In any event, there's nothing to be gained by accepting the status quo, and everything to gain from making a fuss. Good standards are important. If ISO can't deliver them we need a standards body that can.
I totally agree with you. My posts were to point out that if we make a fuss about the WRONG THING, the eventual fixes won't fix anything. Too many people here seem to think that ISO fell because an overly powerful evil corporation pushed it around. But it fell because EVERYONE have ALWAYS been pushing it around. Thats very important to understand, else the next standard body or whatever will fall the same way, just without the big buzz to notify us that it did, like this.
I think you're conflating two ideas there
I'm not... again, I was trying to show the real problem. OOXML is open in the sense that anyone can implement it. Its just totally hellish to do so because a big corporation's ideas were forced into it: like virtually ALL freagin standards, from OOXML to SOAP going by tons of IEEE stuff. Lots of them are extremely hard to implement, and seriously, if I had the choice between implementing OOXML and implementing HTML 5.0 and CSS 3.0, I'd sure as hell pick the former, its easier! There isn't even a perfect implementation of XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0 for christ' sake (or did FF3.0 and the latest webkit FINALLY did it? Because I have seen VAST difference in behavior between FF2.0, FF3.0, Safari and Opera, so its not just Microsoft having trouble. And I'm not talking about the defaults being different, since thats valid by the standards).
These are all open standards. But its damn near impossible to implement them. You can get 90-95% right with several years and big money behind it (ok, I don't think Opera has the founding of Microsoft/Apple/Mozilla Foundation, so thumbs up to them to be getting so close), but good lord!
While a bit off topic, I have to say that unfortunately, you need to protect people from themselves, because people who ruin their lives often ruin others (for example, school drop outs are much more likely to go toward crime).
The W3C makes a lot more standards than just HTML/CSS, and its standards sucked long before Microsoft failed to implement them, and even those that are perfectly (or mostly so) implemented everywhere still also suck.
All it does is spit out standard specifications that are more bloated than Vista on a bad day, and virtually everything that falls under its wings go that way. Its just the same as ISO: its multiple bodies pushing for their ideas and goals and instead of filtering the good from the bad, they implement everything to keep everyone happy (SOAP). Or not enough to make a few key people happy in their own little world (CSS... even with CSS 3.0, if it was fully implementing, you'd still be missing a lot of stuff. "You shouldn't need to have vertical control in a document!!! Welcome to the real world, idealistic zealot").
My point is that "respected" bodies like ISO aren't falling. They've hit the lowest ground years (and in some cases, decades) ago. This particular event is nothing new: its always how it has been, and why most of these standards suck ass, from ISO to the W3C and beyond. It didn't reach a new low or anything, it has done much, much worse.
The whole idea of "independant standard bodies" is about as flawed as the idea behind software patents. It simply cannot work, and I'm not sure what the alternative is.
This is only in the spotlight because it matters to anti-MS geeks. International standards have ALWAYS been such a freagin mess. It has always been a fight of power and money. "Fine, we will let you have your feature in the standard, if our technology is part of the standard too, then we'll vote for your proposition, and you vote for our proposition tomorrow".
Its why many are so stupidly hard to implement, are political mess (XHTML2 anyone?), and why corporations eventually feel the need to make their own, to just bypass it all and be done with it.
It was -always- this way. ISO has -always- been a freagin joke, and most people who implemeneted their crap already know this (ISO9001, lol). This is just a whole lot of same old same old.
Bad laws are there to be exposed so that they can be changed. If all you do is break them:
A) who makes YOU decide which law is good or bad? B) Not enough people will know, and if its truly a bad law, you'll have to constantly break it instead of having it fixed.
The main thing is that people don't try to do something else with their consoles usually. I mean, certain DRMs for PC can hose it for non-gaming purposes. Or worse, for games like Mass Effect, you have a limited amount of installs, which is totally annoying, since if I buy a game (and a I buy a -lot- of them), its because I still plan on playing it 10 years from now on my 5th PC or whatever. With this I'd have to call up EA and say pretty please (which is worse than Microsoft, who'll basically let you reactivate as long as you call, while with EA you have to convince them).
Console DRM doesn't affect users as much (and until recently, games weren't installed either, so you had to have the disk in anyway... just couldn't use a copy).
Basically, both have DRMs. The PC DRM is just worse. (Some is fine though... I don't mind Steam's, for example).
Even worse is that some of those system are freagin picky too.
You may know the answer. But it may be case sensitive, and fairly picky. "Whats your favorite food". Is it Curry, curry, curry chicken, Curry Chicken, chicken, Chicken?
I got locked out of my bank account because of that BS once (it wasn't a password reset though, it was a 2 step authentication, so it asked that on TOP of the password)
Your examples do show something: People don't want value or features. They want mindless and easy, regardless of how useful or anything else it is for them. Mindless and easy is what they want, nothing more. They'll buy something they don't need or want, if its mindless and easy.
So yeah...secure internet will never go through. You have to find something mindless and easy that just so freagin happen to be more secure than what we have now.
The thing is, the barrier for entry for anything "global" is so stupidly high... getting things accepted by the public is harder and harder, and large scale projects are farther and farther in between (unless they involve war).
So as soon as something of large scale appears, people jump on it. Be it Youtube, Facebook, the Internet, fossil fuel, TV, HTML 4.0... You can't make up stuff like that everyday.. we all wish we could have stuff truly designed for what we need it... but its so hard to get it massively adopted...
Not much of a revenge, as only shitty programmers will be affected by this. Its not like its using an MSSQL exploit or anything... this could be done with any database that allows multiple statements in a single query (and maybe some that don't, if the code is really bad).
This would never be able to hit any application written by someone with more than "I know how to use a mouse LOLZ" level of experience.
The only thing I've read about though, is that this attack was so aggressive, it actually DDOSed some smaller scale web sites.
I'm keeping things simple since this is an internet forum/chat, not a whitepaper.
Its case by case basis. Different companies will deal with you differently. Microsoft will either give you copies that don't phone home, or let you have your own license server. Some companies will give you a version that doesn't expire, or scripts to bypass it.
-Many- will deal with you for liability exemptions.
It went the other way around many times. I've done business several times with companies (especially banks) that will not purchase any software or services from you if you do not have a liability contract with them AND have liability insurance. So if our software made them lose money (as defined in the contract), your insurance has to cover their loss. If you don't have it, they look elsewhere for their software.
Yup, and in many places those clauses aren't valid. Even more so... when you buy corporate licenses for several douzen thousands of dollars of software... you do get someone to contact the company directly and sign a custom contract, yes? YES? RIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT?
No way in hell I'm purchasing 50000$ of licenses for whatever from Amazon.ca or some crap. If its mission critical, I get a contract that will state conditions. Worked fine so far (only for mission critical software, of course)
Because its an exceptional case. This particular one will hit a lot of people, but for the most part, most people have never had any issues with stuff like this. I know I never did.
And when that happen? Who cares, I'll just sue their asses, like I do whenever OTHER problems come up, and it works to recover losses, if its a bit of a pain in the ass (though usually they compensate you without having to go that far).
Hahaha, you're correct. I had a brain dead moment and simply listed 10 years old or more PC games I had that weren't DOS made (and thus no direct X at all), which weren't many.
Point still stands though. DX games still work in Vista, unless portion of the games which have nothing to do with DX are messed up.
Err... really, most DX games work fine on Vista. The ones that don't are almost all old DOS games. I mean, I know quite a few examples of games that don't, but its pretty much never because of the video stack (even though Vista's stack changed significantly). Starcraft, Diablo 1, Hexen 2, Baldurs Gate... Roughly 10 years old (Baldurs Gate is a little less than that, but definately will be before Windows 7 comes out, and it probably will work after that). They all work perfectly fine. I'd be pissed as hell if they didn't.
One can bash DX for a lot of stuff... but forward compatibility isn't one of em, as its almost perfect (at least for the video stack).
Thats just for the "how many 10 years old games can you get working on Vista". I generally agree with the rest of your comments. OpenGL isn't only about games (and for non-gaming applications, it often TRASH Direct X). Its just that everytime people talk about DX (which is mainly about games, even though its used for a lot of stuff multi-media on Windows, including some you wouldn't think about), you hear "DX sucks! Game developers should go to OpenGL, its better in every ways!". Well, its not (for games), and that just proves it.
One also has to look about it for the future... sure, today almost no game use DX10 features. But by the time OpenGL 4.0 is out, they sure as hell will... so what comes out -today- is important for -tomorrow-.
Corporate mentality makes this trickier than it sounds. I'm no PHP programmer, but just to give you an example: We're a.NET shop here. All our stuff is.NET 2.0. We have the licenses for VS2008 to use with.NET 3.5, and we control all of the servers, all hooked to a domain, so we can push.NET 3.5 to all our servers with the click of a single button.
Upgrading from 2.0 to 3.5 is like this: double click the solution, open it in VS2008, recompile, deploy. In some cases to use new features you have to add 4 lines in the configuration files (always the same lines, copy and paste) Thats -it-. 99.99999% of the code will work.
Yet we're not doing it... why? No time, or so I'm told. (I've done that migration many times for other companies).
Point is, if the above is too much for some companies... imagine migrating from PHP4 to PHP5... the same people would -faint-.
Well, its why I compared it to volunteer work (as in, not paid!).
You are still right overall, but one point where things clash (and why a lot of employers don't give a flying duck about volunteer work... I know... I've done a lot, and its extremely rare for an employer to care at all, though it does happen), is that on a real job, you don't always end up doing what you feel like. You don't pick your project, the people you work with, and if in the morning you don't feel like doing it, you do it -anyway-.
Being a volunteer in an open source project does show enthousiasm and love for what you do, and it shows your technical skills. The later, many employers don't give a flying duck (you can always learn it on the fly... what they care about most is experience with real handling of work situations, crisis, customers, analysing problems you don't control, etc). The former technically shows something more useful and positive, but I've found that most places don't understand it, so it can actually HURT you, as they'll see you as a giggly little kid who think work == games.
Now, the above is actually a GOOD thing, if what you want is landing the ideal job where you'll be happy forever and ever and ever. That sure is my goal, so I'd see it as a good thing, definately. Its a bad thing if the only thing you care about is paying rent in a time of recession and lower economic growth.
If it was that simple, you wouldn't have the right to buy a used copy of copyrighted material, fair use clauses wouldn't exist, etc. Jeez, maybe there is::gasps:: a balance to such things! And who would have thought... people making copyrighted work are... HUMANS TOO! Wow!
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I totally agree with you. My posts were to point out that if we make a fuss about the WRONG THING, the eventual fixes won't fix anything. Too many people here seem to think that ISO fell because an overly powerful evil corporation pushed it around. But it fell because EVERYONE have ALWAYS been pushing it around. Thats very important to understand, else the next standard body or whatever will fall the same way, just without the big buzz to notify us that it did, like this.
I'm not... again, I was trying to show the real problem. OOXML is open in the sense that anyone can implement it. Its just totally hellish to do so because a big corporation's ideas were forced into it: like virtually ALL freagin standards, from OOXML to SOAP going by tons of IEEE stuff. Lots of them are extremely hard to implement, and seriously, if I had the choice between implementing OOXML and implementing HTML 5.0 and CSS 3.0, I'd sure as hell pick the former, its easier! There isn't even a perfect implementation of XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0 for christ' sake (or did FF3.0 and the latest webkit FINALLY did it? Because I have seen VAST difference in behavior between FF2.0, FF3.0, Safari and Opera, so its not just Microsoft having trouble. And I'm not talking about the defaults being different, since thats valid by the standards).
These are all open standards. But its damn near impossible to implement them. You can get 90-95% right with several years and big money behind it (ok, I don't think Opera has the founding of Microsoft/Apple/Mozilla Foundation, so thumbs up to them to be getting so close), but good lord!
While a bit off topic, I have to say that unfortunately, you need to protect people from themselves, because people who ruin their lives often ruin others (for example, school drop outs are much more likely to go toward crime).
The W3C makes a lot more standards than just HTML/CSS, and its standards sucked long before Microsoft failed to implement them, and even those that are perfectly (or mostly so) implemented everywhere still also suck.
All it does is spit out standard specifications that are more bloated than Vista on a bad day, and virtually everything that falls under its wings go that way. Its just the same as ISO: its multiple bodies pushing for their ideas and goals and instead of filtering the good from the bad, they implement everything to keep everyone happy (SOAP). Or not enough to make a few key people happy in their own little world (CSS... even with CSS 3.0, if it was fully implementing, you'd still be missing a lot of stuff. "You shouldn't need to have vertical control in a document!!! Welcome to the real world, idealistic zealot").
They'd still be that way, Microsoft or not.
My point is that "respected" bodies like ISO aren't falling. They've hit the lowest ground years (and in some cases, decades) ago. This particular event is nothing new: its always how it has been, and why most of these standards suck ass, from ISO to the W3C and beyond. It didn't reach a new low or anything, it has done much, much worse.
The whole idea of "independant standard bodies" is about as flawed as the idea behind software patents. It simply cannot work, and I'm not sure what the alternative is.
This is only in the spotlight because it matters to anti-MS geeks. International standards have ALWAYS been such a freagin mess. It has always been a fight of power and money. "Fine, we will let you have your feature in the standard, if our technology is part of the standard too, then we'll vote for your proposition, and you vote for our proposition tomorrow".
Its why many are so stupidly hard to implement, are political mess (XHTML2 anyone?), and why corporations eventually feel the need to make their own, to just bypass it all and be done with it.
It was -always- this way. ISO has -always- been a freagin joke, and most people who implemeneted their crap already know this (ISO9001, lol). This is just a whole lot of same old same old.
Bad laws are there to be exposed so that they can be changed. If all you do is break them:
A) who makes YOU decide which law is good or bad?
B) Not enough people will know, and if its truly a bad law, you'll have to constantly break it instead of having it fixed.
The main thing is that people don't try to do something else with their consoles usually. I mean, certain DRMs for PC can hose it for non-gaming purposes. Or worse, for games like Mass Effect, you have a limited amount of installs, which is totally annoying, since if I buy a game (and a I buy a -lot- of them), its because I still plan on playing it 10 years from now on my 5th PC or whatever. With this I'd have to call up EA and say pretty please (which is worse than Microsoft, who'll basically let you reactivate as long as you call, while with EA you have to convince them).
Console DRM doesn't affect users as much (and until recently, games weren't installed either, so you had to have the disk in anyway... just couldn't use a copy).
Basically, both have DRMs. The PC DRM is just worse. (Some is fine though... I don't mind Steam's, for example).
Hahahaha... Thats a lot of Fail if I've ever seen Fail :)
I was indeed giving an existing system as a point of reference to compare the article to.
Of course, I cannot put non-alphanumeric characters or more than 9 characters in my password.
So its kind of inconsistant.
Even worse is that some of those system are freagin picky too.
You may know the answer. But it may be case sensitive, and fairly picky. "Whats your favorite food". Is it Curry, curry, curry chicken, Curry Chicken, chicken, Chicken?
I got locked out of my bank account because of that BS once (it wasn't a password reset though, it was a 2 step authentication, so it asked that on TOP of the password)
No, but the mix of lower and upper case letters shows that you're an up & down kindda person!
Your examples do show something: People don't want value or features. They want mindless and easy, regardless of how useful or anything else it is for them. Mindless and easy is what they want, nothing more. They'll buy something they don't need or want, if its mindless and easy.
So yeah...secure internet will never go through. You have to find something mindless and easy that just so freagin happen to be more secure than what we have now.
The thing is, the barrier for entry for anything "global" is so stupidly high... getting things accepted by the public is harder and harder, and large scale projects are farther and farther in between (unless they involve war).
So as soon as something of large scale appears, people jump on it. Be it Youtube, Facebook, the Internet, fossil fuel, TV, HTML 4.0... You can't make up stuff like that everyday.. we all wish we could have stuff truly designed for what we need it... but its so hard to get it massively adopted...
Basically, I'd say, people are broken :)
Not much of a revenge, as only shitty programmers will be affected by this. Its not like its using an MSSQL exploit or anything... this could be done with any database that allows multiple statements in a single query (and maybe some that don't, if the code is really bad).
This would never be able to hit any application written by someone with more than "I know how to use a mouse LOLZ" level of experience.
The only thing I've read about though, is that this attack was so aggressive, it actually DDOSed some smaller scale web sites.
I'm keeping things simple since this is an internet forum/chat, not a whitepaper.
Its case by case basis. Different companies will deal with you differently. Microsoft will either give you copies that don't phone home, or let you have your own license server. Some companies will give you a version that doesn't expire, or scripts to bypass it.
-Many- will deal with you for liability exemptions.
It went the other way around many times. I've done business several times with companies (especially banks) that will not purchase any software or services from you if you do not have a liability contract with them AND have liability insurance. So if our software made them lose money (as defined in the contract), your insurance has to cover their loss. If you don't have it, they look elsewhere for their software.
Its very, very common.
Yup, and in many places those clauses aren't valid. Even more so... when you buy corporate licenses for several douzen thousands of dollars of software... you do get someone to contact the company directly and sign a custom contract, yes? YES? RIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT?
No way in hell I'm purchasing 50000$ of licenses for whatever from Amazon.ca or some crap. If its mission critical, I get a contract that will state conditions. Worked fine so far (only for mission critical software, of course)
Because its an exceptional case. This particular one will hit a lot of people, but for the most part, most people have never had any issues with stuff like this. I know I never did.
And when that happen? Who cares, I'll just sue their asses, like I do whenever OTHER problems come up, and it works to recover losses, if its a bit of a pain in the ass (though usually they compensate you without having to go that far).
Hahaha, you're correct. I had a brain dead moment and simply listed 10 years old or more PC games I had that weren't DOS made (and thus no direct X at all), which weren't many.
Point still stands though. DX games still work in Vista, unless portion of the games which have nothing to do with DX are messed up.
Err... really, most DX games work fine on Vista. The ones that don't are almost all old DOS games. I mean, I know quite a few examples of games that don't, but its pretty much never because of the video stack (even though Vista's stack changed significantly). Starcraft, Diablo 1, Hexen 2, Baldurs Gate... Roughly 10 years old (Baldurs Gate is a little less than that, but definately will be before Windows 7 comes out, and it probably will work after that). They all work perfectly fine. I'd be pissed as hell if they didn't.
One can bash DX for a lot of stuff... but forward compatibility isn't one of em, as its almost perfect (at least for the video stack).
Thats just for the "how many 10 years old games can you get working on Vista". I generally agree with the rest of your comments. OpenGL isn't only about games (and for non-gaming applications, it often TRASH Direct X). Its just that everytime people talk about DX (which is mainly about games, even though its used for a lot of stuff multi-media on Windows, including some you wouldn't think about), you hear "DX sucks! Game developers should go to OpenGL, its better in every ways!". Well, its not (for games), and that just proves it.
One also has to look about it for the future... sure, today almost no game use DX10 features. But by the time OpenGL 4.0 is out, they sure as hell will... so what comes out -today- is important for -tomorrow-.
Corporate mentality makes this trickier than it sounds. I'm no PHP programmer, but just to give you an example: We're a .NET shop here. All our stuff is .NET 2.0. We have the licenses for VS2008 to use with .NET 3.5, and we control all of the servers, all hooked to a domain, so we can push .NET 3.5 to all our servers with the click of a single button.
Upgrading from 2.0 to 3.5 is like this: double click the solution, open it in VS2008, recompile, deploy. In some cases to use new features you have to add 4 lines in the configuration files (always the same lines, copy and paste) Thats -it-. 99.99999% of the code will work.
Yet we're not doing it... why? No time, or so I'm told. (I've done that migration many times for other companies).
Point is, if the above is too much for some companies... imagine migrating from PHP4 to PHP5... the same people would -faint-.
But but but... Microsoft is an EVIL EVIL convincted monopolist! Its even WORSE than a felon!!!
Holy cow...and I thought my last few employers were disasters... I hope you're paid 6 figures to endure that stuff...
Well, its why I compared it to volunteer work (as in, not paid!).
You are still right overall, but one point where things clash (and why a lot of employers don't give a flying duck about volunteer work... I know... I've done a lot, and its extremely rare for an employer to care at all, though it does happen), is that on a real job, you don't always end up doing what you feel like. You don't pick your project, the people you work with, and if in the morning you don't feel like doing it, you do it -anyway-.
Being a volunteer in an open source project does show enthousiasm and love for what you do, and it shows your technical skills. The later, many employers don't give a flying duck (you can always learn it on the fly... what they care about most is experience with real handling of work situations, crisis, customers, analysing problems you don't control, etc). The former technically shows something more useful and positive, but I've found that most places don't understand it, so it can actually HURT you, as they'll see you as a giggly little kid who think work == games.
Now, the above is actually a GOOD thing, if what you want is landing the ideal job where you'll be happy forever and ever and ever. That sure is my goal, so I'd see it as a good thing, definately. Its a bad thing if the only thing you care about is paying rent in a time of recession and lower economic growth.
If it was that simple, you wouldn't have the right to buy a used copy of copyrighted material, fair use clauses wouldn't exist, etc. Jeez, maybe there is ::gasps:: a balance to such things! And who would have thought... people making copyrighted work are... HUMANS TOO! Wow!