The problem is that so long as IE comes bundled and is difficult/impossible to remove, the principle of minimum software will always prevent the use of any other browser on windows.
Now really this is a flaw which acts directly against the principle of minimum software, because you are forced to keep IE wether you like it or not, even on a system which is never intended to do any web browsing duties... However there is often a double standard, if anyone else pulled shit like this it would be declared horrendously insecure and avoided and yet MS can get away with gaping holes.
Look at any OS hardening guides, unix based guides will tell you to remove whatever browser (if any) comes installed and even to remove X11 if you can, whereas windows guides skirt around the fact that a gui and installation of ie are mandatory. And yet the results of both sets of hardening are considered on the same level by various government agencies and industry bodies (eg PCI regulations).
IE9 is still a problem tho... When IE6 came out it wasn't all that bad compared to its peers, just like IE9 today. However, if everyone moves over to IE9 and other browsers die out then you can kiss goodbye to any updates, IE9 will stagnate and become the new IE6. Market share of any browsers other than IE should be as high as possible, otherwise MS will just screw the web like they have done before.
That assumes there is sufficiently low latency, combined with tcp window scaling to ensure that your connection is actually saturated... Quite often, there will be capability for the line to receive more data but the server will wait for acknowledgement of what its already sent before it sends any more. This is especially bad over links with high latency, or with poor upstream speeds relative to their download speed.
Sure, that's what resume is for... HTTP supports it, FTP supports it...
What i don't like are sites which force you to download files within the browser (which are designed for browsing, and generally have very poor download functions) instead of just presenting a url which you can cut+paste to wget.
The problem is that the buffers are too big, which is done to increase throughput at the expense of latency. Once the buffer is full, you have to wait for the entire contents of the buffer to be sent before your next high priority packet can be sent.
Perhaps because ISPs like to rate limit torrent traffic, making bittorrent downloads uselessly slow (while downloads over http are much faster). Or perhaps because torrents hog your upstream bandwidth, and most end user connections have massively less upstream than they do downstream. And because most consumer routers have large buffers, uploading flat out results in ridiculous levels of latency. Or maybe because many ISPs cap you at a certain volume of traffic per month, and this include upstream as well. Or it could have to do with most people being NAT'd and thus reducing the efficiency of torrents (and causing higher load on those of us who aren't natted). Or maybe because bittorrent has a reputation of being used for copyright infringement.
In this context it's actually far more efficient for the ISP to just keep a local cache of all the frequently downloaded content.
MS has long been way behind when it comes to eyecandy... I ran enlightenment on my p100 in the late 90s and it looked prettier than windows ever has, but i soon found out that i actually preferred a simple, lightweight unintrusive window manager. All the fancy graphics just serve to increase confusion and reduce performance.
Selling software is the easy money, support contracts are relatively hard work in comparison.
With software you can produce more copies extremely easy, especially if your just sending out license codes rather than physical media. You have virtually infinite scalability without increasing costs, thus you can reap massive profits. Also above a certain threshold, the development cost of software becomes covered and the ongoing costs are so trivial that its effectively a 100% profit margin.
Support contracts on the other hand require staff on hand to answer the phone and deal with the customers queries, if you have too few staff or staff who aren't sufficiently capable of providing the support the customers are paying for you will have major problems so as you get more customers you also need more staff.
They implemented perfectly good encryption in a flawed way, you don't just need industry standard algorithms, you need to be able to verify that they are implemented correctly.
The iphone supports SSL for IMAP, POP3 and SMTP... It also supports SSL for Activesync. There is also support for establishing a VPN connection.
Sure, Apple don't mandate the use of a proprietary service and give you the option to use plain unencrypted imap/pop3 if you want to.
What RIM are doing is locking users in to their proprietary service and proprietary server, android and ios based phones will talk to any number of standards compliant servers from a multitude of different sources with or without encryption.
Apple/Google give the customers choices, RIM don't.
I don't understand how you can claim blackberry is for power users, you have a closed proprietary platform tied to a closed proprietary service and requires you to run another closed proprietary server... You get far more flexibility from android, and even from iOS once you jailbreak it.
Blackberry is aimed at business users who have very limited requirements, quite the opposite of a power user.
The iphone has remote desktop, vnc and ssh clients, as do android phones, they also have voip clients which blackberry handsets seem to be severely lacking and which are great for business use, if your physically in the office and within wireless range calls are routed over that, otherwise they are routed over your cell service.
BES runs on windows (which is not free) and requires a corporate groupware setup such as exchange, notes or groupwise, none of which are free.
Other phones now offer many of the same features, but by integrating directly with the mail server and not requiring a third party server or service.
I don't like the idea of having to use RIMs service or run their server, i want something open and which i can use with any mobile service and any backend server. Activesync may not be that open, but there are specs available and third party implementations which is more than can be said for RIMs protocols.
You will most likely have reduced performance, especially if the rest of the car has to spin the defective motor, but it should still run...
When Jaguar were still producing V12 engines, it was quite common for people to not change the rear pair spark plugs (they are quite hard to reach because of the size of the v12 and the dimensions of the engine bay) so after a while they would be running on only 10 cylinders.
Sure, people who are writing code because they enjoy it and are taking their time rather than rushing are likely to make much better code than someone who is forced to work to a deadline.
But that's not even the case, many free software is written by students, researchers, or by people who's day job isn't writing code such as network admins. Many people are even paid to write free software, by companies who make their money through offering goods or services which cannot be trivially duplicated such as hardware and support services.
And as i pointed out already, distributing your code under an open license makes it easy for you to reuse other code available under the same or similar terms, so you may find that most of what you want to write already exists and you just need to add to it.
Surely the software is free, support costs model should be preferable to virtually everyone on slashdot... A site populated by people who are generally clued up enough to not need support services means we don't really need to pay for anything.
There are plenty of people who are willing to develop software for free. There are also plenty of companies out there willing to develop software for free and use alternative methods of obtaining revenue (support contracts, hardware sales, advertising etc).
When you share, the development work becomes considerably less too. Compare the time/effort of developing your own OS from scratch vs creating your own customised linux distribution.
Iran was grossly negligent in allowing their critical infrastructure to run on software controlled by a hostile government (and which they most likely had to pirate because there are export restrictions against iran).
It just means you can't do it in realtime on a 2.5ghz core2... Nothing to stop you dumping the encrypted data somewhere and decrypting it later.
Also consider a 2.5GHz Core2 isn't all that modern, and it doesn't even specify wether this cpu is dual or quad core. With 6, 8 and even 12 core processors available, plus the possibility to parallelize over multiple processors 60fps is quite achievable today.
There is also the possibility of using a GPU to do this.
And what if those circumvention devices are distributed by someone outside of the jurisdiction of the DMCA and you as a US citizen are simply purchasing one and keeping it to yourself?
Take guns for an example, there are legal uses for them (shooting targets etc)... But i would wager a significant portion of actual gun use is illegal. In many countries guns are tightly controlled, yet the US has rather looser controls than most countries.
I have a device capable of running psgroove, and i have a ps3 which runs an old version of the firmware (not currently compatible with the jailbreak but i dont want to upgrade). It currently runs linux through the otheros feature, but as soon as a version comes out which uses the jailbreak and can give me full access to the hardware i intend to use it.
As you say, people with limited funds... These people would have bought few, if any, games if they weren't able to pirate them. And if they do pirate games, chances are their limited funds will be used to buy accessories like controllers (remember when games consoles actually came with 2 controllers?).
Aside from the convenience... Many people live in very small apartments especially in large cities, where are we supposed to store 400 or more DVD cases? I certainly don't have any space for that, but a couple of 2TB hard drives is far less of a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that so long as IE comes bundled and is difficult/impossible to remove, the principle of minimum software will always prevent the use of any other browser on windows.
Now really this is a flaw which acts directly against the principle of minimum software, because you are forced to keep IE wether you like it or not, even on a system which is never intended to do any web browsing duties... However there is often a double standard, if anyone else pulled shit like this it would be declared horrendously insecure and avoided and yet MS can get away with gaping holes.
Look at any OS hardening guides, unix based guides will tell you to remove whatever browser (if any) comes installed and even to remove X11 if you can, whereas windows guides skirt around the fact that a gui and installation of ie are mandatory. And yet the results of both sets of hardening are considered on the same level by various government agencies and industry bodies (eg PCI regulations).
IE9 is still a problem tho...
When IE6 came out it wasn't all that bad compared to its peers, just like IE9 today. However, if everyone moves over to IE9 and other browsers die out then you can kiss goodbye to any updates, IE9 will stagnate and become the new IE6.
Market share of any browsers other than IE should be as high as possible, otherwise MS will just screw the web like they have done before.
That assumes there is sufficiently low latency, combined with tcp window scaling to ensure that your connection is actually saturated...
Quite often, there will be capability for the line to receive more data but the server will wait for acknowledgement of what its already sent before it sends any more. This is especially bad over links with high latency, or with poor upstream speeds relative to their download speed.
Sure, that's what resume is for... HTTP supports it, FTP supports it...
What i don't like are sites which force you to download files within the browser (which are designed for browsing, and generally have very poor download functions) instead of just presenting a url which you can cut+paste to wget.
The problem is that the buffers are too big, which is done to increase throughput at the expense of latency. Once the buffer is full, you have to wait for the entire contents of the buffer to be sent before your next high priority packet can be sent.
Perhaps because ISPs like to rate limit torrent traffic, making bittorrent downloads uselessly slow (while downloads over http are much faster).
Or perhaps because torrents hog your upstream bandwidth, and most end user connections have massively less upstream than they do downstream. And because most consumer routers have large buffers, uploading flat out results in ridiculous levels of latency.
Or maybe because many ISPs cap you at a certain volume of traffic per month, and this include upstream as well.
Or it could have to do with most people being NAT'd and thus reducing the efficiency of torrents (and causing higher load on those of us who aren't natted).
Or maybe because bittorrent has a reputation of being used for copyright infringement.
In this context it's actually far more efficient for the ISP to just keep a local cache of all the frequently downloaded content.
MS has long been way behind when it comes to eyecandy... I ran enlightenment on my p100 in the late 90s and it looked prettier than windows ever has, but i soon found out that i actually preferred a simple, lightweight unintrusive window manager. All the fancy graphics just serve to increase confusion and reduce performance.
Choosing defaults values for parameters are done at the implementation stage, especially if those parameters are not modifiable by the user later.
Selling software is the easy money, support contracts are relatively hard work in comparison.
With software you can produce more copies extremely easy, especially if your just sending out license codes rather than physical media. You have virtually infinite scalability without increasing costs, thus you can reap massive profits. Also above a certain threshold, the development cost of software becomes covered and the ongoing costs are so trivial that its effectively a 100% profit margin.
Support contracts on the other hand require staff on hand to answer the phone and deal with the customers queries, if you have too few staff or staff who aren't sufficiently capable of providing the support the customers are paying for you will have major problems so as you get more customers you also need more staff.
They implemented perfectly good encryption in a flawed way, you don't just need industry standard algorithms, you need to be able to verify that they are implemented correctly.
The iphone supports SSL for IMAP, POP3 and SMTP... It also supports SSL for Activesync.
There is also support for establishing a VPN connection.
Sure, Apple don't mandate the use of a proprietary service and give you the option to use plain unencrypted imap/pop3 if you want to.
What RIM are doing is locking users in to their proprietary service and proprietary server, android and ios based phones will talk to any number of standards compliant servers from a multitude of different sources with or without encryption.
Apple/Google give the customers choices, RIM don't.
I don't understand how you can claim blackberry is for power users, you have a closed proprietary platform tied to a closed proprietary service and requires you to run another closed proprietary server... You get far more flexibility from android, and even from iOS once you jailbreak it.
Blackberry is aimed at business users who have very limited requirements, quite the opposite of a power user.
The iphone has remote desktop, vnc and ssh clients, as do android phones, they also have voip clients which blackberry handsets seem to be severely lacking and which are great for business use, if your physically in the office and within wireless range calls are routed over that, otherwise they are routed over your cell service.
BES runs on windows (which is not free) and requires a corporate groupware setup such as exchange, notes or groupwise, none of which are free.
Other phones now offer many of the same features, but by integrating directly with the mail server and not requiring a third party server or service.
I don't like the idea of having to use RIMs service or run their server, i want something open and which i can use with any mobile service and any backend server. Activesync may not be that open, but there are specs available and third party implementations which is more than can be said for RIMs protocols.
You will most likely have reduced performance, especially if the rest of the car has to spin the defective motor, but it should still run...
When Jaguar were still producing V12 engines, it was quite common for people to not change the rear pair spark plugs (they are quite hard to reach because of the size of the v12 and the dimensions of the engine bay) so after a while they would be running on only 10 cylinders.
Sure, people who are writing code because they enjoy it and are taking their time rather than rushing are likely to make much better code than someone who is forced to work to a deadline.
But that's not even the case, many free software is written by students, researchers, or by people who's day job isn't writing code such as network admins. Many people are even paid to write free software, by companies who make their money through offering goods or services which cannot be trivially duplicated such as hardware and support services.
And as i pointed out already, distributing your code under an open license makes it easy for you to reuse other code available under the same or similar terms, so you may find that most of what you want to write already exists and you just need to add to it.
Surely the software is free, support costs model should be preferable to virtually everyone on slashdot... A site populated by people who are generally clued up enough to not need support services means we don't really need to pay for anything.
They were, up to twice as fast as a PC specially selected to be half the speed.
There are plenty of people who are willing to develop software for free.
There are also plenty of companies out there willing to develop software for free and use alternative methods of obtaining revenue (support contracts, hardware sales, advertising etc).
When you share, the development work becomes considerably less too. Compare the time/effort of developing your own OS from scratch vs creating your own customised linux distribution.
Doesn't really matter either way...
Iran was grossly negligent in allowing their critical infrastructure to run on software controlled by a hostile government (and which they most likely had to pirate because there are export restrictions against iran).
It just means you can't do it in realtime on a 2.5ghz core2... Nothing to stop you dumping the encrypted data somewhere and decrypting it later.
Also consider a 2.5GHz Core2 isn't all that modern, and it doesn't even specify wether this cpu is dual or quad core. With 6, 8 and even 12 core processors available, plus the possibility to parallelize over multiple processors 60fps is quite achievable today.
There is also the possibility of using a GPU to do this.
And what if those circumvention devices are distributed by someone outside of the jurisdiction of the DMCA and you as a US citizen are simply purchasing one and keeping it to yourself?
Take guns for an example, there are legal uses for them (shooting targets etc)... But i would wager a significant portion of actual gun use is illegal.
In many countries guns are tightly controlled, yet the US has rather looser controls than most countries.
I have a device capable of running psgroove, and i have a ps3 which runs an old version of the firmware (not currently compatible with the jailbreak but i dont want to upgrade).
It currently runs linux through the otheros feature, but as soon as a version comes out which uses the jailbreak and can give me full access to the hardware i intend to use it.
And they say the GPL is viral...
As you say, people with limited funds...
These people would have bought few, if any, games if they weren't able to pirate them. And if they do pirate games, chances are their limited funds will be used to buy accessories like controllers (remember when games consoles actually came with 2 controllers?).
Aside from the convenience...
Many people live in very small apartments especially in large cities, where are we supposed to store 400 or more DVD cases? I certainly don't have any space for that, but a couple of 2TB hard drives is far less of a problem.