....and is there any backwards compatibility with previous Office formats?
Only if MS ever publishes the specifications for previous MS Office formats. As it stands even Ecma 376, which is marketed as being backward compatible, does not give any details regarding the old formats. One of the only conclusions possible there is that the claims are false.
And what does it matter anyway? Even MS doesn't use Ecma 376 in MS Office 2007, something rather close, but just so not Ecma 376.
I know of people, myself included, who have been after Apple for years to support OpenDocument. (Yeah, it's been that long already.) As far as I can tell, the way their bugreporter is set up it's not possible to view other people's bugs. That means that all requests for supporting open standards get blown of as "duplicate" without being able to see the original or its status.
It'd be really interesting to know the real reasons Apple's still failing to support formats like OpenDocument and Ogg. Ogg entered the double digit marketshare two years back. OpenDocument is recommended by governments around the world for a few years as well. It can't be that M$ is threatening withholding its applications from the platform, because there aren't any left to speak of. Productivity software was the last piece, but faster, better, cheaper, more stable, more interoperable software can be had from everyone else -- again since a few years back. So, what's the hold up at Apple about open formats?
Wait a short while for MS to figure out how to game these numbers too.
All MS has to due is illegally leverage that desktop monopoly again. MS Outlook currently infests a large number of MS Windows desktops. All MS has to do is add a "security" patch that co-incidentally also sets MS Outlook to spew MOOOXML for all formatted messages. Overnight overpopulation of the new formats. Courts are so #$&* slow that by the time the anti-trust papers are served, it'll have been long since over. Of course, current bandwidth limitations would be a show-stopper for that plan - message sizes would go up by about three orders of magnitude.
Nice strawman. WLID (formerly known as MS Passport) is not just any random piece of shit. It's a piece of shit being marketed as a core security component -- authentication. So, no, in answer to your question. Sure some things were "fixed" but the fundamental design flaws remain.
Furthermore, since M$ still maintains a monopoly on desktop systems and has been found on many occasions to have been illegally leveraging that monopoly to break into a new market, the risk of WLID spreading is actually rather high. If the stats at NetCraft are anything close to reliable, then M$ would be able to leverage the IIS install base.
[How long] Until the first site with a fake passport login form shows up?...
It doesn't matter so much, it's not like MS WLID, formerly known as MS Passport can ever be made secure.
It's fundamentally flawed from the design.
However, all the bad press was about MS Passport, so a simple name change and, Voila, no bad press about the product. Palladium was sanitize the same way.
Prevent Windoze at the packet filter
on
Ubuntu Servers Hacked
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Also the only other reason I can imagine a windows machine to be running IIS in comparison to Linux with Apache is if you're a smaller company with only a few windows servers and cant really afford extra dedicated server hardware.
Hosting is only $7 to $15 per month for Apache with all bells and whistles, so even then there is no rationale to try to deal with maintaining a webserver inhouse.
Ah, yes, but if you prevent the home user from running as root.. it becomes significantly more difficult to get the trojan installed in areas where
it could do real damage.. for now...
It helps there if the account for daily use has no sudo or admin privileges.
The next step would be keep things in order by applying the Write XOR Execute principle to disk partitions: put the user home directories on their own partition, mounted noexec, put everything else on another mount it read-only./var can be symlinked to a directory in/home.
Knowing the partition sizes is the only tricky part.
also Microsoft professionals created the IT infrastructure that has caused billions of dollars in malware-related downtime, and degraded to useless performance of infested machines. Thank you Bill Gates, you've fucked up more businesses than any world war.
We see that according to last year's figures he's implicated in about around $7.8 billion dollars in malware damage, in the U.S. alone, per year. So if the U.S. really is succumbing to IIS like the original post claims, then there is concrete economic harm as a result.
Even if there are some costs in the transition over to OS X, Debian, Kubuntu, OpenBSD or whatever, it would still be a significant net gain for the US to drop the last remaining Windows machines.
Troll somewhere else. No
assertion was made. A question was asked and you do have to admit that even though the answer appears to be "no" that it was/is a possibility.
Easy to dismiss any and all critique or questioning as "bashing", isn't it. At least part of the question got answered:
... Starting with Server 2003 (four years ago now) IIS is off by default. In Vista, its not even installed.
However, what about XP? Of the MS server platforms MS Server 2003 has negligable market penetration compared to XP.
It's common enough for MS patches and upgrades and services packs to turn things on or off, change configurations or just plain break something. So it's happened before, and since most of us have to work and don't have time or interest to follow the details of MS Windows, it's logical to ask.
It's also logical to ask because the remaining MS Windows users have become so used to that kind of effect from patches, upgrades and service packs that they don't complain. In fact it gains them a few hours of overtime. The press doesn't comment either, because it happens again and again and is business as usual, and because the remaining trade magazines are so dependent on MS advertising that the editors won't let any non-praise slip through.
Easy to dismiss any and all critique or questioning as "bashing", isn't it.
If that's the methodology, then the more obvious solution is to base any statistics on IP address, and not on sites. Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would use a "site" as the primary means of doing web server counts.
One IP number can represent dozens of name virtual hosts. So if you count IP numbers you get stats favoring IIS, which has closer to a 1:1 ratio (or worse) of machine to web presence. If you count hostnames, you get stats favoring all other HTTP servers.
And if you limit your survey to HTTP compliance then you eliminate all IIS sites. Add in TCP/IP compliance and you eliminate anything hosted on MS Windows, accidentally, out of ignorance or otherwise not just IIS but also Lighttpd and Apache.
There is also a serious discrepancy in that other stats seem to show IIS on the last moments of extinction in hi-tech zones like Germany. NetCraft report doesn't really have any explanation of the figures it presents.
What's really problematic is that over time NetCraft has become less informative. No mention has been made lately of what the changes in market share are attributed to. In years past, even a percent or two got a few lines of explanation or analysis. Did one of the service packs or 'security' upgrades install and turn on IIS for all Windows users? Or are more domain parkers and cybersquatters using IIS in the server identification string?
This downturn started last year when MS paid GoDaddy to swap out (or claim to swap out) its domain parking. GoDaddy did get the OSS community to lay off by throwing some chump change to OpenSSH and we can see the result of these last 12+ months. The money did some good, but if it's just a one-off donation, then it's questionable whether then benefit offsets the harm. Either way it's funny to see GoDaddy decision makers thinking they can buy indulgences. Maybe it ought to become an annual fee.
Except that articular console 'game' system isn't supposed to make money or even play well. If it does then fine, but the primary purpose is to be a testbed for the technologies formerly known as Palladium. That's why its maker doesn't appear t care that people laugh at its clunkiness, poor sales, egregious quality (30% return rate), fire-starting powersupplies and what not.
When it comes to closed systems like video cards and their drivers, I think only a fool would turn up his nose at a binary simply because it doesn't come with source code.
Haven't learned our lesson regarding security or portability have we?
Popular binary drivers had some unresolved, severe exploits and couldn't be bothered to address them for about two years. That's just an anecdote, but illustrates that the problem is real and not just theoretical. Anecdotes aside, there are inherent problems with binary-only drivers (or binary-only anything). For the obtuse, the
interview with Theo de Raadtinterview with Jonathan Gray and Damien Bergamini go into more details.
Production mistakes and design flaws aside, happen. That's why we get the effect that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". But with
binary-only that also means that nearly anything, from back doors to monitoring, can be piggybacked into the blob. You'd be hard pressed to find out.
And depending on the vendor for the binary also leaves you dependent on their choice of architectures - not yours, and their lifecycle timeline - not yours.
Some, like the GP, may prefer the GPL, others may prefer other open source license. Whatever. Any of them is a far cry better than no source code.
Also, remember the open source is not just a license, but a development model. Popular hardware will gain development speed and quality for the drivers. It's not like the drivers have any inherent value without the hardware. Opening up the drivers would most likely boost the sales of the hardware they use.
So what? That's still less than the economic damaged caused by a few years of MS viruses, the damage runs at several billion per quarter. Then there would be the general maintenance costs for MS junk which is throwing even more good money after bad. I'd say compared to all that, the Mars rover is cheap. When you start taking into account the merits of what you get for the money, the difference is even greater.
It took a few decades for the scientific benefits of the Apollo missions to spread out to the general populace. It will be similar here, though probably faster due to the Internet and other communications technologies.
The account you replied to is at best a troll, probably an astroturfer of some kind. This article has gotten them to log in using all their spare accounts and cache in all their mod points.
He forgets, or wants us to forget, that for years MS had an illegal deal with the OEMs to ship only MS DOS / MS Windows. That got broken by the courts, but MS was back with workarounds within short order that do the same thing but stay within the letter of the law. The grip used to extend firmly to the applications which the OEMs had pre-loaded and even to which icons were on the desktop.
The interesting thing here is that the grip on the OEMs seems to have slipped, despite everything. MS Office is one of the two profitable lines for MS. OpenOffice.org cuts the legs off of that one, especially because of the format OpenDocument, unless MS can get enough small time operators with their mouths open and shove in their proprietary format. Many people will find that they are quite happy with OpenOffice.org and that it serves their needs better than MS Office. That alone is useful as it breaks the lock MS had on mindshare and starts to lets people get back to using their computers instead of spending all their time mucking with them, trying to get them to work. .
"The European Patent Convention (EPC), Article 52, paragraph 2
(2) The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions within the meaning of paragraph 1: ...
(a) discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods; ...
(c) schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers;"
That covers algorithms specifically and software in general. SW patents are neither valid nor enforceable in the EU. That is the existing practice. The CII was / is an attempt to change all that and to introduce sw patents to Europe.
Which particular EU legislation are you referring to?...
The CII of course. The apparent purpose of the CII was / is to introduce the ability to patent software, algorithms, formula, business methods, and so on. Existing practice and, indeed existing EU law, prohibits such idiocy.
More like, the bastards tested the water to see if yet another attempt could be successful this time and saw they didn't have a whisper.
The current European Parliament members have learned what soft patents mean, and know their consequences.
Hence these guys are going to crawl back under their rock and try to make themselves forgotten until after the next elections.
That'd be my take on it, too.
Alternately it's just a PR move to get everyone to drop their guard so that the pro-sw crowd (aka MS) can try fast tracking it through some agriculture and fisheries committee or other unexpected venue. It'd be a clever trick to get suckered in to giving up just as we're about to finalize the victory. So, if it's the pro-swpatent crowd saying the debate is over, I'd recommend extreme caution.
Currently there are parts of Europe which, rather than follow EU law, style themselves as a 51st state and take after US law instead. That occurs in spite of being member states in the EU and not in the US. Sweden, for example, is one which has a patent office promoting software patents. For that matter the European Patent Office is still granting (invalid) patents on software. Until these and the others actually start following EU law by refusing further patents on software and annulling any previously granted software patents, the danger is not reduced. If anything, complacency increases the risk.
We're seeing too much of that on Slashdot these days, not just the astroturfers posting their messages, but endless bombardment of MS-oriented slashvertisements in place of real articles. Sometimes it's several content-free articles per day apparently posted just to keep MS in the headlines. How about easing up on that and getting back to technology?
None of the negative coverage is getting through, such as a 30% return rate for the Palladium testbed, so that suggests that Slashdot is a participant (willing or unwilling) in spreading that movement's marketing churn.
A moratorium on MS churn, whether slashvertisements or otherwise, even one day a week or one week a month would do wonders to improve Slashdot. Let's leave political parties like MS on the sideline and re-focus on technology.
How about a moratorium on MS-oriented slashvertisements here at regular intervals? One day a week or one week a month would do it. Day after day, there are content-free articles posted just to keep MS in the headlines. Let's get back to technology and leave political parties like MS on the sideline.
Slashdot Mirror
....and is there any backwards compatibility with previous Office formats?Only if MS ever publishes the specifications for previous MS Office formats. As it stands even Ecma 376, which is marketed as being backward compatible, does not give any details regarding the old formats. One of the only conclusions possible there is that the claims are false.
And what does it matter anyway? Even MS doesn't use Ecma 376 in MS Office 2007, something rather close, but just so not Ecma 376.
I know of people, myself included, who have been after Apple for years to support OpenDocument. (Yeah, it's been that long already.) As far as I can tell, the way their bugreporter is set up it's not possible to view other people's bugs. That means that all requests for supporting open standards get blown of as "duplicate" without being able to see the original or its status.
It'd be really interesting to know the real reasons Apple's still failing to support formats like OpenDocument and Ogg. Ogg entered the double digit marketshare two years back. OpenDocument is recommended by governments around the world for a few years as well. It can't be that M$ is threatening withholding its applications from the platform, because there aren't any left to speak of. Productivity software was the last piece, but faster, better, cheaper, more stable, more interoperable software can be had from everyone else -- again since a few years back. So, what's the hold up at Apple about open formats?
Wait a short while for MS to figure out how to game these numbers too.
All MS has to due is illegally leverage that desktop monopoly again. MS Outlook currently infests a large number of MS Windows desktops. All MS has to do is add a "security" patch that co-incidentally also sets MS Outlook to spew MOOOXML for all formatted messages. Overnight overpopulation of the new formats. Courts are so #$&* slow that by the time the anti-trust papers are served, it'll have been long since over. Of course, current bandwidth limitations would be a show-stopper for that plan - message sizes would go up by about three orders of magnitude.
Nice strawman. WLID (formerly known as MS Passport) is not just any random piece of shit. It's a piece of shit being marketed as a core security component -- authentication. So, no, in answer to your question. Sure some things were "fixed" but the fundamental design flaws remain.
Furthermore, since M$ still maintains a monopoly on desktop systems and has been found on many occasions to have been illegally leveraging that monopoly to break into a new market, the risk of WLID spreading is actually rather high. If the stats at NetCraft are anything close to reliable, then M$ would be able to leverage the IIS install base.
It doesn't matter so much, it's not like MS WLID, formerly known as MS Passport can ever be made secure. It's fundamentally flawed from the design.
However, all the bad press was about MS Passport, so a simple name change and, Voila, no bad press about the product. Palladium was sanitize the same way.
You can back up your policy in the packet filter.
In iptables, look up osf and --genre.
For pf, look up osfp.
Hosting is only $7 to $15 per month for Apache with all bells and whistles, so even then there is no rationale to try to deal with maintaining a webserver inhouse.
it could do real damage.. for now...
It helps there if the account for daily use has no sudo or admin privileges.
The next step would be keep things in order by applying the Write XOR Execute principle to disk partitions: put the user home directories on their own partition, mounted noexec, put everything else on another mount it read-only. /var can be symlinked to a directory in /home.
Knowing the partition sizes is the only tricky part.
Security-oriented systems are even applying the Write XOR Execute principle to memory
We see that according to last year's figures he's implicated in about around $7.8 billion dollars in malware damage, in the U.S. alone, per year. So if the U.S. really is succumbing to IIS like the original post claims, then there is concrete economic harm as a result.
Even if there are some costs in the transition over to OS X, Debian, Kubuntu, OpenBSD or whatever, it would still be a significant net gain for the US to drop the last remaining Windows machines.
Jeez. Anything other than praise, including questions, is now dismissed as bashing. No wonder MS is regarded as a cult.
Troll somewhere else. No assertion was made. A question was asked and you do have to admit that even though the answer appears to be "no" that it was/is a possibility.
Easy to dismiss any and all critique or questioning as "bashing", isn't it. At least part of the question got answered:
... Starting with Server 2003 (four years ago now) IIS is off by default. In Vista, its not even installed.However, what about XP? Of the MS server platforms MS Server 2003 has negligable market penetration compared to XP.
It's common enough for MS patches and upgrades and services packs to turn things on or off, change configurations or just plain break something. So it's happened before, and since most of us have to work and don't have time or interest to follow the details of MS Windows, it's logical to ask.
It's also logical to ask because the remaining MS Windows users have become so used to that kind of effect from patches, upgrades and service packs that they don't complain. In fact it gains them a few hours of overtime. The press doesn't comment either, because it happens again and again and is business as usual, and because the remaining trade magazines are so dependent on MS advertising that the editors won't let any non-praise slip through.
Easy to dismiss any and all critique or questioning as "bashing", isn't it.
One IP number can represent dozens of name virtual hosts. So if you count IP numbers you get stats favoring IIS, which has closer to a 1:1 ratio (or worse) of machine to web presence. If you count hostnames, you get stats favoring all other HTTP servers.
And if you limit your survey to HTTP compliance then you eliminate all IIS sites. Add in TCP/IP compliance and you eliminate anything hosted on MS Windows, accidentally, out of ignorance or otherwise not just IIS but also Lighttpd and Apache.
There is also a serious discrepancy in that other stats seem to show IIS on the last moments of extinction in hi-tech zones like Germany. NetCraft report doesn't really have any explanation of the figures it presents.
What's really problematic is that over time NetCraft has become less informative. No mention has been made lately of what the changes in market share are attributed to. In years past, even a percent or two got a few lines of explanation or analysis. Did one of the service packs or 'security' upgrades install and turn on IIS for all Windows users? Or are more domain parkers and cybersquatters using IIS in the server identification string?
This downturn started last year when MS paid GoDaddy to swap out (or claim to swap out) its domain parking. GoDaddy did get the OSS community to lay off by throwing some chump change to OpenSSH and we can see the result of these last 12+ months. The money did some good, but if it's just a one-off donation, then it's questionable whether then benefit offsets the harm. Either way it's funny to see GoDaddy decision makers thinking they can buy indulgences. Maybe it ought to become an annual fee.
Except that articular console 'game' system isn't supposed to make money or even play well. If it does then fine, but the primary purpose is to be a testbed for the technologies formerly known as Palladium. That's why its maker doesn't appear t care that people laugh at its clunkiness, poor sales, egregious quality (30% return rate), fire-starting powersupplies and what not.
Haven't learned our lesson regarding security or portability have we?
Popular binary drivers had some unresolved, severe exploits and couldn't be bothered to address them for about two years. That's just an anecdote, but illustrates that the problem is real and not just theoretical. Anecdotes aside, there are inherent problems with binary-only drivers (or binary-only anything). For the obtuse, the interview with Theo de Raadt interview with Jonathan Gray and Damien Bergamini go into more details.
Production mistakes and design flaws aside, happen. That's why we get the effect that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". But with binary-only that also means that nearly anything, from back doors to monitoring, can be piggybacked into the blob. You'd be hard pressed to find out. And depending on the vendor for the binary also leaves you dependent on their choice of architectures - not yours, and their lifecycle timeline - not yours.
Some, like the GP, may prefer the GPL, others may prefer other open source license. Whatever. Any of them is a far cry better than no source code.
Also, remember the open source is not just a license, but a development model. Popular hardware will gain development speed and quality for the drivers. It's not like the drivers have any inherent value without the hardware. Opening up the drivers would most likely boost the sales of the hardware they use.
So what? That's still less than the economic damaged caused by a few years of MS viruses, the damage runs at several billion per quarter. Then there would be the general maintenance costs for MS junk which is throwing even more good money after bad. I'd say compared to all that, the Mars rover is cheap. When you start taking into account the merits of what you get for the money, the difference is even greater.
It took a few decades for the scientific benefits of the Apollo missions to spread out to the general populace. It will be similar here, though probably faster due to the Internet and other communications technologies.
Clue #1: Don't call them that.
The account you replied to is at best a troll, probably an astroturfer of some kind. This article has gotten them to log in using all their spare accounts and cache in all their mod points.
He forgets, or wants us to forget, that for years MS had an illegal deal with the OEMs to ship only MS DOS / MS Windows. That got broken by the courts, but MS was back with workarounds within short order that do the same thing but stay within the letter of the law. The grip used to extend firmly to the applications which the OEMs had pre-loaded and even to which icons were on the desktop.
The interesting thing here is that the grip on the OEMs seems to have slipped, despite everything. MS Office is one of the two profitable lines for MS. OpenOffice.org cuts the legs off of that one, especially because of the format OpenDocument, unless MS can get enough small time operators with their mouths open and shove in their proprietary format. Many people will find that they are quite happy with OpenOffice.org and that it serves their needs better than MS Office. That alone is useful as it breaks the lock MS had on mindshare and starts to lets people get back to using their computers instead of spending all their time mucking with them, trying to get them to work. .
Which is it? I'm confused. In one place the post says it comes with MS Vista and in another it says it comes without crapware?
That covers algorithms specifically and software in general. SW patents are neither valid nor enforceable in the EU. That is the existing practice. The CII was / is an attempt to change all that and to introduce sw patents to Europe.
Harmonize that.
Which particular EU legislation are you referring to? ...
The CII of course. The apparent purpose of the CII was / is to introduce the ability to patent software, algorithms, formula, business methods, and so on. Existing practice and, indeed existing EU law, prohibits such idiocy.The current European Parliament members have learned what soft patents mean, and know their consequences.
Hence these guys are going to crawl back under their rock and try to make themselves forgotten until after the next elections.
That'd be my take on it, too.
Alternately it's just a PR move to get everyone to drop their guard so that the pro-sw crowd (aka MS) can try fast tracking it through some agriculture and fisheries committee or other unexpected venue. It'd be a clever trick to get suckered in to giving up just as we're about to finalize the victory. So, if it's the pro-swpatent crowd saying the debate is over, I'd recommend extreme caution.
It'd be very unwise to consider the debate over until even the very possibility of sw patents has a wooden stake in it and is buried upside down at a Crossroads with garlic and holy wafers in its mouth. One way to do it would be a re-affirmation of the 1974 European Patent Convention which, in Article 52, explicitly excludes "schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers".
Currently there are parts of Europe which, rather than follow EU law, style themselves as a 51st state and take after US law instead. That occurs in spite of being member states in the EU and not in the US. Sweden, for example, is one which has a patent office promoting software patents. For that matter the European Patent Office is still granting (invalid) patents on software. Until these and the others actually start following EU law by refusing further patents on software and annulling any previously granted software patents, the danger is not reduced. If anything, complacency increases the risk.
We're seeing too much of that on Slashdot these days, not just the astroturfers posting their messages, but endless bombardment of MS-oriented slashvertisements in place of real articles. Sometimes it's several content-free articles per day apparently posted just to keep MS in the headlines. How about easing up on that and getting back to technology?
None of the negative coverage is getting through, such as a 30% return rate for the Palladium testbed, so that suggests that Slashdot is a participant (willing or unwilling) in spreading that movement's marketing churn.
A moratorium on MS churn, whether slashvertisements or otherwise, even one day a week or one week a month would do wonders to improve Slashdot. Let's leave political parties like MS on the sideline and re-focus on technology.
How about a moratorium on MS-oriented slashvertisements here at regular intervals? One day a week or one week a month would do it. Day after day, there are content-free articles posted just to keep MS in the headlines. Let's get back to technology and leave political parties like MS on the sideline.