So why the criticism for releasing an operating system which, instead of being about new features and the gee-whiz factor, is primarily about security and compatibility and reliability?
Sure, that's cool. I think some of the under-the-hood features are great. The new driver model is an improvement. I'll check out Vista, but from what I've read so far there's nothing in it that's really making me chomp at the bit for it. My point is that in the past these "major upgrades" have always had very tangible improvements that were immediately obvious to the user. I wasn't around for the DOS to Windows 3.1 switch, but it's pretty obvious that 3.1 was superior. Windows 95 had obvious UI improvements over 3.1, to the point where I cringed every time I had to a machine with 3.1 on it. The improvements in reliability became obvious later (more below). I upgraded from 98 to 2000 because it was such a major improvement in stability, reliability, etc. Anyone that ran NT 4 knew to expect this added reliability in 2000, combined with USB, and UI features of 98. I tried XP, but found it to offer nothing I needed and it decreased my reliability so I went back to 2000.
Anyway, the average user wants to see some tanglible improvement to the UI, and the reviews I've seen so far haven't revealed much in that regard. Those kind of improvements are obvious right away, and thus drive upgrades.
As far as reliability, security, etc are concerned, of course I want that, but it's not obvious that Vista has that. You believe that the culture has changed and the OS is a lot more secure because of it. I've heard that from other people too, and maybe that's true. But the rest of us aren't insiders at Microsoft, and aren't naive enough to just believe what any-old-company says. The entire software industry is built on saying "This new product is GREAT! You simply HAVE to have it.. that old product we sold you last year.. well, it's not so great, but this one is WAY better". Sometimes that turns out to be true, other times it's just marketing BS.
Anyway, the proof is in the product, and like the article says we'll see if the product is secure and reliable as you say. The thing about reliability, security, compatibility, etc is they aren't immediately obvious and only reveal themselves with time. Would you trust a car company that says "we've changed.. our new model cars will last over 100,000 miles!" before the car has even had one day of real exposure to the public? I wouldn't. I'd wait about 4-5 years and see how reliable those new cars are, then make a judgement.
Maybe Vista DOES have all those properties, and all the spyware, "windows rot", virus infections, etc are a thing of the past. But you can't expect a review released at t-minus 2 or 3 weeks to talk about any of that, since it's not a known property yet.
I didn't make it to the end of the article, but apparently the weather report, stock ticker, etc is a feature of Vista.
I don't think that really changes the main point though. These are all features that were available on OS X, and Linux years ago. It's not like Microsoft couldn't have whipped up these relatively simple apps in a month or two.
No, though there certainly were rumours floating around at the time that this would be the case. Windows 95 was released on August 24, 1995. in fact it emphasizes it since Win95 was a venture into unknown technology, just like Vista.
Well, I'd say Windows 95 was the largest change in technology Microsoft had released since the change from DOS to Windows 3.1. Windows 95 offered very substantial improvements in stability, performance, and UI improvements over Windows 3.1 (I worked with 3.1 at the time and it had significant issues with regard to stability). Windows 95 was an obvious improvement even if you knew nothing about all the under-the-hood improvements.
From what I've heard of Vista so far, the improvements aren't on anywhere near the same level. There's some nice under-the-hood stuff, but I doubt the average user would ever even notice it. But hey, maybe all the reviews are wrong. I haven't used it myself, so the rest of us will all make our own judgements when it's actually available.
If this is relating to computer fraud how the fuck can they justify over 100 years of punishment?
See, the key phrase in this article is "up to". The journalist or prosecutor arrived at the figure 101 years simply from multiplying the number of crimes he's convicted of by the maximum sentence for each act.
Simply put, there's no way he'll serve anywhere close to that long. Even if by some insane judge sentences him to 101 years in jail, that's a no-brainer that'll get reduced on first appeal.
My point was that if there was an easy, fool-proof technical solution, it would be in place.
Well, I guess we simply disagree on why solutions aren't implemented. I don't think we live in a world where the biggest barrier to adoption of a better solution for everyone is simply technical. The fact still remains, though, that someone who's cracked one bank's system will have a huge leg up on cracking other banks' systems. Why expose yourself to the extra risk when you can use a proprietary system without that risk?
Because a proprietary system is likely to suck rocks compared to a system that's been well studied by multiple people. Security benefits from being transparent, not through being obscure and secretive. It also benefits (like anything) from more funding that multiple-banks can provide. If you don't have a lot of money to throw at a problem, you might rely on this short term flash based crap rather than well proven cryptographic authentication.
If everyone relies on a system and a flaw is found then there's more impetus (and funding) to fix the flaw rather than justs hoping no one else discovers it. If you're just one little credit union relying on your proprietary solution, it becomes a lot more expensive to maintain your solution and fix any flaws you find along the way (so therefor less flaws will be fixed/found.).
So the end result is that a well secured system will be extremely difficult for someone to crack it. A proprietary solution will be less secure. If you were a bank.. which one would you choose? Hopefully you'd choose the more secure one.
I wonder, maybe XP was just good enough, and didn't really need to many improvements, besides the security patches it has been receiving, not mention two full service packs.
Well, I'd disagree that XP is an OS that doesn't need improving. One thing that I simply HATE is the constant rebooting you have to do when you either upgrade some critical part of the OS, or re-install a piece of software.
The rebooting problem is a major flaw of the OS. It was designed with the philosophy "rebooting is OK, since updates are infrequent and won't affect the user experience". Linux/Unix was designed with the opposite philosophy, i.e. "this is a multi-user system that needs to be available 24/7. Rebooting is just plain terrible and should be used as a last resort".
This flaw has been improved somewhat in Vista with the new driver model, but it still hasn't really been fixed.
There's also some things I'd love to see Microsoft support in the UI. Why can I get a weather report, stock ticker, dictionary lookup, etc from out of the box on a Linux machine.. but I have to go download spyware laden 3rd party apps (or try to dig through multiple free windows apps) to get the same thing on Windows?
If I can come up with a few things that's improve the Windows experience in 5 minutes, why can't Microsoft develop some actually usefull stuff in 5 years? I'll withhold final judgement until I actually try Vista, but so far the reviews I've read haven't exactly been stunning.
Ah, yes, the old "but it seems so simple to my admittedly uneducated self." Really, isn't it common sense that if it were that easy it would have been done already?
I didn't say I knew NOTHING about security/crypto, I'm just not an expert along the lines of Bruce Schneire. Sheesh, there IS a middle ground between being a total neophyte and knowing everything about something.
You seem to think the problems must obviously be technical, and that's why no one has done it yet. It's hardly ever that way in business. The problems in technology are usually just getting everyone on-board and agreeing that "something has to be done", and "we should all try to do the same thing". This is in contrast with what often happens whith everyone trying to go in a different direction because they're afraid that they might wind up being screwed by some other company, or that co-operating will help the competition more than it helps them. Or maybe no one even at the company recognizes that there's a problem, so they just go on and ignore it until it becomes blindingly obvious that "something must be done". Do you think it's a good idea to put everyone's eggs all in one basket, so that if an inside job compromises the single system, everyone's screwed?
Why would you think that security relies on one or a few people "pulling an inside job" to screw everyone? If you design the system properly knowing the details of the implementation won't help you. If you're REALLY paranoid, just get independant reviewers to make sure there's no backdoors built into the system. Or better yet publish the standard and let anyone that wants to work on an implementation. Then choose the one you like the best.
Here I was, all this time, really loving Vista and appreciating its massive list of new features... And do you appreciate them by just looking at a nice list and drooling, or do you actually get anything tangible from that list of features?
I've read over the list before, and while I personally think some of them are cool, I don't think the average user cares two bits about improved IPV6, or the fact that you don't have to reboot to install new video drivers. I think they're important features, don't get me wrong. But for the average user it's not really something they should upgrade over.
Have you ever felt that sometimes people go out of their way to put down Microsoft.
No, I feel that the reviewer was expecting more from 5 years of development, and not to be burdened by hefty hardware requirements to take advantage of the new improvements. He compares it to OS X because it's gotten steadily better over the past 5 years, where the offerings from Microsoft, a much larger and richer company isn't really worthy of 5 years of development efforts.
Really I think the article sounds quite honest. He mentions that there's some improvements, but the majority of people don't have the hardware to take advantage of the improvements. The average guy is wondering "Should I upgrade to Vista?" not "Does this guy like Vista or not?" The article essentially say that unless you have a gig or more of memory, a recent computer, and a fast graphics processor.. Vista doesn't provide any benefits worth upgrading for.
Ultimately I think it indicates a larger problem at Microsoft. It's been more than 5 years since XP, the last desktop OS from Microsoft. That's pretty horrible considering that previously Microsoft has released a new desktop OS every about every 2 or 2.5 years (3.1 in 92, 3.11 in 93, 95 in 95, 98 in 98, 98 SE in 99, ME in 2000, WT2K in 2000, XP in 2001).
Look at all the major changes in previous 5 year spans. Compare Windows 3.11 in 93 to Windows 98 in 98, or Windows 95 in 95 to Windows 2000 in 2000 and you'll see what I'm talking about. Hell, compare the initial (really awfull) release of OSX 10.0 to the decent release of 10.4 only 4 years later. Sure there's a lot more to improve in OS X since it was so totally new.. but the fact that Apple can pull off more in less time doesn't speak well for Microsoft.
However, the real question is: Is Flash a good, secure option that a bank should use to help identify you?"
This is a foolish, short sighted strategy. Do you really think Flash is going to be the same 5 years from now? Is it even going to exist in 10 years? Does this solution even address the real security concerns, or is it just an ugly hack dreamed up by some people that have no other solution? I'd say the latter.
Banks need to get together and solve this problem outright. It's hurting all of them because they all have to develop these proprietary technologies (that only wind up sucking). They need to get together and find someone they all trust to lead development of a technology to secure transactions. If they were smart they'd hire someone like Bruce Schneier to design and oversee development of a system for them to secure web transactions.
IMO this techology lies under the "something you have" category of authentication, unlocked by "something you know". In other words a hardware device of some type that plugs into a USB port, and verifies that:
A. You're talking to the bank you think you are. Thus avoiding phishing attacks that get people to connect to sites pretending to be the bank.
B. That you are who you say you are.
Design it in such a way that if one component fails, the whole thing isn't compromised. I'm not a crypto/security expert, but from what I know all these requirements aren't even very technically challenging.
He wasn't saying the developers are pawns as in "worthless minions to do our evil bidding" or "clueless morons who can't make it without us".
Huh? It's quite clear what he's saying. Essentially he's saying that ISVs aren't partners with Microsoft, but companies that can be strategically set up to either be sacrificed for the greater good of Microsoft. Or maybe just used to gain competitive advantage.
Gee.. why would any ISV be offended at being sacrificed or duped into a certain strategy that only helps Microsoft? I justs can't imagine how this is an offensive comment to those companies.
Of courses, it really should come to no surprise that Microsoft operates like this. Most large companies do the same thing, it's just that Microsoft has been better at it than others. Could he have used a better, less easily misconstrued term?
Why would he? It was a speech intended to be kept inside Microsoft only. Had this been a public speech you can bet he'd have turned on that "not making them feel like pawns" language. This only was released as part of a lawsuit, otherwise it'd never have reached public eyes.
500 comments on this article, and you're saying this with a straight face?
You're mistaking scientific controversy, with political or societal controversy. The GP was (I'm assuming) saying that global warming isn't a scientific controversy. There's really little or no debate in the scientific community that we're raising global average temeperature.
It's like saying that "evolution" isn't controversial. There's not even an inkling of scientific debate on it. But of course there's vocal thumpers who'll have you believe that it's the most contested scientific theory in existance.
This is why global warming raises such an alarm bell with me, because it never seems to be presented in this way. People trumpet it as something of which there is NO DOUBT, a fact, not a theory
You seem to be of the opinion that there's two categories of knowledge. Facts, of which we are certain, and theories of which we aren't. I have a theory that yesterday happened. My evidence is that I remember yesterday, I have records that were produced yesterday, I have video, newspaper reports, etc of yesterday occouring, and everyone I talk to also remembers yesterday occouring (I occasionally run into some people that don't recall yesterday, but all those people were either drunk, or have demonstratable problems with memory.)
But how do you know there's not an all-powerfull evil deceiver that merely manufactured all this evidence to fool us into thinking yesterday happened? You can't disprove it, can you? And I sure did dismiss those people that didn't remember yesterday quickly. Maybe they don't have memory problems.. maybe they have memory ENHANCEMENTS! Perhaps the evil deceiver isn't all powerfull and his powers don't affect those people, or people who were drunk at the time!
Ok, so my alternative theory isn't very good and doesn't explain anything new. That wasn't really the point of course. The point is to illustrate that you can look at everything as "theory", and there's not as hard a line between "fact" and "theory" as some people would have you believe. There's no such thing as a fact that's totally unquestionable down to an infinite amount of decimal places. I don't even have to go to ridicous extremes. Our memories aren't perfect, our senses can deceive us, etc. If you look out and see your car in the driveway, you'd think it's a fact that your car is in the driveway. But maybe it just LOOKS like your car and is in fact someone elses car. Or maybe you've had brain damage and your memories are faulty. We dismiss these alternative theories because they're not very good without any evidence to support them.
Another important point is that all theories aren't equally well accepted. We'd be VERY surprised if helio-centric theory (that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa) were wrong. We're so sure of it that no one really questions it because there's no good alternative. People that DO are considered quacks and fools.. not because they're questioning something unquestionable, but because they don't have any good alternative that stands up to scrutiny. My evil-deceiver theory falls to Occam's razor (simplified down to "all things being equal, the simpler theory wins"). It requires un-observed phenomenon like an evil-deceiver that's all powerfull and violates our understanding of essentially all of physics. (it is a theory, so is how gravity works, and so on). If you question it you are stupid, or an industry shill, or ignoring the issue, and so on.
No, I think the problem is that the criticism that gets through is all rather stupid or miss-informed. Some people seem to think you can be some guy off the street and just topple global warming with a flick of the wrist. Others think that you can topple it if you're "real smart" (but don't have the knowledge or training to understand the central arguments of global warming). The evidence for global warming is complex enough that you need to be educated in the science surrounding it. Rush Limbaugh (and probbably other global warming critics) has occasionally poked at global warming through referencing that the amounts of CO2 produced by volcanoes far exceeds that produced by humans. This is actually true, but isn't relevant to the debate since the CO2 in the atmosphere is a balance between what's emitted, and what's absorbed. Change the balance, and there's more CO2 in the atmosphere. This is an example of information that sounds like a gaping hole in global warming to anyone that doesn't have the whole picture.. but it disappeers when you actually understand what's going
In what other country is having K-Mart clothes looked down upon so much?
From what I've heard, much of Europe (well, at least the richer countries). I've gotten the impression that quality clothes are valued much more over there. When did the idea of saving money, being fiscally conservative and personally humble go out of style?
Quite a long time ago. I think it's a terrible terrible trend though. People have gone insane with spending crazy amounts of money on stuff they don't need, but THINK they need it. The most glaring example I can think of is weddings. Why is it necessary to spend $30,000 on one day of your life?
But why? The pain to Person A and Person A's ISP isn't that high.
To avoid producing all that useless bounce messages, to be a decent business that doesn't cause problems, to avoid Corporation XYZ (who was infected by a virus from Person A's ISP) suing person A's ISP for gladly spreading viruses around when there's simple, inexpensive technology available that would have prevented it. Or maybe just providing an additional service to Person A who'd appreciate not sending out viruses to his family and friends.
Well, person A's ISP should be have a virus scanner in place to prevent this kind of garbage. If you detect the mail is a virus, silently drop it (and perhaps log the IP address it came from). In any case, I can see how that'd present a problem.
I've also seen some backscatter mail from poorly configured virus scanners that don't know that viruses spoof the from: or reply-to: address.
It was banned by presidential order by Jimmy Carter in 1977 due to fears of reproccessing resulting in proliferation.
Which might have made some political sense at the time, given that we were in the middle of a cold war and everyone was insane about making more and more nuclear weapons.
But now it's just dumb, and should eventually be reversed. There's no political will to do it right now for a number of reasons. It's cheaper to just buy new fuel, so the power plant lobby doesn't really want it to happen. The far left is scared shitless by anything nuclear, so even though it's a wise environmental move they sure as hell don't want to support it, and the far right wants to bury it's head in the sand with any environmental concern. So who's left? A few geeks who value efficiency and aren't afraid of things they don't initially understand.
Can someone tell me the differences in terms of when each happens, and what happens on the other end between a bounce and a reject? I _think_ I understand the difference, but I'm not certain.
My understanding is that a reject is sent by the receiving SMTP server before it's accepted the mail. I.e. server a->server b, server a says mail is to: bill@serverB_Domain.com from: john@spoofedaddress.com. Server B can then accept the mail, or reject it (with various different codes for each). If B accepts it, it's server B's responsibility to handle it. If it rejects it, it's server A's responsibility to handle it.
So, (if I understand this right) the problem the submitter is getting at is that server B accepts the mail, but then later bounces it. (Because a spammer is obviously not going to bother bouncing the mail when it's rejected).
Why would Server B accept mail from Server A if it's only later going to bounce it? I can think of at least once case (and one I have experience with). If Server B is acting as a relay host for Server C, then it's difficult (but not impossible) for Server B to know if Server C will accept or reject the mail. So Server B just accepts all mail, but later has to bounce some of it when Server C rejects the mail.
I've dealt with this problem, and only recently fixed it when I rebuilt the relay server. I use Postfix, which now supports validating recipient addresses for relay hosts. Essentially what happens (in terms of my little scenario) is before Server B accepts a message, it connects to server C and sends a test message addressed to the recipient. If server C rejects the message, Server B rejects the message from Server A. (Yah, it's a little more complicated than that and involves caching, but that's the general idea). The previous version I was using didn't support this feature, so I wound up with a lot of bounce messages going out for spam addressed to invalid addresses.
The other scenario I can think of is that Server B later figures out that the mail is spam. But why in the world would you decide to bounce the mail at this point, since it's very likely the return address is fake, will never accept mail, etc? Either throw the mail away entirely and forget about the whole ugly mess, flag the mail as spam and delivery it to its destination, or squirrel it away somewhere just in case someone really really needs to see it (like it's a false positive).
What I do is flag the mail and stick it in the users spam folder. Then no one complains about not getting mail.
The days of HTTPS being valuable are long gone. We can look inside this traffic realtime. I monitor & block traffic to HTTPS sites myself..
The only way this is possible (barring someone having cracked SSL, which hasn't happened) is through a man-in-the-middle attack. If you try that, the user will get a message on the screen when they connect to https sights saying the certficicate is bad, unless you can somehow get them to recognize you as Certificate Authority by installing a root CA key. You can do that if you own the machines (business environment), but good luck doing that if you don't. You'd either have to break into someones machine, or trick them into installing it.
It doesn't have to be great art to be art; any art is worthy of protection just as any other expression that doesn't hurt anyone is
And I don't have any problem with the game existing, with someone entering it in a competition, etc. What I do have a problem with is someone calling garbage a rose. This game is garbage, it doesn't convey anything of value. I'm not even really offended by it, I just think it's a bad game that should have been remained obscure and unknown. I won't get into the "is it art" debate, as I think that's a meaningless label.
Oh how quickly people forget. Remember the 360 launch? It sucked. Hard. The sales pace made the PS3 look like a champ.
I don't know anything about the 360 launch, but there's a big difference between now and a year ago. A year ago the 360 was the only next-gen console on the market. Not having a great launch didn't matter as much since what are the people hungering for a new console going to do? They either already own the PS2, or have a XBox. In short, Microsoft doesn't lose much from a poor launch.
A year later and a PS3 launch failure hurts Sony a LOT more. Why? Because all three consoles next-gen consoles are now out, so Sony has more competition to worry about. Can't get/afford a PS3? Well the XBOX 360 is available, a good replacement for the PS3 (with the promise of a second generation of games coming out for it too). Or maybe you have the XBox and are looking for something new.. well, the Wii is real cheap, and it's fun and different than the XBox. But it is way too early to call this. What I will say though, is that if Microsoft writes off Sony at this point, Sony is going to eat their lunch and Microsoft will end up in third place again.
Sure, maybe Sony will perform some miracle comeback and sweep the competition. But if this were a baseball game, the score would be 5-0 in the bottom of the second inning. Unless Microsoft really screws up, it's looking like Sony is going to lose this game.
I also wouldn't take what Bill Gates says to the press as a reflection of what he believes. If you were him, wouldn't you try to say Sony has already lost (and hopefully discourage people from buying PS3s)?
Look how worked up you are about it. It's more than you thinking "why was this worth consideration"?
I get pissed off at the moronic government of George W Bush too. Is he now "good art"? You seem to think I really care about SCMRPG. What pissed me off is the people trying to fool other people by dangling the word "art" in front of something, hynotizing them until their brains shut off. It has nothing to do with SCMRPG, and everything to do with the people who're in the "art above all" camp. Art isn't easily defined. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make any difference.
I don't care if it's "art" or not. Call it art, fine. Say it's not, fine. All I know is that it's a poor game.
My problem with the whole "art" defense is that it becomes the ultimate shield for some people. Say to such a person you think it sucks, and they come back with "Ohh.. well you just don't UNDERSTAND IT!" As if the given is that it's "art" and if you don't respect it in some way, you've "missed the point".
Seriously, although I am not for disqualifying the SCRPG, how would you feel about a new FPS entering the contest called Maryland Sniper? Remember the guy who was sniping innocent people coming out of the parking lot or attempting to use a gas pump? Would that be an acceptable entry as well?
Sure, why not? I'm not sure why you're disqualifying an entry because some people will be offended. There's a difference between what's socially acceptable (whatever that means) and what's an acceptable entry in a competition. If "Maryland Sniper" has some kind of redeeming quality and is a good game, why not? If it's a poor game, and just trying to be "controversial" then it's a poor entry.
As to your arguments about "where the line is", it's not really relevant. What offends people is different for each person. I'm offended by the idiotic "Left Behind" game. I'd never buy it, I think people who play it and take it seriously are religious wackos, but I don't really care if someone puts it in a competition. "Where the line is" only matters to someone trying to sell the game (which was never the goal with SCMRPG), and even then you can only define it in terms of a percentage of the population. Hell, I'm sure there's some nutjobs out their that think there's something wrong with pac-man because he's a glutton that's always eating and is never satiated.
As for SCMRPG, I've played it and found it to be a poor entry into the competition because it's a poor game. Not because it might offend someone, "cross the line", or is "innapropriate". Frankly I think it was included in the competition purely because it covers a controversial subject. Then someone higher up heard about it, and decided that "the money guys won't like it", so they pulled it. Pretty lame if you ask me.
Just because you don't like the game, it doesn't mean that it hasn't made people think. "Monkey-dick" is just your perception but the game made you think.
What a load of bullshit. You know what it made me think? It made me think "Why the hell did the idiots at slamdance ever think this junk was worth considering for a competition?"
Sheesh. Making someone think is hardly worthy of note. Is Pollock Jackson less of an artist than Hieronymus Bosch or than Botticelli?
I don't know what being more, or less of an artist means. I do know what shitty art is. SCMRPG is shitty art. The "Freshman humanities 101" reference makes you sound like you're a condescending jerk
No, I just think that flowering something up with specialized type language doesn't make it a more educated or accurate point of view. If you've ever read anything in the humanities, a lot of it is mindless garbage disguised with smart sounding words to make it sound like the author is saying something important. But now I know I'll end up thinking about it during a meeting, and kicking around the idea of it as art in comparison with Super Columbine.
Your problem is you're throwing art into some special category that's above reproach. Can "Custers Revenge" be considered art? Sure, why not? But that doesn't mean it has anything interesting to say, says it in an interesting way, or is any more relevant than the art created by a 4 year old.
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So why the criticism for releasing an operating system which, instead of being about new features and the gee-whiz factor, is primarily about security and compatibility and reliability?
Sure, that's cool. I think some of the under-the-hood features are great. The new driver model is an improvement. I'll check out Vista, but from what I've read so far there's nothing in it that's really making me chomp at the bit for it. My point is that in the past these "major upgrades" have always had very tangible improvements that were immediately obvious to the user. I wasn't around for the DOS to Windows 3.1 switch, but it's pretty obvious that 3.1 was superior. Windows 95 had obvious UI improvements over 3.1, to the point where I cringed every time I had to a machine with 3.1 on it. The improvements in reliability became obvious later (more below). I upgraded from 98 to 2000 because it was such a major improvement in stability, reliability, etc. Anyone that ran NT 4 knew to expect this added reliability in 2000, combined with USB, and UI features of 98. I tried XP, but found it to offer nothing I needed and it decreased my reliability so I went back to 2000.
Anyway, the average user wants to see some tanglible improvement to the UI, and the reviews I've seen so far haven't revealed much in that regard. Those kind of improvements are obvious right away, and thus drive upgrades.
As far as reliability, security, etc are concerned, of course I want that, but it's not obvious that Vista has that. You believe that the culture has changed and the OS is a lot more secure because of it. I've heard that from other people too, and maybe that's true. But the rest of us aren't insiders at Microsoft, and aren't naive enough to just believe what any-old-company says. The entire software industry is built on saying "This new product is GREAT! You simply HAVE to have it.. that old product we sold you last year.. well, it's not so great, but this one is WAY better". Sometimes that turns out to be true, other times it's just marketing BS.
Anyway, the proof is in the product, and like the article says we'll see if the product is secure and reliable as you say. The thing about reliability, security, compatibility, etc is they aren't immediately obvious and only reveal themselves with time. Would you trust a car company that says "we've changed.. our new model cars will last over 100,000 miles!" before the car has even had one day of real exposure to the public? I wouldn't. I'd wait about 4-5 years and see how reliable those new cars are, then make a judgement.
Maybe Vista DOES have all those properties, and all the spyware, "windows rot", virus infections, etc are a thing of the past. But you can't expect a review released at t-minus 2 or 3 weeks to talk about any of that, since it's not a known property yet.
I didn't make it to the end of the article, but apparently the weather report, stock ticker,
etc is a feature of Vista.
I don't think that really changes the main point though. These are all features that were available on OS X, and Linux years ago. It's not like Microsoft couldn't have whipped up these relatively simple apps in a month or two.
Wasn't Windows 95 delayed until late 1996
No, though there certainly were rumours floating around at the time that this would be the case. Windows 95 was released on August 24, 1995.
in fact it emphasizes it since Win95 was a venture into unknown technology, just like Vista.
Well, I'd say Windows 95 was the largest change in technology Microsoft had released since the change from DOS to Windows 3.1. Windows 95 offered very substantial improvements in stability, performance, and UI improvements over Windows 3.1 (I worked with 3.1 at the time and it had significant issues with regard to stability). Windows 95 was an obvious improvement even if you knew nothing about all the under-the-hood improvements.
From what I've heard of Vista so far, the improvements aren't on anywhere near the same level. There's some nice under-the-hood stuff, but I doubt the average user would ever even notice it. But hey, maybe all the reviews are wrong. I haven't used it myself, so the rest of us will all make our own judgements when it's actually available.
If this is relating to computer fraud how the fuck can they justify over 100 years of punishment?
See, the key phrase in this article is "up to". The journalist or prosecutor arrived at the figure 101 years simply from multiplying the number of crimes he's convicted of by the maximum sentence for each act.
Simply put, there's no way he'll serve anywhere close to that long. Even if by some insane judge sentences him to 101 years in jail, that's a no-brainer that'll get reduced on first appeal.
My point was that if there was an easy, fool-proof technical solution, it would be in place.
Well, I guess we simply disagree on why solutions aren't implemented. I don't think we live in a world where the biggest barrier to adoption of a better solution for everyone is simply technical.
The fact still remains, though, that someone who's cracked one bank's system will have a huge leg up on cracking other banks' systems. Why expose yourself to the extra risk when you can use a proprietary system without that risk?
Because a proprietary system is likely to suck rocks compared to a system that's been well studied by multiple people. Security benefits from being transparent, not through being obscure and secretive. It also benefits (like anything) from more funding that multiple-banks can provide. If you don't have a lot of money to throw at a problem, you might rely on this short term flash based crap rather than well proven cryptographic authentication.
If everyone relies on a system and a flaw is found then there's more impetus (and funding) to fix the flaw rather than justs hoping no one else discovers it. If you're just one little credit union relying on your proprietary solution, it becomes a lot more expensive to maintain your solution and fix any flaws you find along the way (so therefor less flaws will be fixed/found.).
So the end result is that a well secured system will be extremely difficult for someone to crack it. A proprietary solution will be less secure. If you were a bank.. which one would you choose? Hopefully you'd choose the more secure one.
I wonder, maybe XP was just good enough, and didn't really need to many improvements, besides the security patches it has been receiving, not mention two full service packs.
Well, I'd disagree that XP is an OS that doesn't need improving. One thing that I simply HATE is the
constant rebooting you have to do when you either upgrade some critical part of the OS, or re-install a piece of software.
The rebooting problem is a major flaw of the OS. It was designed with the philosophy "rebooting is OK, since updates are infrequent and won't affect the user experience". Linux/Unix was designed with the opposite philosophy, i.e. "this is a multi-user system that needs to be available 24/7. Rebooting is just plain terrible and should be used as a last resort".
This flaw has been improved somewhat in Vista with the new driver model, but it still hasn't really been fixed.
There's also some things I'd love to see Microsoft support in the UI. Why can I get a weather report, stock ticker, dictionary lookup, etc from out of the box on a Linux machine.. but I have to go download spyware laden 3rd party apps (or try to dig through multiple free windows apps) to get the same thing on Windows?
If I can come up with a few things that's improve the Windows experience in 5 minutes, why can't Microsoft develop some actually usefull stuff in 5 years? I'll withhold final judgement until I actually try Vista, but so far the reviews I've read haven't exactly been stunning.
Ah, yes, the old "but it seems so simple to my admittedly uneducated self." Really, isn't it common sense that if it were that easy it would have been done already?
I didn't say I knew NOTHING about security/crypto, I'm just not an expert along the lines of Bruce Schneire. Sheesh, there IS a middle ground between being a total neophyte and knowing everything about something.
You seem to think the problems must obviously be technical, and that's why no one has done it yet. It's hardly ever that way in business. The problems in technology are usually just getting everyone on-board and agreeing that "something has to be done", and "we should all try to do the same thing". This is in contrast with what often happens whith everyone trying to go in a different direction because they're afraid that they might wind up being screwed by some other company, or that co-operating will help the competition more than it helps them. Or maybe no one even at the company recognizes that there's a problem, so they just go on and ignore it until it becomes blindingly obvious that "something must be done".
Do you think it's a good idea to put everyone's eggs all in one basket, so that if an inside job compromises the single system, everyone's screwed?
Why would you think that security relies on one or a few people "pulling an inside job" to screw everyone? If you design the system properly knowing the details of the implementation won't help you. If you're REALLY paranoid, just get independant reviewers to make sure there's no backdoors built into the system. Or better yet publish the standard and let anyone that wants to work on an implementation. Then choose the one you like the best.
Here I was, all this time, really loving Vista and appreciating its massive list of new features...
And do you appreciate them by just looking at a nice list and drooling, or do you actually get anything tangible from that list of features?
I've read over the list before, and while I personally think some of them are cool, I don't think the average user cares two bits about improved IPV6, or the fact that you don't have to reboot to install new video drivers. I think they're important features, don't get me wrong. But for the average user it's not really something they should upgrade over.
Have you ever felt that sometimes people go out of their way to put down Microsoft.
No, I feel that the reviewer was expecting more from 5 years of development, and not to be burdened by hefty hardware requirements to take advantage of the new improvements. He compares it to OS X because it's gotten steadily better over the past 5 years, where the offerings from Microsoft, a much larger and richer company isn't really worthy of 5 years of development efforts.
Really I think the article sounds quite honest. He mentions that there's some improvements, but the majority of people don't have the hardware to take advantage of the improvements. The average guy is wondering "Should I upgrade to Vista?" not "Does this guy like Vista or not?" The article essentially say that unless you have a gig or more of memory, a recent computer, and a fast graphics processor.. Vista doesn't provide any benefits worth upgrading for.
Ultimately I think it indicates a larger problem at Microsoft. It's been more than 5 years since XP, the last desktop OS from Microsoft. That's pretty horrible considering that previously Microsoft has released a new desktop OS every about every 2 or 2.5 years (3.1 in 92, 3.11 in 93, 95 in 95, 98 in 98, 98 SE in 99, ME in 2000, WT2K in 2000, XP in 2001).
Look at all the major changes in previous 5 year spans. Compare Windows 3.11 in 93 to Windows 98 in 98, or Windows 95 in 95 to Windows 2000 in 2000 and you'll see what I'm talking about. Hell, compare the initial (really awfull) release of OSX 10.0 to the decent release of 10.4 only 4 years later. Sure there's a lot more to improve in OS X since it was so totally new.. but the fact that Apple can pull off more in less time doesn't speak well for Microsoft.
However, the real question is: Is Flash a good, secure option that a bank should use to help identify you?"
This is a foolish, short sighted strategy. Do you really think Flash is going to be the same 5 years from now? Is it even going to exist in 10 years? Does this solution even address the real security concerns, or is it just an ugly hack dreamed up by some people that have no other solution? I'd say the latter.
Banks need to get together and solve this problem outright. It's hurting all of them because they all have to develop these proprietary technologies (that only wind up sucking). They need to get together and find someone they all trust to lead development of a technology to secure transactions. If they were smart they'd hire someone like Bruce Schneier to design and oversee development of a system for them to secure web transactions.
IMO this techology lies under the "something you have" category of authentication, unlocked by "something you know". In other words a hardware device of some type that plugs into a USB port, and verifies that:
A. You're talking to the bank you think you are. Thus avoiding phishing attacks that get people to connect to sites pretending to be the bank.
B. That you are who you say you are.
Design it in such a way that if one component fails, the whole thing isn't compromised. I'm not a crypto/security expert, but from what I know all these requirements aren't even very technically challenging.
He wasn't saying the developers are pawns as in "worthless minions to do our evil bidding" or "clueless morons who can't make it without us".
Huh? It's quite clear what he's saying. Essentially he's saying that ISVs aren't partners with Microsoft, but companies that can be strategically set up to either be sacrificed for the greater good of Microsoft. Or maybe just used to gain competitive advantage.
Gee.. why would any ISV be offended at being sacrificed or duped into a certain strategy that only helps Microsoft? I justs can't imagine how this is an offensive comment to those companies.
Of courses, it really should come to no surprise that Microsoft operates like this. Most large companies do the same thing, it's just that Microsoft has been better at it than others.
Could he have used a better, less easily misconstrued term?
Why would he? It was a speech intended to be kept inside Microsoft only. Had this been a public speech you can bet he'd have turned on that "not making them feel like pawns" language. This only was released as part of a lawsuit, otherwise it'd never have reached public eyes.
500 comments on this article, and you're saying this with a straight face?
You're mistaking scientific controversy, with political or societal controversy. The GP was (I'm assuming) saying that global warming isn't a scientific controversy. There's really little or no debate in the scientific community that we're raising global average temeperature.
It's like saying that "evolution" isn't controversial. There's not even an inkling of scientific debate on it. But of course there's vocal thumpers who'll have you believe that it's the most contested scientific theory in existance.
This is why global warming raises such an alarm bell with me, because it never seems to be presented in this way. People trumpet it as something of which there is NO DOUBT, a fact, not a theory
You seem to be of the opinion that there's two categories of knowledge. Facts, of which we are certain, and theories of which we aren't. I have a theory that yesterday happened. My evidence is that I remember yesterday, I have records that were produced yesterday, I have video, newspaper reports, etc of yesterday occouring, and everyone I talk to also remembers yesterday occouring (I occasionally run into some people that don't recall yesterday, but all those people were either drunk, or have demonstratable problems with memory.)
But how do you know there's not an all-powerfull evil deceiver that merely manufactured all this evidence to fool us into thinking yesterday happened? You can't disprove it, can you? And I sure did dismiss those people that didn't remember yesterday quickly. Maybe they don't have memory problems.. maybe they have memory ENHANCEMENTS! Perhaps the evil deceiver isn't all powerfull and his powers don't affect those people, or people who were drunk at the time!
Ok, so my alternative theory isn't very good and doesn't explain anything new. That wasn't really the point of course. The point is to illustrate that you can look at everything as "theory", and there's not as hard a line between "fact" and "theory" as some people would have you believe. There's no such thing as a fact that's totally unquestionable down to an infinite amount of decimal places. I don't even have to go to ridicous extremes. Our memories aren't perfect, our senses can deceive us, etc. If you look out and see your car in the driveway, you'd think it's a fact that your car is in the driveway. But maybe it just LOOKS like your car and is in fact someone elses car. Or maybe you've had brain damage and your memories are faulty. We dismiss these alternative theories because they're not very good without any evidence to support them.
Another important point is that all theories aren't equally well accepted. We'd be VERY surprised if helio-centric theory (that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa) were wrong. We're so sure of it that no one really questions it because there's no good alternative. People that DO are considered quacks and fools.. not because they're questioning something unquestionable, but because they don't have any good alternative that stands up to scrutiny. My evil-deceiver theory falls to Occam's razor (simplified down to "all things being equal, the simpler theory wins"). It requires un-observed phenomenon like an evil-deceiver that's all powerfull and violates our understanding of essentially all of physics.
(it is a theory, so is how gravity works, and so on). If you question it you are stupid, or an industry shill, or ignoring the issue, and so on.
No, I think the problem is that the criticism that gets through is all rather stupid or miss-informed. Some people seem to think you can be some guy off the street and just topple global warming with a flick of the wrist. Others think that you can topple it if you're "real smart" (but don't have the knowledge or training to understand the central arguments of global warming). The evidence for global warming is complex enough that you need to be educated in the science surrounding it. Rush Limbaugh (and probbably other global warming critics) has occasionally poked at global warming through referencing that the amounts of CO2 produced by volcanoes far exceeds that produced by humans. This is actually true, but isn't relevant to the debate since the CO2 in the atmosphere is a balance between what's emitted, and what's absorbed. Change the balance, and there's more CO2 in the atmosphere. This is an example of information that sounds like a gaping hole in global warming to anyone that doesn't have the whole picture.. but it disappeers when you actually understand what's going
In what other country is having K-Mart clothes looked down upon so much?
From what I've heard, much of Europe (well, at least the richer countries). I've gotten the impression that quality clothes are valued much more over there.
When did the idea of saving money, being fiscally conservative and personally humble go out of style?
Quite a long time ago. I think it's a terrible terrible trend though. People have gone insane with spending crazy amounts of money on stuff they don't need, but THINK they need it. The most glaring example I can think of is weddings. Why is it necessary to spend $30,000 on one day of your life?
But why? The pain to Person A and Person A's ISP isn't that high.
To avoid producing all that useless bounce messages, to be a decent business that doesn't cause problems, to avoid Corporation XYZ (who was infected by a virus from Person A's ISP) suing person A's ISP for gladly spreading viruses around when there's simple, inexpensive technology available that would have prevented it. Or maybe just providing an additional service to Person A who'd appreciate not sending out viruses to his family and friends.
Well, person A's ISP should be have a virus scanner in place to prevent this kind of garbage. If you detect the mail is a virus, silently drop it (and perhaps log the IP address it came from). In any case, I can see how that'd present a problem.
I've also seen some backscatter mail from poorly configured virus scanners that don't know that viruses spoof the from: or reply-to: address.
It was banned by presidential order by Jimmy Carter in 1977 due to fears of reproccessing resulting in proliferation.
Which might have made some political sense at the time, given that we were in the middle of a cold war and everyone was insane about making more and more nuclear weapons.
But now it's just dumb, and should eventually be reversed. There's no political will to do it right now for a number of reasons. It's cheaper to just buy new fuel, so the power plant lobby doesn't really want it to happen. The far left is scared shitless by anything nuclear, so even though it's a wise environmental move they sure as hell don't want to support it, and the far right wants to bury it's head in the sand with any environmental concern. So who's left? A few geeks who value efficiency and aren't afraid of things they don't initially understand.
Can someone tell me the differences in terms of when each happens, and what happens on the other end between a bounce and a reject? I _think_ I understand the difference, but I'm not certain.
My understanding is that a reject is sent by the receiving SMTP server before it's accepted the mail. I.e. server a->server b, server a says mail is to: bill@serverB_Domain.com from: john@spoofedaddress.com. Server B can then accept the mail, or reject it (with various different codes for each). If B accepts it, it's server B's responsibility to handle it. If it rejects it, it's server A's responsibility to handle it.
So, (if I understand this right) the problem the submitter is getting at is that server B accepts the mail, but then later bounces it. (Because a spammer is obviously not going to bother bouncing the mail when it's rejected).
Why would Server B accept mail from Server A if it's only later going to bounce it? I can think of at least once case (and one I have experience with). If Server B is acting as a relay host for Server C, then it's difficult (but not impossible) for Server B to know if Server C will accept or reject the mail. So Server B just accepts all mail, but later has to bounce some of it when Server C rejects the mail.
I've dealt with this problem, and only recently fixed it when I rebuilt the relay server. I use Postfix, which now supports validating recipient addresses for relay hosts. Essentially what happens (in terms of my little scenario) is before Server B accepts a message, it connects to server C and sends a test message addressed to the recipient. If server C rejects the message, Server B rejects the message from Server A. (Yah, it's a little more complicated than that and involves caching, but that's the general idea). The previous version I was using didn't support this feature, so I wound up with a lot of bounce messages going out for spam addressed to invalid addresses.
The other scenario I can think of is that Server B later figures out that the mail is spam. But why in the world would you decide to bounce the mail at this point, since it's very likely the return address is fake, will never accept mail, etc? Either throw the mail away entirely and forget about the whole ugly mess, flag the mail as spam and delivery it to its destination, or squirrel it away somewhere just in case someone really really needs to see it (like it's a false positive).
What I do is flag the mail and stick it in the users spam folder. Then no one complains about not getting mail.
Just one more example of how Computer Science isn't quite up to the reliability requirements of Space
And how many failures have happened because of an enginering mistake?
You seem to assume that there's zero failure in space for everything else, and 6 problems in.. 30 years? is some horrible record.
All information only makes sense in context. What's the failure rate of other components of the system?
The days of HTTPS being valuable are long gone. We can look inside this traffic realtime. I monitor & block traffic to HTTPS sites myself..
The only way this is possible (barring someone having cracked SSL, which hasn't happened) is through a man-in-the-middle attack. If you try that, the user will get a message on the screen when they connect to https sights saying the certficicate is bad, unless you can somehow get them to recognize you as Certificate Authority by installing a root CA key. You can do that if you own the machines (business environment), but good luck doing that if you don't. You'd either have to break into someones machine, or trick them into installing it.
It doesn't have to be great art to be art; any art is worthy of protection just as any other expression that doesn't hurt anyone is
And I don't have any problem with the game existing, with someone entering it in a competition, etc. What I do have a problem with is someone calling garbage a rose. This game is garbage, it doesn't convey anything of value. I'm not even really offended by it, I just think it's a bad game that should have been remained obscure and unknown. I won't get into the "is it art" debate, as I think that's a meaningless label.
Oh how quickly people forget. Remember the 360 launch? It sucked. Hard. The sales pace made the PS3 look like a champ.
I don't know anything about the 360 launch, but there's a big difference between now and a year ago. A year ago the 360 was the only next-gen console on the market. Not having a great launch didn't matter as much since what are the people hungering for a new console going to do? They either already own the PS2, or have a XBox. In short, Microsoft doesn't lose much from a poor launch.
A year later and a PS3 launch failure hurts Sony a LOT more. Why? Because all three consoles next-gen consoles are now out, so Sony has more competition to worry about. Can't get/afford a PS3? Well the XBOX 360 is available, a good replacement for the PS3 (with the promise of a second generation of games coming out for it too). Or maybe you have the XBox and are looking for something new.. well, the Wii is real cheap, and it's fun and different than the XBox.
But it is way too early to call this. What I will say though, is that if Microsoft writes off Sony at this point, Sony is going to eat their lunch and Microsoft will end up in third place again.
Sure, maybe Sony will perform some miracle comeback and sweep the competition. But if this were a baseball game, the score would be 5-0 in the bottom of the second inning. Unless Microsoft really screws up, it's looking like Sony is going to lose this game.
I also wouldn't take what Bill Gates says to the press as a reflection of what he believes. If you were him, wouldn't you try to say Sony has already lost (and hopefully discourage people from buying PS3s)?
Look how worked up you are about it. It's more than you thinking "why was this worth consideration"?
I get pissed off at the moronic government of George W Bush too. Is he now "good art"? You seem to think I really care about SCMRPG. What pissed me off is the people trying to fool other people by dangling the word "art" in front of something, hynotizing them until their brains shut off. It has nothing to do with SCMRPG, and everything to do with the people who're in the "art above all" camp.
Art isn't easily defined. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make any difference.
I don't care if it's "art" or not. Call it art, fine. Say it's not, fine. All I know is that it's a poor game.
My problem with the whole "art" defense is that it becomes the ultimate shield for some people. Say to such a person you think it sucks, and they come back with "Ohh.. well you just don't UNDERSTAND IT!" As if the given is that it's "art" and if you don't respect it in some way, you've "missed the point".
Seriously, although I am not for disqualifying the SCRPG, how would you feel about a new FPS entering the contest called Maryland Sniper? Remember the guy who was sniping innocent people coming out of the parking lot or attempting to use a gas pump? Would that be an acceptable entry as well?
Sure, why not? I'm not sure why you're disqualifying an entry because some people will be offended. There's a difference between what's socially acceptable (whatever that means) and what's an acceptable entry in a competition. If "Maryland Sniper" has some kind of redeeming quality and is a good game, why not? If it's a poor game, and just trying to be "controversial" then it's a poor entry.
As to your arguments about "where the line is", it's not really relevant. What offends people is different for each person. I'm offended by the idiotic "Left Behind" game. I'd never buy it, I think people who play it and take it seriously are religious wackos, but I don't really care if someone puts it in a competition. "Where the line is" only matters to someone trying to sell the game (which was never the goal with SCMRPG), and even then you can only define it in terms of a percentage of the population. Hell, I'm sure there's some nutjobs out their that think there's something wrong with pac-man because he's a glutton that's always eating and is never satiated.
As for SCMRPG, I've played it and found it to be a poor entry into the competition because it's a poor game. Not because it might offend someone, "cross the line", or is "innapropriate". Frankly I think it was included in the competition purely because it covers a controversial subject. Then someone higher up heard about it, and decided that "the money guys won't like it", so they pulled it. Pretty lame if you ask me.
Just because you don't like the game, it doesn't mean that it hasn't made people think. "Monkey-dick" is just your perception but the game made you think.
What a load of bullshit. You know what it made me think? It made me think "Why the hell did the idiots at slamdance ever think this junk was worth considering for a competition?"
Sheesh. Making someone think is hardly worthy of note.
Is Pollock Jackson less of an artist than Hieronymus Bosch or than Botticelli?
I don't know what being more, or less of an artist means. I do know what shitty art is. SCMRPG is shitty art.
The "Freshman humanities 101" reference makes you sound like you're a condescending jerk
No, I just think that flowering something up with specialized type language doesn't make it a more educated or accurate point of view. If you've ever read anything in the humanities, a lot of it is mindless garbage disguised with smart sounding words to make it sound like the author is saying something important.
But now I know I'll end up thinking about it during a meeting, and kicking around the idea of it as art in comparison with Super Columbine.
Your problem is you're throwing art into some special category that's above reproach. Can "Custers Revenge" be considered art? Sure, why not? But that doesn't mean it has anything interesting to say, says it in an interesting way, or is any more relevant than the art created by a 4 year old.