So if MS can't make Linux go away they should simply become like IBM.
One thing that so many people who make this suggestion is that MS can't become like IBM. IBM is a hardware company. Microsoft is a software company. IBM an embrace Linux because it adds value to their solutions, whilst cutting costs. Microsoft can't do that.
"entity" will have no control over its lower level functions, in the same way that you are sentient but cannot will any particular neuron to fire.
It is reasonable(*) to assume that at some point, an AI will understand programming, thus understanding how to modify itself. We COULD will a particular neuron to fire, IF we could modify ourselves to do so.
For an AI to be aware of lower level functions, it just needs to add a hook to those functions, and process the data. Granted, it's not going to know the state of its cpu's electrons but only because that's a physical problem. But as soon as we start talking machine code and up, AI's are pretty much their own gods.
* If an AI can learn to understand a language (a resonable goal) then why not the computer language it was written in?
Microsoft builds *every* piece of software with the end-user in mind. That's their problem. That's why their stuff is so riddled with security holes: people asked for the convenience of not having to deal with certain things, MS obliged, and then the people got fucked by it.
I'm sorry, but as far as i'm concerned, you statement is a cop out. What about Apple? Borland? Heaps of companies make good software, that is great to use, and has the end user in mind WHILE maintaining a decent level of security. It comes down to good enginnering practises.
For Microsoft, security is an afterthought. Getting products out to maintain an illegal monopoly is the priority.
I agree with most of your points, but i guess i think about attacking the issue differently. I am of the opinion that a lot of the bloat in mozilla is due to the nature of opensource in large projects. As soon as you have a large project involving smart people, everyone wants some input into the direction of the project. And opensource by its nature is allowing everyone to do what they want! This impedes direction, and introduces bloat.
What can we do about this? Well in this regards, I think you've hit the nail on it's head unintentionally.
For opensource to succeed it needs modularity.
Every good opensource project needs a module/plugin/etc. system. IMHO Linux would be FAR better off if it had a stable module interface. Mozilla too. Developers don't want moving targets. The Win32 API has been so successful because it hasn't been a moving target for developers. Same goes with SYSV.
When an opensource project becomes modular, it becomes a base from which other projects can grow. The Natural Selection side of OSS comes into play. If you don't like something, unload the module! Someone else can easily develop a better one.
Actually, now you got me ranting, and realising things that probably wouldn't have been as clear otherwise.
On a side note, I think one of the benefits with firefox is it's plugin system. It's not perfect - actually far from it, but the dependancy stuff they are adding now is looking kinda good - at least compared to anything else I know of.
Also, another note: A lot of mozilla as an application's bloat comes from the design decision to not use native widgets for portability reasons.
Everyone keeps saying how far MS are behind mozilla based browsers in terms of features. But HTML doens't mean jack in the next round of the browser wars.
In the next round, the web is an Application Platform. XAML is what matters. While everyone using firefox thinks that they have a kickarse browser, It's only for the current web.
XAML is way better than XUL. And even within the XUL community there is a disgrunted feeling.
My personal rant with XUL is: Where is XUL's OLE/Opendoc replacement? It would be easy to just allow XUL embeding in xhtml - What an easy solution! But the mozilla editor doesn't support xhtml! only html 4!
Noone is listening to the users of XUL. and it sucks.
2. xbox/drm If MS gets their own DRM box in everyone's house, they control the platform!
Things OSS need to do:
* I really wish the mozilla project would focus on making their XUL offering a bit more substantial. It would be awesome if you could make a program in XUL that could minimise to the system tray! making a messenger/irc/chat program would be easy as! it already supports server push via multipart/x-mixed-replace in newer versions (>1.7).
* Firefox/mozilla are moving targets for developers! Plugins break between releases! It's okay to add features, but maybe the versioning system should be modifyed to not break things until the next major version. And possibly the next major version shouldn't be released until there is a seamless migration strategy.
You're talking daemon or server side remote exploits. This does nothing for client side exploits. There are quite a few clients that are used on nearly all OSX boxes! safari comes to mind instantly.
Someone could have a link exploiting a bug in safari, and spread the freecache version - in fact the virus could make a mini httpd on it's host and spread itself by emailing that url around.
Clients open up ports too!
Good hackers are lateral thinkers, and while I agree MACOSX ships with some reasonable defaults, don't for a minute think you're secure.
Can't you just run it under wine with TCPA turned off? who cares if the application is signed if TCPA is turned off.
This is actually an advantage for linux. We can run any software we want.
The problem is the internet enabled software that connects to servers requiring TCPA enabled verification/certification.
Maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can see, TCPA is lending itself to interpreted languages. A signed binary (the interpreter) is running the code.
A compiler could do the same thing, compile your c/whatever code to a library, and then jump into the library, effectively running your application.
if say, and ELF loader was signed, isn't it effectively able to run any application with unlimited permissions? How would other applications over the network know that you aren't running a signed application?
Please explain what i'm getting wrong because folowing this line of thinking TCPA seems pretty useless.
But I don't think that the punishment should be too harsh in this case, perhaps on the same scale as graffiti, maybe a little harsher because of the more expensive "cleanup".
computer crimes cleanup is cheap. Because with computers, unlike with physical crimes, there is the opportunity to work smarter.
with graffiti, someone has to scrub, and scrubbing takes time. There isn't much you can do to avoid someone graffiti-ing in the first place.
a computer breakin on the other hand, with a competent sysadmin, can be reduced to putting a cd-rom in and restoring from a backup. Also the person breaking in is learning new skills that wil l help raise the bar for sysadmin in the future. This has many benefits, one of the most important at the moment being securing our systems from the threat of terror.
The amount of work involved in recovering from a Cracker is far more extensive than physical graffiti.
But it shouldn't be. Sticking in a few cdroms and restoring a system from backup should take minutes.
If an admin of a large site can't enforce a proper backup strategy, they shouldn't be there in the first place. Do we really want windows weenies prevalent in the workforce?
Kids being allowed to explore networks without reprocussion is the best thing possible for our next generation of system administrators. raising the bar means proper security practisees will become commonplace, and that will in turn help us defend our computer systems from terrorists.
IF someone steals creditcard info from a computer system that is a different story. If someone uses cracked systems to perform a DoS that's a different story. But simply owning/defacing sites is a lot more harmless, and in fact benefits the industry significantly.
Engineers were forced to design to withstand natural disaster. Our buildings can withstand kids. Why can't our computer systems?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry but no.
Motor car registrations don't limit your freedom of speech. That's just stupid.
Internet registrations quite well could.
The internet is a means of communication. The motor vehicle is not.
One thing that so many people who make this suggestion is that MS can't become like IBM. IBM is a hardware company. Microsoft is a software company. IBM an embrace Linux because it adds value to their solutions, whilst cutting costs. Microsoft can't do that.
It is reasonable(*) to assume that at some point, an AI will understand programming, thus understanding how to modify itself. We COULD will a particular neuron to fire, IF we could modify ourselves to do so.
For an AI to be aware of lower level functions, it just needs to add a hook to those functions, and process the data. Granted, it's not going to know the state of its cpu's electrons but only because that's a physical problem. But as soon as we start talking machine code and up, AI's are pretty much their own gods.
* If an AI can learn to understand a language (a resonable goal) then why not the computer language it was written in?
Profits equals slash equals R&D.
because apple is involved.
I'm sorry, but as far as i'm concerned, you statement is a cop out. What about Apple? Borland? Heaps of companies make good software, that is great to use, and has the end user in mind WHILE maintaining a decent level of security. It comes down to good enginnering practises.
For Microsoft, security is an afterthought. Getting products out to maintain an illegal monopoly is the priority.
First of all, thanks.
I agree with most of your points, but i guess i think about attacking the issue differently. I am of the opinion that a lot of the bloat in mozilla is due to the nature of opensource in large projects. As soon as you have a large project involving smart people, everyone wants some input into the direction of the project. And opensource by its nature is allowing everyone to do what they want! This impedes direction, and introduces bloat.
What can we do about this? Well in this regards, I think you've hit the nail on it's head unintentionally.
For opensource to succeed it needs modularity.
Every good opensource project needs a module/plugin/etc. system. IMHO Linux would be FAR better off if it had a stable module interface. Mozilla too. Developers don't want moving targets. The Win32 API has been so successful because it hasn't been a moving target for developers. Same goes with SYSV.
When an opensource project becomes modular, it becomes a base from which other projects can grow. The Natural Selection side of OSS comes into play. If you don't like something, unload the module! Someone else can easily develop a better one.
Actually, now you got me ranting, and realising things that probably wouldn't have been as clear otherwise.
On a side note, I think one of the benefits with firefox is it's plugin system. It's not perfect - actually far from it, but the dependancy stuff they are adding now is looking kinda good - at least compared to anything else I know of.
Also, another note: A lot of mozilla as an application's bloat comes from the design decision to not use native widgets for portability reasons.
Everyone keeps saying how far MS are behind mozilla based browsers in terms of features. But HTML doens't mean jack in the next round of the browser wars.
In the next round, the web is an Application Platform. XAML is what matters. While everyone using firefox thinks that they have a kickarse browser, It's only for the current web.
XAML is way better than XUL. And even within the XUL community there is a disgrunted feeling.
My personal rant with XUL is: Where is XUL's OLE/Opendoc replacement? It would be easy to just allow XUL embeding in xhtml - What an easy solution! But the mozilla editor doesn't support xhtml! only html 4!
Noone is listening to the users of XUL. and it sucks.
Here's a bad link.
I can see ms battling in at least 2 ways;
1. patents.
MS has funds that OSS do not.
2. xbox/drm
If MS gets their own DRM box in everyone's house, they control the platform!
Things OSS need to do:
* I really wish the mozilla project would focus on making their XUL offering a bit more substantial. It would be awesome if you could make a program in XUL that could minimise to the system tray! making a messenger/irc/chat program would be easy as! it already supports server push via multipart/x-mixed-replace in newer versions (>1.7).
* Firefox/mozilla are moving targets for developers! Plugins break between releases! It's okay to add features, but maybe the versioning system should be modifyed to not break things until the next major version. And possibly the next major version shouldn't be released until there is a seamless migration strategy.
You work at microsoft, and your nick is Carnage4Life. Coincidence?
on this page it says
#Disable switch compatibility (XBox Live compatibility)
does this mean we can play on xbox live with modded xboxen?
Can't you just run it under wine with TCPA turned off? who cares if the application is signed if TCPA is turned off. This is actually an advantage for linux. We can run any software we want. The problem is the internet enabled software that connects to servers requiring TCPA enabled verification/certification.
Maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can see, TCPA is lending itself to interpreted languages.
A signed binary (the interpreter) is running the code.
A compiler could do the same thing, compile your c/whatever code to a library, and then jump into the library, effectively running your application.
if say, and ELF loader was signed, isn't it effectively able to run any application with unlimited permissions? How would other applications over the network know that you aren't running a signed application?
Please explain what i'm getting wrong because folowing this line of thinking TCPA seems pretty useless.
computer crimes cleanup is cheap. Because with computers, unlike with physical crimes, there is the opportunity to work smarter.
with graffiti, someone has to scrub, and scrubbing takes time. There isn't much you can do to avoid someone graffiti-ing in the first place.
a computer breakin on the other hand, with a competent sysadmin, can be reduced to putting a cd-rom in and restoring from a backup. Also the person breaking in is learning new skills that wil l help raise the bar for sysadmin in the future. This has many benefits, one of the most important at the moment being securing our systems from the threat of terror.
The amount of work involved in recovering from a Cracker is far more extensive than physical graffiti.
But it shouldn't be. Sticking in a few cdroms and restoring a system from backup should take minutes.
If an admin of a large site can't enforce a proper backup strategy, they shouldn't be there in the first place. Do we really want windows weenies prevalent in the workforce?
Kids being allowed to explore networks without reprocussion is the best thing possible for our next generation of system administrators. raising the bar means proper security practisees will become commonplace, and that will in turn help us defend our computer systems from terrorists.
IF someone steals creditcard info from a computer system that is a different story. If someone uses cracked systems to perform a DoS that's a different story. But simply owning/defacing sites is a lot more harmless, and in fact benefits the industry significantly.
Engineers were forced to design to withstand natural disaster. Our buildings can withstand kids. Why can't our computer systems?