Does anyone know if this flaw got beyond the theoretical level - i.e., were any exploits discovered, "in the wild"?
> When a (serious) MS bug is found...
Well, we already know one "military" server was owned by an unknown cracker, so exploits already exist out there, and they are being used.
In other words, yes it is biased reporting (what else do you expect on/.?), but there are very different levels of severity here. Bugs are everywhere, but not all bugs are created equal.
I guess it's not so hard to hit 1B rejects in a day when they start rejecting ALL email from certain major ISP's....
I'm not sure what the problem is, but I just discovered this evening that all mail from my Time Warner/Roadrunner account is being bounced by AOL. Gives me some truncated error message, so I don't even know what the problem is.
is not this kinda conflict of interest? microsoft is selling hardware!...
Now add in the fact (from a previous/. article) that MS is trying to change anti-spam laws to make thenselves exempt. (They already prevent me from adding them to my spam filter on Hotmail.) How long before we start getting "Size Matters! Enlarge Your Hard Drive!" spam from Microsoft???
If you go back to the original post that you were responding to, you would find that the author was not talking about receiving spam, but rather to a spammer forging the headers to use the victim's his email address in the Reply-to: header. This results in hundreds or possibly thousands of replies and bounces hitting the victim's email inbox. This is a case Identity Theft, and in my mind should be punishable by removing certain tender parts of their anatomy...
> i hate spam to, but i don't think there is or should be anything illegal about it.
Heh... You've obviously never been on the receiving end of this little trick. You'd quickly change your pretty little tune after receiving several thousand hate-mail messages, and had your ISP account cancelled because you were "generating illegal spam and violating the User Agreement," and then got blacklisted from other ISP's because you were a known spammer, and had people hacking into your computer to get back at you and... well, need I go on?
> if i send the same messages via snail mail is it illegal abuse of your home address?
Ummm.... that's called Mail Fraud, and carries heavy fines, and jail time if you do it enough.
If it's a brute force guessing attack, then why don't I get the same amount of spam on my Yahoo account?
Actually, there is a solution, at least on my end. I created a hotmail account just so I could talk to someone on the Microsoft IM client, so I know I should receive ZERO messages on that account. I just set filtering to only accept mail from people in my address book, and then have zero entries in my address book.
It doesn't stop all the Spam that Microsoft itself sends me, but it keeps most of the rest of the spam away.
> I'm not an Opera user, and I'm now aware of the problem!
Exactly. And with a stunt like this, I would be very surprised if it doesn't find it's way to some of the larger "mainline" media sites.
Also, I have a feeling that Microsoft itself will react pretty quickly. The technical "trick" they played was pretty simple-minded, not unlike the "Swicher" add that was mentioned in another article here. Microsoft caught some major flack for that one, after some Slashdot folks discovered that the anonymous switcher was really an employee of the advertising company that was doing the add. I have a feeling some people got canned for that little stunt. Besides, there probably are some Opera users who reakky do need to get to stuff on MSN, and hopefully, now their pages won't be broken.
In the end, it's another black eye for Microsoft. It won't make much difference in the short run, but who knows what effect this will have in the long term?
(Well, for one, I just downloaded the latest free version of Opera on my Linux box, and may end up paying for the commercial version if I like it better than Galeon. I'm probably not the only one who did this because of this article...)
> If someone spends a year researching and writing a book on the subject, they certainly deserve to profit from their efforts...
Someone could research a book for TEN years and still produce complete trash. The world is full of trash that passes for "research". Much of it is motivated by personal gain or spite, or pushing this or that political agenda. A "year" is nothing!
That being said, no one here is denying the author his personal right to profit from his work. However, if I have good reason to believe it is empty of any kind of factual content, then why should *I* contribute to its author?
I've found that, when it comes to interfacing with different computer interfaces, people are profoundly driven by inertia. The real difference between Gnome and KDE is not that one is fundamentally better than the other, but rather that people have gotten used to operating in one interface or the other, and find it very uncomfortable to switch.
The point of this is, I've gotten used to the simple motion of scanning off the edge of the screen to switch to another desktop. We could argue until we were blue in the face over the different technical merits of this or that desktop or viewport setup, but in the end, it comes down to what we are used to, and what we find fits our personal style of working.
So, I think Red Hat is doing a "Good Thing" in trying to aim 8.0 at the desktop, but personally, I find it almost impossible to get anything done in RH 8.0, because they changed so many basic things on the UI.
> "viewports", you mean workspaces? RH8 Gnome2 desktop has those.
No, those are two completely different things!
Workspaces are totally independent desktops. If you slide something off the edge of one, it just vanishes. In order to flip between them, currently you have to drag the mouse down to the little toolbar applet and click on a different one. Pain!!
Viewports are like a window on a single, much larger desktop. You can drag a application off the edge of one viewport and onto an adjoining one, which is why you have edge-flipping. It is also possible to open a window much larger than the physical display and scan around it.
Personally, I use viewports and edge flipping all the time!
The lack of viewports in RH 8.0 is the single greatest reason why I haven't switched yet.
What did you miss the most?
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Even being the Net.Junkie that I am, I have to admit, there are times when I like to get away from the Internet and being online all the time... for perhaps a week or so. But as soon as I get back from camping in the woods, one of the first things I do is log on to check my email.:-/
I'm sure that, with all the things you were forced to give up being away from any contact with computers for as long as you were, there were plenty of things you quickly got used to being without, and things you probably even forgot existed. However, I'm sure there were some things you really missed.
Of all the things you had to do without, what one thing about computers and the Internet did you miss the most?
I haven't gone back to read the article a second time, but as I remember, he is saying that people are beginning to leave Microsoft. His specific examples include numerous Open Source initiatives at various governmental levels (both inside and outside the US), and in the schools.
The author himself admits that he hasn't gotten off his duff and tried Linux, but the general tone of the article was that he was quickly approaching that point.
Again: You can piss people off for a little while and they will forgive you, but continued displays of arrogance are eventually met with your customers dumping you.
Well, I actually did some hunting and found some hard references. I won't repeat all the details here, since it would be better to read the original article. Please see the CNN article on this.
Also, you can find information on "safe" donations of computers (and why it is dangerous to donate computers running old copies of Windows) on the SchoolForge site.
Saying "thousands of computers" is an overstatement for this particular incident, but if you count the number of "illegally" donated computers (i.e., ones donated to schools where they have not paid the $100 to $200 each for new licenses), then the number probably pretty close. Microsoft has shown repeatedly that they are ready, willing and able to drag school systems through the courts to prevent them from using these systems.
> Wow, such insight. No wonder this got posted on the front page of $la$hdot.
Ummmm.... yea. The other point of the article, interestingly enough, is that Microsoft doesn't seem to get it. In fact, it seems to be a pretty common trait among large corporations that a large fraction of their top level executives seem to get so wrapped up in themselves that they don't seem to be able to comprehend simple relationships like this. They have been so successful wringing every last cent out of their customers that they don't even notice when they start to flee in droves, and when they do notice, they respond by simply turning up the pressure, which in turn, accelerates the hemoraging
> - Attacking microsoft because the PCs it donates aren't good enough?...
No, because the donated PC's are simply blatant attempt to supplant Apple's dominance in the educational market, and to generate more license revenue for Microsoft. Who do you think pays to upgrade those PCs when people realize that Windows 3.1 doesn't run any real software?
(Also, when another independent company tried to do the same thing, MS took them to court because they couldn't prove they had valid licenses for all the copies of Windows 95 that the used computers were running. They ended up having to trash several thousand used computers because they didn't have enough money to buy all brand new licenses for them.)
> Until it can do this, it shouldn't expect more users to come flocking to their programs.
Did you read the same article as I did???
The point of the article had very little to do with the merits of OS software. He was merely stating the fact that he himself had very little experience with Linux.
The point of the article was that, no matter how good or bad your product is, or how firmly entrenched you monopoly may be, if you piss off your customers long enough, you will eventually strangle yourself to death.
Or, to put it another way, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall..."
Can't wait to see the MS "spin control" on this one. "Well, when you factor in long term preferences and TCO, you see that what he really meant to say was..."
Can't wait to see the MS "spin control" on this one. "Well, when you factor in long term preferences and TCO, you see that what he really meant to say was..."
> How did these "primitives" get off of earth in the first place, if they don't have advanced technology?
Ever read "The Dragon Riders of Pern"?
Basic "primitive" society on a different planet. You don't find out until quite a few books into the series, but it was simply a matter of a high tech civilization going to another planet, and finding that they didn't have the resources to maintain all their gadgets. There were lots of unexpected hardships (big surprise on a new planet), and things like power cells eventually broke down to the point where they had to learn how to do things by hand.
Remember, most of the technology we are familiar with has literally thousands of years of history behind it. Throw it at a brand new environment, and there's a significant chance that it will simply collapse, and people won't know what to do to fix it.
> ...leading me to wonder if it really is Microsoft these people are talking about. They sure as hell don't make it clear!
Heh... Sure seemed pretty obvious to me. What other company produces a product called "MS Word", and has been recently convicted of "illegally maintaining its monopoly position"?
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone know if this flaw got beyond the theoretical level - i.e., were any exploits discovered, "in the wild"?
> When a (serious) MS bug is found ...
Well, we already know one "military" server was owned by an unknown cracker, so exploits already exist out there, and they are being used.
In other words, yes it is biased reporting (what else do you expect on /.?), but there are very different levels of severity here. Bugs are everywhere, but not all bugs are created equal.
I'm not sure what the problem is, but I just discovered this evening that all mail from my Time Warner/Roadrunner account is being bounced by AOL. Gives me some truncated error message, so I don't even know what the problem is.
Cute. :-/
Now add in the fact (from a previous /. article) that MS is trying to change anti-spam laws to make thenselves exempt. (They already prevent me from adding them to my spam filter on Hotmail.) How long before we start getting "Size Matters! Enlarge Your Hard Drive!" spam from Microsoft???
Uh.... that sort of makes it difficult to do the update at all, unless you have a firewall that can filter based on encrypted content of the message.
Or ... redirect microsoft.com to linux.org
Well, that might not be such a bad idea.
If you go back to the original post that you were responding to, you would find that the author was not talking about receiving spam, but rather to a spammer forging the headers to use the victim's his email address in the Reply-to: header. This results in hundreds or possibly thousands of replies and bounces hitting the victim's email inbox. This is a case Identity Theft, and in my mind should be punishable by removing certain tender parts of their anatomy...
Heh... You've obviously never been on the receiving end of this little trick. You'd quickly change your pretty little tune after receiving several thousand hate-mail messages, and had your ISP account cancelled because you were "generating illegal spam and violating the User Agreement," and then got blacklisted from other ISP's because you were a known spammer, and had people hacking into your computer to get back at you and... well, need I go on?
> if i send the same messages via snail mail is it illegal abuse of your home address?
Ummm.... that's called Mail Fraud, and carries heavy fines, and jail time if you do it enough.
Actually, there is a solution, at least on my end. I created a hotmail account just so I could talk to someone on the Microsoft IM client, so I know I should receive ZERO messages on that account. I just set filtering to only accept mail from people in my address book, and then have zero entries in my address book.
It doesn't stop all the Spam that Microsoft itself sends me, but it keeps most of the rest of the spam away.
Exactly. And with a stunt like this, I would be very surprised if it doesn't find it's way to some of the larger "mainline" media sites.
Also, I have a feeling that Microsoft itself will react pretty quickly. The technical "trick" they played was pretty simple-minded, not unlike the "Swicher" add that was mentioned in another article here. Microsoft caught some major flack for that one, after some Slashdot folks discovered that the anonymous switcher was really an employee of the advertising company that was doing the add. I have a feeling some people got canned for that little stunt. Besides, there probably are some Opera users who reakky do need to get to stuff on MSN, and hopefully, now their pages won't be broken.
In the end, it's another black eye for Microsoft. It won't make much difference in the short run, but who knows what effect this will have in the long term?
(Well, for one, I just downloaded the latest free version of Opera on my Linux box, and may end up paying for the commercial version if I like it better than Galeon. I'm probably not the only one who did this because of this article...)
Someone could research a book for TEN years and still produce complete trash. The world is full of trash that passes for "research". Much of it is motivated by personal gain or spite, or pushing this or that political agenda. A "year" is nothing!
That being said, no one here is denying the author his personal right to profit from his work. However, if I have good reason to believe it is empty of any kind of factual content, then why should *I* contribute to its author?
And, of course, is it Copylefted? ;-)
The point of this is, I've gotten used to the simple motion of scanning off the edge of the screen to switch to another desktop. We could argue until we were blue in the face over the different technical merits of this or that desktop or viewport setup, but in the end, it comes down to what we are used to, and what we find fits our personal style of working.
So, I think Red Hat is doing a "Good Thing" in trying to aim 8.0 at the desktop, but personally, I find it almost impossible to get anything done in RH 8.0, because they changed so many basic things on the UI.
No, those are two completely different things!
Workspaces are totally independent desktops. If you slide something off the edge of one, it just vanishes. In order to flip between them, currently you have to drag the mouse down to the little toolbar applet and click on a different one. Pain!!
Viewports are like a window on a single, much larger desktop. You can drag a application off the edge of one viewport and onto an adjoining one, which is why you have edge-flipping. It is also possible to open a window much larger than the physical display and scan around it.
Personally, I use viewports and edge flipping all the time!
The lack of viewports in RH 8.0 is the single greatest reason why I haven't switched yet.
I'm sure that, with all the things you were forced to give up being away from any contact with computers for as long as you were, there were plenty of things you quickly got used to being without, and things you probably even forgot existed. However, I'm sure there were some things you really missed.
Of all the things you had to do without, what one thing about computers and the Internet did you miss the most?
The author himself admits that he hasn't gotten off his duff and tried Linux, but the general tone of the article was that he was quickly approaching that point.
Again: You can piss people off for a little while and they will forgive you, but continued displays of arrogance are eventually met with your customers dumping you.
Also, you can find information on "safe" donations of computers (and why it is dangerous to donate computers running old copies of Windows) on the SchoolForge site.
Saying "thousands of computers" is an overstatement for this particular incident, but if you count the number of "illegally" donated computers (i.e., ones donated to schools where they have not paid the $100 to $200 each for new licenses), then the number probably pretty close. Microsoft has shown repeatedly that they are ready, willing and able to drag school systems through the courts to prevent them from using these systems.
Ummmm.... yea. The other point of the article, interestingly enough, is that Microsoft doesn't seem to get it. In fact, it seems to be a pretty common trait among large corporations that a large fraction of their top level executives seem to get so wrapped up in themselves that they don't seem to be able to comprehend simple relationships like this. They have been so successful wringing every last cent out of their customers that they don't even notice when they start to flee in droves, and when they do notice, they respond by simply turning up the pressure, which in turn, accelerates the hemoraging
No, because the donated PC's are simply blatant attempt to supplant Apple's dominance in the educational market, and to generate more license revenue for Microsoft. Who do you think pays to upgrade those PCs when people realize that Windows 3.1 doesn't run any real software?
(Also, when another independent company tried to do the same thing, MS took them to court because they couldn't prove they had valid licenses for all the copies of Windows 95 that the used computers were running. They ended up having to trash several thousand used computers because they didn't have enough money to buy all brand new licenses for them.)
Heh... And your point is???
Did you read the same article as I did???
The point of the article had very little to do with the merits of OS software. He was merely stating the fact that he himself had very little experience with Linux.
The point of the article was that, no matter how good or bad your product is, or how firmly entrenched you monopoly may be, if you piss off your customers long enough, you will eventually strangle yourself to death.
Or, to put it another way, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall..."
OK... that's what they say now. However, who's to stop the next guy from implementing a small autorun app on your audio CD that is not so polite?
Can't wait to see the MS "spin control" on this one. "Well, when you factor in long term preferences and TCO, you see that what he really meant to say was..."
(duh.... posted to wrong subject. OK, mod me out 'o sight. move along folks....)
Can't wait to see the MS "spin control" on this one. "Well, when you factor in long term preferences and TCO, you see that what he really meant to say was..."
Ever read "The Dragon Riders of Pern"?
Basic "primitive" society on a different planet. You don't find out until quite a few books into the series, but it was simply a matter of a high tech civilization going to another planet, and finding that they didn't have the resources to maintain all their gadgets. There were lots of unexpected hardships (big surprise on a new planet), and things like power cells eventually broke down to the point where they had to learn how to do things by hand.
Remember, most of the technology we are familiar with has literally thousands of years of history behind it. Throw it at a brand new environment, and there's a significant chance that it will simply collapse, and people won't know what to do to fix it.
Heh... Sure seemed pretty obvious to me. What other company produces a product called "MS Word", and has been recently convicted of "illegally maintaining its monopoly position"?