Just install Junkbuster, with the
Waldherr.org blockfile. Edit the
blockfile: Remove the regexp's that
block anything that sounds like an ad, then
delete the URL's of companies whose ads you
don't mind seeing.
Windoze users have it easy: The Waldherr
version of Junkbuster has a monitor screen that
enables the user to open and edit the.ini files
with one click of a mouse, to add or remove
ad blocking domanin names, or domain-wide cookie
authorizaton.
Worry more: No paper output, no audit trail
of any kind, and the closed source proprietary software will be written
by contractors hired by Florida election officials.
The same kind of contractors that "purged"
thousands of non-felons from the voting rolls
for Ms. Harris. Oh, they fixed the error...
then a county elections supervisor found her
own name on the corrected felon list. The
one they actually used.
As a Florida resident who watched the 2000
election very closely, I agree, Florida is a
very forward-looking State. The Y2K election was so close, even after every "safe" form of cheating
was used, that it was necessary to declare the
Florida vote null and void. Gore won by over
30,000 votes. See http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181. Remember that Florida State law requires that the voter's "intent" be the standard for counting. Republican election thieves, with the full and informed assistance of the "free" press, threw out over 30,000 "over votes", where the voter picked Gore twice by marking a space and writing his name.
The cracking challenge is absolute propaganda and
bullshit. The real danger is elections rigged
and stolen by criminals like Freida Harris and
her hirelings, who will have physical access to
the insides of those black boxes. The real intent of the challenge, is to increase confidence that no one will be able to crack these boxes and demonstrate that their software counts votes erroneously. On purpose.
The machines approved for use in Florida produce
no paper output. All votes cast are electronic
fictions subject to no kind of verification,
ever, under any circumstance: A crooked election official's wettest dream come true. At least in Florida, the democratic proces is over, dead and buried, as of now. And BTW the software is proprietary closed source, made by contractors hired by the dominant political party.
it has a feature called "Enable Auto-Blocking" which
DOES firewall the intrusion packets it finds.
OK. So if something fits its signatures it will
block it. Lovely. How is that the same thing as
as a PC firewall, with by default blocks everything
until or unless the user creates a rule?
Does it prevent scans from locating a PC and identifying
its OS, version, and available services? Does it block
outgoing packets from applications the user may not know
was in an installer package? Does it enable the user to
restrict all access to a set of chosen IP addresses?
There's nothing wrong with intrusion detectors. There's
something definitely wrong with calling them PC firewalls.
Black Ice Defender is an intrusion detector,
not a PC firewall. It does nothing to inhibit
hostile traffic, inbound or outbound, in only
tells the user when he's been cracked and owned. Maybe. If he's lucky.
The retail box for Black Ice calls it a firewall. They lie.
Too bad our courts are as corrupt as our cops. Cases in point:
Records of the Mitnik trial sealed, explicitly to shield prosecutors, FBI agents, and the corporate "victims" of Mitnik's activities from felony prosecution and civil damages (fraud, solicitation of perjury, perjury).
I won't even mention the Supreme Court Republicans and Al Gore's 30,000 vote margin of victory in the Florida election.
We live in a dictatorship of the Corporations. Sure it's a demoncracy: One dollar, one vote.
By definition, open PGP software should all be Open PGP compliant, and there should be no compatability issues.
Network Associates PGP has never been known for
standards compliance; NAI has "joined" the Open PGP Alliance, but we will have to wait and see if they are really interested in cleaning up their act in this area.
Given that Network Associates have decided not to release the source code for PGP 7.x, the "latest & greatest" Win32 PGP version, I have my doubts about NAI's willingness to "do the right thing" with regard to standards compliance. If these decisions were up to the developers, I am sure that we would already have full source for PGP 7.x and that a standards compliant version from MAI would already be in the works. But the marketroids have the final say, and they seem to be saying, "Welcome to the complete Microsoft business model."
Right you are, preaching to the choir, etc.
But so far nobody is mentioning the real news:
Network Associates PGP is closed source, as of
release 7.x. Phil Zimmermann has left Network
Associates' payroll, citing "philosophical differences" over the direction of PGP's development. (Can we say, "Ironcald non-disclosure & noncompete clauses"?) In the crypto world,
this means that NAI PGP is dead and buried, though
one can still decently use versions up to 6.5.8. We can hope that Network Associates management will come to their senses, but not expect it. PGP
was great while it lasted, but as of 2001 it's over.
GPG is going to be the new standard, beyond question. Those who care about the issues
that crypto addresses-- privacy, security,
non-repudiation, and anonymity (remailers use PKI technology)-- need to put some focus on the
fact that the vast majority of public key crypto users are still PGP users. In the transitional
period following the de facto death of NAI PGP,
compatability is the single most
important issue. GPG and PGP key formats are partially incompatable and often fail to inter-operate.
From the standpoint of crypto advocacy, the
incompatabilities between GPG and PGP create a logistical nightmare. It's hard enough to try to persuade "normal" people to use PGP; asking them to deal with two incompatable standards is simply impossible. You might as well tell them, "Crypto is beyond your reach, forget all about using it unless you are a computer professional." Or tell
them that it's OK to use closed source crypto and
just ignore all the Bad Things that this implies.
The PGP user community, made up largely of non-geeks, will largely disappear along with PGP itself, unless they are assisted in the transition to GPG. What they want and in many cases need, is Win32 binaries (already available), GUI front ends for Win32 (none yet exist, at least nothing comparable to the "PGP Tray" utility), and most of all, "legacy" support for PGP keys (not available and AFAIK not even planned). I personally have not published and do not use a GPG key, because
I still have to maintain full compatability with PGP users.
Enough rant for now. Send your Windows oriented
users to
http://home.mpinet.net/pilobilus/EZ_PGP.htm if
they are having trouble getting started with PGP.
If you think my position has some sense in it, let
the GPG developers know: because I want to take that PGP tutorial page DOWN sometime soon, and replace it with a GPG quick-start tutorial: One
that the same kind of people who write to thank me
for the existing page, will still be able to understand and use.
The point is, you can look up my key on the
server network, and use it to encrypt messages
to me. Only I can decrypt messages encrypted
with my key. Same for me using your key.
That's called asymmetrical encryption. It's the
reason PGP and similar cryptosystems are very
convenient to use. Go get PGP or GPG and RTFM,
you'll probably think it's pretty cool stuff.
Any parent irresponsible enough to allow a kid to surf the net either accompanied by an adult, or solo is simply an unfit parent.
Translation: Any parent that allows their children
to access information outside of government controlled classrooms and mainstream right wing churches should be shot... if they have the contempt for rightful authority to resist having their children taken, that is.
Here's a little something for those who may need a refresher on
M$ history and business practice. Like maybe your U.S. senator,
local paper tech editor,.?
Microsoft vs. Innovation
How the Redmond Giant works to stifle diversity and
&n bsp;competition in the software industry
--or--
Balls to Ballmer
In the Microsoft philosophy, you do not own your computer.
Microsoft owns your computer. You are allowed to use "your"
computer as long as you use it in a manner that meets
Microsoft's approval, that is, pays money to Microsoft at every
turn. Any deviation from Microsoft's dictates is a crime, at
least in theory, and if Microsoft gets its way--which it usually
has so far--violating Redmond's dictates may soon be against the
law. According to the latest Microsoft propaganda, Linux and
other GPL software is un-American, destroys intellectual
property, and threatens the entire software industry with doom.
They are buying as many politicians as they can, as fast as they
can, starting with over $36 milliion to help "elect" George W.
Bush. So what's on their agneda?
Microsoft is your friend
The Microsoft philosophy is illustrated most clearly in its
dealings with computer manufacturers: They threaten PC makers,
that they will refuse to allow them to resell licenses for any
MS operating system at a price they can afford, if that company
fails to pre-install application software and marketing material
dictated by Microsoft. In other words, "You will ram our
application software and advertising down your customers'
throats, or we will refuse to allow you to sell computers at
all." This is extortion, because realistically, most consumers
still want a Microsoft operating system, and would not buy a PC
that did not include it.
http://unquietmind.com/bust_micros1.html
Resistance Is Futile
What about selling computers with no operating system at all?
According to Microsoft, this is a very bad thing to do, because
the people who ask to buy "naked" PCs intend to break the law by
stealing Microsoft operating system software. In their "Naked
PC" web page, which was hastily taken down when the Internet
press publicised it beyond its intended audience (small
independent PC makers), Microsoft said exactly this: "even if
your customer manages to illegally acquire and install operating
systems elsewhere, it still costs them far more time and money
than they bargained for." They go into considerable detail
about how bad and dangerous it is to allow people to buy
computers without Microsoft operating systems pre-installed, and
after ominous warnings of installation problems, viruses, and
the long arm of the law, advise small computer makers: "Politely
decline to expose your buyers or their businesses to such
troubles."
http://www.lut.fi/~lseppane/linkit/nakedpc.html
Embrace, extend, dominate.
How does Microsoft deal with companies that manage to compete
with it successfully? One example is a strategy originally
developed by Microsoft in its efforts to finish off Netscape.
Once its dominant market share with Internet Explorer was
secured (by illegally dumping it on the market), Microsoft went
to work to break the HTML standard used to display web pages. It
does this by incorporating new HTML "tags"-- programming codes--
into its own automated web-authoring software (which it also
dumped on the market, killing competitors). These new tags were
designed so that they only work with the Internet Explorer web
browser, in effect sabotaging the websites created by Microsoft
Front Page, so that they will work poorly (if at all) when
viewed with any browser but the latest and greatest versions of
Internet Explorer.
Another example of "embrace, extend, dominate" tactics, is
Microsoft's handling of another major competitor, Sun
Microsystems. Sun introduced Java, a programming language
designed to work the same with all operating systems: "Write
once, run anywhere." Now that's real innovation! Microsoft's
response was to adopt Java as its own, change it so that it
would only operate correctly on Microsoft platforms, and push
their new, improved, "J++" version of Java by, again, dumping
J++ development tools on the market. In this case, the strategy
failed: Java is not a comsumer commodity, it is an advanced
programming tool, and by definiton a crippled version of Java
that will only work with Microsoft's operating systems, is no
Java at all. J++ was universally rejected. Oh well, you can't
win them all.
Microsoft's leading propaganda buzzword is "innovation". MS
marketing strategy includes claims that it invented nearly
everything in the PC world, when in fact, Microsoft has never,
in its entire corporate history, made an original contribution
to PC functionality. The original DOS product that made Bill
Gates rich was, in fact, QDOS, the Quick Dirty Operating System
written in six weeks by Tim Paterson. This is nothing but a
simplified version of CP/M, which was sold to Mr. Gates for
$50,000.00. Mr. Gates' sole contribution was to get rid of the
word "dirty". All the innovations in DOS came from the company
Mr. Gates licensed DOS to: IBM rewrote MS-DOS after finding 300
bugs in it. Xerox invented the modern graphic "desktop
interface", Apple developed it into
consumer product, and Microsoft reverse-engineered Apple's work
to create its own "innovative" desktop operating systems.
There is little evidence that Microsoft has ever invented or
developed anything: From operating systems to networking
technology and desktop applicaitons, Microsoft never makes what
it can buy. A list of companies bought out and absorbed by MS
includes: Stac Electronics, Aha software, Lernout & Hauspie,
Fox Software, Altamira, Santa Cruz Operation, Netwise, Panorama
Software Systems, Wildfire Communications, VANstar, ENTEX
Information Services, XLConnect Solutions Inc., Vxtreme, One
Tree, Vermeer, Narta, Aspect Engineering, ResNova Software,
Interse Corp., Coopers & Peters, `LinkAge Software Inc., Colusa,
Dimension X, eShop, Softimage, Dreamworks SKG, RenderMorphics
Ltd., Bruce Artwick Organization, SingleTrac Entertainmnet,
Atomic Games. Rainbow America, Exos, Electric Gravity, UUNet,
Web TV Networks, Navitel, and controlling interests in many
other software companies.
In short, Microsoft does not innovate; they buy and kill
companies that do, and once they have absorbed the work of
others, they go looking for more new technology to purchase.
This process ends innovation, rather than creating or supporting
it.
http://www.netaction.org/msoft/world/
Microsoft and the Internet Age
Mr. Gates used to take personal credit for the purely imaginary
"information economy" and the e-everything boom; now that market
forces have had time to assert some reality and the e-swindles
have collapsed, Microsoft publicists have fallen silent on these
subjects. The facts are more like this: The Internet was built
of, by, and for the UNIX operating systems. All the standards
and technologies that run the Internet are still UNIX based, and
by the way, UNIX and its freeware clones, like BSD and Linux,
still dominate the webserver market. When and where performance
matters, Microsoft products are, by definition, excluded-- MS
Hotmail runs on FreeBSD (a high performance UNIX clone), and the
Microsoft web pages are delivered to you by Apache (a free Linux-
native web server). This demonstrates, conclusively, that even
Microsoft knows that Microsoft technology is inferior.
Micfrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said, in an interview with the
Chicago Sun-Times,that Linux is "a cancer that attaches itself
in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."
Mr. Ballmer says, "Open source is not available to commercial
companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-
source software, you have to make the rest of your software open
source." These lies come from the CEO of a company that, as
mentioned above, does in fact use GPL software in its daily
operations. Microsoft's real objection to Linux, is that
Microsoft can not cut and paste the superior Linux code into its
own products. That is all. Oh, yes, and Microsoft can not buy
GPL-licensed software technology, and claim to have invented it.
No one can. GPL software, such as the Linux kernel and GNU
operating system, is public property, free for anyone to use,
and the GPL keeps it that way.
Microsoft is right to hfear Linux. The Linux
phenomenon demonstrates that a bunch of amateurs, working in
their spare time, can make a kernel, operating system, and
comprehensive suite of software applications that is always as
good, and usually better, than anything Microsoft can buy and
put its name on. Linux is so deadly to the business world that
IBM, among others, has made a massive financial and engineering
committment to making GNU/Linux bigger and better. The
Microsoft monopoly is a temporary aberration; within two years,
Linux distributions that are more user-friendly than the latest
and greatest MS consumer products will be in circulation. Linux
already has MS beat, hands down, in network and professional
applications technologies; and what's worse, application
software written for Win32 can now be run under Linux, via VA
Linux and/or the WINE emulator.
Microsoft is already dead, running on nothing but inertia; they
have run out of real innovators they can buy, and don't know how
to do it themselves. Ballmer and Gates have only possible hope:
buy enough politicians and distribute enough propaganda to have
the GPL license declared null and void in the U.S., so they can
happily steal and use superior GPL code in their closed source
products... and claim to have invented it themselves. That is
the only way Microsoft knows how to innovate. That is the only
way Microsoft knows how to compete in the marketplace.
There will always be a Microsoft, but its days as the
invincible bully of the technology world may be coming to an end.
It's going to be a lot of fun, watching the Redmond giant fall.
(c) 2001, this text is released under GPL license, see
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
PGP 7.x.x versions from Network Associates are closed source, and
I heartily encourage people to avoid them.
Something to debate/ discuss at a key signing party, non?
Also gotta spam for my frequently updated PGP tutorial. It's for
Win32 users just starting out with PGP.
http://home.mpinet.net/pilobilus/EZ_PGP.htm
:o)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 6.5.8ckt http://www.ipgpp.com/
Comment: Friends don't let friends use closed source crypto.
Well I just created my 1st Slashdot user account,
because I hope this post will get read and moderated up.
Phil Zimmermann has left Network Associates,
citing "philosophical differences", and NAI PGP
has just become closed source software. PGP
without source is not PGP. Slashdot readers
know why. Please avoid Network Associates
PGP version 7.x.x, and spread the word.
Cyber Knights Templar PGP 6.5.8 is open source PGP for
Windows users, and includes a security patch for a very nasty
remote exploit against "official" NAI PGP 6.5.8., the
ascii armor parsing bug.
GPG is the wave of the future, but in the present,
user friendly Windows support for strong crypto is still important.
This support is provided by the Cyber
Knights Templar builds, which also include the AES cipher (Rijndael 256) and large key support.
Please publicise this address, where Win32 binaries and full
source code are posted for download:
Slashdot Mirror
Just install Junkbuster, with the
Waldherr.org blockfile. Edit the
blockfile: Remove the regexp's that
block anything that sounds like an ad, then
delete the URL's of companies whose ads you
don't mind seeing.
Windoze users have it easy: The Waldherr
version of Junkbuster has a monitor screen that
enables the user to open and edit the
with one click of a mouse, to add or remove
ad blocking domanin names, or domain-wide cookie
authorizaton.
Junkbuster. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Is there anytning Science can't do?
The same kind of contractors that "purged" thousands of non-felons from the voting rolls for Ms. Harris. Oh, they fixed the error... then a county elections supervisor found her own name on the corrected felon list. The one they actually used.
Gore won Florida by over 30,000 votes.
The cracking challenge is absolute propaganda and bullshit. The real danger is elections rigged and stolen by criminals like Freida Harris and her hirelings, who will have physical access to the insides of those black boxes. The real intent of the challenge, is to increase confidence that no one will be able to crack these boxes and demonstrate that their software counts votes erroneously. On purpose.
The machines approved for use in Florida produce no paper output. All votes cast are electronic fictions subject to no kind of verification, ever, under any circumstance: A crooked election official's wettest dream come true. At least in Florida, the democratic proces is over, dead and buried, as of now. And BTW the software is proprietary closed source, made by contractors hired by the dominant political party.
it has a feature called "Enable Auto-Blocking" which DOES firewall the intrusion packets it finds.
OK. So if something fits its signatures it will
block it. Lovely. How is that the same thing as
as a PC firewall, with by default blocks everything
until or unless the user creates a rule?
Does it prevent scans from locating a PC and identifying
its OS, version, and available services? Does it block
outgoing packets from applications the user may not know
was in an installer package? Does it enable the user to
restrict all access to a set of chosen IP addresses?
There's nothing wrong with intrusion detectors. There's
something definitely wrong with calling them PC firewalls.
not a PC firewall. It does nothing to inhibit
hostile traffic, inbound or outbound, in only
tells the user when he's been cracked and owned.
Maybe. If he's lucky.
The retail box for Black Ice calls it a firewall. They lie.
Records of the Mitnik trial sealed, explicitly to shield prosecutors, FBI agents, and the corporate "victims" of Mitnik's activities from felony prosecution and civil damages (fraud, solicitation of perjury, perjury).
I won't even mention the Supreme Court Republicans and Al Gore's 30,000 vote margin of victory in the Florida election.
We live in a dictatorship of the Corporations. Sure it's a demoncracy: One dollar, one vote.
99 buckets of bits on the wall...
Network Associates PGP has never been known for standards compliance; NAI has "joined" the Open PGP Alliance, but we will have to wait and see if they are really interested in cleaning up their act in this area.
Given that Network Associates have decided not to release the source code for PGP 7.x, the "latest & greatest" Win32 PGP version, I have my doubts about NAI's willingness to "do the right thing" with regard to standards compliance. If these decisions were up to the developers, I am sure that we would already have full source for PGP 7.x and that a standards compliant version from MAI would already be in the works. But the marketroids have the final say, and they seem to be saying, "Welcome to the complete Microsoft business model."
99 buckets of bits on the wall...
Network Associates PGP is closed source, as of release 7.x. Phil Zimmermann has left Network Associates' payroll, citing "philosophical differences" over the direction of PGP's development. (Can we say, "Ironcald non-disclosure & noncompete clauses"?) In the crypto world, this means that NAI PGP is dead and buried, though one can still decently use versions up to 6.5.8. We can hope that Network Associates management will come to their senses, but not expect it. PGP was great while it lasted, but as of 2001 it's over.
GPG is going to be the new standard, beyond question. Those who care about the issues that crypto addresses-- privacy, security, non-repudiation, and anonymity (remailers use PKI technology)-- need to put some focus on the fact that the vast majority of public key crypto users are still PGP users. In the transitional period following the de facto death of NAI PGP, compatability is the single most important issue. GPG and PGP key formats are partially incompatable and often fail to inter-operate.
From the standpoint of crypto advocacy, the incompatabilities between GPG and PGP create a logistical nightmare. It's hard enough to try to persuade "normal" people to use PGP; asking them to deal with two incompatable standards is simply impossible. You might as well tell them, "Crypto is beyond your reach, forget all about using it unless you are a computer professional." Or tell them that it's OK to use closed source crypto and just ignore all the Bad Things that this implies.
The PGP user community, made up largely of non-geeks, will largely disappear along with PGP itself, unless they are assisted in the transition to GPG. What they want and in many cases need, is Win32 binaries (already available), GUI front ends for Win32 (none yet exist, at least nothing comparable to the "PGP Tray" utility), and most of all, "legacy" support for PGP keys (not available and AFAIK not even planned). I personally have not published and do not use a GPG key, because I still have to maintain full compatability with PGP users.
Enough rant for now. Send your Windows oriented users to http://home.mpinet.net/pilobilus/EZ_PGP.htm if they are having trouble getting started with PGP. If you think my position has some sense in it, let the GPG developers know: because I want to take that PGP tutorial page DOWN sometime soon, and replace it with a GPG quick-start tutorial: One that the same kind of people who write to thank me for the existing page, will still be able to understand and use.
99 buckets of bits on the wall...
That's called asymmetrical encryption. It's the reason PGP and similar cryptosystems are very convenient to use. Go get PGP or GPG and RTFM, you'll probably think it's pretty cool stuff.
99 buckets of bits on the wall...
Translation: Any parent that allows their children to access information outside of government controlled classrooms and mainstream right wing churches should be shot... if they have the contempt for rightful authority to resist having their children taken, that is.
99 buckets of bits on the wall...
Here's a little something for those who may need a refresher on M$ history and business practice. Like maybe your U.S. senator, local paper tech editor, .?
Microsoft vs. Innovation
How the Redmond Giant works to stifle diversity and
&n bsp;competition in the software industry
--or--
Balls to Ballmer
In the Microsoft philosophy, you do not own your computer.
Microsoft owns your computer. You are allowed to use "your"
computer as long as you use it in a manner that meets
Microsoft's approval, that is, pays money to Microsoft at every
turn. Any deviation from Microsoft's dictates is a crime, at
least in theory, and if Microsoft gets its way--which it usually
has so far--violating Redmond's dictates may soon be against the
law. According to the latest Microsoft propaganda, Linux and
other GPL software is un-American, destroys intellectual
property, and threatens the entire software industry with doom.
They are buying as many politicians as they can, as fast as they
can, starting with over $36 milliion to help "elect" George W.
Bush. So what's on their agneda?
Microsoft is your friend
The Microsoft philosophy is illustrated most clearly in its
dealings with computer manufacturers: They threaten PC makers,
that they will refuse to allow them to resell licenses for any
MS operating system at a price they can afford, if that company
fails to pre-install application software and marketing material
dictated by Microsoft. In other words, "You will ram our
application software and advertising down your customers'
throats, or we will refuse to allow you to sell computers at
all." This is extortion, because realistically, most consumers
still want a Microsoft operating system, and would not buy a PC
that did not include it.
http://unquietmind.com/bust_micros1.html
Resistance Is Futile
What about selling computers with no operating system at all?
According to Microsoft, this is a very bad thing to do, because
the people who ask to buy "naked" PCs intend to break the law by
stealing Microsoft operating system software. In their "Naked
PC" web page, which was hastily taken down when the Internet
press publicised it beyond its intended audience (small
independent PC makers), Microsoft said exactly this: "even if
your customer manages to illegally acquire and install operating
systems elsewhere, it still costs them far more time and money
than they bargained for." They go into considerable detail
about how bad and dangerous it is to allow people to buy
computers without Microsoft operating systems pre-installed, and
after ominous warnings of installation problems, viruses, and
the long arm of the law, advise small computer makers: "Politely
decline to expose your buyers or their businesses to such
troubles."
http://www.lut.fi/~lseppane/linkit/nakedpc.html
Embrace, extend, dominate.
How does Microsoft deal with companies that manage to compete
with it successfully? One example is a strategy originally
developed by Microsoft in its efforts to finish off Netscape.
Once its dominant market share with Internet Explorer was
secured (by illegally dumping it on the market), Microsoft went
to work to break the HTML standard used to display web pages. It
does this by incorporating new HTML "tags"-- programming codes--
into its own automated web-authoring software (which it also
dumped on the market, killing competitors). These new tags were
designed so that they only work with the Internet Explorer web
browser, in effect sabotaging the websites created by Microsoft
Front Page, so that they will work poorly (if at all) when
viewed with any browser but the latest and greatest versions of
Internet Explorer.
http://www.internetnews.com/wd-news/article/0,,1 0_ 83051,00.html
Another example of "embrace, extend, dominate" tactics, is
Microsoft's handling of another major competitor, Sun
Microsystems. Sun introduced Java, a programming language
designed to work the same with all operating systems: "Write
once, run anywhere." Now that's real innovation! Microsoft's
response was to adopt Java as its own, change it so that it
would only operate correctly on Microsoft platforms, and push
their new, improved, "J++" version of Java by, again, dumping
J++ development tools on the market. In this case, the strategy
failed: Java is not a comsumer commodity, it is an advanced
programming tool, and by definiton a crippled version of Java
that will only work with Microsoft's operating systems, is no
Java at all. J++ was universally rejected. Oh well, you can't
win them all.
http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/articles/microsof tj ava/
How Microsoft Innovates
Microsoft's leading propaganda buzzword is "innovation". MS
marketing strategy includes claims that it invented nearly
everything in the PC world, when in fact, Microsoft has never,
in its entire corporate history, made an original contribution
to PC functionality. The original DOS product that made Bill
Gates rich was, in fact, QDOS, the Quick Dirty Operating System
written in six weeks by Tim Paterson. This is nothing but a
simplified version of CP/M, which was sold to Mr. Gates for
$50,000.00. Mr. Gates' sole contribution was to get rid of the
word "dirty". All the innovations in DOS came from the company
Mr. Gates licensed DOS to: IBM rewrote MS-DOS after finding 300
bugs in it. Xerox invented the modern graphic "desktop
interface", Apple developed it into
consumer product, and Microsoft reverse-engineered Apple's work
to create its own "innovative" desktop operating systems.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893 ,s
id9_gci214277,00.html
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html
Innovation Stops Here
There is little evidence that Microsoft has ever invented or
developed anything: From operating systems to networking
technology and desktop applicaitons, Microsoft never makes what
it can buy. A list of companies bought out and absorbed by MS
includes: Stac Electronics, Aha software, Lernout & Hauspie,
Fox Software, Altamira, Santa Cruz Operation, Netwise, Panorama
Software Systems, Wildfire Communications, VANstar, ENTEX
Information Services, XLConnect Solutions Inc., Vxtreme, One
Tree, Vermeer, Narta, Aspect Engineering, ResNova Software,
Interse Corp., Coopers & Peters, `LinkAge Software Inc., Colusa,
Dimension X, eShop, Softimage, Dreamworks SKG, RenderMorphics
Ltd., Bruce Artwick Organization, SingleTrac Entertainmnet,
Atomic Games. Rainbow America, Exos, Electric Gravity, UUNet,
Web TV Networks, Navitel, and controlling interests in many
other software companies.
In short, Microsoft does not innovate; they buy and kill
companies that do, and once they have absorbed the work of
others, they go looking for more new technology to purchase.
This process ends innovation, rather than creating or supporting
it.
http://www.netaction.org/msoft/world/
Microsoft and the Internet Age
Mr. Gates used to take personal credit for the purely imaginary
"information economy" and the e-everything boom; now that market
forces have had time to assert some reality and the e-swindles
have collapsed, Microsoft publicists have fallen silent on these
subjects. The facts are more like this: The Internet was built
of, by, and for the UNIX operating systems. All the standards
and technologies that run the Internet are still UNIX based, and
by the way, UNIX and its freeware clones, like BSD and Linux,
still dominate the webserver market. When and where performance
matters, Microsoft products are, by definition, excluded-- MS
Hotmail runs on FreeBSD (a high performance UNIX clone), and the
Microsoft web pages are delivered to you by Apache (a free Linux-
native web server). This demonstrates, conclusively, that even
Microsoft knows that Microsoft technology is inferior.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,25 07 538,00.html, 00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,20768
Linux is a cancer?
Micfrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said, in an interview with the
Chicago Sun-Times,that Linux is "a cancer that attaches itself
in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."
Mr. Ballmer says, "Open source is not available to commercial
companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-
source software, you have to make the rest of your software open
source." These lies come from the CEO of a company that, as
mentioned above, does in fact use GPL software in its daily
operations. Microsoft's real objection to Linux, is that
Microsoft can not cut and paste the superior Linux code into its
own products. That is all. Oh, yes, and Microsoft can not buy
GPL-licensed software technology, and claim to have invented it.
No one can. GPL software, such as the Linux kernel and GNU
operating system, is public property, free for anyone to use,
and the GPL keeps it that way.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micr o0 1.html
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/faq.html
My two cents
Microsoft is right to hfear Linux. The Linux
phenomenon demonstrates that a bunch of amateurs, working in
their spare time, can make a kernel, operating system, and
comprehensive suite of software applications that is always as
good, and usually better, than anything Microsoft can buy and
put its name on. Linux is so deadly to the business world that
IBM, among others, has made a massive financial and engineering
committment to making GNU/Linux bigger and better. The
Microsoft monopoly is a temporary aberration; within two years,
Linux distributions that are more user-friendly than the latest
and greatest MS consumer products will be in circulation. Linux
already has MS beat, hands down, in network and professional
applications technologies; and what's worse, application
software written for Win32 can now be run under Linux, via VA
Linux and/or the WINE emulator.
Microsoft is already dead, running on nothing but inertia; they
have run out of real innovators they can buy, and don't know how
to do it themselves. Ballmer and Gates have only possible hope:
buy enough politicians and distribute enough propaganda to have
the GPL license declared null and void in the U.S., so they can
happily steal and use superior GPL code in their closed source
products... and claim to have invented it themselves. That is
the only way Microsoft knows how to innovate. That is the only
way Microsoft knows how to compete in the marketplace.
There will always be a Microsoft, but its days as the
invincible bully of the technology world may be coming to an end.
It's going to be a lot of fun, watching the Redmond giant fall.
(c) 2001, this text is released under GPL license, see
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
99 buckets of bits on the wall...
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Hash: SHA1
Look for my other comment if yer still here.
PGP 7.x.x versions from Network Associates are closed source, and
I heartily encourage people to avoid them.
Something to debate/ discuss at a key signing party, non?
Also gotta spam for my frequently updated PGP tutorial. It's for
Win32 users just starting out with PGP.
http://home.mpinet.net/pilobilus/EZ_PGP.htm
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Comment: Friends don't let friends use closed source crypto.
iQA/AwUBOx3BVk0LbMwPxGulEQKR8QCeM3diSGvaQlpHnQbs6I 1Ta3uAVnoAoI2v
5TbynWjWA3CnuhK12WjSwRES
=CzMd
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99 buckets of bits on the wall...
Well I just created my 1st Slashdot user account, because I hope this post will get read and moderated up.
Phil Zimmermann has left Network Associates, citing "philosophical differences", and NAI PGP has just become closed source software. PGP without source is not PGP. Slashdot readers know why. Please avoid Network Associates PGP version 7.x.x, and spread the word.
Cyber Knights Templar PGP 6.5.8 is open source PGP for Windows users, and includes a security patch for a very nasty remote exploit against "official" NAI PGP 6.5.8., the ascii armor parsing bug.
GPG is the wave of the future, but in the present, user friendly Windows support for strong crypto is still important. This support is provided by the Cyber Knights Templar builds, which also include the AES cipher (Rijndael 256) and large key support.
Please publicise this address, where Win32 binaries and full source code are posted for download:
http://www.ipgpp.com/
There is no charge for CKT PGP, and BTW, I am not afilliated in any way with the CKT folks.
99 buckets of bits on the wall...