Yes, and so have I. But neither of us are like the clueless Joe who goes down to Costco or orders a Dell and then doesn't know much more.
But you weren't referring to those sorts of people, you were referring to people using computers in managed environments (either at work or by a family member).
So what if i'd be bankrupt in about two weeks, for hey, at least i'd still have my pride: noone would be able to say that i subjugated myself to my customers' demands.
Customers aren't the one making the demands here, the EU is.
You must know only extraordinarily humble people, that don't have an inflated sense of their driving prowess.
No, I just know enough about traffic to know that the majority of drivers will - in the absence of outside influences - travel at the optimal speed for any given section of roadway.
Or, to put it another way, if the road truly merits an 80km/h speed limit, drivers will slow to that speed *without* needing to be told so by a road sign. Chances are extremely high - if someone cruised past a marginally lower speed limit sign without noticing it and without feeling the need to slow - that that particularly piece of roadway doesn't really need to have a lower speed limit (at least from a safety perspective). Traffic police might refer to it as a "target rich environment".
Really ? Can you give some examples where complexity in law is *required* and not the end result of generations of lawyers investing in job security ?
By the way, it's lawyers, not the government or the courts, who have put forth the most effort to SIMPLIFY the law, e.g., with restatements, uniform codes, etc.
At least where I come from, the majority of "government" and "the courts" _are_ lawyers, used to be lawyers, or would have been lawyers.
Sort of, except that you do sell houses over and over again, often the exact same design, just not the same physical house.
Exactly. And that's why the two situations aren't even _close_ to be "sort of" the same.
Thanks to copyright, people who peddle in "IP" _can_ sell exactly the same thing over and over and over and over again. A luxury no other industry has and one the copyright industry ruthlessly defends.
When you sell music, you're selling IP over and over again to different people, but with IP protection you're allowing a composer to sell a service that involves a unique skill.
Yes, but the difference is you're giving them the ability to only have to exercise that service _once_ and then giving them carte blanche to charge for it over and over and over and over again. The difference between the carpeter and the composer is that the carpenter has to work on each and every house he sells, whereas the compose only has to compose his songs *once* and he can then sell them an infinite number of times.
If I get what you're saying, you think a composer should be able to sell tickets to the first showing of their opera after which each showing should be free?
No. If the composer is going to be there providing his service, then he is more than welcome to charge for the provision of that service. What he shouldn't have is legislative protection to be able to charge for not providing the service, but merely a recorded copy of the service.
Or should they only maintain the rights over the original parchment used to write the music down? If I invent a low-power consuming light bulb, should I only retain the rights to sell the first bulb?
Typically, your analogies are not only laughably poor, but conflate the provision of physical services and goods with copies of mere information.
A house is not in any way, shape or form analagous to a recording of a song. Nor is a live performance analogous to a recorded copy of that performance.
Why should people whose skills create monolithic products that cannot be easily reproduced have the market cornered on making a living and having a career?
Why should people whose business model is nothing more than trivially reproducing existing information have their industry protected by law and not exposed to market forces ?
Do you believe that people who go through years of training/schooling shouldn't be rewarded just because their skill is coming up with concepts or expressions that people without said training can easily reproduce, but cannot create?
No.
If you don't think it is a valid analogy, how about this analogy; tell a carpenter that he will get paid only for the first house he builds in a subdivision. He must complete every house in the project to get paid for the first house, but he will only get paid for the first.
Once again you conflate physical goods and labour with copies of information.
Do you consider that a fair analogy for a composer that spends years working on a piece that he has to perform to profit on, but as soon as he does so it will be copied endlessly without him making a dime?
If this could be done on MS systems, it would dramtically cut down on zombiefied, malware infested computers.
It can be done on Windows systems. Easily.
Unfortunately, many Windows programs fail if the user is not an adminsistrator.
Applications that don't run as a non-Admin, but can't be fixed by even a semi-competent admin with simple and easily-implemented workarounds, are quite rare these days. Applications that require the user to actually be logged in all the time as admin (rather than just executing that single program as admin), are even rarer.
I've managed to run NT systems as a regular user day to day for nearly 10 years now. It's just not that hard.
Of course the "holes" you listed are all plugged. You'll notice that none of those were exploited, Apple fixed them before publicly acknowledging they fixed the problem.
It's always amazing how problems on any platform except Windows cease to be an issue the instant the vendor releases a patch (or in Linux's case, when it hits CVS), whereas Windows can still be called "insecure" because of holes that were patched *years* beforehand.
Well I don't know about you, but most people I know buy their computer to do real work running real application programs.
You seem to be missing the point I'm making - which is that constantly criticising Microsoft about something they have no control over is simply stupid.
If I bought a program for my Mac that requires me to run as an admin for everyday use, I'd angrily demand my money back and so would almost all Mac users.
Oh, bullshit. 95% of Mac users wouldn't even know what "admin" really meant.
MS has managed to condition most Windows users to accept such crapware as "normal".
Once again, Microsoft has no real control over software developers.
MS users could force these lazy developers to stop putting out crapware that needs admin access by not buying such apps.
What makes you think Microsoft buys the apps for its users ?I can't even count the number of re-installations of the OS I've done because some errant software hosed the registry to the point that the system would no longer boot, no matter what I tried.
As for the registry, I still don't know why they built in such a single point of failure into their OS.
Because it's no different from the "single points of failure" that exist in every OS.
I can't even count the number of re-installations of the OS I've done because some errant software hosed the registry to the point that the system would no longer boot, no matter what I tried.
God only knows what you keep installing then, because I haven't *ever* seen an application hose the registry, let alone simultaneously wipe out one of the backups the system automatically keeps.
In a DUI case the conviction depends on the numbers that the breathalyser produces.
Here in Australia the breathalyser test only decides whether or not you are given a further blood test - it is the blood test that actually becomes the evidence that will or will not decide if you were over the limit (this is how suitably well-connected individuals avoid DUI charges - if you can stall for long enough so that the blood test return zero (or the legal equivalent thereof) the prosecution has no case).
I'd be surprised if that weren't the case everywhere - breathalysers are quite sensitive to residual alcohol left in the mouth for up to 20 minutes after the last drink, which can easily double the reading that might otherwise apply.
Should a rape suspect be able to get off because he questioned how the DNA scanner works, and the court can't provide an answer?
You're asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is whether or not the risk of sending an innocent person to gaol is worth one company's (rather dubious) claims of necessary secrecy ?
Everybody hates lawyers, until they need one. Lawyers are preety much the only thing that stands between politicians and absolute power.
Of course, about the only reason anyone would ever *need* a lawyer is to deal with another lawyer, and the self-reinforcing system of complexity they have built around themselves.
You really believe what you just wrote? Perhaps, if the computer is never networked, it will continue to function.
It will remain the same product initially purchased.
But as soon as new exploits are found and no patches are released, it will be exploited and will then not function just as it has for the last 5 years.
Security patches will be released until 2010.
Even if they weren't, it *still* wouldn't mean your Windows 2000 install somehow became unusable or automatically uninstalled itself from your computer.
Last, but not least, I hate to sound like a zealot, but Mac OS 8, while not perfectly stable, was way ahead of Win2K in performance and stability areas.
Unfortunately that makes you sound like a Mac zealot. To try and claim OS8 - completely lacking in decent memory protection, having a dismal disk caching and VM system, being co-operatively multitasked (to name just a few reasons) was faster or more stable than Win2k is just stupid. Maybe if you were running Win2k on some dodgy, POS, cobbled-together-from-scrap-PC-parts machine, OS8 might have been more stable (and even then...), but out in the real world it wasn't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.
You were lucky to get a few days out of (any version of) MacOS Classic - Windows 2000 could easily stay up for months.
Then stopped making replacement parts for consumables in order to force us to buy a new car.
Who is forcing you to buy a new OS ? It's not like every copy of Windows 2000 in the world is suddnely going to evaporate when it moves out of the mainstream support cycle. Your Windows 2000 computer will continue to function just as it has for the last 5 years until such time that you choose not to run it.
Unless the OS prevents them from installing stuff -- at least not without first asking for an administrator password and giving a strong warning in BIG RED PRINT that they should SURE that the source of the download is known to be trustworthy. On Mac OSX a user is asked for an adminstrator account name and password before software will install on the system and then further asked when a given program is run for the first time.
This makes no difference in the real world. When users are prepared to open *password encrypted zip files* and execute the contents, do you seriously think a password dialog that users see reasonably often will make much difference ?
If you run Windows, you PC will be owned at some point.
Bollocks.
(Yes, yes, I know some of you out there are perfect, and haver *never* messed up *anything* security wise)
I've messed up plenty of things security-wise - but the stuff you need to "mess up" to let someone 0wn your Windows machine is so trivial it barely qualifies as "security stuff".
The solution is the same as always. Switch OSs.
Right. Because Windows is the only OS that ever has - or ever will - be cracked.
I'm not sure. But just like the guy with the TV that summoned the coast guard, (http://www.syncmag.com/article2/0,1759,1781135,00.asp), someone needs to be held accountable, or no-one will fix their behavior.
Application developers and users are primarily at fault. Best of luck trying to make them "accountable".
I've moved my servers to OpenBSD [openbsd.org] due to their incredible security record, and I'm going to be moving my desktops/laptops to Mac/Linux soon.
If you have the knowledge, skill and mandate to migrate an entire business to a different platform, you should be able to run a secure Windows shop - it's not particularly hard.
In a Mac, if there were any, the malwares can't imbed themselves deeply in the system, modify a critical file, such as the Windows registry.
Of course they can.
Getting rid of that stupid, obtuse registry, or at least making it read only to all non-system software would put a crimp into all these malware programs that set themselves up to automatically run at every re-boot.
If you don't run as an Adminitrator, it *is* "read only".
All this crap happens because Windows is still a SINGE USER system.
NT has been multiuser since day 1.
If a limited user is set up, many if not most Widows programs malfunction.
Not that there's much Microsoft can do about poorly written applications.
The responsibility of security of a computer lies within the OS, not any of the application programs. Since the Windows OS is insecure, the apps will be also. I hope MS fixes this in the new Windows, whatever they will ultimately call it.
There's not really anything for them to "fix" apart from changing the default user from an Administratir to something like a Power User - and that's going to break exactly the same things then as doing it manually does today.
Anyway giving someone rights over a song they wrote is no different than a painter being able to sell a painting, or a carpenter building and selling houses.
Actually it's very different, because neither the painter nor the carpenter can sell their product over and over and over and over again.
This is where all analogies between physical items and "intellectual property" obviously fall apart, and why you can guarantee anyone pushing them is either naive or simply trying to further their own agenda.
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But you weren't referring to those sorts of people, you were referring to people using computers in managed environments (either at work or by a family member).
Don't move the goalposts.
Customers aren't the one making the demands here, the EU is.
No, I just know enough about traffic to know that the majority of drivers will - in the absence of outside influences - travel at the optimal speed for any given section of roadway.
Or, to put it another way, if the road truly merits an 80km/h speed limit, drivers will slow to that speed *without* needing to be told so by a road sign. Chances are extremely high - if someone cruised past a marginally lower speed limit sign without noticing it and without feeling the need to slow - that that particularly piece of roadway doesn't really need to have a lower speed limit (at least from a safety perspective). Traffic police might refer to it as a "target rich environment".
Really ? Can you give some examples where complexity in law is *required* and not the end result of generations of lawyers investing in job security ?
By the way, it's lawyers, not the government or the courts, who have put forth the most effort to SIMPLIFY the law, e.g., with restatements, uniform codes, etc.
At least where I come from, the majority of "government" and "the courts" _are_ lawyers, used to be lawyers, or would have been lawyers.
Exactly. And that's why the two situations aren't even _close_ to be "sort of" the same.
Thanks to copyright, people who peddle in "IP" _can_ sell exactly the same thing over and over and over and over again. A luxury no other industry has and one the copyright industry ruthlessly defends.
When you sell music, you're selling IP over and over again to different people, but with IP protection you're allowing a composer to sell a service that involves a unique skill.
Yes, but the difference is you're giving them the ability to only have to exercise that service _once_ and then giving them carte blanche to charge for it over and over and over and over again. The difference between the carpeter and the composer is that the carpenter has to work on each and every house he sells, whereas the compose only has to compose his songs *once* and he can then sell them an infinite number of times.
If I get what you're saying, you think a composer should be able to sell tickets to the first showing of their opera after which each showing should be free?
No. If the composer is going to be there providing his service, then he is more than welcome to charge for the provision of that service. What he shouldn't have is legislative protection to be able to charge for not providing the service, but merely a recorded copy of the service.
Or should they only maintain the rights over the original parchment used to write the music down? If I invent a low-power consuming light bulb, should I only retain the rights to sell the first bulb?
Typically, your analogies are not only laughably poor, but conflate the provision of physical services and goods with copies of mere information.
A house is not in any way, shape or form analagous to a recording of a song. Nor is a live performance analogous to a recorded copy of that performance.
Why should people whose skills create monolithic products that cannot be easily reproduced have the market cornered on making a living and having a career?
Why should people whose business model is nothing more than trivially reproducing existing information have their industry protected by law and not exposed to market forces ?
Do you believe that people who go through years of training/schooling shouldn't be rewarded just because their skill is coming up with concepts or expressions that people without said training can easily reproduce, but cannot create?
No.
If you don't think it is a valid analogy, how about this analogy; tell a carpenter that he will get paid only for the first house he builds in a subdivision. He must complete every house in the project to get paid for the first house, but he will only get paid for the first.
Once again you conflate physical goods and labour with copies of information.
Do you consider that a fair analogy for a composer that spends years working on a piece that he has to perform to profit on, but as soon as he does so it will be copied endlessly without him making a dime?
No.
It can be done on Windows systems. Easily.
Unfortunately, many Windows programs fail if the user is not an adminsistrator.
Applications that don't run as a non-Admin, but can't be fixed by even a semi-competent admin with simple and easily-implemented workarounds, are quite rare these days. Applications that require the user to actually be logged in all the time as admin (rather than just executing that single program as admin), are even rarer.
I've managed to run NT systems as a regular user day to day for nearly 10 years now. It's just not that hard.
It's always amazing how problems on any platform except Windows cease to be an issue the instant the vendor releases a patch (or in Linux's case, when it hits CVS), whereas Windows can still be called "insecure" because of holes that were patched *years* beforehand.
I'm at a loss as to how you manage to keep your users running with non-admin rights on NT4, but can't do it on XP.
You seem to be missing the point I'm making - which is that constantly criticising Microsoft about something they have no control over is simply stupid.
If I bought a program for my Mac that requires me to run as an admin for everyday use, I'd angrily demand my money back and so would almost all Mac users.
Oh, bullshit. 95% of Mac users wouldn't even know what "admin" really meant.
MS has managed to condition most Windows users to accept such crapware as "normal".
Once again, Microsoft has no real control over software developers.
MS users could force these lazy developers to stop putting out crapware that needs admin access by not buying such apps.
What makes you think Microsoft buys the apps for its users ?I can't even count the number of re-installations of the OS I've done because some errant software hosed the registry to the point that the system would no longer boot, no matter what I tried.
As for the registry, I still don't know why they built in such a single point of failure into their OS.
Because it's no different from the "single points of failure" that exist in every OS.
I can't even count the number of re-installations of the OS I've done because some errant software hosed the registry to the point that the system would no longer boot, no matter what I tried.
God only knows what you keep installing then, because I haven't *ever* seen an application hose the registry, let alone simultaneously wipe out one of the backups the system automatically keeps.
Here in Australia the breathalyser test only decides whether or not you are given a further blood test - it is the blood test that actually becomes the evidence that will or will not decide if you were over the limit (this is how suitably well-connected individuals avoid DUI charges - if you can stall for long enough so that the blood test return zero (or the legal equivalent thereof) the prosecution has no case).
I'd be surprised if that weren't the case everywhere - breathalysers are quite sensitive to residual alcohol left in the mouth for up to 20 minutes after the last drink, which can easily double the reading that might otherwise apply.
You're asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is whether or not the risk of sending an innocent person to gaol is worth one company's (rather dubious) claims of necessary secrecy ?
If the section of road truly merits an 80km/h speed limit, the driver will slow down naturally.
Of course, about the only reason anyone would ever *need* a lawyer is to deal with another lawyer, and the self-reinforcing system of complexity they have built around themselves.
It will remain the same product initially purchased.
But as soon as new exploits are found and no patches are released, it will be exploited and will then not function just as it has for the last 5 years.
Security patches will be released until 2010.
Even if they weren't, it *still* wouldn't mean your Windows 2000 install somehow became unusable or automatically uninstalled itself from your computer.
That's not true at all. A TS CAL is about 1/3 the price of an XP license.
Unfortunately that makes you sound like a Mac zealot. To try and claim OS8 - completely lacking in decent memory protection, having a dismal disk caching and VM system, being co-operatively multitasked (to name just a few reasons) was faster or more stable than Win2k is just stupid. Maybe if you were running Win2k on some dodgy, POS, cobbled-together-from-scrap-PC-parts machine, OS8 might have been more stable (and even then...), but out in the real world it wasn't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.
You were lucky to get a few days out of (any version of) MacOS Classic - Windows 2000 could easily stay up for months.
Who is forcing you to buy a new OS ? It's not like every copy of Windows 2000 in the world is suddnely going to evaporate when it moves out of the mainstream support cycle. Your Windows 2000 computer will continue to function just as it has for the last 5 years until such time that you choose not to run it.
What makes you think OS X is going to run more reliably that properly maintained Windows machines using decent hardware ?
This makes no difference in the real world. When users are prepared to open *password encrypted zip files* and execute the contents, do you seriously think a password dialog that users see reasonably often will make much difference ?
Bollocks.
(Yes, yes, I know some of you out there are perfect, and haver *never* messed up *anything* security wise)
I've messed up plenty of things security-wise - but the stuff you need to "mess up" to let someone 0wn your Windows machine is so trivial it barely qualifies as "security stuff".
The solution is the same as always. Switch OSs.
Right. Because Windows is the only OS that ever has - or ever will - be cracked.
I'm not sure. But just like the guy with the TV that summoned the coast guard, (http://www.syncmag.com/article2/0,1759,1781135,00 .asp), someone needs to be held accountable, or no-one will fix their behavior.
Application developers and users are primarily at fault. Best of luck trying to make them "accountable".
If you have the knowledge, skill and mandate to migrate an entire business to a different platform, you should be able to run a secure Windows shop - it's not particularly hard.
How so ?
Of course they can.
Getting rid of that stupid, obtuse registry, or at least making it read only to all non-system software would put a crimp into all these malware programs that set themselves up to automatically run at every re-boot.
If you don't run as an Adminitrator, it *is* "read only".
All this crap happens because Windows is still a SINGE USER system.
NT has been multiuser since day 1.
If a limited user is set up, many if not most Widows programs malfunction.
Not that there's much Microsoft can do about poorly written applications.
The responsibility of security of a computer lies within the OS, not any of the application programs. Since the Windows OS is insecure, the apps will be also. I hope MS fixes this in the new Windows, whatever they will ultimately call it.
There's not really anything for them to "fix" apart from changing the default user from an Administratir to something like a Power User - and that's going to break exactly the same things then as doing it manually does today.
The problem is the *applications*, not the OS.
Actually it's very different, because neither the painter nor the carpenter can sell their product over and over and over and over again.
This is where all analogies between physical items and "intellectual property" obviously fall apart, and why you can guarantee anyone pushing them is either naive or simply trying to further their own agenda.
However, this does not imply your contribution is worth accepting (much like applying for a job is no guarantee you'll get it).