Because that makes for a very good backdoor... If the owner of that system removes your malware, you have at least left the system open so that you can install something else more easily in the future.
Which is why Linux is much better for the vast majority of people...
"Happy_pup.jpg.sh" would show up as "Happy_pup.jpg.sh" and not "Happy_pup.jpg" for starters, windows likes to hide the file extension while teaching people to trust the file extension, so they see the first extension and assume it's a picture... Linux doesn't do that.
Also, instructions for linux would be longer (and involve changing file permissions etc first and probably invoking sudo), before the malware could execute.
Linux provides most of what people need in the default package repositories, so you create a distro for such users where they can only install things from the built in repositories, and cannot execute anything else (ie their homedir is mounted noexec)... The very few people who need to install something not in the default repository can get someone knowledgeable to do it.
You don't need to give people no install capability, you just give them limited install capability... The existing install capability offered by modern linux distros is more than enough for most people anyway.
Obligatory car analogy, most people know better than to open the hood, and rely on someone appropriately trained if anything more advanced than regular driving needs to be done. Why should computers be any different? Your velma wouldn't try to change her oil, let alone install additional components into her car.
You can also wait for someone else to log in, and then spoof their mac address and ip... Their connection will die and you will take it over, and they won't be able to reconnect.
Both O2 in the UK and AT&T provide wifi access as an inclusive part of their iphone plans, i assume other carriers do the same... Why shouldn't verizon do the same? Wifi is a lot faster, and pulling out a phone to read something is much easier than using a laptop, even a very small laptop.
That strategy is good in the grant scheme of things.. Not everyone should compete at all levels of a given market. Ferrari don't make cheap lowend cars, they don't make large family cars, they compete in small subsets of the market. Prada don't make cheap jumpsuits for mechanics to wear at work etc... Given an open competitive market it's possible to do this.
If MS's stranglehold is broken, then you will see Apple as a highend vendor offering higher end fashionable goods, lower end vendors like Dell and Asus offering cheaper linux based systems, sun/oracle offering their own solaris based packages targeting the high end but less fashionable market, and end users can choose what suits them best, just like they do today with cars, clothes and thousands of other goods.
Also, you won't be at a disadvantage by choosing one of these alternative products... You won't buy a canon photocopier, only to find that people send you "proprietary xerox paper" that the canon can't copy... You won't find yourself in gas stations selling proprietary ford-specific fuel, and you won't find yourself trying to drive on ford specific roads.
All of these products operate in open markets dominated by standards where any supplier can produce a compatible product, and you have the freedom to choose the one that provides you the best value.
Unregulated capitalism will ultimately lead to fascism, where sufficiently powerful corporations will become or control the government.
Free market capitalism is far better for everyone else. And if a competitive market doesn't happen on its own, then the government should force competition and prevent corporations from becoming too powerful.
That would be fine, if you could remove the default browser, which you can't... Also, they are illegally affecting the market by getting other things tied to their browser, thus harming competition without improving their own product.
Competition is supposed to promote improvements and decrease prices, not allow one player to rise to the top by nefarious means and then do everything they can to prevent any future competition.
SGI machines were able to determine the size from Sun and IBM monitors too, not just the SGI ones...
Code *should* work in inches, it's code that works in pixels which overrides the dpi setting... Code has no way to know how many pixels are required to represent an inch without knowing the screen dpi.
Most modern monitors are capable of reporting their DPI to the host system, yet windows ignores that and assumes 96 unless you explicitly tell it otherwise... X11 also lets you manually override the detected DPI if you wish, and it also handles non square pixels correctly (a single figure dpi value has no way to specify the shape of pixels).
Mine is very slightly off square: screen #0:
dimensions: 1600x1024 pixels (373x241 millimeters)
resolution: 109x108 dots per inch
and measuring the visible area of the screen by hand, that's spot on and required no intervention from me to configure it.
Free software by Stallman's definition implies a high level of freedom, tho obviously not limitless because limitless freedom turns to anarchy where the strongest prosper and the weak suffer.
In a world under Stallman's vision, all software would be free, and you would be free to choose which of the available free software you used and what you did with it, and if you don't like the existing software you can modify it or write (/have written) your own according to the openly available specs.
That sounds pretty good to me, and certainly a lot better than the current status quo where many things force you to use MS software wether you like it or not.
Your right, long copyright terms on software are ridiculous because of how quickly it becomes obsolete...
What would make more sense, is a rolling term with requirements... Once you make software available the clock starts, and you must continue making it available on a non discriminate basis under the same or more lenient terms, with the same or greater level of support and for the same price or less (allowing for the official government rate of inflation).
If you stop making something available, then you should be required to release it to the public domain including source code.
I whole heartedly agree with your "innovate or die" approach, not just for technology but for any copyrighted work... Noone should sit on their lazy ass collecting royalties for work they did years ago... How many fucked up musicians do we have who haven't produced any new music in years, but are spending their days fucked out of their minds on drugs paid for by ongoing royalties.
Because they can find out who you are, but they no longer have any way to trace the guy who sat round the corner from your house with a laptop. You have effectively facilitated his crime and assisted him in covering his tracks.
To tell it, it doesn't try to work out that information by itself like X11 does (and has for many years, sgi machines used to know what monitor they had connected). Also, most apps are designed for the default dpi setting so some things break when you modify the setting, X11 is more resilient because there is more variety of different values for the dpi.
The reviewer complains that it's slow on a machine a few years old running IE7... What does he expect? IE7 has one of the slowest javascript engines of any browser... It already lagged way behind everything else *before* the other browsers started implementing their new JIT based javascript engines, and now the speed difference is just ridiculous.
Gentoo lets you build binary packages too, build the packages on one box and send binaries to the rest... That way you can update what you need to and leave what you don't, with binary packages dependencies often have to be replaced too... For example, something built against glibc 2.8 will require glibc 2.8 at runtime, even if its perfectly capable of being compiled against a much older version.
Yes, i've known a lot of people like this... The solution is to setup a consultancy company and sell him some free software for an extremely high price (rebrand it if necessary)... He will feel happier because he paid through the nose for it, and you'll feel happier because you just made yourself a tidy sum.
I knew someone who was totally against anything free or anything associated with linux etc, and yet he uses cisco asa firewalls (linux based), vmware esx (linux based), cisco call manager (linux based), some kind of ids which runs linux, ironport spam filters (freebsd based) and probably a lot of other stuff too...
By default, and in virtually all deployments, windows does not comply with various government security rules... Like having no support for AES encryption until very recently (and gov tend to still use old versions) or having unnecessary and excessively complex services (like msrpc and netbios) open...
Whoever audits the system is supposed to flag these issues and if they cant be fixed, detail how they are mitigated (eg firewall the unnecessary ports)... Unfortunately, a lot of people doing this don't even follow the guidelines properly and ignore things like this...
I think any network deployment should include complete details of every function available remotely from the system (ie document the protocols in use and all features they support and wether these features are available with or without authentication)...
Take for example pop3 (which should run over ssl) the only functions available without auth are user and pass (ie functions required to let you authenticate), and a wide variety of other functions are available to users who successfully authenticate.
That way you know exactly what should be happening, and you can build a proper risk profile and setup very strict IDS rules etc..
Assuming the OS knows and uses the screen DPI... X11 has done this for years, but i dont think windows does. And aside from that, not all screens are capable of reporting their DPI, and this will also break where you have a multi screen setup using 2 different size screens.
So what happens if someone uses a screen which uses a different DPI to the one intended by the creator of this device? Nothing will line up and you won't get any readable output from it unless you resize the image on screen to the appropriate size...
On a system which automatically works out your DPI, this could work... However the majority of systems (windows, osx) don't...
Yes, keyboard/mouse are far better for some kinds of games... I tried C&C on the xbox and found it virtually unplayable with the control pad, and FPS games really need the immediacy of a mouse rather than the slow gradual (by comparison) movement of a control pad.
But for everything else a console is so much more convenient, you have fixed hardware and a guarantee that a game you purchase will run with no fuss...
All the modern consoles support USB, and most new keyboards and mice are also USB... So why don't more games support this as a possible control method? Most console games also have PC versions, or are direct ports of PC games so adding keyboard/mouse support wouldn't even be much of a burden.
Second that, i used Q/A for up/down and C/B for left/right, i remember that being the default binding for some game i had on the sinclair spectrum. Most games with keyboard control would let you customize the keys, and i never had a joystick for my sinclair so keyboard control was my only option. In fact, the sinclair didn't even have joystick ports by default, you required a third party interface card and there were several different types of such card so virtually every game had a keyboard option and possibly up to 4 different joystick options.
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Because that makes for a very good backdoor...
If the owner of that system removes your malware, you have at least left the system open so that you can install something else more easily in the future.
Which is why Linux is much better for the vast majority of people...
"Happy_pup.jpg.sh" would show up as "Happy_pup.jpg.sh" and not "Happy_pup.jpg" for starters, windows likes to hide the file extension while teaching people to trust the file extension, so they see the first extension and assume it's a picture... Linux doesn't do that.
Also, instructions for linux would be longer (and involve changing file permissions etc first and probably invoking sudo), before the malware could execute.
Linux provides most of what people need in the default package repositories, so you create a distro for such users where they can only install things from the built in repositories, and cannot execute anything else (ie their homedir is mounted noexec)... The very few people who need to install something not in the default repository can get someone knowledgeable to do it.
You don't need to give people no install capability, you just give them limited install capability... The existing install capability offered by modern linux distros is more than enough for most people anyway.
Obligatory car analogy, most people know better than to open the hood, and rely on someone appropriately trained if anything more advanced than regular driving needs to be done. Why should computers be any different? Your velma wouldn't try to change her oil, let alone install additional components into her car.
You can also wait for someone else to log in, and then spoof their mac address and ip... Their connection will die and you will take it over, and they won't be able to reconnect.
Both O2 in the UK and AT&T provide wifi access as an inclusive part of their iphone plans, i assume other carriers do the same... Why shouldn't verizon do the same?
Wifi is a lot faster, and pulling out a phone to read something is much easier than using a laptop, even a very small laptop.
That strategy is good in the grant scheme of things.. Not everyone should compete at all levels of a given market.
Ferrari don't make cheap lowend cars, they don't make large family cars, they compete in small subsets of the market.
Prada don't make cheap jumpsuits for mechanics to wear at work etc...
Given an open competitive market it's possible to do this.
If MS's stranglehold is broken, then you will see Apple as a highend vendor offering higher end fashionable goods, lower end vendors like Dell and Asus offering cheaper linux based systems, sun/oracle offering their own solaris based packages targeting the high end but less fashionable market, and end users can choose what suits them best, just like they do today with cars, clothes and thousands of other goods.
Also, you won't be at a disadvantage by choosing one of these alternative products... You won't buy a canon photocopier, only to find that people send you "proprietary xerox paper" that the canon can't copy... You won't find yourself in gas stations selling proprietary ford-specific fuel, and you won't find yourself trying to drive on ford specific roads.
All of these products operate in open markets dominated by standards where any supplier can produce a compatible product, and you have the freedom to choose the one that provides you the best value.
Unregulated capitalism will ultimately lead to fascism, where sufficiently powerful corporations will become or control the government.
Free market capitalism is far better for everyone else. And if a competitive market doesn't happen on its own, then the government should force competition and prevent corporations from becoming too powerful.
Maybe if windows actually had a package manager like everything else does, then you could just use that to install a browser easily.
I was able to install ubuntu, remove firefox and install another browser (in this case epiphany) without ever starting firefox...
That would be fine, if you could remove the default browser, which you can't...
Also, they are illegally affecting the market by getting other things tied to their browser, thus harming competition without improving their own product.
Competition is supposed to promote improvements and decrease prices, not allow one player to rise to the top by nefarious means and then do everything they can to prevent any future competition.
SGI machines were able to determine the size from Sun and IBM monitors too, not just the SGI ones...
Code *should* work in inches, it's code that works in pixels which overrides the dpi setting... Code has no way to know how many pixels are required to represent an inch without knowing the screen dpi.
Most modern monitors are capable of reporting their DPI to the host system, yet windows ignores that and assumes 96 unless you explicitly tell it otherwise... X11 also lets you manually override the detected DPI if you wish, and it also handles non square pixels correctly (a single figure dpi value has no way to specify the shape of pixels).
Mine is very slightly off square:
screen #0:
dimensions: 1600x1024 pixels (373x241 millimeters)
resolution: 109x108 dots per inch
and measuring the visible area of the screen by hand, that's spot on and required no intervention from me to configure it.
Free software by Stallman's definition implies a high level of freedom, tho obviously not limitless because limitless freedom turns to anarchy where the strongest prosper and the weak suffer.
In a world under Stallman's vision, all software would be free, and you would be free to choose which of the available free software you used and what you did with it, and if you don't like the existing software you can modify it or write (/have written) your own according to the openly available specs.
That sounds pretty good to me, and certainly a lot better than the current status quo where many things force you to use MS software wether you like it or not.
Your right, long copyright terms on software are ridiculous because of how quickly it becomes obsolete...
What would make more sense, is a rolling term with requirements... Once you make software available the clock starts, and you must continue making it available on a non discriminate basis under the same or more lenient terms, with the same or greater level of support and for the same price or less (allowing for the official government rate of inflation).
If you stop making something available, then you should be required to release it to the public domain including source code.
I whole heartedly agree with your "innovate or die" approach, not just for technology but for any copyrighted work... Noone should sit on their lazy ass collecting royalties for work they did years ago... How many fucked up musicians do we have who haven't produced any new music in years, but are spending their days fucked out of their minds on drugs paid for by ongoing royalties.
Because they can find out who you are, but they no longer have any way to trace the guy who sat round the corner from your house with a laptop. You have effectively facilitated his crime and assisted him in covering his tracks.
To tell it, it doesn't try to work out that information by itself like X11 does (and has for many years, sgi machines used to know what monitor they had connected).
Also, most apps are designed for the default dpi setting so some things break when you modify the setting, X11 is more resilient because there is more variety of different values for the dpi.
The reviewer complains that it's slow on a machine a few years old running IE7... What does he expect? IE7 has one of the slowest javascript engines of any browser... It already lagged way behind everything else *before* the other browsers started implementing their new JIT based javascript engines, and now the speed difference is just ridiculous.
Gentoo lets you build binary packages too, build the packages on one box and send binaries to the rest... That way you can update what you need to and leave what you don't, with binary packages dependencies often have to be replaced too... For example, something built against glibc 2.8 will require glibc 2.8 at runtime, even if its perfectly capable of being compiled against a much older version.
Yes, i've known a lot of people like this...
The solution is to setup a consultancy company and sell him some free software for an extremely high price (rebrand it if necessary)... He will feel happier because he paid through the nose for it, and you'll feel happier because you just made yourself a tidy sum.
I knew someone who was totally against anything free or anything associated with linux etc, and yet he uses cisco asa firewalls (linux based), vmware esx (linux based), cisco call manager (linux based), some kind of ids which runs linux, ironport spam filters (freebsd based) and probably a lot of other stuff too...
By default, and in virtually all deployments, windows does not comply with various government security rules... Like having no support for AES encryption until very recently (and gov tend to still use old versions) or having unnecessary and excessively complex services (like msrpc and netbios) open...
Whoever audits the system is supposed to flag these issues and if they cant be fixed, detail how they are mitigated (eg firewall the unnecessary ports)... Unfortunately, a lot of people doing this don't even follow the guidelines properly and ignore things like this...
I think any network deployment should include complete details of every function available remotely from the system (ie document the protocols in use and all features they support and wether these features are available with or without authentication)...
Take for example pop3 (which should run over ssl) the only functions available without auth are user and pass (ie functions required to let you authenticate), and a wide variety of other functions are available to users who successfully authenticate.
That way you know exactly what should be happening, and you can build a proper risk profile and setup very strict IDS rules etc..
The acquisition hasn't completed, so they are still 2 separate companies for now..
Making the DHCP server use DHCP is more amusing...
Assuming the OS knows and uses the screen DPI... X11 has done this for years, but i dont think windows does.
And aside from that, not all screens are capable of reporting their DPI, and this will also break where you have a multi screen setup using 2 different size screens.
So what happens if someone uses a screen which uses a different DPI to the one intended by the creator of this device?
Nothing will line up and you won't get any readable output from it unless you resize the image on screen to the appropriate size...
On a system which automatically works out your DPI, this could work... However the majority of systems (windows, osx) don't...
Yes, keyboard/mouse are far better for some kinds of games... I tried C&C on the xbox and found it virtually unplayable with the control pad, and FPS games really need the immediacy of a mouse rather than the slow gradual (by comparison) movement of a control pad.
But for everything else a console is so much more convenient, you have fixed hardware and a guarantee that a game you purchase will run with no fuss...
All the modern consoles support USB, and most new keyboards and mice are also USB... So why don't more games support this as a possible control method? Most console games also have PC versions, or are direct ports of PC games so adding keyboard/mouse support wouldn't even be much of a burden.
Second that, i used Q/A for up/down and C/B for left/right, i remember that being the default binding for some game i had on the sinclair spectrum.
Most games with keyboard control would let you customize the keys, and i never had a joystick for my sinclair so keyboard control was my only option. In fact, the sinclair didn't even have joystick ports by default, you required a third party interface card and there were several different types of such card so virtually every game had a keyboard option and possibly up to 4 different joystick options.