The sad thing is that, once again, the University is left out of the innovation equation. In this time when the United States economy is being driven by technology, it is important to remember that the University is one of the few places where innovation can occur in a relatively free environment. It is the one place where a five to twenty year development cycle is accepted. There is nothing wrong with an entrepreneur taking the publically funded prototype and creating a commercial product. What is bad is when that entrepreneur wants to pretend that the University is not a critical part of the process.
Drug companies are especially guilty of this crime, greatly inflating their research costs and downplaying the fact that most basic research is done through highly efficient government and private grants at the public research institutions.
Because you have absolutely no clue as why they chose the Blade, one must assume you did not do much digging before wasting bandwidth with your post. The article went into great depth explaining why they bought the Blade. The high points were power consumption, lack of a serious and fully supported OS, lack of a server class PC in their price range, the $1000 price tag, and the fact they already had the software written to run on Solaris. They admitted that could get an x86 for a little less, but it wasn?t enough to make good business sense.
I am amazed at how people buy into the myth of cheap PC?s. Yes, if you are technically oriented and are not running critical applications, a cheap PC will be ok. On the other hand, I have been involved with several enterprises in which my employer insisted on going with cheap PC?s at the expense of short- and long-term productivity. One certainly cannot get a server class PC for $500, and there is few if any available for $1000. I would not say that a Blade would make a good office machine, but it seems to be a good choice for a server.
It seems to me that the article has little good news for Linux. Although systems may be sold with Linux, this is most likely a ploy to circumvent M$ 'naked system' ban. There was a time when countries like China just ignore M$ edicts, but M$ is a big company and China is trying to play nice. It is baseless to suppose that a significant percentage of users even notice the Linux OS before inserting their Windows CD.
In addition, I must agree with article that cost will play no significant part in the Linux/Windows battle. As a matter of fact, I think that piracy may make Windows the cheaper choice, just as it was in the USA through most of the 90's. For example, when I was in High School everyone had an Apple II. This was a very efficient system to acquire as one never had to buy software. Each day we would copy off a number of programs for our group of users. We even put bulk orders in for a hundreds of diskettes. It was fun and simple activity. As we moved into the late 80's, the balance of easily pirated software shifted to the M$ OS as a result of the growing dominance of M$ and the introduction of the Macintosh. Even with the recent anti-piracy efforts, sales of PCs running Windows still seems to be partially driven by the availability of pirated or gray market software. This is true in the U.S., and I assume it is true in China.
P.S. I mostly use MacOS and pay for my software, even M$ Office.
First let me say that I give blood and do many of the other socially responsible things one should do to help those fortunate that ourselves.
That said, why should I donate my spare cycles to a project that will only help those who can afford to pay. After all, the drug companies will take the publicly funded research, use it develop a product, claim that they incurred all the development costs, price it higher than most people can pay, and use the profits to bribe congress into extending the patents beyond all reasonable time frames.
Admittedly, the search for these numbers may seem inconsequential in comparison to all-important cure for cancer. However, these numbers cannot be patented, encrypted or otherwise hidden. The cost of studying, reading, and enjoying these numbers is often nothing higher than a trip to the library. It is exactly the apparent worthlessness to the money grubbing, uncreative, management elite that makes such pursuits so enjoyable.
I would agree with this as long as the 'escrow' were placed in MS SQL, connected to the internet through IIS, and password protected.
At least in this way, the escrow would be no more secure than the bugs it contained.
So what?
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I read a few of Scot Adams' books. I found his delving into psuedo philosophy and metaphysics so inane and superficial that they destroyed my enjoyment of his comics. Frankly, it reminds me of L. Ron Hubbard. For example, in one of his management books he talks about certain mystical principles he used to help him succeed. At the time it reminded me of certain aspects of Scientology.
This book looks to be particularly dreadful, as it ignores the relative functional form of science. For instance, the review states that Adams believes that gravity is fueled by probability. It really doesn't matter whether he just made that up or it is the result of methodical analysis. Until Adams shows us how this 'new physics' can better send a rocket to Mars it is largely useless. Take a look at it this way. We have all sorts of alternative theories of gravity, most in an effort to reach a theory of Quantum Gravity. It each case, the authors try to find something that can be tested in a lab. For instance, we may generate black holes in the next generation of accelerators, and that will be interesting.
Some may invoke Thomas Kuhn and say I am being obstructionist. This is not the case. I am merely saying that it not so hard to write 128 of compelling fiction, and the fact that it is anti-establishment does not say anything about ir's correctness. It is true that many great discoveries were hard to believe. It is also true that most of these corrected severe defects in contemporary theory. We could not begin to simply explain the planets without Galileo. We could not explain black box radiation with Planck. We could not fully explain the planets without Einstein. Again, I want to see Adams tell us how to get to Mars faster.
I do have great respect for Adams. He is honest and straightforward about what he does and why he does it, much like Heinlein. He also has an ego bigger than Shatners, and it may be getting the best of him.
I primarily have broadband easy to use. I don't have to waste time dialing in. I don't have to waste time with busy signals. I don't have to manually disconnect from overworked hosts. I just do what I need to do, without the distraction of establishing a connection. Occasionally, the speed may drop dramatically, but that is not generally a problem.
Honestly, I belive that DSL is at least as reliable as modem access. I have had DSL for past three years with two different companies. Except for the time that it took to switch companies, I have had no system outages and few critical slowdowns. My friends have cable and they report no significant problems. When I had a modem, I had weekly outages, and often could not quickly get online in the evening. The only issue we have around here is that people far outside the city center cannot get reliable broadband, which is the same problem with other utilities and services. That is just a price that is paid to live in a place where there are only a few people per acre.
I suspect that people are just feeling the expense of broadband and romanticizing the modem. I, for one, do not miss the band old days before affordable broadband.
This just sounds silly. This is just another case of two parties wanting money. I don't think it is fair to label anyone as a victim or aggressor. It is good the website is back, but blaming the CRC for everything is a bit overkill.
Let's take a look at the facts. According to the account, it seems the author started the fight long before the CRC filed the lawsuit. First, the author gave the content to Wolfram Research, possibly in exchange for a job. This fundamentally changed the nature of the website from a private enterprise that could support the book to a Wolfram branded resource. One must ask if the book was of any further interest, or if the real goal was keeping the boss happy.
Second, the author complains about lack of promotion 15 months after the book is published. How useful is this book a year later? Many CRC publications are revised yearly. I would think this would especially critical for a snapshot of a website. This again begs the questions about the author's confict of interest between the book promoted by CRC and the website promoted by his boss. There is no reason for CRC to waste ad space if the author is not interested in selling it.
Third, the author complains about the price, citing concern with students. Well, from my experience the best way to help students is to have yearly updates of the book. This encourages a healthy resale market. CRC has always charged the most the market could bear. People who need the resource have paid that price. Student can buy an older copy of fraction of the retail price. Nothing changes so fast that a student needs a spanking new latest book. I used a copy of the math reference that was older than I was. Frankly, I would not have cared if the book were $60, $100, or $150. Any optional book over $20 was out of my reach.
Again, it is not my intention to malign anyone. I just think that all these attacks on CRC publishing are uncalled for. I don?t know for sure why the CRC sued, but it seemed the author did give them plenty or reasons.
This is probably because Intel doesn't make computers or software, they sell chipsets. The only reason Intel has such visibility is that they have spend millions of dollars on branding to convince consumers that there is some glamour associated with using thier chipset. This glamour is hard to transfer to a device that looks just like every other device but costs more.
Apple has done quite well selling Apple only peripherals. There is in general a real difference, if only superficial, between an Apple product and a competitor. Just take a look at thier flat screen monitors and the pre-USB printers.
In an effort to be racially sensitive, M$ will use the auto-correct feature to insure that people of color are not referred to in a deregulatory manner. Therefore, black will be translated to African American, red to Native American, and yellow to Asian.
Henceforth, we will be attending African American tie formal balls, read the Native American Badge of Courage, and, of course, catch Asian fever.
God bless America for M$.
(Not my original idea, but I can?t remember where it came from).
My experience is the recent increase in customer service problems does not not result from a decrease in product quality, but an increase in the reliance of the warranty. As late as two or three years ago it was still common to return defective merchandise to the retail outlet. Liberal return policies, supported by manufacturers and retailers, allowed defective merchandise to be returned or exchanged within 30-60 days. As an added incentive, if the retail outlet was local, defects could be discussed and solutions could be quickly found. Even if a piece of merchandise was not defective, but just unusable, the merchandise could still be returned. This saved the manufacturer the trouble of having an excessive number of disgruntled customers that would likely waste the time of call center reps. This scenario, of course, does not apply to software which seems to thrive on having a significant percentage of disgruntled customers.
The situation is much different today. Returning any merchandise often incurs a 15% restocking fee, forcing more people into exchanges. Manufactures have reduced return windows from 30-60 days to 7-14 days. All too often, defects appear soon after the return period expires, forcing consumers to use the generally inadequate warranty policy. This then involves a large number of lengthy phone calls, which result in even longer waits as the manufacturer refuses to staff the call center at adequate levels. Customer satisfaction is further eroded, ultimately resulting in silly question being asked on Slashdot.
My experience with custom build computer shops is even worse. They, in general, will not admit fault, resulting in the endless replacement of individual components. I something is crap; I just want to return it.
As the article stated, battery life is expected to reach 1 day before the watch reaches market. That will probably be good enough. If I wanted one, it would be good enough for me.
Look at it this way. In college I had three primary portable devices. The first was a Tandy 200, which would run a couple of days of on a set of batteries. The second was a Tandy calculator programmable in basic with mass storage and a printer, with a battery life of maybe a month. The third was an HP calculator, the clamshell type, with a lifetime of a few months.
By those standards, modern portable devices are unacceptable. Portable computers that can't even last through lunch time. Palm Pilots that can't last the week. Don't even get me started on MP3 players that have about half the lifetime as my old cassette deck.
But we still buy these products, even if they are not as good as the old reliable things we grew up with. The new things, are, at the end of the day, good enough, and much more interesting.
The choice seems to be either a solar panel or a flywheel. Both have problems.
The solar panel would either have to transparent to visible frequencies, or be mounted below the display, which would mean that the crystal and display would have to be transparent to non-visible frequencies.
The flywheel may be equally difficult. My autowind watch requires several hours of wear just to power the movement for a day. One would have to engage in some vigorous activities to power a computer for a day.
In either case, precious space is consumed by additional components.
In a society based on Common Law, like the US, those things that are not illegal are legal, wearing leather or fur, or raising minks for fur, isn't illegal and it's not right for a private citizen to attack that property.
I do understand your point, but I disagree that all acts not specifically illegal are legal. You even have some confusion on this issue. For instance, your complain at the end of the post completely contradicts the above quotation..
PETA branding people for a choice of calories is no more right than Aryan Nation branding people for a choice of mate or church.
In this case, you are equating an act that is completely legal, branding based on diet, to an act that is somewhat illegal, branding based on mate, then to an act that is largely illegal, branding based on religion. If, as you say, a thing that is not illegal is legal, then I should, in fact, feel completely free to brand you, as I presume you are, a vicious meat eating nincompoop.
But you do make a good point. Some act that ELF have engaged in may be considered terrorism. Most mainstream organizations will use the political process to affect change, and will, in general, find that this is a very fruitful avenue. Unfortunately, some extremeist are not happy with the results of the political process and will emgage in violent acts. For instance, the current political climate does not provide much hope for forests, and therefore ELF goes out and destroys machines and developments. Likewise, Christian right organizations do not see much hope to stop abortions, so they go out and burn down women health clinics and murder doctors. As long as our political process is open, such episode will remain rare. One of the dangers of the current legislation is to close the process to a point where more organizations are forced underground and there is less of an incentive to minimize the violence.
That said, I do not know of a case where PETA has been held responsible for the murder of a person. They may be indirectly responsible for deaths of a persons, in the same way that the Christian right or Republicans may indirectly be responsible for the murder of a person, particularly non-WASP persons, but probably not directly responsible.
The question is a good one, and can be answered without being silly or reaching for meaningless analogies.
First, it is mostly a matter of perspective. Some people may not be comfortable with the word atheist and in fact would never invite an atheist over for tea. The projection of negative connotation, beyond the mere belief that there is no g-d, has made the identification of oneself as an atheist about as dangerous as the identification of oneself as a vegetarian or pacifist.
Likewise, agnostic is an equally troubling identification. It places one in a specific group that other group specifically do not like. And again, one may not feel like an agnostic. An agnostic is willing to accept that g-d may exist.
So, if one is not affiliated with a place of worship, does not really care about the silly g-d thing, and does not want to be a part of any group that allow membership, then 'none' would be a great answer.
When one looks at the top six vulnerabilities, one sees the mark of shoddy implementation and almost nonexistent manufacturer and vendor responsibility. For instance, the default installs of OSs that leave the customer at risk. An example of this is in the Windows and MacOs install. In the installation process, there is a suggestion to make a shared folder. Most people do not need a shared folder, and with the explosion of broadband, most people should not have a shared folder. Yet both these applications want the user to create one. To make matter worse, there is no suggested password to increase the likelihood of security(On an up note, I was happy to see that SuSE did suggest a password at installation). Software vendors should not be encouraging us to make our computers less secure.
Equally negligent are broadband vendors that give away connection hardware, but can't be bothered to include a firewall or software that will check for open ports. These vendors won't make the simplest effort to insure the product they are selling is secure, yet will not take the responsibility when their service dies due to DOS attacks. These DOS attacks are largely possible because of the massive number of wide-open computers created by their broadband connections.
This is not a rant; this is a statement of reality. Vendors can not, and should not, expect the consumer to be skilled enough to provide adequate levels of security. This is why houses and cars come with locks. Sometimes consumers lock themselves out, but that is a minor inconvenience. As an extreme example, many shoes now have Velcro, and most cars, at least in the U.S., have automatic transmissions.
No stream of security patches, warnings, and news items will solve the problem. The consumer is not skilled enough to keep up. Until the default configuration is secure, until vendors are forced to take monetary consequences for their defective products, and until the consumer is trained to suffer the imposed inconveniences, we will continue to see the same sort of problems.
If there is one thing we know, M$ thrives on subtle incompatibility, even within their own product lines. It is these incompatibilities that drive the upgrade process and allow them to retain market share. It is the subtleness of these incompatibilities that allow the claim of fair competition even if they are purposefully sabotaging other people's products.
For instance, if I give someone a M$ Word document created on the Macintosh, the opening of that document will sometimes crash a windows machine. There is no reason for this as I am simply transferring a document from MS Word to MS Word. I suppose that such problems are tolerated because it limit the appeal of MacOS machines, and may indicate that I need to upgrade to the latest Office.
So, naive folks, do not wait for the day when MS Office documents will seamlessly integrate with Star Office. And do not blame Star Office for the problems. History provides nearly 20 years of evidence, all the way back to incomplete specifications for system calls in DOS, that M$ will do whatever it can to insure that integration does not occur.
Let me see if I got this right. The RePlay unit is now to be connected to Internet 24X7. The company needs to have access to the unit to upgrade software and presumable download viewing statistics. The software is remotely upgradeable. And to say more precisely, it doesn?t look like it can be behind a firewall because the company needs access to the unit.
So, are we talking a gleaming new attack vector into the home network with a guaranteed propagation strategy as user exchange content, or has security been taken seriously? I do not see anything in the specs or FAQ.
I would probably let a M$ box onto my network first.
Slashdot Mirror
Drug companies are especially guilty of this crime, greatly inflating their research costs and downplaying the fact that most basic research is done through highly efficient government and private grants at the public research institutions.
I am amazed at how people buy into the myth of cheap PC?s. Yes, if you are technically oriented and are not running critical applications, a cheap PC will be ok. On the other hand, I have been involved with several enterprises in which my employer insisted on going with cheap PC?s at the expense of short- and long-term productivity. One certainly cannot get a server class PC for $500, and there is few if any available for $1000. I would not say that a Blade would make a good office machine, but it seems to be a good choice for a server.
In addition, I must agree with article that cost will play no significant part in the Linux/Windows battle. As a matter of fact, I think that piracy may make Windows the cheaper choice, just as it was in the USA through most of the 90's. For example, when I was in High School everyone had an Apple II. This was a very efficient system to acquire as one never had to buy software. Each day we would copy off a number of programs for our group of users. We even put bulk orders in for a hundreds of diskettes. It was fun and simple activity. As we moved into the late 80's, the balance of easily pirated software shifted to the M$ OS as a result of the growing dominance of M$ and the introduction of the Macintosh. Even with the recent anti-piracy efforts, sales of PCs running Windows still seems to be partially driven by the availability of pirated or gray market software. This is true in the U.S., and I assume it is true in China.
P.S. I mostly use MacOS and pay for my software, even M$ Office.
That said, why should I donate my spare cycles to a project that will only help those who can afford to pay. After all, the drug companies will take the publicly funded research, use it develop a product, claim that they incurred all the development costs, price it higher than most people can pay, and use the profits to bribe congress into extending the patents beyond all reasonable time frames.
Admittedly, the search for these numbers may seem inconsequential in comparison to all-important cure for cancer. However, these numbers cannot be patented, encrypted or otherwise hidden. The cost of studying, reading, and enjoying these numbers is often nothing higher than a trip to the library. It is exactly the apparent worthlessness to the money grubbing, uncreative, management elite that makes such pursuits so enjoyable.
At least in this way, the escrow would be no more secure than the bugs it contained.
This book looks to be particularly dreadful, as it ignores the relative functional form of science. For instance, the review states that Adams believes that gravity is fueled by probability. It really doesn't matter whether he just made that up or it is the result of methodical analysis. Until Adams shows us how this 'new physics' can better send a rocket to Mars it is largely useless. Take a look at it this way. We have all sorts of alternative theories of gravity, most in an effort to reach a theory of Quantum Gravity. It each case, the authors try to find something that can be tested in a lab. For instance, we may generate black holes in the next generation of accelerators, and that will be interesting.
Some may invoke Thomas Kuhn and say I am being obstructionist. This is not the case. I am merely saying that it not so hard to write 128 of compelling fiction, and the fact that it is anti-establishment does not say anything about ir's correctness. It is true that many great discoveries were hard to believe. It is also true that most of these corrected severe defects in contemporary theory. We could not begin to simply explain the planets without Galileo. We could not explain black box radiation with Planck. We could not fully explain the planets without Einstein. Again, I want to see Adams tell us how to get to Mars faster.
I do have great respect for Adams. He is honest and straightforward about what he does and why he does it, much like Heinlein. He also has an ego bigger than Shatners, and it may be getting the best of him.
Honestly, I belive that DSL is at least as reliable as modem access. I have had DSL for past three years with two different companies. Except for the time that it took to switch companies, I have had no system outages and few critical slowdowns. My friends have cable and they report no significant problems. When I had a modem, I had weekly outages, and often could not quickly get online in the evening. The only issue we have around here is that people far outside the city center cannot get reliable broadband, which is the same problem with other utilities and services. That is just a price that is paid to live in a place where there are only a few people per acre.
I suspect that people are just feeling the expense of broadband and romanticizing the modem. I, for one, do not miss the band old days before affordable broadband.
Let's take a look at the facts. According to the account, it seems the author started the fight long before the CRC filed the lawsuit. First, the author gave the content to Wolfram Research, possibly in exchange for a job. This fundamentally changed the nature of the website from a private enterprise that could support the book to a Wolfram branded resource. One must ask if the book was of any further interest, or if the real goal was keeping the boss happy.
Second, the author complains about lack of promotion 15 months after the book is published. How useful is this book a year later? Many CRC publications are revised yearly. I would think this would especially critical for a snapshot of a website. This again begs the questions about the author's confict of interest between the book promoted by CRC and the website promoted by his boss. There is no reason for CRC to waste ad space if the author is not interested in selling it.
Third, the author complains about the price, citing concern with students. Well, from my experience the best way to help students is to have yearly updates of the book. This encourages a healthy resale market. CRC has always charged the most the market could bear. People who need the resource have paid that price. Student can buy an older copy of fraction of the retail price. Nothing changes so fast that a student needs a spanking new latest book. I used a copy of the math reference that was older than I was. Frankly, I would not have cared if the book were $60, $100, or $150. Any optional book over $20 was out of my reach.
Again, it is not my intention to malign anyone. I just think that all these attacks on CRC publishing are uncalled for. I don?t know for sure why the CRC sued, but it seemed the author did give them plenty or reasons.
Apple has done quite well selling Apple only peripherals. There is in general a real difference, if only superficial, between an Apple product and a competitor. Just take a look at thier flat screen monitors and the pre-USB printers.
Henceforth, we will be attending African American tie formal balls, read the Native American Badge of Courage, and, of course, catch Asian fever.
God bless America for M$.
(Not my original idea, but I can?t remember where it came from).
The situation is much different today. Returning any merchandise often incurs a 15% restocking fee, forcing more people into exchanges. Manufactures have reduced return windows from 30-60 days to 7-14 days. All too often, defects appear soon after the return period expires, forcing consumers to use the generally inadequate warranty policy. This then involves a large number of lengthy phone calls, which result in even longer waits as the manufacturer refuses to staff the call center at adequate levels. Customer satisfaction is further eroded, ultimately resulting in silly question being asked on Slashdot.
My experience with custom build computer shops is even worse. They, in general, will not admit fault, resulting in the endless replacement of individual components. I something is crap; I just want to return it.
Look at it this way. In college I had three primary portable devices. The first was a Tandy 200, which would run a couple of days of on a set of batteries. The second was a Tandy calculator programmable in basic with mass storage and a printer, with a battery life of maybe a month. The third was an HP calculator, the clamshell type, with a lifetime of a few months.
By those standards, modern portable devices are unacceptable. Portable computers that can't even last through lunch time. Palm Pilots that can't last the week. Don't even get me started on MP3 players that have about half the lifetime as my old cassette deck.
But we still buy these products, even if they are not as good as the old reliable things we grew up with. The new things, are, at the end of the day, good enough, and much more interesting.
The solar panel would either have to transparent to visible frequencies, or be mounted below the display, which would mean that the crystal and display would have to be transparent to non-visible frequencies.
The flywheel may be equally difficult. My autowind watch requires several hours of wear just to power the movement for a day. One would have to engage in some vigorous activities to power a computer for a day.
In either case, precious space is consumed by additional components.
It will have some weight in LEO. Not much, but certainly more than 0.
I do understand your point, but I disagree that all acts not specifically illegal are legal. You even have some confusion on this issue. For instance, your complain at the end of the post completely contradicts the above quotation..
PETA branding people for a choice of calories is no more right than Aryan Nation branding people for a choice of mate or church.
In this case, you are equating an act that is completely legal, branding based on diet, to an act that is somewhat illegal, branding based on mate, then to an act that is largely illegal, branding based on religion. If, as you say, a thing that is not illegal is legal, then I should, in fact, feel completely free to brand you, as I presume you are, a vicious meat eating nincompoop.
But you do make a good point. Some act that ELF have engaged in may be considered terrorism. Most mainstream organizations will use the political process to affect change, and will, in general, find that this is a very fruitful avenue. Unfortunately, some extremeist are not happy with the results of the political process and will emgage in violent acts. For instance, the current political climate does not provide much hope for forests, and therefore ELF goes out and destroys machines and developments. Likewise, Christian right organizations do not see much hope to stop abortions, so they go out and burn down women health clinics and murder doctors. As long as our political process is open, such episode will remain rare. One of the dangers of the current legislation is to close the process to a point where more organizations are forced underground and there is less of an incentive to minimize the violence.
That said, I do not know of a case where PETA has been held responsible for the murder of a person. They may be indirectly responsible for deaths of a persons, in the same way that the Christian right or Republicans may indirectly be responsible for the murder of a person, particularly non-WASP persons, but probably not directly responsible.
First, it is mostly a matter of perspective. Some people may not be comfortable with the word atheist and in fact would never invite an atheist over for tea. The projection of negative connotation, beyond the mere belief that there is no g-d, has made the identification of oneself as an atheist about as dangerous as the identification of oneself as a vegetarian or pacifist.
Likewise, agnostic is an equally troubling identification. It places one in a specific group that other group specifically do not like. And again, one may not feel like an agnostic. An agnostic is willing to accept that g-d may exist.
So, if one is not affiliated with a place of worship, does not really care about the silly g-d thing, and does not want to be a part of any group that allow membership, then 'none' would be a great answer.
Equally negligent are broadband vendors that give away connection hardware, but can't be bothered to include a firewall or software that will check for open ports. These vendors won't make the simplest effort to insure the product they are selling is secure, yet will not take the responsibility when their service dies due to DOS attacks. These DOS attacks are largely possible because of the massive number of wide-open computers created by their broadband connections.
This is not a rant; this is a statement of reality. Vendors can not, and should not, expect the consumer to be skilled enough to provide adequate levels of security. This is why houses and cars come with locks. Sometimes consumers lock themselves out, but that is a minor inconvenience. As an extreme example, many shoes now have Velcro, and most cars, at least in the U.S., have automatic transmissions.
No stream of security patches, warnings, and news items will solve the problem. The consumer is not skilled enough to keep up. Until the default configuration is secure, until vendors are forced to take monetary consequences for their defective products, and until the consumer is trained to suffer the imposed inconveniences, we will continue to see the same sort of problems.
For instance, if I give someone a M$ Word document created on the Macintosh, the opening of that document will sometimes crash a windows machine. There is no reason for this as I am simply transferring a document from MS Word to MS Word. I suppose that such problems are tolerated because it limit the appeal of MacOS machines, and may indicate that I need to upgrade to the latest Office.
So, naive folks, do not wait for the day when MS Office documents will seamlessly integrate with Star Office. And do not blame Star Office for the problems. History provides nearly 20 years of evidence, all the way back to incomplete specifications for system calls in DOS, that M$ will do whatever it can to insure that integration does not occur.
Anyone remember the Oxymoron battery ad from 'Sheep in the Big City'? The batteries last as long as you do!
So, are we talking a gleaming new attack vector into the home network with a guaranteed propagation strategy as user exchange content, or has security been taken seriously? I do not see anything in the specs or FAQ.
I would probably let a M$ box onto my network first.