"Sure they are illegal in the US due to the DMCA, but here in Sweden there is no DMCA."
I'm getting really tired of this "Not in my country" defense. It doesn't hold water.
Let's say Americans steal something that's Swedish. I don't know what you guys actually make (uh, chocolates and army knives I guess), but let's suppose it's chocolate. To keep in the spirit of the "defense" of Pirate Bay, let's say we don't actually steal the chocolate, but have others in your country steal it for us. They go into the chocolate stores, maybe pose as a chocolate worker, grab some chocolate and put it under their coat.
At that point, they don't actually sell us the chocolate. They put ads in the paper that say "Half price chocolate! Just call this phone number!" They do this for months and months while the chocolate companies suffer. Sure, the chocolate companies' bosses are probably ok, but workers are paid far less and some treated like theives (even if they're not) because some American has a sweet tooth.
Now, if you knew the perps were advertising the same ad in the same newspaper day after day, and the newspaper was getting money for those ads, and you couldn't find the guys who were stealing the chocolate out of the stores (although you could probably find them if you asked the newspaper guys), what would you do?
You'd question the newspaper, make sure you got the info needed to get the theives and make sure ads like that stopped appearing. Aka: kill the torrent site.
"This is like what Super Mario World might have been if Nintendo waited until now to continue the Mario franchise."
Honestly, I did get it, and while the game is very good it pales in comparison to Super Mario World. It pales even more to perhaps the best platformer ever made: Yoshi's Island. The control is a bit loose (more "SMB-ish" than "SMB 3-ish") and the game is over all too quickly. With dedication you can beat Super Mario World in one sitting. With light effort you can do the same with New Super Mario Bros.
It's a fun title, but will it be remembered in the annals of platformer history? Doubt it.
While I agree that "fun" matters more, a lot of people still judge games by the screenshots.
Story: when Nintendo's press conference broke, I sent screenshots to my friends of Wii games. A lot of people said the same thing: "It doesn't look that great; I'm not interested in the games." When I sent them the video of Nintendo execs bouncing around on stage they then said "Ok, looks cool."
And think about it: what are the primary means of learning about upcoming games? Some people have IGN/GameSpot/et all subscriptions and get high quality video. Most just look at screenshots in the review. When mom goes to buy a game for junior, she looks at the endcap advertising and the box. Screenshots still sell the game, no matter what anyone says.
What Nintendo (and any other company who wants to break the mold) needs to do is have a lot of Wii controllers at every game store. Let people play the thing. It's the only way it's gonna sell.
Given the same price, people will go with the more stylish model. Given different prices, they'll go for the cheaper model (U2 iPod, and now a $200 luxury option on a consumer PC). Imagine that.
"I am sick of explaining to people that Windows XP still BSODs whether it be due to viruses or "third party drivers."
I'm personally sick of explaining to Mac fans that Macs do the same thing. A third party driver can easily kernel panic a Mac. Hell, Keynote used to kernel panic the box when it tried to write directly to ATI drivers.
If you so much as step outside the carefully constrained boundaries Apple has set up with hardware, you can end up in a world of hurt. I personally love laughing at that new Mac commerical with "that camera from Japan". First time I connected a digital camera to a 10.4 Mac using a simple USB cable, the thing kernel paniced. Second time, iPhoto loaded up then proceeded to give me the beachball treatment. And this was a camera *I bought from their Apple store*.
"Only 3D-gamers actually need dedicated graphics cards. For everything else, integrated graphics are more than functional enough. And gamers are not Macs major market, simply because there are relatively few games available for it, compared to Wintel machines."
Honestly, I'm waiting on a Pro Mac tower just so I can replace my gaming rig. The games that matter (World of Warcraft, Quake, etc) run on Mac fine, and now that you can boot to Windows you open up an entire library.
If Apple puts a fairly highend card in their Intel Pro Macs, and the price of the tower is reasonable ($2000-2500) I think a lot of gamers will go for them, actually.
"Yup it's a $50 hard drive upgrade and tax on the fashion conscious. If you don't like it, don't pay it."
Quite frankly, I doubt anyone will pay for it. You just said it was a consumer laptop. E.g.: get a computer for mom to use, junior to take to college, etc. The $1099 model fits that bill perfectly.
Putting luxury options on a consumer portable makes no sense, from a business standpoint and a marketing standpoint. If junior wants a pretty laptop, he'll move up to the ProBooks.
"In any case, this smiley after that sentence would inevitably give me a very negative impression about you."
That's under the assumption that you've never met me. You wouldn't know my sense of humor. I was assuming we'd be coworkers.
Not to mention, I'm talking about a very specific case, here. We're not talking the embesselment of hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're talking a few bucks out of petty cash. The wink and tongue sticking out, to me, means "Look, this is nothing to get our panties in a knot over."
Personally, if MY subordinates came to me because some old guy was yelling over a couple bucks missing from petty cash, I would laugh right along with them. Priorities, my friend.
I guess it matters what kind of job you have. Assuming you do manage, you sound like a manager at a local Staples or TGI Fridays or something. In my line of work, there's no sense getting one's panties in a knot over a couple of bucks when we're dealing with equipment and ROIs in the hundreds of thousands.
I looked at the graphics and was pretty disappointed too. The old iBooks had crappy ATI cards. They sucked, but at least there was dedicated graphics.
On the other hand, this would be perfect for my mom (or students, I imagine). The $1099 model has a slightly smaller screen, smaller hard drive and no DVD burner vs. the lowest-end PowerBook (ProBook -- dammit I hate saying that)... but is almost half the price. $1099 for a dual core machine is not a bad deal, and the rest of the hardware (outside the graphics) is certainly usable. Decent-speed hard drive, lightweight design, etc.
The black model is a total ripoff, but the white model drives a hard bargain when it comes to bang for the buck (which Apple points out on the hardware portion of the site).
This is a situation where, strangely enough, emoticons really help. For example, I have a fairly good, sarcastic sense of humor -- very difficult to read in emails. Let's say the "money" example had to do with a few bucks stolen from petty cash.
I didn't steal the money.
vs.
I didn't steal the money.:P
The second conveys a kind of shrugged shoulders, palms upward vibe. It not only says that I didn't steal the money, but also conveys my view that stealing a few bucks is a relatively minor problem and we should move on. Without the emoticon there, that would've been a very difficult sentiment to convey succinctly (I guess I could go into a paragraph explaining my viewpoint, like I did here, but that would be rather onerous).
Unfortunately, emoticons aren't considered "professional", and that leads to a lot of misguided cues. I kind of wish they were more accepted in a business setting.
"You mean that if a web page does something like "location = 'file:///c|/...'", or gives the user a link to a local file that the user clicks on, it won't load the specified file? Doesn't matter whether the file is visible in the context of the untrusted document, the question is whether the file can be loaded at all."
Um... ok, I think you're confusing things here. Originally you were talking about file system objects. E.g., an assembly gets loaded by the browser and code within the assembly calls routines to perform file operations. In that case, the CLR would prevent the operations from going through based on the security settings (which, by default, wouldn't allow access to those kinds of routines from Internet or Local Intranet zones).
But.NET file system objects don't use "file:///c|/", so I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. Do you mean if a user clicks a hyperlink on an HTML document in a web browser (which has very little to do with.NET, by the way), would it open the file? Well, that's the browser's concern, not Java/.NET/etc. Any modern day browser would ask the user if they want to open the file, whether it was a click or a redirect.
Just to make clear, though, that has nothing to do with.NET. You seem to be talking about a standard browser open.
In reference to dialog boxes asking users to do stupid things, it's a tough nut to crack, honestly. There's a very thin line between completely locking down the UI and not driving users crazy.
Let me give you an example: on Friday I was working on a Mac (an OS lauded for its usability). I had to save a Perl file on the root of the hard drive, so it asked me for the admin password. No problem. Later on, I had to do some work on the file and it asked me for the password when I opened it. Understandable.
Now, I'm working on this file, and I save it a few times. EVERY SINGLE TIME I hit Ctrl-S, it asks me for the password. Why? I already gave it the password when I opened the file. The text editor process should be given free reign to make changes to the file when I need to save it. It shouldn't ask me repeatedly. If I close the text editor, logoff or reboot, that's the only time it should ask for the password again.
And you're right, it's a social engineering issue. However, no manner of code is going to fix this problem. You either take the attitude that the user needs to get work done and can't be bothered to repeatedly enter passwords (even though they have the potential to wreck the machine) or you distrust them completely and repeatedly ask for passwords.
When Vista comes out, this isn't going to go away. People are still going to go through the "click Yes repeatedly" process when they get a dialog box. Except this time they'll get in the habit of entering their admin password. Either way, they won't actually look at what the program is accessing or changing. They just want that P2P/screensaver/stupid bug that tells the weather installed.
"Is there a mechanism whereby an object in Internet or even LocalIntranet can request the execution of an arbitrarily specified object in the MyComputer zone?"
Well, no, there isn't. By default,.NET assemblies are given "No Trust" (not allowed to execute) in the Internet zone. (Go into the control panel, Administrative Tools folder,.NET Configuration and bring up Runtime Security Policy). They're currently given "Medium Trust" to Local Intranet, but that's still fairly limited. And that will likely change in IE 7 because they're redoing zones. Zones were an IE 4 convention and they were stupid to begin with.
The word "arbitrary specified object in the My Computer zone" is kind of confusing. Do you mean benign stuff like the keyboard or actual file system objects? Regardless, no, Internet and Local Intranet don't have that kind of access in.NET.
"Is it possible for a user to specify that a specific object (based on any criteria, whether URL or certificate or address or strong name) be granted this right at the time the request is made?"
No, there isn't. The user isn't given a dialog box -- they're told the assembly doesn't have permission to run. The user can change the assembly's trust level in.NET Configuration (which goes far beyond the IE "zones") but there's no "click this button to wipe your system32" button or anything if a user comes across a rogue assembly.
Although, I don't know why that condition is relevant. The dialog boxes are there so users aren't completely annoyed, trying to find where to grant apps access. Java, Flash, etc. all do this. I've seen (and written) Java dialog boxes that grant bytecode access to do some pretty heinous things (one click access to read/write on system32, for example). The only reason, I think, that people don't bring this up in Java security discussions is that very few people actually run Java apps in browsers in the first place.
But to answer your questions "no, N/A, no". Hence my opinion "pretty darn secure".
"browser-integration with.NET".NET's pretty darn secure. MS Research did a pretty good job putting it together. Certainly as secure as anything else that runs in a sandbox (Java, Flash, Shockwave, etC).
I don't see where you're getting the 100,000 vs. 20 numbers. Are you implying that Windows has as many as 100,000 unpatched vulnerabilities (and that Apple has as few as 20)? Source, please?
Slashdot's methodology in Mac vs. Windows XP security posts has nothing to do with Windows XP users being "used" to a buggy system. It has to do with Apple marketing's misguided attempts to sell the machine as more secure. (See http://www.apple.com/getamac). When you SAY your machine is more secure than the other guys, you naturally invite comparisons.
For example, Microsoft routinely touts the security of their server OSes. So everytime one is launched, or a new SP comes out for them, Slashdot posts abound, hacker contests get held, and everyone tries to crack the box. When they do, it gets more posts on Slashdot. When they don't, it's quietly shoved off to the side.
Notice that Microsoft very rarely touts the security of Windows XP -- despite the fact that they're have almost identical codebases. They're marketed as completely different from the server OSes. Apple doesn't do this. Their desktop boxes, they claim, are as secure as their servers. Right or wrong, that's a dangerous claim o make.
The reality is that software is software, and people make mistakes coding software (including Apple). Hackers like having a large number of machines to attack, so as Apples become more popular, more vulnerabilities are going to pop up.
I buy my family Macs, but it has nothing to do with the security of the machine. I buy them because Spyware hasn't really targetted the platform and the kids in particular tend to download P2P apps. I'm not so foolhearty as to believe "Windows users take one for the team". We all do.
Um... sure. It's always a good to equate businesses completely with the INDIVIDUALS that work for them. They're obviously one and the same. *rolls eyes*
I totally disagree. The Wii is a great system, the controller is truly revolutionary, and Nintendo in particular has brass balls. That doesn't necessarily equal sales or success.
I'm HOPING for Nintendo to succeed, the same way I hope Apple succeeds. In their respective industries, each provides a much-needed jolt of creativity and energy. Both industries would stagnate without them.
But if they fail, if they're a distant third (notice the "ifs") does anyone honestly believe they'll make another console? They'll continue handhelds (they completely dominate), but the core of the Nintendo experience was never the hardware -- it was the fantastic software. If they have to (again, not saying they will) they can pull a Sega and lose a major resource drain in the process (hardware sales).
Microsoft has said this before. When Nintendo first showed off the controller, MS called it "innovative" (the same buzzword they used when they were trying to protect themselves from the Justice Department, e.g. "freedom to innovate"). In every interview I've ever read since then, the interviewers hit hard with Sony/Microsoft questions then always toss in "So what do you think of Nintendo?" You always get "Revolution/Wii's innovative" and "I can't wait to play X Mario, Y Zelda, etc."
Does this mean a deathknell for Nintendo? Not at all. At their core, Moore, Allard, etc. are gamers. They're MS businessmen, but they're gamers. They know what good games look like and try to court the best talent (well, except Rare...:P ). I'm sure if Nintendo hung up the towel they would have no problem letting them develop on Xbox 460 and a Halftwist, but I don't think they're serious about buying them out or forming a partnership.
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GivePosterCookie();
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MS and Epic know what they have here, dude. It's not a revolutionary leap over anything. It seems (at least from reading the press reaction) that it's a solid shooter.
Remember, Microsoft is the same company that pitched Halo as "Combat Evolved", not "combat so new it just came out of the womb". It's a solid shooter to hold people off while Bungie wraps up Halo 3 -- nothing more.
I basically said the same thing to the gamers I know. No matter if they succeed or fail, you've got to admit Nintendo has balls here. Arguably this is the last thing they really could've tried to stop the juggernauts (and the monotony they were bringing) and they seemed to have succeeded. We need Nintendo around the same we need Apple -- you may not always agree with their direction but they jolt the industry. I'm going to be buying a Wii even though I absolutely despise Nintendo fanboys. Here's hoping it sells well.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sure they are illegal in the US due to the DMCA, but here in Sweden there is no DMCA."
I'm getting really tired of this "Not in my country" defense. It doesn't hold water.
Let's say Americans steal something that's Swedish. I don't know what you guys actually make (uh, chocolates and army knives I guess), but let's suppose it's chocolate. To keep in the spirit of the "defense" of Pirate Bay, let's say we don't actually steal the chocolate, but have others in your country steal it for us. They go into the chocolate stores, maybe pose as a chocolate worker, grab some chocolate and put it under their coat.
At that point, they don't actually sell us the chocolate. They put ads in the paper that say "Half price chocolate! Just call this phone number!" They do this for months and months while the chocolate companies suffer. Sure, the chocolate companies' bosses are probably ok, but workers are paid far less and some treated like theives (even if they're not) because some American has a sweet tooth.
Now, if you knew the perps were advertising the same ad in the same newspaper day after day, and the newspaper was getting money for those ads, and you couldn't find the guys who were stealing the chocolate out of the stores (although you could probably find them if you asked the newspaper guys), what would you do?
You'd question the newspaper, make sure you got the info needed to get the theives and make sure ads like that stopped appearing. Aka: kill the torrent site.
"I took a Knoppix CD with me to the store"
Was the Knoppix CD beta? No?
*Bugs bunny voice* Then shaddup! */Bugs bunny voice*
I don't know how this is even a remotely fair comparison given that one system is in beta and one isn't.
"This is like what Super Mario World might have been if Nintendo waited until now to continue the Mario franchise."
Honestly, I did get it, and while the game is very good it pales in comparison to Super Mario World. It pales even more to perhaps the best platformer ever made: Yoshi's Island. The control is a bit loose (more "SMB-ish" than "SMB 3-ish") and the game is over all too quickly. With dedication you can beat Super Mario World in one sitting. With light effort you can do the same with New Super Mario Bros.
It's a fun title, but will it be remembered in the annals of platformer history? Doubt it.
While I agree that "fun" matters more, a lot of people still judge games by the screenshots.
Story: when Nintendo's press conference broke, I sent screenshots to my friends of Wii games. A lot of people said the same thing: "It doesn't look that great; I'm not interested in the games." When I sent them the video of Nintendo execs bouncing around on stage they then said "Ok, looks cool."
And think about it: what are the primary means of learning about upcoming games? Some people have IGN/GameSpot/et all subscriptions and get high quality video. Most just look at screenshots in the review. When mom goes to buy a game for junior, she looks at the endcap advertising and the box. Screenshots still sell the game, no matter what anyone says.
What Nintendo (and any other company who wants to break the mold) needs to do is have a lot of Wii controllers at every game store. Let people play the thing. It's the only way it's gonna sell.
Which were the same price as the white models.
Given the same price, people will go with the more stylish model. Given different prices, they'll go for the cheaper model (U2 iPod, and now a $200 luxury option on a consumer PC). Imagine that.
What was the point of your argument again?
They did. It was called the U2 iPod. Sold like crap.
"I am sick of explaining to people that Windows XP still BSODs whether it be due to viruses or "third party drivers."
I'm personally sick of explaining to Mac fans that Macs do the same thing. A third party driver can easily kernel panic a Mac. Hell, Keynote used to kernel panic the box when it tried to write directly to ATI drivers.
If you so much as step outside the carefully constrained boundaries Apple has set up with hardware, you can end up in a world of hurt. I personally love laughing at that new Mac commerical with "that camera from Japan". First time I connected a digital camera to a 10.4 Mac using a simple USB cable, the thing kernel paniced. Second time, iPhoto loaded up then proceeded to give me the beachball treatment. And this was a camera *I bought from their Apple store*.
"Only 3D-gamers actually need dedicated graphics cards. For everything else, integrated graphics are more than functional enough. And gamers are not Macs major market, simply because there are relatively few games available for it, compared to Wintel machines."
Honestly, I'm waiting on a Pro Mac tower just so I can replace my gaming rig. The games that matter (World of Warcraft, Quake, etc) run on Mac fine, and now that you can boot to Windows you open up an entire library.
If Apple puts a fairly highend card in their Intel Pro Macs, and the price of the tower is reasonable ($2000-2500) I think a lot of gamers will go for them, actually.
"Yup it's a $50 hard drive upgrade and tax on the fashion conscious. If you don't like it, don't pay it."
Quite frankly, I doubt anyone will pay for it. You just said it was a consumer laptop. E.g.: get a computer for mom to use, junior to take to college, etc. The $1099 model fits that bill perfectly.
Putting luxury options on a consumer portable makes no sense, from a business standpoint and a marketing standpoint. If junior wants a pretty laptop, he'll move up to the ProBooks.
"In any case, this smiley after that sentence would inevitably give me a very negative impression about you."
That's under the assumption that you've never met me. You wouldn't know my sense of humor. I was assuming we'd be coworkers.
Not to mention, I'm talking about a very specific case, here. We're not talking the embesselment of hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're talking a few bucks out of petty cash. The wink and tongue sticking out, to me, means "Look, this is nothing to get our panties in a knot over."
You don't actually manage anyone, do you?
Personally, if MY subordinates came to me because some old guy was yelling over a couple bucks missing from petty cash, I would laugh right along with them. Priorities, my friend.
I guess it matters what kind of job you have. Assuming you do manage, you sound like a manager at a local Staples or TGI Fridays or something. In my line of work, there's no sense getting one's panties in a knot over a couple of bucks when we're dealing with equipment and ROIs in the hundreds of thousands.
I wouldn't use it. My mom might.
I looked at the graphics and was pretty disappointed too. The old iBooks had crappy ATI cards. They sucked, but at least there was dedicated graphics.
On the other hand, this would be perfect for my mom (or students, I imagine). The $1099 model has a slightly smaller screen, smaller hard drive and no DVD burner vs. the lowest-end PowerBook (ProBook -- dammit I hate saying that)... but is almost half the price. $1099 for a dual core machine is not a bad deal, and the rest of the hardware (outside the graphics) is certainly usable. Decent-speed hard drive, lightweight design, etc.
The black model is a total ripoff, but the white model drives a hard bargain when it comes to bang for the buck (which Apple points out on the hardware portion of the site).
Not to mention all models have Intel integrated graphics. Boo! At least the old ones had ATI (crappy ATI, but ATI nonetheless).
At least the other hardware is nice. A laptop with a camera for only $1100? Sweet.
This is a situation where, strangely enough, emoticons really help. For example, I have a fairly good, sarcastic sense of humor -- very difficult to read in emails. Let's say the "money" example had to do with a few bucks stolen from petty cash.
:P
I didn't steal the money.
vs.
I didn't steal the money.
The second conveys a kind of shrugged shoulders, palms upward vibe. It not only says that I didn't steal the money, but also conveys my view that stealing a few bucks is a relatively minor problem and we should move on. Without the emoticon there, that would've been a very difficult sentiment to convey succinctly (I guess I could go into a paragraph explaining my viewpoint, like I did here, but that would be rather onerous).
Unfortunately, emoticons aren't considered "professional", and that leads to a lot of misguided cues. I kind of wish they were more accepted in a business setting.
"You mean that if a web page does something like "location = 'file:///c|/...'", or gives the user a link to a local file that the user clicks on, it won't load the specified file? Doesn't matter whether the file is visible in the context of the untrusted document, the question is whether the file can be loaded at all."
.NET file system objects don't use "file:///c|/", so I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. Do you mean if a user clicks a hyperlink on an HTML document in a web browser (which has very little to do with .NET, by the way), would it open the file? Well, that's the browser's concern, not Java/.NET/etc. Any modern day browser would ask the user if they want to open the file, whether it was a click or a redirect.
.NET. You seem to be talking about a standard browser open.
Um... ok, I think you're confusing things here. Originally you were talking about file system objects. E.g., an assembly gets loaded by the browser and code within the assembly calls routines to perform file operations. In that case, the CLR would prevent the operations from going through based on the security settings (which, by default, wouldn't allow access to those kinds of routines from Internet or Local Intranet zones).
But
Just to make clear, though, that has nothing to do with
In reference to dialog boxes asking users to do stupid things, it's a tough nut to crack, honestly. There's a very thin line between completely locking down the UI and not driving users crazy.
Let me give you an example: on Friday I was working on a Mac (an OS lauded for its usability). I had to save a Perl file on the root of the hard drive, so it asked me for the admin password. No problem. Later on, I had to do some work on the file and it asked me for the password when I opened it. Understandable.
Now, I'm working on this file, and I save it a few times. EVERY SINGLE TIME I hit Ctrl-S, it asks me for the password. Why? I already gave it the password when I opened the file. The text editor process should be given free reign to make changes to the file when I need to save it. It shouldn't ask me repeatedly. If I close the text editor, logoff or reboot, that's the only time it should ask for the password again.
And you're right, it's a social engineering issue. However, no manner of code is going to fix this problem. You either take the attitude that the user needs to get work done and can't be bothered to repeatedly enter passwords (even though they have the potential to wreck the machine) or you distrust them completely and repeatedly ask for passwords.
When Vista comes out, this isn't going to go away. People are still going to go through the "click Yes repeatedly" process when they get a dialog box. Except this time they'll get in the habit of entering their admin password. Either way, they won't actually look at what the program is accessing or changing. They just want that P2P/screensaver/stupid bug that tells the weather installed.
"Is there a mechanism whereby an object in Internet or even LocalIntranet can request the execution of an arbitrarily specified object in the MyComputer zone?"
.NET assemblies are given "No Trust" (not allowed to execute) in the Internet zone. (Go into the control panel, Administrative Tools folder, .NET Configuration and bring up Runtime Security Policy). They're currently given "Medium Trust" to Local Intranet, but that's still fairly limited. And that will likely change in IE 7 because they're redoing zones. Zones were an IE 4 convention and they were stupid to begin with.
.NET.
.NET Configuration (which goes far beyond the IE "zones") but there's no "click this button to wipe your system32" button or anything if a user comes across a rogue assembly.
Well, no, there isn't. By default,
The word "arbitrary specified object in the My Computer zone" is kind of confusing. Do you mean benign stuff like the keyboard or actual file system objects? Regardless, no, Internet and Local Intranet don't have that kind of access in
"Is it possible for a user to specify that a specific object (based on any criteria, whether URL or certificate or address or strong name) be granted this right at the time the request is made?"
No, there isn't. The user isn't given a dialog box -- they're told the assembly doesn't have permission to run. The user can change the assembly's trust level in
Although, I don't know why that condition is relevant. The dialog boxes are there so users aren't completely annoyed, trying to find where to grant apps access. Java, Flash, etc. all do this. I've seen (and written) Java dialog boxes that grant bytecode access to do some pretty heinous things (one click access to read/write on system32, for example). The only reason, I think, that people don't bring this up in Java security discussions is that very few people actually run Java apps in browsers in the first place.
But to answer your questions "no, N/A, no". Hence my opinion "pretty darn secure".
"browser-integration with .NET" .NET's pretty darn secure. MS Research did a pretty good job putting it together. Certainly as secure as anything else that runs in a sandbox (Java, Flash, Shockwave, etC).
I don't see where you're getting the 100,000 vs. 20 numbers. Are you implying that Windows has as many as 100,000 unpatched vulnerabilities (and that Apple has as few as 20)? Source, please?
"Apple should not be forced to make an ill-prepared and possibly buggy patch release due to the threats of this "analyst"."
And yet people do this MS all the time. Hmm...
Slashdot's methodology in Mac vs. Windows XP security posts has nothing to do with Windows XP users being "used" to a buggy system. It has to do with Apple marketing's misguided attempts to sell the machine as more secure. (See http://www.apple.com/getamac). When you SAY your machine is more secure than the other guys, you naturally invite comparisons.
For example, Microsoft routinely touts the security of their server OSes. So everytime one is launched, or a new SP comes out for them, Slashdot posts abound, hacker contests get held, and everyone tries to crack the box. When they do, it gets more posts on Slashdot. When they don't, it's quietly shoved off to the side.
Notice that Microsoft very rarely touts the security of Windows XP -- despite the fact that they're have almost identical codebases. They're marketed as completely different from the server OSes. Apple doesn't do this. Their desktop boxes, they claim, are as secure as their servers. Right or wrong, that's a dangerous claim o make.
The reality is that software is software, and people make mistakes coding software (including Apple). Hackers like having a large number of machines to attack, so as Apples become more popular, more vulnerabilities are going to pop up.
I buy my family Macs, but it has nothing to do with the security of the machine. I buy them because Spyware hasn't really targetted the platform and the kids in particular tend to download P2P apps. I'm not so foolhearty as to believe "Windows users take one for the team". We all do.
Um... sure. It's always a good to equate businesses completely with the INDIVIDUALS that work for them. They're obviously one and the same. *rolls eyes*
I totally disagree. The Wii is a great system, the controller is truly revolutionary, and Nintendo in particular has brass balls. That doesn't necessarily equal sales or success.
I'm HOPING for Nintendo to succeed, the same way I hope Apple succeeds. In their respective industries, each provides a much-needed jolt of creativity and energy. Both industries would stagnate without them.
But if they fail, if they're a distant third (notice the "ifs") does anyone honestly believe they'll make another console? They'll continue handhelds (they completely dominate), but the core of the Nintendo experience was never the hardware -- it was the fantastic software. If they have to (again, not saying they will) they can pull a Sega and lose a major resource drain in the process (hardware sales).
Microsoft has said this before. When Nintendo first showed off the controller, MS called it "innovative" (the same buzzword they used when they were trying to protect themselves from the Justice Department, e.g. "freedom to innovate"). In every interview I've ever read since then, the interviewers hit hard with Sony/Microsoft questions then always toss in "So what do you think of Nintendo?" You always get "Revolution/Wii's innovative" and "I can't wait to play X Mario, Y Zelda, etc."
:P ). I'm sure if Nintendo hung up the towel they would have no problem letting them develop on Xbox 460 and a Halftwist, but I don't think they're serious about buying them out or forming a partnership.
Does this mean a deathknell for Nintendo? Not at all. At their core, Moore, Allard, etc. are gamers. They're MS businessmen, but they're gamers. They know what good games look like and try to court the best talent (well, except Rare...
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MS and Epic know what they have here, dude. It's not a revolutionary leap over anything. It seems (at least from reading the press reaction) that it's a solid shooter.
Remember, Microsoft is the same company that pitched Halo as "Combat Evolved", not "combat so new it just came out of the womb". It's a solid shooter to hold people off while Bungie wraps up Halo 3 -- nothing more.
I basically said the same thing to the gamers I know. No matter if they succeed or fail, you've got to admit Nintendo has balls here. Arguably this is the last thing they really could've tried to stop the juggernauts (and the monotony they were bringing) and they seemed to have succeeded. We need Nintendo around the same we need Apple -- you may not always agree with their direction but they jolt the industry. I'm going to be buying a Wii even though I absolutely despise Nintendo fanboys. Here's hoping it sells well.