Well, funny that you mention that. What computer cracker goes into a network and *only* steals the data for 1 state?? No one! Choicepoint was flat out lieing and being unfair to the consumer by stating that only California was affected. It was only when the heat was turned on them by the news media & the internet bloggers that they admitted that more people were affected & would be notified.
One of my job functions at the university where I'm employed is to fix student computers. 95% of the calls we receive are spyware/virus related. We have stopped trying to disinfect Windows from inside the operating system because it is pointless - there is no way to clean everything off from within the operating system. What we do is boot off of BartPE bootable CD, connect to the network, update the virus scanner & adaware, and clean off the hard drive. Then we proceed to boot the computer into windows to finish the final clean-up.
So, it surprises me that a report about this kind of ad-ware/viruses is just now coming out because we have been dealing with impossible-to-remove software for at least a year now. Fortunately the only way to defeat a BartPE scan is to install a BIOS virus - and almost nobody does that any more.:-)
A corporation isn't a person, even though we like to think of it that way. When you hand your keys over to one corporation, you are really handing it over to thousands and thousands of individual people - some of whom have good intentions, and some of whom have bad intentions. I do not trust a corporation as a collection whole.
I think at certain times we are all evil in some ways. I know that I have lied, stolen, etc. at various times in my life, but I don't do it consistenly or often. Most people are probably about the same way. We all have a tendency to do evil actions even though we don't live our lives full of evil actions.
Throughout humanity, there is a basic standard of right and wrong. We may disagree on some of the smaller points of it, but the general principles are there. Don't steal, don't murder, don't lie, etc... Evil is something that breaks one of these basic rules. A company out for a profit is not inherently evil, however, when it starts to break these rules, then it partaking in evil actions. In general MS and Google are neither evil because neither of them are breaking these basic laws of humanity. We may not like the way they compete in business, but that doesn't make them evil.
I think we need to stop thinking of Google and MS as good vs. evil. They are both companies out to make a profit. Google chooses to make a profit by showing us advertisements, while Microsoft chooses to make a profit by getting us to buy their software. Neither is less or more evil than the other - they both answer to consumers when the screw up something, and since consumers control the almighty dollar, they are answerable to us. The problem is that most consumers can't agree on what color blue is, much less whether a company is doing something that is too invasive or not.
Perhaps 25 million can imply - 25 million computers. You probably only download it to 1 machine at a time. So, 1 machine at home, 1 at work, that leaves about 12.5 million distinct users. Still not a bad number. That's more downloads than the latest album of William Shatner singing.:-)
What's interesting to note about the press release is that Microsoft is going to offer (for a fee) a managed anti-spyware solution. Since the beta that's out now, can't be deployed over an enterprise with any ease, they will make one that can be pushed out and managed from a server. Right now, Webroot Spysweeper has the monopoly on enterprise anti-spyware technology, but we'll see if MS can give them a run for their money.
Its pretty likely that the png & css problems will be fixed because when the ie 7 team at MS was formed, they acknowledged that these problems were one of the driving forces for reestablishing the team.
As far as tabbed browsing & mouse gestures, well MS has been pretty smug in saying they provide what their customers are asking for & they aren't asking for tabbed browsing & mouse gestures - so probably not.
Microsoft press release gives a lot of good information. After changing their earlier position that IE 7 would only be released with Longhorn, Microsoft intends to release an IE7 beta this summer. Right now, it is only for Windows XP SP2 customers.
The Microsoft Antispyware program will stay free for personal users, but for sysadmins who need a managed solution, Microsoft will charge for that package.
Also, a unified Microsoft OS & application update service focused on consumers and small businesses, called Microsoft Update, will be released this March. The enterprise Microsoft update product, Windows Update Services (WUS) - the follow up to SUS, will be released sometime in the first half of this year.
I think you are right on the money. Look back at 7-10 years ago with microsoft. They tried to get into your entertainment system with the web tv system. They have been developing computer games for many years. Obviously they had a hankering to get into the entertainment market. Look at apple - they have done none of that. They don't even make LCD tv's which is what every other computer manufacturer is doing right now. Apple will stay a computer and computer peripheral company.
We have heard all of this before. PS3 marketing is doing what marketing does best - lying. Only believe it when you have the hardware in hand. We have never been given any evidence that the PS, Xbox, or gamecube marketing departments ever tell anything close to the truth.
Case in point. Read this time article from before PS2 came out:
I used picasa 1 extensively and it was mainly a picture cataloging program - which it handled most excelently. Picasa 2 has all of those great features, plus picture touch-up features. For photo management, I give it 5 stars.
I was at Kennedy Space Center 2 weeks ago. Truly the saturn V is a marvel of modern engineering. The tour guide gave lots of information that I already knew, yet the people that were with me said, "Wow, this is really cool! How come they don't teach any of this stuff in school? How come we aren't still using this stuff?" I tried to explain how we have been sidetracked for 25 years by the space shuttle and how, hopefully, we will be using something similar, yet even greater, than this wonderful Saturn V again in the future. Most of the tour at KSC is overrated, but the drive around the vehicle assembly building, the tour of the saturn V rocket, and the "rocket garden" full of old gemini and mercury redstone rockets make the high price of admission worth it.
Scrap the shuttle, use atlas & delta rockets for launching heavy equipment, and use a small, reusable craft (spaceship one, anyone??) for putting people in space to work on the equipment. Also, begin building nuclear powered rockets to take us off of the planet and out of earth's orbit.
Also, stop using the International Space Station because it can't get us to the moon, mars, or anywhere, and it is too expensive. It also has no scientific gain since it takes a full time crew working just to keep the thing from crashing into the ocean, exploding, or something else.
Check out this google news search. Many many media outlets are already picking up on this and running it as a news story. That means that the monetary investment into the ad has paid off by growing into real news stories.
At the support center that I work at, we do pretty much the exact same thing - 90% of our calls are related to spyware. One thing you didn't mention above that you may want to consider is Bart PE. It is a bootable windows xp cd that can run ad-aware, clamwin, mcafee, and f-prot. It can also connect to the internet and download updates for each of these apps. You can then tell these apps to scan & disinfect the person's hard drive. We have found that if we run bartpe right away on any computer we get in, we can save ourselves tons of time because it knocks out all the nasty spyware, trojans, and viruses right from the start.
I work in a computer support center where people drop off their computers for us to fix. The biggest problem we have isn't spyware installed via IE, it is spyware installed via kazaa, morpheus, etc. It's these companies bundling spyware with their apps that is the major problem - not just people installing spyware via activex. So, unfortunately, installing firefox is a good idea, but it still leaves a large attack vector for spyware to get in.
Also, hijack this does not get rid of spyware processes that are currently running. There are plenty of spyware apps out there that will monitor your activities and if you delete it from the registry, it will immediately add itself back in there. There are also "peer" apps that will monitor each other and if one process is killed the other immediately re-runs it making it next to impossible to get rid of them without booting into safe mode or bart pe.
Everyone is forgetting one of the most important methods of combating spyware - install windows critical updates. Many many many spyware installs get on systems by browser holes. If people would just update their systems, they would be protected against a huge infection vector. Obviously, that doesn't keep spyware off of your system if you have installed kazaa or some other stupid app like that, but it does protect you against drive-by installs.
The other great, untapped tool is BartPE. This is a bootable windows xp cd. You can have ad-aware, clamwin, mcafee, and f-prot all load up from a bootable cd where they can download internet updates, and scan a hard drive. You don't know how many times I have "cleaned" people's computers with ad-aware & spybot while booted into their windows os, but some spyware has built in functions to hide itself, so spyware keeps reappearing. Using bartpe solves that problem, you boot off of it first, get the really nasty spyware, trojans, and viruses out of the way, then you boot into windows and run ad-aware and spybot again to get whatever was left behind (usually registry entries).
clamwin does not have an on-access scanner. it only can do user initiated system scans or scheduled scans. It does not serve as a replacement for avg, norton, mcafee, etc.
The problem at EA is the same reason unions were first started, over 100 years ago. Employers would drive their employees to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion with little compensation (monetary or otherwise) to show for it. Today, unions have become nothing but organized gangs out for political power, but their original purpose was valid. There aren't an infinite number of jobs available out there, so if a person quits working at EA, they aren't guaranteed to get a job anywhere else, and then their family starves. Sometimes you have to keep working at a job that is terrible because the consequences of quitting are even more terrible. I think EA (like other gaming companies) should stop rushing junk out the door, and if they use a reasonable, efficient methodology (i.e. extreme programming, or something along those lines) then they will not have the infamous crunch time.
My in-laws recently bought an emachine from walmart. It came with winxp sp1, ms works, some other stupid software, and **netscape 6.2**! That software is so old and outdated that they are just begging for someone from firefox to come along and show them how much better firefox is than netscape 6.2, and how emachines' customers would be happier and benefit more from firefox being in the default install.
About desktop search, I don't really view it as that important of a feature and not worth too much time. How often do most people search for files on their hard drive - my guess is not that often. I think of it like this - whenever my internet connection goes down either at home or at work, I don't sit there and start browsing my hard drive - that's boring. I turn off my monitor and go do something else. All of my information is tied to the internet - not to my hard drive, so a desktop search feature, for me, is very low on my priority scale.
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Well, funny that you mention that. What computer cracker goes into a network and *only* steals the data for 1 state?? No one! Choicepoint was flat out lieing and being unfair to the consumer by stating that only California was affected. It was only when the heat was turned on them by the news media & the internet bloggers that they admitted that more people were affected & would be notified.
So, it surprises me that a report about this kind of ad-ware/viruses is just now coming out because we have been dealing with impossible-to-remove software for at least a year now. Fortunately the only way to defeat a BartPE scan is to install a BIOS virus - and almost nobody does that any more. :-)
A corporation isn't a person, even though we like to think of it that way. When you hand your keys over to one corporation, you are really handing it over to thousands and thousands of individual people - some of whom have good intentions, and some of whom have bad intentions. I do not trust a corporation as a collection whole.
I think at certain times we are all evil in some ways. I know that I have lied, stolen, etc. at various times in my life, but I don't do it consistenly or often. Most people are probably about the same way. We all have a tendency to do evil actions even though we don't live our lives full of evil actions.
Throughout humanity, there is a basic standard of right and wrong. We may disagree on some of the smaller points of it, but the general principles are there. Don't steal, don't murder, don't lie, etc... Evil is something that breaks one of these basic rules. A company out for a profit is not inherently evil, however, when it starts to break these rules, then it partaking in evil actions. In general MS and Google are neither evil because neither of them are breaking these basic laws of humanity. We may not like the way they compete in business, but that doesn't make them evil.
Now reverse that and you have the view of americans as opposed to the view you gave which is the one europeans hold ;-)
I think we need to stop thinking of Google and MS as good vs. evil. They are both companies out to make a profit. Google chooses to make a profit by showing us advertisements, while Microsoft chooses to make a profit by getting us to buy their software. Neither is less or more evil than the other - they both answer to consumers when the screw up something, and since consumers control the almighty dollar, they are answerable to us. The problem is that most consumers can't agree on what color blue is, much less whether a company is doing something that is too invasive or not.
Perhaps 25 million can imply - 25 million computers. You probably only download it to 1 machine at a time. So, 1 machine at home, 1 at work, that leaves about 12.5 million distinct users. Still not a bad number. That's more downloads than the latest album of William Shatner singing. :-)
What's interesting to note about the press release is that Microsoft is going to offer (for a fee) a managed anti-spyware solution. Since the beta that's out now, can't be deployed over an enterprise with any ease, they will make one that can be pushed out and managed from a server. Right now, Webroot Spysweeper has the monopoly on enterprise anti-spyware technology, but we'll see if MS can give them a run for their money.
As far as tabbed browsing & mouse gestures, well MS has been pretty smug in saying they provide what their customers are asking for & they aren't asking for tabbed browsing & mouse gestures - so probably not.
The Microsoft Antispyware program will stay free for personal users, but for sysadmins who need a managed solution, Microsoft will charge for that package.
Also, a unified Microsoft OS & application update service focused on consumers and small businesses, called Microsoft Update, will be released this March. The enterprise Microsoft update product, Windows Update Services (WUS) - the follow up to SUS, will be released sometime in the first half of this year.
I think you are right on the money. Look back at 7-10 years ago with microsoft. They tried to get into your entertainment system with the web tv system. They have been developing computer games for many years. Obviously they had a hankering to get into the entertainment market. Look at apple - they have done none of that. They don't even make LCD tv's which is what every other computer manufacturer is doing right now. Apple will stay a computer and computer peripheral company.
Case in point. Read this time article from before PS2 came out:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2000/0320/j apan.sony.html
Don't believe it till you are holding it in your hands.
I used picasa 1 extensively and it was mainly a picture cataloging program - which it handled most excelently. Picasa 2 has all of those great features, plus picture touch-up features. For photo management, I give it 5 stars.
I was at Kennedy Space Center 2 weeks ago. Truly the saturn V is a marvel of modern engineering. The tour guide gave lots of information that I already knew, yet the people that were with me said, "Wow, this is really cool! How come they don't teach any of this stuff in school? How come we aren't still using this stuff?" I tried to explain how we have been sidetracked for 25 years by the space shuttle and how, hopefully, we will be using something similar, yet even greater, than this wonderful Saturn V again in the future. Most of the tour at KSC is overrated, but the drive around the vehicle assembly building, the tour of the saturn V rocket, and the "rocket garden" full of old gemini and mercury redstone rockets make the high price of admission worth it.
Also, stop using the International Space Station because it can't get us to the moon, mars, or anywhere, and it is too expensive. It also has no scientific gain since it takes a full time crew working just to keep the thing from crashing into the ocean, exploding, or something else.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8& q=firefox+new+york+times+ad&btnG=Search+News
Mozillazine has a link. Go to their page here. It is in pdf and is about 700KB. All of the names are readable if you zoom in. http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=5 781
At the support center that I work at, we do pretty much the exact same thing - 90% of our calls are related to spyware. One thing you didn't mention above that you may want to consider is Bart PE. It is a bootable windows xp cd that can run ad-aware, clamwin, mcafee, and f-prot. It can also connect to the internet and download updates for each of these apps. You can then tell these apps to scan & disinfect the person's hard drive. We have found that if we run bartpe right away on any computer we get in, we can save ourselves tons of time because it knocks out all the nasty spyware, trojans, and viruses right from the start.
I work in a computer support center where people drop off their computers for us to fix. The biggest problem we have isn't spyware installed via IE, it is spyware installed via kazaa, morpheus, etc. It's these companies bundling spyware with their apps that is the major problem - not just people installing spyware via activex. So, unfortunately, installing firefox is a good idea, but it still leaves a large attack vector for spyware to get in.
Also, hijack this does not get rid of spyware processes that are currently running. There are plenty of spyware apps out there that will monitor your activities and if you delete it from the registry, it will immediately add itself back in there. There are also "peer" apps that will monitor each other and if one process is killed the other immediately re-runs it making it next to impossible to get rid of them without booting into safe mode or bart pe.
The other great, untapped tool is BartPE. This is a bootable windows xp cd. You can have ad-aware, clamwin, mcafee, and f-prot all load up from a bootable cd where they can download internet updates, and scan a hard drive. You don't know how many times I have "cleaned" people's computers with ad-aware & spybot while booted into their windows os, but some spyware has built in functions to hide itself, so spyware keeps reappearing. Using bartpe solves that problem, you boot off of it first, get the really nasty spyware, trojans, and viruses out of the way, then you boot into windows and run ad-aware and spybot again to get whatever was left behind (usually registry entries).
clamwin does not have an on-access scanner. it only can do user initiated system scans or scheduled scans. It does not serve as a replacement for avg, norton, mcafee, etc.
The problem at EA is the same reason unions were first started, over 100 years ago. Employers would drive their employees to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion with little compensation (monetary or otherwise) to show for it. Today, unions have become nothing but organized gangs out for political power, but their original purpose was valid. There aren't an infinite number of jobs available out there, so if a person quits working at EA, they aren't guaranteed to get a job anywhere else, and then their family starves. Sometimes you have to keep working at a job that is terrible because the consequences of quitting are even more terrible. I think EA (like other gaming companies) should stop rushing junk out the door, and if they use a reasonable, efficient methodology (i.e. extreme programming, or something along those lines) then they will not have the infamous crunch time.
About desktop search, I don't really view it as that important of a feature and not worth too much time. How often do most people search for files on their hard drive - my guess is not that often. I think of it like this - whenever my internet connection goes down either at home or at work, I don't sit there and start browsing my hard drive - that's boring. I turn off my monitor and go do something else. All of my information is tied to the internet - not to my hard drive, so a desktop search feature, for me, is very low on my priority scale.