By this logic a dictatorship is the only free system, because it includes the freedom to take away yours. And the system lives with that "freedom".
Well, that depends on whether your definition of "freedom" means you should be able to control the things you do, or the things other people do. doesn't it ?
Remember the difference. The BSDL is about what you want to happen with *your* code. The GPL is about what you want to happen with *everyone else's* code.
Please let us know of what commercial products the following OSS projects are mere reimplementations
Even if they all weren't (and some of them certainly are), it still wouldn't refute my point. You've got 12 examples here, there are ~150,000 registered projects on sourceforce.
It sure was. Why else would he talk about Sun releasing Java under the GPL, when they had controlled it for so long? Because he's talking about software corporations embracing community, instead of controlling community.
Sun aren't embracing the "community", they're _leveraging_ the "community" to show some semblence of competing with the Microsoft juggernaut.
Seriously, if you think Sun (or IBM, or any of the other "born again open sourcers" have different motivations than Microsoft, you're either very idealistic, or very naive. They're not "embracing" you, they're using you to further their business.
But MS developers are largely vertical developers. Their software scratches an itch and doesn't interact with anything else. It's disposable software -- you can only use it with this generation of application or platform. It won't work with tomorrow's upgrades. Far and away, the software used by the average user is provided by MS. No 'homegrown' Windows software ever finds it's way to a users desktop, without first passing through the gates of MS.
[...]
What. The. Fuck.
You are just so ridiculously, ludicrously wrong I literally don't know where to begin.
You can't keep reinventing and supporting tools like this forever, because no matter how many programmers you have there OSS movement has more. They will keep producing high-quality tools faster than you can release competitors.
Fortunately for Microsoft, since "OSS movement" and "NIH syndrome" are practically synonyms, they don't have too much to worry about it. Those OSS developers will be off half-completing another text editor before moving onto half-completing another window manager, until they get distracted and start working on a "fully skinnable" media player, which will remain unfinished as soon as they start creatinga suitably awesome set of skins to include with it by default.
I find it mind-boggling that someone would criticise Microsoft for reinventing the wheel, then offer up the OSS community as a better model, when you have to look fairly long and hard to find an OSS project that *isn't* just a reimplementation of an existing product.
Or was that a piece of masterful satire that I've been sucked in by ?
It's to deliberately push you into buying another Windows 2003 server just to run WUS (Windows Update Services http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/wsu s/default.mspx) server. Most IT departments can easily roll their own patch update scripts using the patches once they are downloaded, yet Microsoft makes downloading each patch a manually tedious process instead of simply adding a "Download Now" button.
1. You don't need an additional, dedicated server for WSUS.
2. If you worked for me and spent the dozens (if not hundreds) of man-hours recreating and managing a wheel Microsoft gives you for free, instead of productive work, you'd be on the wrong end of a "please explain" meeting.
Believe me, Linux is getting easier to mold a cohesive IT architecture around than Windows because of all the wrenches Microsoft has thrown into the works.
Microsoft are only "throwing wrenches into the works" if you're stuck in the Linux "must create my own solution to every problem from scratch" mindset, rather than using the tools available to you where someone else has already solved that same problem.
Microsoft in essence wants you to buy into their environment, and then buy into it again and again by deliberately preventing you from developing your own automation practices. Why automate anything when Microsoft can sell you another automation "solution"!
Because it's almost certainly cheaper to buy theirs. If you happen to have particularly unusual and specialised needs, this might not be true - but most people don't (even when they think they do).
I hear about some dialog that Vista annoys people with, and that's probably not the right model to be using, because of the "auto-OK" effect. The "switch-to-admin role" mechanism IS the responsiblity of Vista. (or Linux, for that matter.)
The fundamental problem has nothing to do with "switching roles", it's that the typically ignorant end user is incapable of identifying if/when they *should* "switch roles".
Putting in more layers of "Do you mean it" dialogs (ultimately all that "roles", etc, does) isn't going to fix that problem (if anything, it will make it worse because the "auto-OK" effect, as you call it). So long as the software computers run can be determined by the typically ignorant end user, the "security problem" isn't going to go away.
It is quite true. Microsoft needs a Great Satan to keep certain people whipped into a frenzy, and to keep others from concluding that they have a 100% monopoly position.
From a legal perspective, Microsoft and Apple do not compete in the same market, and never have. Ergo, Apple has no bearing on Microsoft's monopoly status.
Seems somewhat odd that an operating system that has been completely rewritten at great expense and effort should be affected by the SAME bug that has been in their products for years.
Who ever said Vista had been rewritten ?
Not to mention, even if it had, you'd still be wrong. There are examples of independently developed codebases having the same exploit because the developers for both made the same bad assumptions.
I mean, how can a company whose email clients automatically launch attachments say that they take security seriously?
No Microsoft email client has ever done this by design.
Let's not get started on the brain-dead file association open / execution misfeatures in every version up to and including Vista.
You mean the one so braindead that everything else from GNOME to OS X works in essentially the same way ?
Here's an interesting exercise to see how bad things can get: rename a safe executable to a filename with a WAV extension. Now double-click it; the executable runs.
No, it doesn't. The shell hands it off to whatever program is registered to handle.wav files, which subsequently tries to open it.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but that's utter bollocks. I have empirical proof of this, from having installed and run numerous Linux-only computer resource centres for first-time computer users. The users are mostly under- or uneducated youth from a developing country, who love nothing more than to click anything that flashes or shines. The number of people who have used these centres is in the thousands, so it's statistically significant. We've just opened another centre that uses only Mac Minis.
If you think in any way this refutes the argument presented, you are stupid.
So why, pray tell, is the total number of malware-infected machines a big fat zero?
Because it's a managed environment. Managed environments are (relatively speaking) _trivial_ to keep secure.
It's not the administration. The staff are taken from among the youth themselves.
What ? You just said:
I have empirical proof of this, from having installed and run numerous Linux-only computer resource centres for first-time computer users.
Which is it ? In which paragraph above were you lying ?
Of course, I am well aware (as is surely those at MS) that it would break too much compatibility of all those many, many legacy apps that keep the customers dependent on the Windows platform. Break too many and the customer will realize they are starting from scratch anyway and really start some serious comparison shopping.
It's got nothing to do with backwards compatibility and everything to do with the impossibility of what you are proposing (assuming you want to stay within the broad constraint of an unamanged, general-purpose operating system).
You miss the point though. A *user* with administrative privilege. That's the problem with Windows. The only person with admin rights should be the admin. Hopefully someone with enough clue to know what they're installing.
In most environments, the "user" and the "admin" are the same person.
This is not in any way a "problem" that Windows has any influence over.
When your product REQUIRES antivirus software, your product is not secure by itself.
Windows doesn't. *USERS* do.
Of course, if they had engineered in things like privilege separation and all the other "security" features of Unix (any of 'em, take your pick, Mac, Linux, what have you) then they'd enjoy all the "intrinsic" lack of NEED for antivirus that Unix systems enjoy.
Please tell me which "security features" of traditional UNIX will stop a rootkit being installed if a virus runs with root privileges.
Had they actually spent the last 7 years improving the underlying privilege model [...]
The "underlying privilege model" of NT is vastly superior to that of traditional UNIX.
Didn't they only just fundamentally rewrite Windows Vista?
No. And this latest comment from a non-technical commentator (Microsft employee or otherwise) is worth about as much as those saying Vista was "fundamentally rewritten".
OTOH, given the massive level of technical ignorance about Windows on Slashdot, the responses to this article should make for amusing (if predictable) reading.
I did 3 hours in a queue at Heathrow 4 weeks after the stupid liquid nonsense.
I was unlucky enough to by flying out of London (to Belfast) the day after that stupidity went down. On a flight that had originally been scheduled for an 9am departure (certainly made getting the rental car back in time interesting after those extra few hours standing in line had to be allowed for - the the flight was obviously delayed for hours anyway).
However, not as unlucky as some friends who happened to be in the air, on the way to London from Australia, when it happened. They had nearly a thousand dollars (Australian) worth of duty free alcohol and cosmetics confiscated (trying to get back onto the plane) during the few hours layover in Singapore when the new rules went into effect. I told them to hit the airport and airline up for reimbursement, but I'm not sure if they were successful.
Slashdot Mirror
The two potentially big problems with it I see are:
1. Lack of tactile feedback in the UI. I.e. you have to look at it and concentrate on the UI to use it.
2. The fragility of the touch screen.
Word Perfect 5.1 and MS Office 97.
Why do you consider a character-based, DOS word processor released in 1989 and a GUI-based, Windows office suite released in 1997 equivalent ?
Why oh why did we ever buy any office suits after these?
Have you ever even used WP 5.1 ? It's not even close to being an "office suite".
Why on Earth would you consider either of those two programs some form of "gold standard" ?
By this logic a dictatorship is the only free system, because it includes the freedom to take away yours. And the system lives with that "freedom".
Well, that depends on whether your definition of "freedom" means you should be able to control the things you do, or the things other people do. doesn't it ?
Remember the difference. The BSDL is about what you want to happen with *your* code. The GPL is about what you want to happen with *everyone else's* code.
The problem with "truly free software" is that companies/people are free to make it non-free.
Please explain how a piece of BSDL software can be made "non-free".
I personally don't see why the "BSD world" thinks that producing software that other people can turn proprietary is a good thing.
Because it's a less deceptive use of the word "free".
Please let us know of what commercial products the following OSS projects are mere reimplementations
Even if they all weren't (and some of them certainly are), it still wouldn't refute my point. You've got 12 examples here, there are ~150,000 registered projects on sourceforce.
It sure was. Why else would he talk about Sun releasing Java under the GPL, when they had controlled it for so long? Because he's talking about software corporations embracing community, instead of controlling community.
Sun aren't embracing the "community", they're _leveraging_ the "community" to show some semblence of competing with the Microsoft juggernaut.
Seriously, if you think Sun (or IBM, or any of the other "born again open sourcers" have different motivations than Microsoft, you're either very idealistic, or very naive. They're not "embracing" you, they're using you to further their business.
But MS developers are largely vertical developers. Their software scratches an itch and doesn't interact with anything else. It's disposable software -- you can only use it with this generation of application or platform. It won't work with tomorrow's upgrades. Far and away, the software used by the average user is provided by MS. No 'homegrown' Windows software ever finds it's way to a users desktop, without first passing through the gates of MS.
[...]
What. The. Fuck.
You are just so ridiculously, ludicrously wrong I literally don't know where to begin.
You can't keep reinventing and supporting tools like this forever, because no matter how many programmers you have there OSS movement has more. They will keep producing high-quality tools faster than you can release competitors.
Fortunately for Microsoft, since "OSS movement" and "NIH syndrome" are practically synonyms, they don't have too much to worry about it. Those OSS developers will be off half-completing another text editor before moving onto half-completing another window manager, until they get distracted and start working on a "fully skinnable" media player, which will remain unfinished as soon as they start creatinga suitably awesome set of skins to include with it by default.
I find it mind-boggling that someone would criticise Microsoft for reinventing the wheel, then offer up the OSS community as a better model, when you have to look fairly long and hard to find an OSS project that *isn't* just a reimplementation of an existing product.
Or was that a piece of masterful satire that I've been sucked in by ?
It's to deliberately push you into buying another Windows 2003 server just to run WUS (Windows Update Services http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/wsu s/default.mspx) server. Most IT departments can easily roll their own patch update scripts using the patches once they are downloaded, yet Microsoft makes downloading each patch a manually tedious process instead of simply adding a "Download Now" button.
1. You don't need an additional, dedicated server for WSUS.
2. If you worked for me and spent the dozens (if not hundreds) of man-hours recreating and managing a wheel Microsoft gives you for free, instead of productive work, you'd be on the wrong end of a "please explain" meeting.
Believe me, Linux is getting easier to mold a cohesive IT architecture around than Windows because of all the wrenches Microsoft has thrown into the works.
Microsoft are only "throwing wrenches into the works" if you're stuck in the Linux "must create my own solution to every problem from scratch" mindset, rather than using the tools available to you where someone else has already solved that same problem.
Microsoft in essence wants you to buy into their environment, and then buy into it again and again by deliberately preventing you from developing your own automation practices. Why automate anything when Microsoft can sell you another automation "solution"!
Because it's almost certainly cheaper to buy theirs. If you happen to have particularly unusual and specialised needs, this might not be true - but most people don't (even when they think they do).
I hear about some dialog that Vista annoys people with, and that's probably not the right model to be using, because of the "auto-OK" effect. The "switch-to-admin role" mechanism IS the responsiblity of Vista. (or Linux, for that matter.)
The fundamental problem has nothing to do with "switching roles", it's that the typically ignorant end user is incapable of identifying if/when they *should* "switch roles".
Putting in more layers of "Do you mean it" dialogs (ultimately all that "roles", etc, does) isn't going to fix that problem (if anything, it will make it worse because the "auto-OK" effect, as you call it). So long as the software computers run can be determined by the typically ignorant end user, the "security problem" isn't going to go away.
The simple fact is, that Windows IS easier to hit. And until the security tightens up, it will remain that way.
How do you suggest they "tighten" it up ?
*nix has decent security in it (due to a good initial design and years of work to get it right).
Seems you don't know your history.
Not so easy in a high availability environment. Where boot times can cost thousands of dollars a second. These root kits can cause havok there.
If a system's boot time has any impact on your services' availability, your architecture is broken.
It is quite true. Microsoft needs a Great Satan to keep certain people whipped into a frenzy, and to keep others from concluding that they have a 100% monopoly position.
From a legal perspective, Microsoft and Apple do not compete in the same market, and never have. Ergo, Apple has no bearing on Microsoft's monopoly status.
Seems somewhat odd that an operating system that has been completely rewritten at great expense and effort should be affected by the SAME bug that has been in their products for years.
Who ever said Vista had been rewritten ?
Not to mention, even if it had, you'd still be wrong. There are examples of independently developed codebases having the same exploit because the developers for both made the same bad assumptions.
I mean, how can a company whose email clients automatically launch attachments say that they take security seriously?
No Microsoft email client has ever done this by design.
Let's not get started on the brain-dead file association open / execution misfeatures in every version up to and including Vista.
You mean the one so braindead that everything else from GNOME to OS X works in essentially the same way ?
Here's an interesting exercise to see how bad things can get: rename a safe executable to a filename with a WAV extension. Now double-click it; the executable runs.
No, it doesn't. The shell hands it off to whatever program is registered to handle .wav files, which subsequently tries to open it.
So no, not including an anti virus software doesn't mean an operating system shouldn't employ design and tactics against viruses.
What "tactics" would you be thinking of ?
Sorry. Your packet crashed and burned at the perimeter firewall.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but that's utter bollocks. I have empirical proof of this, from having installed and run numerous Linux-only computer resource centres for first-time computer users. The users are mostly under- or uneducated youth from a developing country, who love nothing more than to click anything that flashes or shines. The number of people who have used these centres is in the thousands, so it's statistically significant. We've just opened another centre that uses only Mac Minis.
If you think in any way this refutes the argument presented, you are stupid.
So why, pray tell, is the total number of malware-infected machines a big fat zero?
Because it's a managed environment. Managed environments are (relatively speaking) _trivial_ to keep secure.
It's not the administration. The staff are taken from among the youth themselves.
What ? You just said:
Which is it ? In which paragraph above were you lying ?
Of course, I am well aware (as is surely those at MS) that it would break too much compatibility of all those many, many legacy apps that keep the customers dependent on the Windows platform. Break too many and the customer will realize they are starting from scratch anyway and really start some serious comparison shopping.
It's got nothing to do with backwards compatibility and everything to do with the impossibility of what you are proposing (assuming you want to stay within the broad constraint of an unamanged, general-purpose operating system).
You miss the point though. A *user* with administrative privilege. That's the problem with Windows. The only person with admin rights should be the admin. Hopefully someone with enough clue to know what they're installing.
In most environments, the "user" and the "admin" are the same person.
This is not in any way a "problem" that Windows has any influence over.
When your product REQUIRES antivirus software, your product is not secure by itself.
Windows doesn't. *USERS* do.
Of course, if they had engineered in things like privilege separation and all the other "security" features of Unix (any of 'em, take your pick, Mac, Linux, what have you) then they'd enjoy all the "intrinsic" lack of NEED for antivirus that Unix systems enjoy.
Please tell me which "security features" of traditional UNIX will stop a rootkit being installed if a virus runs with root privileges.
Had they actually spent the last 7 years improving the underlying privilege model [...]
The "underlying privilege model" of NT is vastly superior to that of traditional UNIX.
Because it's an unfair advantage to make an insecure OS and then charge "protection" money!
Susceptibility to viruses (or lack thereof) has next to nothing to do with OS security.
Of course the great irony is W98 is more secure than either.
No, it's not.
These days it might be exploited less, but that is a completely different thing to being more secure.
I'm sure that being so wrong, in such a small space, is one way that black holes are formed...
I'll never understand slashdot moderation.
Me either. Accurate moderation would have been "-1, Wrong" or "-1, Ignorant".
Didn't they only just fundamentally rewrite Windows Vista?
No. And this latest comment from a non-technical commentator (Microsft employee or otherwise) is worth about as much as those saying Vista was "fundamentally rewritten".
OTOH, given the massive level of technical ignorance about Windows on Slashdot, the responses to this article should make for amusing (if predictable) reading.
I did 3 hours in a queue at Heathrow 4 weeks after the stupid liquid nonsense.
I was unlucky enough to by flying out of London (to Belfast) the day after that stupidity went down. On a flight that had originally been scheduled for an 9am departure (certainly made getting the rental car back in time interesting after those extra few hours standing in line had to be allowed for - the the flight was obviously delayed for hours anyway).
However, not as unlucky as some friends who happened to be in the air, on the way to London from Australia, when it happened. They had nearly a thousand dollars (Australian) worth of duty free alcohol and cosmetics confiscated (trying to get back onto the plane) during the few hours layover in Singapore when the new rules went into effect. I told them to hit the airport and airline up for reimbursement, but I'm not sure if they were successful.