It is no different than collecting taxes on any other service performed (eg cooking, barbering).
To my knowledge most states don't tax for services (especially not as highly as sales are taxed). Have you ever heard of a musician or lawyer (or even your aforementioned chef or beautician) having to collect any sort of sales tax?
Perhaps you don't understand the point of my comment. I fail to see how it is idealistic or naive to acknowledge and protect your ability to do what you need without the risk of law suits. If anything, most people would consider that the polar opposite of naivete: paranoia:P.
Naturally, the risk is fairly negligible for many people using many products but that doesn't negate the wisdom of wishing to cover your ass just in case.
Granted there is a fair amount of idealism involved in the FOSS movement but don't let it cloud your view of the practical benefits of not being legally encumbered and supporting technologies that help defend it.
You might begin to care if a patent/copyright holder sees what you're doing with their IP and decides to sue you for it. Even if it currently isn't a concern for you, it still is for many others and might become your concern as well eventually (depending on what you do and how public it is).
H.264 is technically better format too. That's why it should be picked, not based on some religious free software views.
Not all concerns about the Freedom to use a technology are matters of obsessive fanboyism or faith. There are plenty of pragmatic concerns associated with IP that only the most reckless would choose to ignore. A technology can be 1000x better than anything else that exists but still be effectively useless or a huge risk to end-users or business management.
As an end user, I don't want my choices limited by how many technologies a prospective vendor can afford to employ. As a developer, I want to be able to create or fix technologies I encounter without much bureaucracy, being hindered by secrecy or risking having all of my hard work phased out through planned obsolescence strategies. As a business owner, I don't want the items purchased by my business to be hindered by cumbersome, nuanced, legal agreements. In my view, the diversity and innovation facilitated by Free software is almost always better even in cases where proprietary counterparts have a few more features or slightly better performance.
Essentially, the freedom to do what you want has its own innate value that, while hard to quantify, should be thoroughly considered before making *any* important decisions, both technology-related and otherwise. It's not always easy to predict when and how those restrictions might hinder your opportunities in the future.
I believe the headline is based on this statement FTA:
Microsoft said it is investigating the flaw and looking at possible solutions, however there was no clear indication that the company intends to patch the flaw in the near future.
Granted it isn't as conclusive as the headline but it does have that connotation...
"Using a CA provided can at least make it more difficult"
The same argument can be made for self-signed certs. They aren't foolproof but they at least make it more difficult for potential eavesdroppers. The big difference is that you aren't forced to entrust your security to a third party who is not only a bigger/riper target but whose interests might [eventually] run counter to your own.
Forcing people to choose between "All" or nothing often leads them to choose nothing which isn't a good thing. IMO just about everything on the Web should be ciphered in these days of government and ISP snooping.
Unfortunately far too many admins (and browser developers) seem to be brainwashed into believing CA's are an absolute necessity. Not everyone is as worried about identification as they are encryption/sniffing by governments and ISPs. Some people simply don't like the idea of trusting the security of their site with a third party (who could still perpetrate or facilitate a MITM themselves using the info you entrust them with) or cannot afford a widely recognized one.
I understand a warning but it seems like FF goes too far out of it's way to make scare users away from self-signed certs which results in a LESS secure web as admins opt for the unprotected data xfer rather than scaring off visitors. Just like the use of DULs as a spam countermeasure, the end result is a sort of centralized/classist Internet upon which people can do certain things if they have enough extra $$ to pay for them and are willing to forfeit various freedoms/virtues in return - which runs counter to the idea of a Free and Open Internet.
As long as DirectX is still in use, *nix will always still be a step behind Windows in gaming. Personally I would be pushing for game developers to support OpenGL more than WINE developers to support DirectX
Don't let them Terminate you! (...or alternative technologies or your privacy)
Keep your shit decentralized, especially sensitive/private information.
"Don't put all of your eggs in one basket" ---mitigates basket dropping AND egg overflow (read: "adds fault-tolerance/redundancy AND malicious activity" with regards to info systems)
Well, "background check" may have been the wrong term to use, I'm not sure; perhaps "criminal history check" is what I mean? It usually just involves the local courthouse checking the computer and print out whatever is there with your name, dob and ssn. They didn't take my fingerprints or anything like that.
I have, however, had job recruiters perform background checks on me a couple of times in the last couple of years... none of them required fingerprints or anything either. Is your state onboard with RealID? Maybe they just want an excuse to catalog everyone's fingerprints (which is what i suspect).
Until fairly recently only felons had their fingerprints taken. Now they want everyone's fingerprints at birth:\
Does this legislature apply to entities such as DMV and Criminal court clerk as well? Is it pretty much the same in all states? Currently it costs several dollars to get a copy of driving record. Background checks are more. Prices for both vary depending on time frame. It seems such info should be publicly available and fall within the realms of this act as well
From a logical standpoint, any crime/misdeed becomes more immoral/unethical as the necessity decreases. That necessity decreases as other resources increase. In other words, the more resources available to an entity, the more wrongful it is to abuse them. A great man once wrote "With great power comes great responsibility".
Bigger business are, and deserve to be, criticized more for their misdeeds. They have more resources at their disposal to mitigate any problems they encounter and their misdeeds harm way more people than any individual or small business. Bigger and more powerful entities deserve more criticism because there is more potential for harm.
I know if I sold something that burned someone's house down, I would very likely be in jail regardless of if it was a mistake. It would be considered irresponsible/negligence and they would probably be right. Noone would care how poor the victims are. Even if I had inexperience/debt/desparation in my defense, I would still be held in disdain by everyone and prosecuted/sued despite having no money and a much worse chance of ever recovering. Large companies have no such excuses. Multi-million dollar budgets, experienced/educated staff etc...
The only reason in many cases against large companies is negligence and/or greed -- err... "responsible business practices" which is A-OK with many people. IMO, even if they are on the verge of bankruptcy, intentionally neglecting to properly test equiptment and/or endangering lives unnecessarily is atrocious.
P.S. This comment was supposed to be a reply to someone else's statement that it's walmart's fault for 'demanding' lower price PCs. That is not an excuse to exploit your customer, only to reject/deny them. The only way Walmart could be at fault here is if they were warned that they could be a fire hazard and didn't relay any such warning to customers (which could be the case for all I know)
if there's one thing society continues to prove, it's that endangering the general public is completely justifiable as long as it is done by a big business.
It doesn't matter how low Walmart demanded the prices, it is no excuse for distributing dangerous products. Either take the drop in profit or tell Walmart to find someone who can/pay more. Can beef distributors start shipping mad-cow meat because grocery store/shoppers demand lower prices? How about if Valvoline starts watering down their brake fluid because Autozone wants something cheaper?
Believe it or not, not everyone who shops at Walmart or risks buying something cheaper does it because they are retarded, it's because they are deluded into believing big businesses/governments won't try to completely exploit them and because their resources/needs leave them little other choice. Walmart has been selling PCs for years, I remember seeing them for $500-700 a long time ago... apparently they didn't sell that well. I guess poor people don't deserve computers
Yeah, I think he meant "...to possess". AFAIK, it has always been legal to possess *processed* hemp/hemp-products I think, but growth or possession of new hemp has been illegal since prohibition until recently except for a brief period in wwII IIRC.
I think I heard it's now legal in.us but if they happen to test the THC level and it's more than like 10x less potent than recreational cannabis, it is illegal. Kinda sucks considering there is still wild cannabis, not to mention illegally cultivated, I think that could cross-pollinate, unintentionally putting the THC level over the limit and endangering farmers so it is a high-risk exploit even if it is technically legal.
FOSS and proprietary support models both have their advantages and disadvantages. There may be plenty more MS admins, but a higher percentage are possess true technical skill/knowledge that they should to charge the amount that they do. This is hard to rectify given that MS and other proprietary vendors are so secretive about their products and is a great justification for many of them to rip customers off ("Well, cannot get definitive answer from vendor or find proper information online, so I'll just blame hardware and/or disk corruption and make some more money; after all, professionals cannot just say they dont know").
I actually had a friend who works at a hardware sales/repair store tell me his boss reprimanded him for recommending Firefox as a preventative measure against malware; the rationale behind this is that it's bad for business. If you think about it, it's not surprising... many people get into computers thinking it will be easy money so they pick what appears easiest to specialize in, any real nerd would have to get paid a fair amount to endure windows in a technical environment for any extended period and everyone in our society these days seem to condone, if not encourage, exploitation of the ignorant.
That isn't to say all hardware shops and MS support is that bad but I'm willing to bet a high percentage are. The thought of knowing exactly where to go for help may seem appealing and safer to them, but in reality this safety is an illusion unless you have a whole lot of $$. Unfortunately there is little choice because unless you already know some fairly computer literate friends, you will end up sifting through malware and software clone sites for hrs trying to find decent fixes online
OTOH, you have FOSS support; These technicians are more likely to know what is really going on with your product than some kid reading a script and/or have more direct access to whoever does have appropriate knowledge. Finding software alternative fixes on your own is usually pretty simple and rarely requires more than sifting through a couple of google results. This may seem unappealing to many, especially at first, but considering how long people usually have to wait on tech support, the irrelevant question redundancy and, worst of all, the hold music...
Honestly, the whole lack of support/information is the exact reason why I switched to FOSS software entirely in 2000. Trying to get any form of support/tech info on most apps was near impossible and I couldn't/can't afford to dish out $50-200 on a replacement I don't even know will work everytime one breaks and I'm sure many people feel the same if they have ever had similar problems...
I don't know if that attitude if refusing to help is bad for FOSS... they already have plenty of support, right? The main argument people cite for not switching to FOSS is lack of support yet the most frequent questions FOSS developers are asked are related to proprietary software.
I do not understand the rationale of expecting an FOSS developer supporting software he knows little about for free, all the while he is struggling to produce quality code to benefit everyone yet you expect them to help others ignore their causes? This seems foolish considering there is no better way to illustrate what a great advantage free/open info is, IMO.
It sounds like the same sort of rationale many webdevelopers have these days... It is blasphemy to make a site that isn't IE compatible, eventhough you are being asked to spend countless hours for free to fix what people at MS were paid millions for. Many of these same developers will create horrid java sites and such assuming everyone will have adequate hardware and must be cheap if they don't. This sort of rationale seems a bit backwards to me in the context of people who give two shits about society, though it is logical if you are a greedy bastard only interested in making money (ie disregarding the poor entirely). It isn't truly about support, it's about where the money is
*Allegedly*:P. The only thing i'm trying to point out with any sort of certainty is that it seems unlikely they could have misinterpreted GPL to mean they *didn't* have to share/distribute code (which they seem to be implying). I suspect they are making excuses to defend their own actions and/or attack FOSS. Both of those seem much more likely considering it is a *technology* [read: should be somewhat familiar with GPL/FOSS philosophy and terms] -oriented *business* [read: highly motivated by financial concerns and eager to impress investors with similar concerns].
They are covering their asses for something, I just don't think it's accidental or GPL is at fault
Well, originally I assumed they would be more discrete about such a big/obvious violation but I must have missed where the article mentioned McAffee had "told investors" this stuff, but it's still hard to believe it would be an 'unforseen' liability due to code distribution terms since the most clear aspect of GPL is that to distribute modified programs/code you must redistribute the source. Even most misinterpretations dictate you have to distribute it in more cases than truly necessary.
In other words, if they violated GPL it was probably intentional. Either way they are taking the opportunity to blame their misdeed (or misfortune crappy business) on GPL/FOSS (at the very least to shift blame, possibly trying to kill multiple birds with one stone).
Sounds to me like that is just an excuse; I think it is fairly likely they are just trying to stir up trouble for FOSS community with SEC. They have a lot at stake if you think about it. AV companies' prime source of revenue is MS and it's adoption is declining while *nix -based systems' are increasing. They have little experience with *nix software probably and know most people won't see much need for a *nix AV solution and there are several to compete with already.
I could be wrong but seems like this and similar complaints about FOSS are from entities with self-serving interests rather than interests of society/world at large. A lot of it is just FUD hoping to encourage paranoia in businesses and slow FOSS adoption
There is a big difference between observing individuals who have a right to expect privacy and anyone in public who has authority over all of those individuals. Public officials and authority figures make decisions and take actions that affect, and supposedly represent, entire cities/towns/communities/countries. We have a much higher responsibility to seek out/hunt down those who would undermine all of our fundamental philosophies than to indiscriminately invade private lives of every citizen whose crimes affect very few or noone at all.
What I don't understand is why it is so hard for some people to grasp that as a society, we have a responsibility to hold those in charge to a higher standard than any individual as their actions have a much greater impact. I don't think many/any on here advocate invasive personal surveillance of anyone, but for public/authorative figures who are supposed to be acting in official/authorative capacity... they need it way more than anyone else
This is one of the direct results of scare tactics used by big corporations and governments everywhere. By sensationalizing and exagerating losses/damages, the RIAA, MPAA and others have essentially cried wolf so many times that many young people have decided to dismiss IP laws altogether. The problem here isn't mere apathy, it's disbelief and this disbelief will continue to propagate until governments/corporations start growing a pair and realizing who is really supporting who. By inflating prices unnecessarily, they have essentially forced many people to go without or steal. Not surprisingly, when forced to choose between the two, many young people choose to steal. Since record prices were already inflated and most of their friends are in similar situation, they don't see much/any harm it could cause and this line of logic gets applied to other forms of IP.
This is similar to what i consider the TRUE gateway drug affect of marijuana. Sensationalized reports of damage from it hurts credibility when kids discover it is actually relatively harmless. Kid then proceeds to doubt similar reports about other drugs. This makes more sense to me than the common assumption that marijuana alone acts as a gateway (which is akin to saying cheeseburgers alone acts as a gateway to obesity). In either example the best mechanism to combat potential harm is information, understanding and honesty.
Exclusive contracts etc: Because they are part of "any" business doesn't necessarily make them moral/ethical. They are robbing the consumer of freedoms they should have and often expect when they pay for something.
Coercian/Curriculum: I've been to three different colleges (although I admit they were community colleges) and *none* offered *any* form of *nix in any of their curriculums. IIRC, even the universities in the areas didn't offer it (which was one of the main reasons I quit). The entire CS curriculum was nothing but Business classes, VC++, java and windows networking stuff. I've also heard students who help manage departments at other colleges say that MS offers them various incentives for offering MS curiculums.
Driver Development: When I mentioned eager driver developers, I didn't mean "for hire". There are plenty who would do it for free if only they had the proper specs. I've read of plenty of offers to do just for various hardware vendors and they are repeatedly rejected. They refuse to even hand over specs, let alone the code for Windows drivers.
Job thing: In that context I was speaking of myself specifically. If I had a decent job I could support myself on and liked OK, I wouldn't bother trying to get a second one, and if I give up the first there is still going to be something for whoever my competition is. This isn't what MS does by completely depriving large numbers of people unnecessarily (which is more harmful than most criminally prosecuted crimes).
Web Standards: I believe you have to be crazy to think the perversion of standards didn't contribute to Netscape's demise. I've pretty much been a diehard Linux user for years and even *I* have been tempted to use a windows box on occasion just to see what a given site was about or how it looked when displayed properly. When suddenly half of the web is using protocols your current browser can't interpret properly and you don't have any sort of allegiance or care about computers/computing, your natural reaction is going to be to just go with whatever seems to work right and generally don't switch without a compelling reason.
Availability: Yes, Firefox is distributed the same now, but it doesn't take 5 hrs of phone/connection-blocked download time for most and *everyone* has cdroms. It was available back then but it wasn't *as* available as IE and not worth the time since it quit working with a lot of sites anyway.
Netscape Quality: Thanks for letting the comment slide. I remember it being a bit slower since it wasn't integrated into the OS but it (Communicator, which is what was "cutting edge" when I came around) seemed to have some decent features of it's own and seemed to work for most sites I used frequently. They seemed to be doing what they could to compete with IE. IIRC, they made more frequent releases/updates at any rate.
"No. Whether its blue-screens, poor standards compliance, philosophical difference about proprietary software, any other problem -- everybody has a simple choice -- don't run windows if you don't like it. The lack of compelling alternatives is not MS's fault. It is the fault of their competitors"
That is somewhat debatable. Whether it was legal for them to do so or not, it is still wrong/unethical IMO for them to ever force OEMs to sale only Windows and by doing so it has tainted the entire industry, over time, for most of it's competitors. MS may have originally gotten to number 1 because of the quality of their software but that quality quickly deteriorated and it has since maintained itself primarily on it's own past popularity, marketing and questionable/unethical business practices. The lack of compelling alternatives most certain is MS's fault if/when those alternatives *did* exist and MS intentionally went of their way to squash them by other means than technical merit (ie patent-squatting, exclusive contracts, closed protocols, coercing higher-education institutions to incorporate MS-only curriculums in their science and business departments, etc).
"I don't even understand what you mean when you say you "miss the ability to buy hardware that is compatible with my os". By OS do you mean windows or linux? Even with the current issues Vista is going through, windows hardware support is phenomenal. MS has done a fantastic job of keeping their driver model stable over the years, working with vendors when there are changes, etc. And with windows being present on 90% of machines, it's obvious that any vendors 1st priority is windows drivers. There's no blame to assign for this, and no apologies to be made."
Sorry, I meant for Linux although the same problem exists for any non-Windows OS on PC hardware, AFAIK. No blame to assign? That is debatable when there are literally hundreds of FOSS developers who are eager to develop the drivers if they could get decent specs and not have to reverse-engineer all of the drivers from scratch so often. I don't necessarily blame that on completely MS (although I wouldn't be surprised if they offer hardware vendors "incentives" for not aiding the FOSS community) but I don't doubt that the 90% of windows machines you mentioned would be considerably lower if they hadn't forced OEMs to use MS only, which caused most people to become familiar with MS and nothing else. This familiarity influenced future purchases that didn't consider quality, only marketing/branding and gave little incentive for OEMs to develop drivers for other platforms. This problem is slowly getting better but it would never have gotten so big if not for MS's monopolistic practices/strategies.
"By that logic, any time you interview for a job and succeed in getting it, you are inflicting poverty on those who didn't get it. Or the Japanese car makers are inflicting poverty on the employees of GM/Ford/Chrysler."
Not exactly... When I interview for a job, I pretty much *need* that job to support myself and/or my family and I am trying to do so based on my own skills and credentials. I am not trying to stop the other guy from ever being able to compete with me or get another job in the same field. I am not trying to remove his only means of supporting his family, I am just trying to support my own. Now if I already have a giant trust fund and there is a very limited opportunity for that career field in that particular reason and I don't have a family to support and intentionally do things to try to make the other applicants look bad, *then* I'd be doing what MS does (which is criminal and immoral, IMO).
"Companies don't go belly-up overnight. They know when they're making crap products, and they know the competitive landscape and what it means in terms of how long they can survive if they don't get their stuff together. Nobody is *entitled* to having 'x' slice of a market so they can survive no matter how non-viable their products are."
Your point about businesses law being a bit harder to interpret and varying more is relevant to some degree but doesn't really address *my* point. MS screws over 10 million people and costs people/businesses like $500k in one swift blow (as a hypothetic example). This damage is the result of their [feigned] ignorance of some law/regulation. For retribution, they are forced to pay.005% of the profit they make in 1 month. If a hypothetical drug dealer gets busted selling selling a gram of crack to a crackhead, he is only costing that one crackhead like $50 (or however much a gram of crack costs) and is only directly hurting that one individual as far as can be legally proven/known. However, the crack dealer is automatically taken to jail no matter what and, if he cannot afford bail, will very likely have to spend at least a year incarcerated in most jurisdictions and pay like 10-50% of his entire monthly income. This also affects his family by removing whatever income he might have provided.
Why do MS and other white collar criminals get penalized so little for causing so much more harm? In my mind intentional deceit and apathy makes their crime 10x worse than the drug dealer's crime or any crime of desperation.
"No, it doesn't.. just tally up the pro-MS, anti-MS stuff in the thread. Public opinion is strongly against MS. I'm not saying it shouldn't be. I get the feeling you're passionately anti-MS so you're getting annoyed a lot more by the pro-MS posts and taking more note of them (no offence - if I'm wrong, I apologise). But again, the antitrust issue has shades of grey -- to expect zero posts supporting MS is unrealistic. To expect a minority (say 30%) is much more realistic."
Well, this is slashdot you're talking about, I'm thinking more of society in general and in business. Despite being directly lied to and misled repeatedly for decades most people or businesses (including many on/.) would trust MS over a majority of other entities. This whole notion that "anything goes in capitalist businesses/society" is no excuse IMO, and it's destructive both in the long and short term. People need to overcome this whole survival of the fittest ideology. It doesn't apply to everything and is mostly only applicable to nature and *gasp* humanity is the most unnatural thing in nature. We need to grow a pair and start living up to our human values rather than ignore them and attribute some unalterable cycle of repetition based on the past and other animals. We aren't those animals and the past doesn't have to repeat. We are ultimately responsible for our future and what happens to our society and that doesn't change all at once but it also doesn't change from accepting/supporting it.
"That's completely unrelated, and no point continuing down that thread.. There are all kinds of drug dealers - some you can feel sorry for and some maybe not. There are arguments for legalizing all controlled substances, and arguments for banning them all.. More shades of grey here as well."
It is relevant/related IMO. Society shuns one offense and punishes it more despite causing much less damage. That is the entire basis of my post. That shade of grey surrounding a dealer who gives freedom (from pain, reality, monotony and of choice and because of desperation) is much lighter than the shade that surrounds the giant company that intentionally deceives everyone and tries to force all competition out of business without regard for those it's hurting or their freedoms. Pointing that out is my entire point in posting. There is nothing wrong with calling MS criminal when they are committing more harmful crimes (in so far as the number of people they affect but also the degree of harm in many cases) than most of the people currently incarcerated.
"How so? If you don't like windows don't use it. The common response is, "your average non-geek buys a budget PC for email and net use -- and has to get windows on it". Well, I don't see that as people "getting silent
Slashdot Mirror
Who is blaming which victim, again?
It is no different than collecting taxes on any other service performed (eg cooking, barbering).
To my knowledge most states don't tax for services (especially not as highly as sales are taxed). Have you ever heard of a musician or lawyer (or even your aforementioned chef or beautician) having to collect any sort of sales tax?
Perhaps you don't understand the point of my comment. I fail to see how it is idealistic or naive to acknowledge and protect your ability to do what you need without the risk of law suits. If anything, most people would consider that the polar opposite of naivete: paranoia :P.
Naturally, the risk is fairly negligible for many people using many products but that doesn't negate the wisdom of wishing to cover your ass just in case.
Granted there is a fair amount of idealism involved in the FOSS movement but don't let it cloud your view of the practical benefits of not being legally encumbered and supporting technologies that help defend it.
You might begin to care if a patent/copyright holder sees what you're doing with their IP and decides to sue you for it. Even if it currently isn't a concern for you, it still is for many others and might become your concern as well eventually (depending on what you do and how public it is).
H.264 is technically better format too. That's why it should be picked, not based on some religious free software views.
Not all concerns about the Freedom to use a technology are matters of obsessive fanboyism or faith. There are plenty of pragmatic concerns associated with IP that only the most reckless would choose to ignore. A technology can be 1000x better than anything else that exists but still be effectively useless or a huge risk to end-users or business management. As an end user, I don't want my choices limited by how many technologies a prospective vendor can afford to employ. As a developer, I want to be able to create or fix technologies I encounter without much bureaucracy, being hindered by secrecy or risking having all of my hard work phased out through planned obsolescence strategies. As a business owner, I don't want the items purchased by my business to be hindered by cumbersome, nuanced, legal agreements. In my view, the diversity and innovation facilitated by Free software is almost always better even in cases where proprietary counterparts have a few more features or slightly better performance. Essentially, the freedom to do what you want has its own innate value that, while hard to quantify, should be thoroughly considered before making *any* important decisions, both technology-related and otherwise. It's not always easy to predict when and how those restrictions might hinder your opportunities in the future.
Microsoft said it is investigating the flaw and looking at possible solutions, however there was no clear indication that the company intends to patch the flaw in the near future.
Granted it isn't as conclusive as the headline but it does have that connotation...
"Using a CA provided can at least make it more difficult" The same argument can be made for self-signed certs. They aren't foolproof but they at least make it more difficult for potential eavesdroppers. The big difference is that you aren't forced to entrust your security to a third party who is not only a bigger/riper target but whose interests might [eventually] run counter to your own. Forcing people to choose between "All" or nothing often leads them to choose nothing which isn't a good thing. IMO just about everything on the Web should be ciphered in these days of government and ISP snooping.
Unfortunately far too many admins (and browser developers) seem to be brainwashed into believing CA's are an absolute necessity. Not everyone is as worried about identification as they are encryption/sniffing by governments and ISPs. Some people simply don't like the idea of trusting the security of their site with a third party (who could still perpetrate or facilitate a MITM themselves using the info you entrust them with) or cannot afford a widely recognized one. I understand a warning but it seems like FF goes too far out of it's way to make scare users away from self-signed certs which results in a LESS secure web as admins opt for the unprotected data xfer rather than scaring off visitors. Just like the use of DULs as a spam countermeasure, the end result is a sort of centralized/classist Internet upon which people can do certain things if they have enough extra $$ to pay for them and are willing to forfeit various freedoms/virtues in return - which runs counter to the idea of a Free and Open Internet.
You're an actor not a convalescent!!
As long as DirectX is still in use, *nix will always still be a step behind Windows in gaming. Personally I would be pushing for game developers to support OpenGL more than WINE developers to support DirectX
Don't let them Terminate you! (...or alternative technologies or your privacy) Keep your shit decentralized, especially sensitive/private information. "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket" ---mitigates basket dropping AND egg overflow (read: "adds fault-tolerance/redundancy AND malicious activity" with regards to info systems)
Well, "background check" may have been the wrong term to use, I'm not sure; perhaps "criminal history check" is what I mean? It usually just involves the local courthouse checking the computer and print out whatever is there with your name, dob and ssn. They didn't take my fingerprints or anything like that. I have, however, had job recruiters perform background checks on me a couple of times in the last couple of years... none of them required fingerprints or anything either. Is your state onboard with RealID? Maybe they just want an excuse to catalog everyone's fingerprints (which is what i suspect). Until fairly recently only felons had their fingerprints taken. Now they want everyone's fingerprints at birth :\
Does this legislature apply to entities such as DMV and Criminal court clerk as well? Is it pretty much the same in all states? Currently it costs several dollars to get a copy of driving record. Background checks are more. Prices for both vary depending on time frame. It seems such info should be publicly available and fall within the realms of this act as well
From a logical standpoint, any crime/misdeed becomes more immoral/unethical as the necessity decreases. That necessity decreases as other resources increase. In other words, the more resources available to an entity, the more wrongful it is to abuse them. A great man once wrote "With great power comes great responsibility".
Bigger business are, and deserve to be, criticized more for their misdeeds. They have more resources at their disposal to mitigate any problems they encounter and their misdeeds harm way more people than any individual or small business. Bigger and more powerful entities deserve more criticism because there is more potential for harm.
I know if I sold something that burned someone's house down, I would very likely be in jail regardless of if it was a mistake. It would be considered irresponsible/negligence and they would probably be right. Noone would care how poor the victims are. Even if I had inexperience/debt/desparation in my defense, I would still be held in disdain by everyone and prosecuted/sued despite having no money and a much worse chance of ever recovering. Large companies have no such excuses. Multi-million dollar budgets, experienced/educated staff etc...
The only reason in many cases against large companies is negligence and/or greed -- err... "responsible business practices" which is A-OK with many people. IMO, even if they are on the verge of bankruptcy, intentionally neglecting to properly test equiptment and/or endangering lives unnecessarily is atrocious.
P.S. This comment was supposed to be a reply to someone else's statement that it's walmart's fault for 'demanding' lower price PCs. That is not an excuse to exploit your customer, only to reject/deny them. The only way Walmart could be at fault here is if they were warned that they could be a fire hazard and didn't relay any such warning to customers (which could be the case for all I know)
if there's one thing society continues to prove, it's that endangering the general public is completely justifiable as long as it is done by a big business.
It doesn't matter how low Walmart demanded the prices, it is no excuse for distributing dangerous products. Either take the drop in profit or tell Walmart to find someone who can/pay more. Can beef distributors start shipping mad-cow meat because grocery store/shoppers demand lower prices? How about if Valvoline starts watering down their brake fluid because Autozone wants something cheaper?
Believe it or not, not everyone who shops at Walmart or risks buying something cheaper does it because they are retarded, it's because they are deluded into believing big businesses/governments won't try to completely exploit them and because their resources/needs leave them little other choice. Walmart has been selling PCs for years, I remember seeing them for $500-700 a long time ago... apparently they didn't sell that well. I guess poor people don't deserve computers
Yeah, I think he meant "...to possess". AFAIK, it has always been legal to possess *processed* hemp/hemp-products I think, but growth or possession of new hemp has been illegal since prohibition until recently except for a brief period in wwII IIRC.
.us but if they happen to test the THC level and it's more than like 10x less potent than recreational cannabis, it is illegal. Kinda sucks considering there is still wild cannabis, not to mention illegally cultivated, I think that could cross-pollinate, unintentionally putting the THC level over the limit and endangering farmers so it is a high-risk exploit even if it is technically legal.
I think I heard it's now legal in
FOSS and proprietary support models both have their advantages and disadvantages. There may be plenty more MS admins, but a higher percentage are possess true technical skill/knowledge that they should to charge the amount that they do. This is hard to rectify given that MS and other proprietary vendors are so secretive about their products and is a great justification for many of them to rip customers off ("Well, cannot get definitive answer from vendor or find proper information online, so I'll just blame hardware and/or disk corruption and make some more money; after all, professionals cannot just say they dont know").
I actually had a friend who works at a hardware sales/repair store tell me his boss reprimanded him for recommending Firefox as a preventative measure against malware; the rationale behind this is that it's bad for business. If you think about it, it's not surprising... many people get into computers thinking it will be easy money so they pick what appears easiest to specialize in, any real nerd would have to get paid a fair amount to endure windows in a technical environment for any extended period and everyone in our society these days seem to condone, if not encourage, exploitation of the ignorant.
That isn't to say all hardware shops and MS support is that bad but I'm willing to bet a high percentage are. The thought of knowing exactly where to go for help may seem appealing and safer to them, but in reality this safety is an illusion unless you have a whole lot of $$. Unfortunately there is little choice because unless you already know some fairly computer literate friends, you will end up sifting through malware and software clone sites for hrs trying to find decent fixes online
OTOH, you have FOSS support; These technicians are more likely to know what is really going on with your product than some kid reading a script and/or have more direct access to whoever does have appropriate knowledge. Finding software alternative fixes on your own is usually pretty simple and rarely requires more than sifting through a couple of google results. This may seem unappealing to many, especially at first, but considering how long people usually have to wait on tech support, the irrelevant question redundancy and, worst of all, the hold music...
Honestly, the whole lack of support/information is the exact reason why I switched to FOSS software entirely in 2000. Trying to get any form of support/tech info on most apps was near impossible and I couldn't/can't afford to dish out $50-200 on a replacement I don't even know will work everytime one breaks and I'm sure many people feel the same if they have ever had similar problems...
I don't know if that attitude if refusing to help is bad for FOSS... they already have plenty of support, right? The main argument people cite for not switching to FOSS is lack of support yet the most frequent questions FOSS developers are asked are related to proprietary software.
I do not understand the rationale of expecting an FOSS developer supporting software he knows little about for free, all the while he is struggling to produce quality code to benefit everyone yet you expect them to help others ignore their causes? This seems foolish considering there is no better way to illustrate what a great advantage free/open info is, IMO.
It sounds like the same sort of rationale many webdevelopers have these days... It is blasphemy to make a site that isn't IE compatible, eventhough you are being asked to spend countless hours for free to fix what people at MS were paid millions for. Many of these same developers will create horrid java sites and such assuming everyone will have adequate hardware and must be cheap if they don't. This sort of rationale seems a bit backwards to me in the context of people who give two shits about society, though it is logical if you are a greedy bastard only interested in making money (ie disregarding the poor entirely). It isn't truly about support, it's about where the money is
In conclusio
*Allegedly* :P. The only thing i'm trying to point out with any sort of certainty is that it seems unlikely they could have misinterpreted GPL to mean they *didn't* have to share/distribute code (which they seem to be implying). I suspect they are making excuses to defend their own actions and/or attack FOSS. Both of those seem much more likely considering it is a *technology* [read: should be somewhat familiar with GPL/FOSS philosophy and terms] -oriented *business* [read: highly motivated by financial concerns and eager to impress investors with similar concerns].
They are covering their asses for something, I just don't think it's accidental or GPL is at fault
Well, originally I assumed they would be more discrete about such a big/obvious violation but I must have missed where the article mentioned McAffee had "told investors" this stuff, but it's still hard to believe it would be an 'unforseen' liability due to code distribution terms since the most clear aspect of GPL is that to distribute modified programs/code you must redistribute the source. Even most misinterpretations dictate you have to distribute it in more cases than truly necessary.
In other words, if they violated GPL it was probably intentional. Either way they are taking the opportunity to blame their misdeed (or misfortune crappy business) on GPL/FOSS (at the very least to shift blame, possibly trying to kill multiple birds with one stone).
My 2 cents
Sounds to me like that is just an excuse; I think it is fairly likely they are just trying to stir up trouble for FOSS community with SEC. They have a lot at stake if you think about it. AV companies' prime source of revenue is MS and it's adoption is declining while *nix -based systems' are increasing. They have little experience with *nix software probably and know most people won't see much need for a *nix AV solution and there are several to compete with already.
I could be wrong but seems like this and similar complaints about FOSS are from entities with self-serving interests rather than interests of society/world at large. A lot of it is just FUD hoping to encourage paranoia in businesses and slow FOSS adoption
There is a big difference between observing individuals who have a right to expect privacy and anyone in public who has authority over all of those individuals. Public officials and authority figures make decisions and take actions that affect, and supposedly represent, entire cities/towns/communities/countries. We have a much higher responsibility to seek out/hunt down those who would undermine all of our fundamental philosophies than to indiscriminately invade private lives of every citizen whose crimes affect very few or noone at all.
What I don't understand is why it is so hard for some people to grasp that as a society, we have a responsibility to hold those in charge to a higher standard than any individual as their actions have a much greater impact. I don't think many/any on here advocate invasive personal surveillance of anyone, but for public/authorative figures who are supposed to be acting in official/authorative capacity... they need it way more than anyone else
This is one of the direct results of scare tactics used by big corporations and governments everywhere. By sensationalizing and exagerating losses/damages, the RIAA, MPAA and others have essentially cried wolf so many times that many young people have decided to dismiss IP laws altogether. The problem here isn't mere apathy, it's disbelief and this disbelief will continue to propagate until governments/corporations start growing a pair and realizing who is really supporting who. By inflating prices unnecessarily, they have essentially forced many people to go without or steal. Not surprisingly, when forced to choose between the two, many young people choose to steal. Since record prices were already inflated and most of their friends are in similar situation, they don't see much/any harm it could cause and this line of logic gets applied to other forms of IP. This is similar to what i consider the TRUE gateway drug affect of marijuana. Sensationalized reports of damage from it hurts credibility when kids discover it is actually relatively harmless. Kid then proceeds to doubt similar reports about other drugs. This makes more sense to me than the common assumption that marijuana alone acts as a gateway (which is akin to saying cheeseburgers alone acts as a gateway to obesity). In either example the best mechanism to combat potential harm is information, understanding and honesty.
Exclusive contracts etc: Because they are part of "any" business doesn't necessarily make them moral/ethical. They are robbing the consumer of freedoms they should have and often expect when they pay for something.
Coercian/Curriculum: I've been to three different colleges (although I admit they were community colleges) and *none* offered *any* form of *nix in any of their curriculums. IIRC, even the universities in the areas didn't offer it (which was one of the main reasons I quit). The entire CS curriculum was nothing but Business classes, VC++, java and windows networking stuff. I've also heard students who help manage departments at other colleges say that MS offers them various incentives for offering MS curiculums.
Driver Development: When I mentioned eager driver developers, I didn't mean "for hire". There are plenty who would do it for free if only they had the proper specs. I've read of plenty of offers to do just for various hardware vendors and they are repeatedly rejected. They refuse to even hand over specs, let alone the code for Windows drivers.
Job thing: In that context I was speaking of myself specifically. If I had a decent job I could support myself on and liked OK, I wouldn't bother trying to get a second one, and if I give up the first there is still going to be something for whoever my competition is. This isn't what MS does by completely depriving large numbers of people unnecessarily (which is more harmful than most criminally prosecuted crimes).
Web Standards: I believe you have to be crazy to think the perversion of standards didn't contribute to Netscape's demise. I've pretty much been a diehard Linux user for years and even *I* have been tempted to use a windows box on occasion just to see what a given site was about or how it looked when displayed properly. When suddenly half of the web is using protocols your current browser can't interpret properly and you don't have any sort of allegiance or care about computers/computing, your natural reaction is going to be to just go with whatever seems to work right and generally don't switch without a compelling reason.
Availability: Yes, Firefox is distributed the same now, but it doesn't take 5 hrs of phone/connection-blocked download time for most and *everyone* has cdroms. It was available back then but it wasn't *as* available as IE and not worth the time since it quit working with a lot of sites anyway.
Netscape Quality: Thanks for letting the comment slide. I remember it being a bit slower since it wasn't integrated into the OS but it (Communicator, which is what was "cutting edge" when I came around) seemed to have some decent features of it's own and seemed to work for most sites I used frequently. They seemed to be doing what they could to compete with IE. IIRC, they made more frequent releases/updates at any rate.
"No. Whether its blue-screens, poor standards compliance, philosophical difference about proprietary software, any other problem -- everybody has a simple choice -- don't run windows if you don't like it. The lack of compelling alternatives is not MS's fault. It is the fault of their competitors"
That is somewhat debatable. Whether it was legal for them to do so or not, it is still wrong/unethical IMO for them to ever force OEMs to sale only Windows and by doing so it has tainted the entire industry, over time, for most of it's competitors. MS may have originally gotten to number 1 because of the quality of their software but that quality quickly deteriorated and it has since maintained itself primarily on it's own past popularity, marketing and questionable/unethical business practices. The lack of compelling alternatives most certain is MS's fault if/when those alternatives *did* exist and MS intentionally went of their way to squash them by other means than technical merit (ie patent-squatting, exclusive contracts, closed protocols, coercing higher-education institutions to incorporate MS-only curriculums in their science and business departments, etc).
"I don't even understand what you mean when you say you "miss the ability to buy hardware that is compatible with my os". By OS do you mean windows or linux? Even with the current issues Vista is going through, windows hardware support is phenomenal. MS has done a fantastic job of keeping their driver model stable over the years, working with vendors when there are changes, etc. And with windows being present on 90% of machines, it's obvious that any vendors 1st priority is windows drivers. There's no blame to assign for this, and no apologies to be made."
Sorry, I meant for Linux although the same problem exists for any non-Windows OS on PC hardware, AFAIK. No blame to assign? That is debatable when there are literally hundreds of FOSS developers who are eager to develop the drivers if they could get decent specs and not have to reverse-engineer all of the drivers from scratch so often. I don't necessarily blame that on completely MS (although I wouldn't be surprised if they offer hardware vendors "incentives" for not aiding the FOSS community) but I don't doubt that the 90% of windows machines you mentioned would be considerably lower if they hadn't forced OEMs to use MS only, which caused most people to become familiar with MS and nothing else. This familiarity influenced future purchases that didn't consider quality, only marketing/branding and gave little incentive for OEMs to develop drivers for other platforms. This problem is slowly getting better but it would never have gotten so big if not for MS's monopolistic practices/strategies.
"By that logic, any time you interview for a job and succeed in getting it, you are inflicting poverty on those who didn't get it. Or the Japanese car makers are inflicting poverty on the employees of GM/Ford/Chrysler."
Not exactly... When I interview for a job, I pretty much *need* that job to support myself and/or my family and I am trying to do so based on my own skills and credentials. I am not trying to stop the other guy from ever being able to compete with me or get another job in the same field. I am not trying to remove his only means of supporting his family, I am just trying to support my own. Now if I already have a giant trust fund and there is a very limited opportunity for that career field in that particular reason and I don't have a family to support and intentionally do things to try to make the other applicants look bad, *then* I'd be doing what MS does (which is criminal and immoral, IMO).
"Companies don't go belly-up overnight. They know when they're making crap products, and they know the competitive landscape and what it means in terms of how long they can survive if they don't get their stuff together. Nobody is *entitled* to having 'x' slice of a market so they can survive no matter how non-viable their products are."
If 'x' is a fair ch
Your point about businesses law being a bit harder to interpret and varying more is relevant to some degree but doesn't really address *my* point. MS screws over 10 million people and costs people/businesses like $500k in one swift blow (as a hypothetic example). This damage is the result of their [feigned] ignorance of some law/regulation. For retribution, they are forced to pay .005% of the profit they make in 1 month. If a hypothetical drug dealer gets busted selling selling a gram of crack to a crackhead, he is only costing that one crackhead like $50 (or however much a gram of crack costs) and is only directly hurting that one individual as far as can be legally proven/known. However, the crack dealer is automatically taken to jail no matter what and, if he cannot afford bail, will very likely have to spend at least a year incarcerated in most jurisdictions and pay like 10-50% of his entire monthly income. This also affects his family by removing whatever income he might have provided.
/.) would trust MS over a majority of other entities. This whole notion that "anything goes in capitalist businesses/society" is no excuse IMO, and it's destructive both in the long and short term. People need to overcome this whole survival of the fittest ideology. It doesn't apply to everything and is mostly only applicable to nature and *gasp* humanity is the most unnatural thing in nature. We need to grow a pair and start living up to our human values rather than ignore them and attribute some unalterable cycle of repetition based on the past and other animals. We aren't those animals and the past doesn't have to repeat. We are ultimately responsible for our future and what happens to our society and that doesn't change all at once but it also doesn't change from accepting/supporting it.
Why do MS and other white collar criminals get penalized so little for causing so much more harm? In my mind intentional deceit and apathy makes their crime 10x worse than the drug dealer's crime or any crime of desperation.
"No, it doesn't.. just tally up the pro-MS, anti-MS stuff in the thread. Public opinion is strongly against MS. I'm not saying it shouldn't be. I get the feeling you're passionately anti-MS so you're getting annoyed a lot more by the pro-MS posts and taking more note of them (no offence - if I'm wrong, I apologise). But again, the antitrust issue has shades of grey -- to expect zero posts supporting MS is unrealistic. To expect a minority (say 30%) is much more realistic."
Well, this is slashdot you're talking about, I'm thinking more of society in general and in business. Despite being directly lied to and misled repeatedly for decades most people or businesses (including many on
"That's completely unrelated, and no point continuing down that thread.. There are all kinds of drug dealers - some you can feel sorry for and some maybe not. There are arguments for legalizing all controlled substances, and arguments for banning them all.. More shades of grey here as well."
It is relevant/related IMO. Society shuns one offense and punishes it more despite causing much less damage. That is the entire basis of my post. That shade of grey surrounding a dealer who gives freedom (from pain, reality, monotony and of choice and because of desperation) is much lighter than the shade that surrounds the giant company that intentionally deceives everyone and tries to force all competition out of business without regard for those it's hurting or their freedoms. Pointing that out is my entire point in posting. There is nothing wrong with calling MS criminal when they are committing more harmful crimes (in so far as the number of people they affect but also the degree of harm in many cases) than most of the people currently incarcerated.
"How so? If you don't like windows don't use it. The common response is, "your average non-geek buys a budget PC for email and net use -- and has to get windows on it". Well, I don't see that as people "getting silent