Because it's easy to develop spiffy applications using Microsoft products on the server side of things.
Was forced to convert fiscal people at work over to Windoze boxes when the central people at work decided it would be swell to rewrite the clunky old terminal interface to the Human Resources database et. all (that anything could access) to be JavaScript and ActiveX up the ying yang (which only IE 5+ on Windows could use).
Code Red has a nasty side effect of knocking over (the poorly written) embedded webservers in hardware devices, such as the HP 4000 or the Cisco 67* DSL router, so it's not just Microsoft products. See the "two birds with one stone" thread, recently featured on BugTraq.
I feel Microsoft products have been a public nuisance since they introduced the deplorable notion of active content in a document (word macro virus)-- forcing me to waste time installing anti-virus software to deal with the symptoms.
ISPs should not bear the cost of treating the symptoms of an OS of negligent design.
Virus writers have always been steps ahead of the virus blockers. Outbreaks keep happening.
When people run Windows, they should be aware of the costs of doing so, including all the attendant virus, spyware, malware, executable documents, and other joys that accompany the start button.
Processing each email in whole is expensive. Any site that deals in a large volume of mail will have to install and maintain expensive servers dedicated to treating the above symptoms.
At work, we don't run IIS. We warn people not to run Windows, and espcially not to run Outlook. If they *must* use Outlook for some reason, we lecture them on the dangers of doing so, and fiddle with the preferences to avoid most of the problems.
Thus far, with N billion dollars in damages being quoted by industry experts for the likes of Sircam and Code Red, and other sites crashing under the load, we've seen little to no impact, and happily advise divesting Microsoft stock and product ownerships when our advice is asked for.
Running JavaScript on a web browser is like leaving the windows to your apartment open in the projects, not some small innocent country house. JavaScript has been exploited in the past, and will be in the future.
Personally, I surf with JavaScript disabled by default, which kills those pop-up windows (bonus!).
Just got back from the Seattle protest; we had 30-40 people out in front of the Adobe campus. Heard that San Jose had two to three times that number, so we gave 'em a cheer over the cell phone link.:)
Copyright law has actually been in the control of various industry groups that have hammered out compromises that has grown into the current mess. Fascinating reading:
"In the 3 hours between 12:00 EDT and 15:00 EDT our class-b was targeted by worm probes from 186,034 unique source IP addresses. That is not a typo: 186,034 hosts in 3 hours. On the plus side it seems to have plateaued as of 14:00 EDT."
All I see are big gray areas. Course, my squid proxy also caches stuff, so if I do visit a page that my comics-obtaining script has seen before, the non-blocked stuff loads even faster.
Squid is harder to setup than junkbuster, but also does FTP proxying, and doesn't break certain applications (like OmniWeb on Mac OS X).
As someone who has to support MS applications on Mac OS, I have every right to bash MS.
First off, MS changes the damn file format with each major revision, forcing upgrades and general havoc when people try to exchange documents-- especially between MS-funded Universities and poorer school districts running ages-old MS software. You can hack solutions together, but generally they're expensive in terms of user education (find out what other person running, send document several times until you get a format that works) or monetary costs (deploying document translation software, plus user education, additional license hassles, and etc).
Secondly, MS Office apps are not WYSIWYG. The same document looks slightly different between different versions of Office, e.g. Office 98 vs. Office 97 vs. Office 2000. Makes it a real pain when someone is trying to print something on a version of Office different from what they wrote it on.
Printing wise, PowerPoint is just a pain. The Office 98 version of it comes with a hard-to-find "black and white printing by default" that you have to futz around in the print dialog box to undo on each new install (let's hear it for plain-text prefs files!). Also, PowerPoint prints funny; I can't tell how much time I've wasted trying to get poster-sized documents to print out right, while other applications (AppleWorks, FrameMaker, raw PostScript on unix) print just fine.
Security wise, Office applications are a joke, requiring the installation of anti-virus software to patch a deficient scripting system. Besides the auto-start worm, MS Office word macro virus are the only virus I've seen ever on the Mac OS platform (in 12 years of usage). On machines without Office, I don't need to go to the trouble and expense of installing and maintaining anti-virus software.
Costs you money and time to draft up and mail the bundle of screw-you! letters to the various "opt-out" departments, but I've been impressed with how little spam I get in my mailbox now.
Slashdot Mirror
Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.2.4
Hmm, they are using Open Source software themselves to "make as much material as possible available over the Internet."
Because it's easy to develop spiffy applications using Microsoft products on the server side of things.
Was forced to convert fiscal people at work over to Windoze boxes when the central people at work decided it would be swell to rewrite the clunky old terminal interface to the Human Resources database et. all (that anything could access) to be JavaScript and ActiveX up the ying yang (which only IE 5+ on Windows could use).
That there is progress for you...
Actually, they did envision digitial media, which resulted in the DMCA being passed. Read the text referenced at the following URL for more details:
http://www.digital-copyright.com/
While DVD support is comming in 10.1, you can use the following Java thingy to configure the airport network to a degree:
http://gicl.mcs.drexel.edu/people/sevy/airport/#Co nfigurator
I braved the evil frames of the securityfocus website to bring you:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/198282
Code Red has a nasty side effect of knocking over (the poorly written) embedded webservers in hardware devices, such as the HP 4000 or the Cisco 67* DSL router, so it's not just Microsoft products. See the "two birds with one stone" thread, recently featured on BugTraq.
I feel Microsoft products have been a public nuisance since they introduced the deplorable notion of active content in a document (word macro virus)-- forcing me to waste time installing anti-virus software to deal with the symptoms.
Translation: using Microsoft is bad for business.
Essential unix sysadmin text: http://www.admin.com/
P.S. grep -c ... is faster than grep ... | wc -l
http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~reriksso/unix/award.h tml for more details, and other shell tips.
ISPs should not bear the cost of treating the symptoms of an OS of negligent design.
Virus writers have always been steps ahead of the virus blockers. Outbreaks keep happening.
When people run Windows, they should be aware of the costs of doing so, including all the attendant virus, spyware, malware, executable documents, and other joys that accompany the start button.
Processing each email in whole is expensive. Any site that deals in a large volume of mail will have to install and maintain expensive servers dedicated to treating the above symptoms.
At work, we don't run IIS. We warn people not to run Windows, and espcially not to run Outlook. If they *must* use Outlook for some reason, we lecture them on the dangers of doing so, and fiddle with the preferences to avoid most of the problems.
Thus far, with N billion dollars in damages being quoted by industry experts for the likes of Sircam and Code Red, and other sites crashing under the load, we've seen little to no impact, and happily advise divesting Microsoft stock and product ownerships when our advice is asked for.
Sandboxed. Heh.
& q= JavaScript+file+exploit
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&lr=lang_en
Running JavaScript on a web browser is like leaving the windows to your apartment open in the projects, not some small innocent country house. JavaScript has been exploited in the past, and will be in the future.
Personally, I surf with JavaScript disabled by default, which kills those pop-up windows (bonus!).
The Office that spreads virus-filled documents far and wide across the 'net?
The Office that is not/barely compatible with other versions of itself?
The only thing they've done "right" with Office is to monopolize the market, enslaving people to a document format of negligent design.
Okay, others who had those camera thingies have uploaded some of the pictures taken:
http://www.premier1.net/~rwkramer/
http://www.sial.org/sklyarov/ - mirror of above site, maybe more as others get posted.
Just got back from the Seattle protest; we had 30-40 people out in front of the Adobe campus. Heard that San Jose had two to three times that number, so we gave 'em a cheer over the cell phone link. :)
Copyright law has actually been in the control of various industry groups that have hammered out compromises that has grown into the current mess. Fascinating reading:
http://www.digital-copyright.com/
Now all we need is a deep-sea diving company to retrieve the computers sealed in concrete blocks so the customer can actually do something with them.
...)
(if you want a secure computer,
http://www.incidents.org/diary/diary.php
"In the 3 hours between 12:00 EDT and 15:00 EDT our class-b was targeted by worm probes from 186,034 unique source IP addresses. That is not a typo: 186,034 hosts in 3 hours. On the plus side it seems to have plateaued as of 14:00 EDT."
All I see are big gray areas. Course, my squid proxy also caches stuff, so if I do visit a page that my comics-obtaining script has seen before, the non-blocked stuff loads even faster.
Squid is harder to setup than junkbuster, but also does FTP proxying, and doesn't break certain applications (like OmniWeb on Mac OS X).
As someone who has to support MS applications on Mac OS, I have every right to bash MS.
First off, MS changes the damn file format with each major revision, forcing upgrades and general havoc when people try to exchange documents-- especially between MS-funded Universities and poorer school districts running ages-old MS software. You can hack solutions together, but generally they're expensive in terms of user education (find out what other person running, send document several times until you get a format that works) or monetary costs (deploying document translation software, plus user education, additional license hassles, and etc).
Secondly, MS Office apps are not WYSIWYG. The same document looks slightly different between different versions of Office, e.g. Office 98 vs. Office 97 vs. Office 2000. Makes it a real pain when someone is trying to print something on a version of Office different from what they wrote it on.
Printing wise, PowerPoint is just a pain. The Office 98 version of it comes with a hard-to-find "black and white printing by default" that you have to futz around in the print dialog box to undo on each new install (let's hear it for plain-text prefs files!). Also, PowerPoint prints funny; I can't tell how much time I've wasted trying to get poster-sized documents to print out right, while other applications (AppleWorks, FrameMaker, raw PostScript on unix) print just fine.
Security wise, Office applications are a joke, requiring the installation of anti-virus software to patch a deficient scripting system. Besides the auto-start worm, MS Office word macro virus are the only virus I've seen ever on the Mac OS platform (in 12 years of usage). On machines without Office, I don't need to go to the trouble and expense of installing and maintaining anti-virus software.
Expensive, buggy, insecure bloatware.
http://www.junkbusters.com/junkmail.html
Costs you money and time to draft up and mail the bundle of screw-you! letters to the various "opt-out" departments, but I've been impressed with how little spam I get in my mailbox now.
Apple stole originally? Yes, that would be another story (wrong, too):
l
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.htm
My problems with Windows include the look of Windows. (But hey, I'm biased that way...)
Even PBS is showing ads now, between shows.
Yeah, who is going to keep the solar panels clean after pesky old mother nature deposits a layer of sand/grit/plastic bags on them after a storm?
Look up the story "Know Nukes" in http://www.global.org/jphogan/mmande/mmande.html for a very good discussion on energy.
Generalization: a lot of people don't know what the hell they're doing installing/using computers.
Quoting a paniced new unix user who knew just enough to be dangerous: "/proc is full!"