix, which came from the Netherlands. Linus himself now lives in the US, but linux development is rather evenly distributed around the world. We've recently read here of iTron, developed in Japan, in use as an embedded kernel in billions of devices built around the world, but still nearly unknown in the US. (Why is this?)
Much of Microsoft's clout is restricted to the US. There are serious signals that governments all over are getting very nervous about them, and are starting to take steps to limit their power. In the US, Microsoft was one of the biggest contributors to George Bush's two campaigns, which bought them the effective dismissal of the Justice Dept's attempt to reign them in, and an "agreement" that effectively indemnifies them against further charges in US courts.
As a result, they are effectively free to take any actions, legal or not, against US competitors. But they are having little success at reigning in new developments outside the US.
Google should just slowly shift their operation to a non-US base, preferably a widely-distributed one not under the control of any one government, as many big corporations are doing. And the rest of the US computer industry should continue moving its R&D to other countries, beyond the reach of Microsoft.
American computer geeks might seriously consider learning a couple of languages other than English. (No, I don't mean Java or Ruby.
Can't we just send them to Australia?
;-)
Hey, there's a good idea. Then we'll be rid of those pesky kids who somehow think that being handed a computer in school means that they should dig into it and get busy learning how it works.
Here in the US, we don't want any inquisitive kids that want to take the initiative and learn about things. We want kids that understand at an early age that they shouldn't touch anything unless they are first explicitly authorized to do so. If they get away with this, before you know, they'll be checking out library books that they weren't authorized to read, instead of waiting for teachers to tell them what to read. You can imagine what sort of adults they're likely to turn into, unless they're punished severely.
I mean can you imagine what would happen to the US computer industry if the schools started turning out kids who respond to new things by trying to get inside them and learn about how they work? Much better that we send these types off to some place like Australia, to work in the industry there.
(An I the only one here who thinks that the school, as a purported "educational institution', should be putting these kids in charge of the computer setup, instead of the apparent incompetents who are running it now?
That seems to indicate that Neanderthals simply interbreeded into the Caucasians, which would explain why we are so big, bony and fierce, ...
Then there's the observation that if you were to transport an average Neanderthal in your time machine to the present day, give him a shave and a haircut, dress him in modern clothes, and drop him off anywhere in Europe, nobody would give him a second glance.
This isn't necessarily convincing of anything. Neanderthals and Europeans are both adapted to European conditions. Their physical similarities could be from interbreeding, or from adaptation to the climate. It's not easy to get the evidence.
But it is kinda fun to think that we may be in part descended from Neanderthals.
There has been a lot of science fiction written on the topic.