Microsoft prices are just enough to kill the competition and have very little to do with economics. Lets take a look at C compilers..
Once there was Borland, Symantec and Microsoft. You could generally get these compilers for $300 or less. Symantec had a real good one too! Symantec got out leaving Borland and Microsoft. Microsoft continually put APIs in theirs that Borland could not obtain stable versions for. Now that Microsoft owns this space as a monopoly the same compiler is about $1000 or more.
Linux does far more as in the orient and Europe where adoption of open source is more pervasive so Microsoft lowers the price of their OS to $30 and less. And they also often include office at a ridiculasly low price when compared to North America.
I believe I paid $75 in 1995 for Windows 95. A current retail version of XP is much more than this today.
No industry I know of gas the profit margins of Microsoft. While this is good for investors it is not very competative. Microsoft will file useless patents and tie up anyone in court that they deem a threat to their pricing model. This being their current strategy.
While it is legal for "Microsoft Only" contracts with Dell and HP there will be very little competition. But this does leave room for someone to come right up the middle and be the next Lell Computer company. (L-inux).
Not sure many major vendors, especially Dell and HP are ready for Linux on the portable PCs just yet. Although I know of quite a few Dells running Linux it is not officially supported by Dell. They do not want to upset the Microsoft monopoly agreement as their per unit costs go up if they do not "recommend Windows".
I know that is anti-competative. But the US legal system doesn't care or is operating under the principle that Microsoft is a US business so it isn't anti-competative, it is business.
So when I bought my last PC it didn't have Intel oe Windows in it. An cheap too. Where else nbut Walmart:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product _id=3504708&cat=179113&type=19&dept=3944%20%20
Or google for "walmart balance"
. EULAs also include things like your distribution rights,
EULAs don't give rights, they remove them.
I see EULA I don't waste my time reading it and just assume:
I have no rigths other than to perhaps use the program at their mercy
I cannot copy or distribute
They are not responsible for anything including back doors or unlicensed material they include
You cannot attempt to hold them responsible for anything
If you open the product at all, your money is not refundable yet you have to open it to read this
If the vendor decides to terminate the agreement they can
EULA's are probably enforcable. And if you choose to ignore it, for exmple make backup copies there is little they can do about it. They could send a lawyer and get a judge to get you to destroy the copies, however to reclaim costs they have to show damages or criminal intent. If a user makes a copy for personal use, or even modifies the binary -- there is no real damages from these actions. So it is not economical to enforce major parts of a EULA.
But on the other hand if you made a copy and sent it to 10000 people you could be liable for damages and costs including punitive damages because the law was broken and they can claim lost sales resulted.
I agree they might be necessary but there aught to be a reasonable law abuut EULAs, they must be short and require only an average IQ to understand. They should be posted on the outside of the product so you can review before purchase.
Refer to page 4. Programmers would not see/edit XML tags. RTFA
It is possible to hire senior web developers that doesn't know how to read html, xml or jscript but is that the type of person you want when it is time to troubleshoot problems?,
Maybe you should read up on the author [third-bit.com]. He's probably written more code in his day than you could shake a stick at.
Haven't you ever worked for a government run company? There are procedures for this sort of thing! The change will be the CEO getting a new cell phone, one that takes pictures of his stock portfolio to send to investors and has a different number to prevent this kind of upset of his chain of command.
Yes I have worked for a government run company and the senior management usually has self denial, run for the hills and procedures are for "other" people unless if is convenient.
This is why it was surprising he came right out and admited it. I give him credit for that as many CEOs would have hidden behind legal or public relations hoping someone would forget about it. In fact, it probably took longer as legal had to approve it.
But being without weekend support and processing active requests at the same time, their customers aught to look carefully at that. And I can't believe in this day and age a few calls could not be made and someone just fixes it.
I am sure the CEO already had a phone to manage his stocks, golf schedule and girlfriends... problem was no one had his number that needed it. My guess is they do not have a DR plan either.
Not that SpaceCast is a great station, it is pale when compared to SciFi but cancelling the last new showing Star Trek is well -- quickly becoming a excuse to cancel cable if it were not for the IP aggress..
Someone please put out a Star Trek outside of the media channels we currently have. They are dysfunctional carbon units controling what we see and hear. Yet they hear nothing as we want Trek!
but this may take until Monday, due to the time differences and difficulties in reaching responsible parties over the weekend.
I smell a law suit a happening. But given the lack of response from this registrar their registration should be pulled if they don't have it fixed with 30 minutes notice.
And maybe ISPs will lean on ICANN to remove the registrar. It is easy to protest. If the top ten ISPs blocked this registrars DNS servers this would in fact make it worth their while to get their act together. If I worked for Earthlink, RR, Sprint, Simpatico, Telus, ATT and others, and had the authority to do this I would participate. As there has to be NO DNS registrar that is fradulent. As it could have been my domain that was hyjacked.
He's got a point there, but still, that stinks of "create a problem, then sell the solution".
But this is the American way...
Microsoft with security, SMS, updates etc. They even want to do it with spam, and most spam comes from Windows PCs.
Trend, McAfee, Norton and others, no expanation needed
ISPs let infected PCs stay on the net, yet want to sell the customers some AV product or "extra" bandwidth
Telcos, sell calling line ID, then sell blocks for it. Some even sell no-calls from blocked.
Credit card companies want to give us credit cards and then want us to pay for insurance to protect us from the flaws in their system
Bank and credit institutions over extend credit and want users to take out insurance
For most insurance companies you can get insurance for what another insurance policy does not cover.
Cars, I like this one. Most are defective yet they want more of your money to cover the defects and keep their junk on the road
You can spend a premium dollar on a HDTV Plama TV and then have to pay more to get a TV tuner.
Heck, it buyer beware.
Actually I am amazed we haven't seen more destructive virus to date. Very few actually kill your PC. So most are doing it for fame, challenge and the opportunity. Maybe even a job.
So although dimented, these types are likly mentally fit.
Windows Update is the big reason Firefox users keep having to use Internet Explorer. There's an ActiveX plugin for Firefox out there, but I don't know if (with masquerading the user agent) it will run Windows Update. Anyone tried this? There's also an extension that adds Windows Update to Firefox's Tools menu.
Actually it might be better to download the patches from a protected PC and burn them to a CD-RW or something. Then move the CD to a unpatched Win PC. Windows Update has one sever flaw. If you install Windows on your PC, and then want to patch it up for the bugs you have to connect it to the network and likely get infected especially if you don't have a hardware/NAT firewall.
But like update, the firewall in XP-SP2 has issues, it is much easier for malware to turn off a software firewall than a $49 Linksys/Netgear/SMC etc cable modem device. Besides, if you must use software firewalling ZoneAlarm is so much better.
this article is great. it does a good job at explaining what firefox is and what it can do, and also tells the reader that if you try it and find a bug, don't trash it. give it time and keep it around.
For the most part, I agree it was informative. However I disagree with the assertion that Firefox has more bugs than IE. And if bugs were a reason not to use software why are most client PCs using the bugiest of them all, Wonodws?
Not running Active-X is a feature -- it improves security 10 fold. And I pray that if Firefox developers ever do the daftest thing like add Active-X support that if be 1) Shipped off by default and 2) Have all sorts of controls on how it is used. Finally 3) Some way to uninstall the crud buildup.
But being a Mozilla and Firefox user for over 18 months, I only use IE where I have too which is becoming less and less. I even discovered OWA 5.5 works with Mozilla.
Kick him out of school and publish his name and address, Make it legal to hack spammers sites. If the Texas University wants to keep him, then they should become liable for his actions. Go get the politicians email addresses and send them greating cards from your favorite email address collection site.
With good reason too. I once consulted to an unamed college and could not believe how disorganized, how poorly planed and how lax security was. But the Dean responsible was worried more about what other things and what I cost him than getting a decent set of backups. The kicker was we game him very low rates as I was between larger projects.
Deans should not manage I/T and computer infrastructure. I/T manager needs to answer to the board/directors and have their own budget and standards. Standards based not on budget pilfering and politics, but based on basic functional and security needs.
And lock down the firewalls and PCs. Heck, many run firewalls but have rules in them that pass all traffic both ways as the people neither have the skills nor the time to do otherwise.
The fact of the mater is, the biggest boost to college computer security is when the internet connection becomes so clogged up it becomes unusable. And a call from a dean who is having problems watching NBA or porno is inconvenienced.
At this point they usually have to get a bigger pipe or clamp down on abuse.
I should note, not all colleges and universities are like this --- but many are.
Microsoft has announced an intent to pick up some of the PeopleSoft customers currently fleeing from possible support contract increases and an uncertain future.
This is like a big whale (Oracle) is about to get bitten by a pirana (Microsoft) and the customers will have to pay, and pay and pay.
Now if the companies invested in open source or their own source code built on an open POSIX based system then these vendors would not be able to do this. If you had the source you don't have to worry about a vendor going in a direction you don't like.
If you do buy commercial closed source products, get a source code escrow in the contract where if they decide not to support it or get bought out you get a copy of the source. This way they are sub-par to open source. If you can't get this escrow - know the risk going in.
Besides, how hard would it be to write a HRS system anyway? A recipe of OpenLDAP, MySQL, PHP, C and Java....
And now we have people getting arrested for pointing out someone else's mistake...
That is why it is best to post your findings on anonymously on foreign servers or through a third party on bugtraq. All too often they either want to sue you or ignore you which can cost you even if you win.
I do make exceptions to the above if the vendor reputation is solid. There is one vendor out there that when I pointed out a major security bug they fixed it in days without a hassle. Mind you, it was a serious security bug.
Hm, in 1978 I remember using a Commodore PET PC. I believe Apple IIs also existed in 1978... BSD was there also with uuget and uuput and we bundled mail for nightly transmission. 2005 - 1978 == 27 years.
OpenVPN therefore does not seem to work for me, though perhaps I was reading the documentation incorrectly. It seems that it requires both endpoints have static IP addresses. Also, am I correct in saying that it requires UDP?
I am not familiar with OpenVPN, but I am with some others. If you are behind a NAT firewall or on a dynamic IP address you may need to turn off AH to make it reliable. AH authenticates the IP address header so if it is altered or tampered with the IPSec/VPN can reject the packet. Having AH on is more secure as it authenticates the source, but loosing it is still secure enough for most uses as the EA keys are unknown to others and without EA keys they cannot generate acceptable data packets.
Alternatively, to keep AH - put the VPN system directly on the Internet network and do not NAT. If it is a dynamic DHCP assigned address, you will need to re-configure the IPSec/VPN each time it changes to keep the AH component working.
"I'm looking for a low cost solution for allowing myself and a few others the ability to share a server at one of our locations. One thought was using SSH tunnels to establish secure connections,
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris (Intel) and most Linux distros offer IPSec VPN as part of the OS Most run well on older hardware and can be a router, gateway, NAT, IP tunnrling as well as a mail relay, IMAP server and of course come with repected firewalls. You can also run IDS software such as Snort, AprWatch and comes with a nice network sniffing tools.
I have been using Solaris this way for years now without issues, and a friends of mine use OpenBSD and Solaris. This allows us to securely share information over the Internet on a private IPSec and tunneled network.
With IPSec VPN the two networks near and far can be ordinary unencrypted networks. The Internet routing systems do all the work of crypto between the sites. IPSec will route all ports, Windows services and even a virus if one end gets infected. That is in part why I prefer xNIX solutions as you can use IPFilter or PF to block unwanted services.
There are some inexpensive appliance systems that have less features than above but then the appliance does not require the working knowledge of the network as the above options do. Some of these are getting quite reasonable in cost.
So your real problem is how, there are lots of ways. With google, search for IPSec and the OS of choice. May the force of privacy be with you!
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Microsoft prices are just enough to kill the competition and have very little to do with economics. Lets take a look at C compilers..
Once there was Borland, Symantec and Microsoft. You could generally get these compilers for $300 or less. Symantec had a real good one too! Symantec got out leaving Borland and Microsoft. Microsoft continually put APIs in theirs that Borland could not obtain stable versions for. Now that Microsoft owns this space as a monopoly the same compiler is about $1000 or more.
Linux does far more as in the orient and Europe where adoption of open source is more pervasive so Microsoft lowers the price of their OS to $30 and less. And they also often include office at a ridiculasly low price when compared to North America.
I believe I paid $75 in 1995 for Windows 95. A current retail version of XP is much more than this today.
No industry I know of gas the profit margins of Microsoft. While this is good for investors it is not very competative. Microsoft will file useless patents and tie up anyone in court that they deem a threat to their pricing model. This being their current strategy.
While it is legal for "Microsoft Only" contracts with Dell and HP there will be very little competition. But this does leave room for someone to come right up the middle and be the next Lell Computer company. (L-inux).
Not sure many major vendors, especially Dell and HP are ready for Linux on the portable PCs just yet. Although I know of quite a few Dells running Linux it is not officially supported by Dell. They do not want to upset the Microsoft monopoly agreement as their per unit costs go up if they do not "recommend Windows".
I know that is anti-competative. But the US legal system doesn't care or is operating under the principle that Microsoft is a US business so it isn't anti-competative, it is business.
So when I bought my last PC it didn't have Intel oe Windows in it. An cheap too. Where else nbut Walmart:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?produc. EULAs also include things like your distribution rights,
EULAs don't give rights, they remove them.
I see EULA I don't waste my time reading it and just assume:
I have no rigths other than to perhaps use the program at their mercy
I cannot copy or distribute
They are not responsible for anything including back doors or unlicensed material they include
You cannot attempt to hold them responsible for anything
If you open the product at all, your money is not refundable yet you have to open it to read this
If the vendor decides to terminate the agreement they can
EULA's are probably enforcable. And if you choose to ignore it, for exmple make backup copies there is little they can do about it. They could send a lawyer and get a judge to get you to destroy the copies, however to reclaim costs they have to show damages or criminal intent. If a user makes a copy for personal use, or even modifies the binary -- there is no real damages from these actions. So it is not economical to enforce major parts of a EULA.
But on the other hand if you made a copy and sent it to 10000 people you could be liable for damages and costs including punitive damages because the law was broken and they can claim lost sales resulted.
I agree they might be necessary but there aught to be a reasonable law abuut EULAs, they must be short and require only an average IQ to understand. They should be posted on the outside of the product so you can review before purchase.
Last I checked, Bruce is the CTO not the CEO.
Good point. Guess the CEO headed for the hills on this one.
Refer to page 4. Programmers would not see/edit XML tags. RTFA
It is possible to hire senior web developers that doesn't know how to read html, xml or jscript but is that the type of person you want when it is time to troubleshoot problems?,
Maybe you should read up on the author [third-bit.com]. He's probably written more code in his day than you could shake a stick at.
Somehow I really doubt that part about code.
Haven't you ever worked for a government run company? There are procedures for this sort of thing! The change will be the CEO getting a new cell phone, one that takes pictures of his stock portfolio to send to investors and has a different number to prevent this kind of upset of his chain of command.
Yes I have worked for a government run company and the senior management usually has self denial, run for the hills and procedures are for "other" people unless if is convenient.
This is why it was surprising he came right out and admited it. I give him credit for that as many CEOs would have hidden behind legal or public relations hoping someone would forget about it. In fact, it probably took longer as legal had to approve it.
But being without weekend support and processing active requests at the same time, their customers aught to look carefully at that. And I can't believe in this day and age a few calls could not be made and someone just fixes it.
I am sure the CEO already had a phone to manage his stocks, golf schedule and girlfriends... problem was no one had his number that needed it. My guess is they do not have a DR plan either.
Not that SpaceCast is a great station, it is pale when compared to SciFi but cancelling the last new showing Star Trek is well -- quickly becoming a excuse to cancel cable if it were not for the IP aggress..
Someone please put out a Star Trek outside of the media channels we currently have. They are dysfunctional carbon units controling what we see and hear. Yet they hear nothing as we want Trek!
Seriously. Isn't software bloated enough? Why obfuscate things further. Dumbest... idea... ever.
Couldn't agree more. Leave it to some MS XML pin head to think you need a new language to be extensible.
The fool should study polymorphism, and a object orientated language like Java or C++. But I suspect that is all is to much for the child's brain.
Going to be flame bait for this:
ALL XML IS IS FREE STYLE HTML/SGML and your smoke'in crack if you do not realize it.
And when I type code I hate typing
all the freaking time to make my job productive. Or at least I don't think it makes me virile.The good, the CEO admitted it so something will likely happen to prevent it in the future.
The bad, panix.com users were compromized and without service
The ugly hopefully (as far as we know) does not happen. Such hijackings can lead to compromized passwords and accesses to other systems.
Be careful out there...
but this may take until Monday, due to the time differences and difficulties in reaching responsible parties over the weekend.
I smell a law suit a happening. But given the lack of response from this registrar their registration should be pulled if they don't have it fixed with 30 minutes notice.
And maybe ISPs will lean on ICANN to remove the registrar. It is easy to protest. If the top ten ISPs blocked this registrars DNS servers this would in fact make it worth their while to get their act together. If I worked for Earthlink, RR, Sprint, Simpatico, Telus, ATT and others, and had the authority to do this I would participate. As there has to be NO DNS registrar that is fradulent. As it could have been my domain that was hyjacked.
He's got a point there, but still, that stinks of "create a problem, then sell the solution".
But this is the American way...
Microsoft with security, SMS, updates etc. They even want to do it with spam, and most spam comes from Windows PCs.
Trend, McAfee, Norton and others, no expanation needed
ISPs let infected PCs stay on the net, yet want to sell the customers some AV product or "extra" bandwidth
Telcos, sell calling line ID, then sell blocks for it. Some even sell no-calls from blocked.
Credit card companies want to give us credit cards and then want us to pay for insurance to protect us from the flaws in their system
Bank and credit institutions over extend credit and want users to take out insurance
For most insurance companies you can get insurance for what another insurance policy does not cover.
Cars, I like this one. Most are defective yet they want more of your money to cover the defects and keep their junk on the road
You can spend a premium dollar on a HDTV Plama TV and then have to pay more to get a TV tuner.
Heck, it buyer beware.
Actually I am amazed we haven't seen more destructive virus to date. Very few actually kill your PC. So most are doing it for fame, challenge and the opportunity. Maybe even a job.
So although dimented, these types are likly mentally fit.
Windows Update is the big reason Firefox users keep having to use Internet Explorer. There's an ActiveX plugin for Firefox out there, but I don't know if (with masquerading the user agent) it will run Windows Update. Anyone tried this? There's also an extension that adds Windows Update to Firefox's Tools menu.
Actually it might be better to download the patches from a protected PC and burn them to a CD-RW or something. Then move the CD to a unpatched Win PC. Windows Update has one sever flaw. If you install Windows on your PC, and then want to patch it up for the bugs you have to connect it to the network and likely get infected especially if you don't have a hardware/NAT firewall.
But like update, the firewall in XP-SP2 has issues, it is much easier for malware to turn off a software firewall than a $49 Linksys/Netgear/SMC etc cable modem device. Besides, if you must use software firewalling ZoneAlarm is so much better.
this article is great. it does a good job at explaining what firefox is and what it can do, and also tells the reader that if you try it and find a bug, don't trash it. give it time and keep it around.
For the most part, I agree it was informative. However I disagree with the assertion that Firefox has more bugs than IE. And if bugs were a reason not to use software why are most client PCs using the bugiest of them all, Wonodws?
Not running Active-X is a feature -- it improves security 10 fold. And I pray that if Firefox developers ever do the daftest thing like add Active-X support that if be 1) Shipped off by default and 2) Have all sorts of controls on how it is used. Finally 3) Some way to uninstall the crud buildup.
But being a Mozilla and Firefox user for over 18 months, I only use IE where I have too which is becoming less and less. I even discovered OWA 5.5 works with Mozilla.
Kick him out of school and publish his name and address, Make it legal to hack spammers sites. If the Texas University wants to keep him, then they should become liable for his actions. Go get the politicians email addresses and send them greating cards from your favorite email address collection site.
I always hated that about college
With good reason too. I once consulted to an unamed college and could not believe how disorganized, how poorly planed and how lax security was. But the Dean responsible was worried more about what other things and what I cost him than getting a decent set of backups. The kicker was we game him very low rates as I was between larger projects.
Deans should not manage I/T and computer infrastructure. I/T manager needs to answer to the board/directors and have their own budget and standards. Standards based not on budget pilfering and politics, but based on basic functional and security needs.
And lock down the firewalls and PCs. Heck, many run firewalls but have rules in them that pass all traffic both ways as the people neither have the skills nor the time to do otherwise.
The fact of the mater is, the biggest boost to college computer security is when the internet connection becomes so clogged up it becomes unusable. And a call from a dean who is having problems watching NBA or porno is inconvenienced. At this point they usually have to get a bigger pipe or clamp down on abuse.
I should note, not all colleges and universities are like this --- but many are.
Why woudl my RAM want Pizzas
With RAM prices so silly I have been buying pizzas and not RAM. It is myself that wants the pizza and a 1GB RAM stick buys a lot of pizza.
Microsoft has announced an intent to pick up some of the PeopleSoft customers currently fleeing from possible support contract increases and an uncertain future.
This is like a big whale (Oracle) is about to get bitten by a pirana (Microsoft) and the customers will have to pay, and pay and pay.
Now if the companies invested in open source or their own source code built on an open POSIX based system then these vendors would not be able to do this. If you had the source you don't have to worry about a vendor going in a direction you don't like.
If you do buy commercial closed source products, get a source code escrow in the contract where if they decide not to support it or get bought out you get a copy of the source. This way they are sub-par to open source. If you can't get this escrow - know the risk going in.
Besides, how hard would it be to write a HRS system anyway? A recipe of OpenLDAP, MySQL, PHP, C and Java....
And now we have people getting arrested for pointing out someone else's mistake...
That is why it is best to post your findings on anonymously on foreign servers or through a third party on bugtraq. All too often they either want to sue you or ignore you which can cost you even if you win.
I do make exceptions to the above if the vendor reputation is solid. There is one vendor out there that when I pointed out a major security bug they fixed it in days without a hassle. Mind you, it was a serious security bug.
Wish I did that 20 years ago, Wood working sure beats kissing some MBA asshome.
But I use Mozilla... not IE. Snicker
Left behind, eh? http://www.windows-longhorn.org/ for details on being left behind. [ Reply to This ]
Interesting to see netcraft.com says the site is running...
"http://www.windows-longhorn.org was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 8-Jan-2005 16:15:53 GMT "
I click on the link and get "Service Unavailable". Both humourous and typical given this discusses the presentation crashing.
Hm, in 1978 I remember using a Commodore PET PC. I believe Apple IIs also existed in 1978... BSD was there also with uuget and uuput and we bundled mail for nightly transmission. 2005 - 1978 == 27 years.
OpenVPN therefore does not seem to work for me, though perhaps I was reading the documentation incorrectly. It seems that it requires both endpoints have static IP addresses. Also, am I correct in saying that it requires UDP?
I am not familiar with OpenVPN, but I am with some others. If you are behind a NAT firewall or on a dynamic IP address you may need to turn off AH to make it reliable. AH authenticates the IP address header so if it is altered or tampered with the IPSec/VPN can reject the packet. Having AH on is more secure as it authenticates the source, but loosing it is still secure enough for most uses as the EA keys are unknown to others and without EA keys they cannot generate acceptable data packets.
Alternatively, to keep AH - put the VPN system directly on the Internet network and do not NAT. If it is a dynamic DHCP assigned address, you will need to re-configure the IPSec/VPN each time it changes to keep the AH component working.
"I'm looking for a low cost solution for allowing myself and a few others the ability to share a server at one of our locations. One thought was using SSH tunnels to establish secure connections,
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris (Intel) and most Linux distros offer IPSec VPN as part of the OS Most run well on older hardware and can be a router, gateway, NAT, IP tunnrling as well as a mail relay, IMAP server and of course come with repected firewalls. You can also run IDS software such as Snort, AprWatch and comes with a nice network sniffing tools.
I have been using Solaris this way for years now without issues, and a friends of mine use OpenBSD and Solaris. This allows us to securely share information over the Internet on a private IPSec and tunneled network.
With IPSec VPN the two networks near and far can be ordinary unencrypted networks. The Internet routing systems do all the work of crypto between the sites. IPSec will route all ports, Windows services and even a virus if one end gets infected. That is in part why I prefer xNIX solutions as you can use IPFilter or PF to block unwanted services.
There are some inexpensive appliance systems that have less features than above but then the appliance does not require the working knowledge of the network as the above options do. Some of these are getting quite reasonable in cost.
So your real problem is how, there are lots of ways. With google, search for IPSec and the OS of choice. May the force of privacy be with you!