The problem is those clueless about computers (haven't used anything but MS products or just don't know much about computers) believe MS is the greatest company since the one who made sliced shit. They think Bill Gates invented computers and all of the quirks in software today is unpreventable.
If MS actually sold sliced shit, you'd bet they would eat it and say "this is wonderful." Then due to MS's questionable practices, all the restaurants serve MS "food" and only MS "food". All the while lusers would denounce chefs who tell them how it is digusting sliced shit. They would say: "You are just jealous of MS's success." While in reality those chefs just don't want to eat shit.
It used to be I could go anywere and be blessed by the foods of the world. Can't I just go to a restaurant where i don't have to eat shit?
Nvidia? They are a fun bunch aren't they? I love that game...what is it called? Oh yeah... Ultimate X Crash! I love how they kick me into it as I am playing a game or a video, or I am browsing the web and I just want to watch this quick clip...
It is the greatest surprize gift. I wish I could meet the Linux driver developers from Nvidia in a dark alley so I can thank them for all these gifts they've been giving me.
X is bloated, but it isn't any slower than MS windows. Every 3D program run in both Linux and MSwin have mostly the same quality and framerate, though sometimes Linux is slightly faster. Yes, the GNOME and KDE systems do slow things down because they take so much processor time, but if you are running a 3D game fullscreen, they aren't doing too much. They seem to take about 5% CPU time. Too much, but alone should not be too noticable. YMMV
Though I have seen 3d programs messed up and running very slow--like ubuntu's glxgears. It was really slow and didn't spit out any benchmarks. I went to my Slackware partion and ran that version (cd/media/hda5/usr/X11/bin;./glxgears) and it was the proper speed and gave good statistics. I don't know what the Ubuntu people did to it.
Also, it can be a pain in the ass to get the correct X config going for 3D. I think some cards are sensitive to what is loaded and in what order. Especially bits per pixel--many older cards only work in 16bpp, and many defaults are set to 24.
Each distro has quirks that distinguish it and those quirks make it harder to build spyware that works on every linux box.
What kind of crap fud is everyone spreading here? It would be difficult to create spyware which embeds itself into the system without root access certainly. There are no "quirks" in the system which would make it difficult to build a binary (or source code) for every distro. The only incompatibilities would be if a different processor was used (say arm or powerpc or motorola's 68000 or whatever) or if they used some sort of incompatible kernel or libc...anyone do this? I haven't seen any distros mod the kernel or glibc or use anything other than the Linux kernel and GNU libc--though I think Debian also supports the Hurd (others?) and if there are any embedded distros (haven't looked) they probably use a smaller libc.
Unless you are talking about the script kiddies who write projects and include a thousand obscure lib deps and no download option to just get the program staticly linked with the unusual ones. Libc, libjpeg, libpng, etc are fine, but weird programming languages, ultra specialized libs, and such should really be included in the package. Maybe your distro may have them, but for everyone else it will be a pain in the ass. Must be them Debian dudes who can just type apt-get and they have access to every library known to man.;-)
The only other potential quirks are when developers don't include the correct header file(s), which is a developer mistake, not the distro's. They should go with the man page or other offical docs.
Any jack off can easily write a spyware binary which only needs libc (or even makes direct kernel syscalls) and it will work on any distro, assuming you didn't compile it with the latest bleeding edge libc and theirs is a lower version. You wouldn't expect a program made for WinXP to run on Win95. Would you? If any libraries are needed, they just have to staticly link them. No "quirks" involved.
No offense intended, but it irritates me so many are saying this. It simply is not true.
In my experience, Nintendo hardware has been quite solid. Had a gamecube (sold) and have a DS. You can let them collect dust, even beat on the things and they still work fine.
Sony's (PS1, a CD player) has not--the PS was iffy reading disks, often claiming there was no disc on boot when there was one. The CD player's (I forget what it is called) center part which holds the cd in place would come out with the CD when I exchanged discs. Those lasted only a few years--dealing with those problems. I would've bought something else, but I didn't have much money and there weren't any stores selling <$10 players like WalMart does today. I don't buy Sony anymore.
MS hardware...I've had very limited experience, but a roommate bought a MS joystick and it broke around a week later. Due to their software, I would not expect any sort of quality or sanity from them. WTF? I think it was DOS call #6 for getting a character without blocking was very flaky. Then there was the DOS call for printing a string...what kind of idiot uses a dollar sign for a terminating character, especially if the processor he is programming has an instruction specifically for detecting the end of a string using a nul (0) character??? Needless to say, I started using the BIOS functions where I could. Then there was Win 3.11 and Win98. Shoddy shoddy crap.
Well, that is a load of crap. If you buy something, you own it and you can do whatever you want with it. Voiding the warranty for cracking open the box, or modifying the bios, or making it self destruct if you use it sounds quite deceptive to me. Unless they tell you that you are "just renting it" or some crap, then they are being dickheads and you shouldn't give them money. Well, time has proven them to be dickheads, so don't be stupid and give them money. A manufacturer should only be allowed to refuse the warranty if the user does something which would obviously break it (such as throwing it against the wall, dropping it, hitting it with a hammer, etc).
In fact, MS making it so people aren't allowed to use alternate operating systems on the xbox should certainly be a breach of anti-trust law. Such a thing is obviously a unethical way of using their position in the market to keep their monopoly. The anti-trust legislation should really be restarted, because DRM is just a new way MS is trying to enforce their monopoly.
And this "only modders" "using it for piracy" crap is bullshit and FUD. Obviously intended to scare away and label users who mod their xbox. Although M$ may say so, once a person buys an xbox (or other machine), they can run Linux (or Darwin or their own custom programs) and it isn't "piracy". In fact, they are allowed to do anything with it they like. Rigging something to break, then claiming the warranty is vioded sounds like a shady practice to me.
Yeah, you are correct. They claim the freed spectrum will be used for wireless networking, but they will probably just auction it off like they did with the rest.
I tried that before with some religious extremists. I gave them every chance and the benefit of the doubt. They screwed me every time. Now I have kidney failure and two strokes for it.
This isn't just about buying and listening to music. This is about basic freedoms. The RIAA don't care about those. Their main goal isn't just to prevent copyright infringement, but to eliminate any possible competition. Look at the patterns.
To acheive those ends, they have sued and harrassed developers and users of communications sofware reguardless of whether or not they were actually infringing or encouraging the infringing of copyrights. They scared away legit developers and trained the public to believe P2P was only for "sharing free music", which flooded the internet with "free" pop crap music and movies. They have spammed the internet with DMCA complaints, many of which there was probably no infringing activity at all in the first place. They have tried to force DRM systems onto computers, which many of the schemes would likely lock down the system and disallow many legitimate programmers from writing programs on their own computer, even those having nothing to do with sharing files or music.
In fact, look at the Napster case. They completely ignored the users who were doing the infringing activity and went after Napster saying they wouldn't sue the "fans" of their music and advertised "free" music for the system in all the newspapers. Maybe the guy who made Napster intended it to be used that way, but they eventually did this to every popular P2P system (including usenet), reguardless of the intent of the developers.
And you are saying we should make a "peace treaty" with them and buy their music? Yeah, because I want to listen to crappy music all day and watch TV. This internet and computer thing was a poor idea from the start...who am I but a lowly pauper slave with an absurd dream for strange things like freedom and innovation and the ability to communicate and collaborate with people all over the world. Who would want that?
The purchase came back "declined due to insufficient funds". Odd, given that the track was supposed to be $.99, and there's a dollar left on the limit.... I was finally able to buy when giving the card a limit of $25.
Not odd at all. What about shipping? Don't you think $24.01 is reasonable for shipping a heavy MP3? Especially through high speed innernet pipes? Come on man, let's be fair!;-)
So did they actually deduct $25 from your account? (What is up with that?)
It is extremely offensive that phone companies think they can take away things for which you have paid, without giving anything in return by expiring the minutes. That is one of the many, many consequences of having a corrupt government.
Yes, I hate how those bastards at the FCC auctioned off the radio spectrum. Radio waves go through everyone's airspace, so we should all be allowed to share it fairly.
If the radio spectrum was properly allocated, we could just use a home based transceiver instead of a cell phone when we are within range of the house (probably several km). It could switch to cell mode when out of range--assuming you want a cell carrier in the first place. Imagine essentially free phone calls near home.
Don't even get me started on how WiFi was pushed into a small band shared with microwave ovens...
Actually, I think popup blockers were created when people started abusing various "features" of javascript. Not only for advertising, but also just to be asses--such as cramming your system with tons of goatse.cx windows. A document being able to resize, move, take away menus, popup windows and such are practically asking for trojan horse javascript. Those "features" should never have been added. A HTML document should never be allowed to render or affect anything beyond the square space it has been given by the web browser.
I would assume since OO does not have the same code base, it will probably not be affected. However, it does not mean OO doesn't have exploits of its own. It all depends on how well coded and audited OO is.
Haiku looks like an interesting project. How well does it work so far?
Well, if they did it right, the addresses would be truely random. It works because some exploits need to use a fixed address to jump to the right location. If the address is randomized, then the black hat can't predict where to make the jump and the exploit doesn't work. More likely it will just crash the program with a seg fault. Forcing a program to crash is much better than remote code execution...
I first heard about this with a security extension to Linux. I'm sure plenty of other systems do it too. There are lots of things like this floating around. I also remember a non-executable stack extension too. It was supposed to keep anything from running on the stack (which many buffer overflow exploits do). Though they had to do a workaround because gcc uses an optimization to jump Probably obsolete now, since new processors (AMD64?) now support separate read and execute flags. (Older ones would use the same flag for read and execute, so if you needed to read a page, you had to allow execution.)
I don't see how your conspiracy would pan out. The kernel can do things like that no matter where in memory the user program is located. A kernel can disable or modify anything it wants, so using a special key to generate the "random" value wouldn't be helpful at all.
Intel says they are not going to develop a 915GM driver for Vista WDDM because of hardware limitations. Strictly "business graphics", which are OK. No Bluetooth hardware driver supplied or can be found. Audio is not all there: the "soft jacks" are not recognised, so plugging in headphones does not cut out the speaker!
It just goes to show, Vista isn't ready for the desktop.
Usenet does not have freedom of expression. Say the wrong thing to upset a troll, and they'll send a complaint to your isp. It doesn't matter what the complaint says because most ISPs cannot afford to higher enough employees to investigate, so you get cut off or whatever punishment your ISP does.
There is no free speech when any asshole can have your access taken away. Once I didn't endorse some fucker's favorite distro, so he sent a complaint to my ISP. All sorts of things like that happen all the time. I know of at least one FAQ maintainer whose ISP would receive complaints from various trolls and such. Luckily he knew the admins, so they knew the trolls were lying shitheads and ignored the complaints.
Yeah, the binary groups usually won't have people complain about you as long as you post good warez and movies and such, but the other groups will eat you alive just for posting. Doesn't matter how nice or helpful you are.
Installing an OS is not for the masses, you need at least some knowledge about computers to do that. That is why computer vendors pre install the OS instead of just including the disk with the package and expecting the end user to do it.
I meant it to be an option, I guess I didn't say it. If the ISP charges a fair price, downloading an ISO should still be cheaper than buying it through mail order, even if they only charge for the physical media and shipping.
Right now, they make downloading ISOs an iffy business. If they arbitrarily decide you used too much bandwidth, they will cut you off anyway.
I think only charging for the packets you send (aside from a base fee) would be the fairest option, however I don't think it will happen.
It was somewhere around v9 they also put in digital signatures, verifiable with a gpg key. I'm not sure, but I think RPMs support signatures embedded into the package file. I would assume Debian does (or will do) this as well. Why would they not?
I don't know what all this talk about warez is about. If a script kiddie cracks commerical software, there is nothing surprizing about them being able to insert malware. As the article says, do you really know if it is the software you think it is and not malware? How is this new?
I want to know where the discussions about computer vendors are located. What is so far fetched about someone buying a "discount" computer at a store, and the vendor put in a bunch of spyware and adware? For the most part, legit looking companies have only been doing this for maybe 5 or 10 years. Would it be surprizing if real unwanted malware (something more than crappy AOL icons/software being installed) were installed onto a computer from the beginning? It would be a real money maker. That is for sure.
I would not be surprised at all to see a computer vendor do this, if there are none which have done this already.
Knowing MS and other "commercial" software companies, I can't believe it will stay that way. Eventually, they'll "upgrade" it so you have to pay them a fee to get your data back or more likely, they'll try to lock you into their software packages with a nice "optional" upgrade cycle.
That is a load of crap. When I was on cable internet, it was shared in such a way where if lots of people were sending packets, then everyone on that segment would have problems sending too. Even if you are using the internet like a web based tv such as the media companies want, your browser/ip stack needs to send urls to fetch and acks and other crap. Asymmetrical connections just mean you have less usage on your entire segment before you are screwed. Not to mention the fact it encourages old fashoned one way communication similar to tv.
It would be better for the ISPs to charge per MB fees instead, perhaps with some sort of available setting to cut off at a certain point, so users wouldn't have to pay more than they were willing. That way anyone who's computer gets infected has to pay for the bandwidth they use. People will also have cause to sue malware authors for monetary losses due to wasted bandwidth. It would make being a malware author a very costly deal if they get caught.
It would also make them lift absurd bans on "servers" (really meaning two way internet) and similar crap. Then again, cable ISPs would probably set prices to absurd levels--way more than they pay, especially for upstream--just so they can lock you in to viewing their content. Also you wouldn't have to pay very much if you don't use much bandwidth, and you wouldn't have to worry about being arbitrarily cut off just because you use too much bandwidth or use bandwith in ways the ISP doesn't like--at least they wouldn't have a good excuse anymore...
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The problem is those clueless about computers (haven't used anything but MS products or just don't know much about computers) believe MS is the greatest company since the one who made sliced shit. They think Bill Gates invented computers and all of the quirks in software today is unpreventable.
If MS actually sold sliced shit, you'd bet they would eat it and say "this is wonderful." Then due to MS's questionable practices, all the restaurants serve MS "food" and only MS "food". All the while lusers would denounce chefs who tell them how it is digusting sliced shit. They would say: "You are just jealous of MS's success." While in reality those chefs just don't want to eat shit.
It used to be I could go anywere and be blessed by the foods of the world. Can't I just go to a restaurant where i don't have to eat shit?
Nvidia? They are a fun bunch aren't they? I love that game...what is it called? Oh yeah... Ultimate X Crash! I love how they kick me into it as I am playing a game or a video, or I am browsing the web and I just want to watch this quick clip...
It is the greatest surprize gift. I wish I could meet the Linux driver developers from Nvidia in a dark alley so I can thank them for all these gifts they've been giving me.
X is bloated, but it isn't any slower than MS windows. Every 3D program run in both Linux and MSwin have mostly the same quality and framerate, though sometimes Linux is slightly faster. Yes, the GNOME and KDE systems do slow things down because they take so much processor time, but if you are running a 3D game fullscreen, they aren't doing too much. They seem to take about 5% CPU time. Too much, but alone should not be too noticable. YMMV
Though I have seen 3d programs messed up and running very slow--like ubuntu's glxgears. It was really slow and didn't spit out any benchmarks. I went to my Slackware partion and ran that version (cd /media/hda5/usr/X11/bin; ./glxgears) and it was the proper speed and gave good statistics. I don't know what the Ubuntu people did to it.
Also, it can be a pain in the ass to get the correct X config going for 3D. I think some cards are sensitive to what is loaded and in what order. Especially bits per pixel--many older cards only work in 16bpp, and many defaults are set to 24.
What kind of crap fud is everyone spreading here? It would be difficult to create spyware which embeds itself into the system without root access certainly. There are no "quirks" in the system which would make it difficult to build a binary (or source code) for every distro. The only incompatibilities would be if a different processor was used (say arm or powerpc or motorola's 68000 or whatever) or if they used some sort of incompatible kernel or libc...anyone do this? I haven't seen any distros mod the kernel or glibc or use anything other than the Linux kernel and GNU libc--though I think Debian also supports the Hurd (others?) and if there are any embedded distros (haven't looked) they probably use a smaller libc.
Unless you are talking about the script kiddies who write projects and include a thousand obscure lib deps and no download option to just get the program staticly linked with the unusual ones. Libc, libjpeg, libpng, etc are fine, but weird programming languages, ultra specialized libs, and such should really be included in the package. Maybe your distro may have them, but for everyone else it will be a pain in the ass. Must be them Debian dudes who can just type apt-get and they have access to every library known to man. ;-)
The only other potential quirks are when developers don't include the correct header file(s), which is a developer mistake, not the distro's. They should go with the man page or other offical docs.
Any jack off can easily write a spyware binary which only needs libc (or even makes direct kernel syscalls) and it will work on any distro, assuming you didn't compile it with the latest bleeding edge libc and theirs is a lower version. You wouldn't expect a program made for WinXP to run on Win95. Would you? If any libraries are needed, they just have to staticly link them. No "quirks" involved.
No offense intended, but it irritates me so many are saying this. It simply is not true.
In my experience, Nintendo hardware has been quite solid. Had a gamecube (sold) and have a DS. You can let them collect dust, even beat on the things and they still work fine.
Sony's (PS1, a CD player) has not--the PS was iffy reading disks, often claiming there was no disc on boot when there was one. The CD player's (I forget what it is called) center part which holds the cd in place would come out with the CD when I exchanged discs. Those lasted only a few years--dealing with those problems. I would've bought something else, but I didn't have much money and there weren't any stores selling <$10 players like WalMart does today. I don't buy Sony anymore.
MS hardware...I've had very limited experience, but a roommate bought a MS joystick and it broke around a week later. Due to their software, I would not expect any sort of quality or sanity from them. WTF? I think it was DOS call #6 for getting a character without blocking was very flaky. Then there was the DOS call for printing a string...what kind of idiot uses a dollar sign for a terminating character, especially if the processor he is programming has an instruction specifically for detecting the end of a string using a nul (0) character??? Needless to say, I started using the BIOS functions where I could. Then there was Win 3.11 and Win98. Shoddy shoddy crap.
Well, that is a load of crap. If you buy something, you own it and you can do whatever you want with it. Voiding the warranty for cracking open the box, or modifying the bios, or making it self destruct if you use it sounds quite deceptive to me. Unless they tell you that you are "just renting it" or some crap, then they are being dickheads and you shouldn't give them money. Well, time has proven them to be dickheads, so don't be stupid and give them money. A manufacturer should only be allowed to refuse the warranty if the user does something which would obviously break it (such as throwing it against the wall, dropping it, hitting it with a hammer, etc).
In fact, MS making it so people aren't allowed to use alternate operating systems on the xbox should certainly be a breach of anti-trust law. Such a thing is obviously a unethical way of using their position in the market to keep their monopoly. The anti-trust legislation should really be restarted, because DRM is just a new way MS is trying to enforce their monopoly.
And this "only modders" "using it for piracy" crap is bullshit and FUD. Obviously intended to scare away and label users who mod their xbox. Although M$ may say so, once a person buys an xbox (or other machine), they can run Linux (or Darwin or their own custom programs) and it isn't "piracy". In fact, they are allowed to do anything with it they like. Rigging something to break, then claiming the warranty is vioded sounds like a shady practice to me.
Yeah, you are correct. They claim the freed spectrum will be used for wireless networking, but they will probably just auction it off like they did with the rest.
Makes me want to become a freebander.
I tried that before with some religious extremists. I gave them every chance and the benefit of the doubt. They screwed me every time. Now I have kidney failure and two strokes for it.
This isn't just about buying and listening to music. This is about basic freedoms. The RIAA don't care about those. Their main goal isn't just to prevent copyright infringement, but to eliminate any possible competition. Look at the patterns.
To acheive those ends, they have sued and harrassed developers and users of communications sofware reguardless of whether or not they were actually infringing or encouraging the infringing of copyrights. They scared away legit developers and trained the public to believe P2P was only for "sharing free music", which flooded the internet with "free" pop crap music and movies. They have spammed the internet with DMCA complaints, many of which there was probably no infringing activity at all in the first place. They have tried to force DRM systems onto computers, which many of the schemes would likely lock down the system and disallow many legitimate programmers from writing programs on their own computer, even those having nothing to do with sharing files or music.
In fact, look at the Napster case. They completely ignored the users who were doing the infringing activity and went after Napster saying they wouldn't sue the "fans" of their music and advertised "free" music for the system in all the newspapers. Maybe the guy who made Napster intended it to be used that way, but they eventually did this to every popular P2P system (including usenet), reguardless of the intent of the developers.
And you are saying we should make a "peace treaty" with them and buy their music? Yeah, because I want to listen to crappy music all day and watch TV. This internet and computer thing was a poor idea from the start...who am I but a lowly pauper slave with an absurd dream for strange things like freedom and innovation and the ability to communicate and collaborate with people all over the world. Who would want that?
Not odd at all. What about shipping? Don't you think $24.01 is reasonable for shipping a heavy MP3? Especially through high speed innernet pipes? Come on man, let's be fair! ;-)
So did they actually deduct $25 from your account? (What is up with that?)
Yes, I hate how those bastards at the FCC auctioned off the radio spectrum. Radio waves go through everyone's airspace, so we should all be allowed to share it fairly.
If the radio spectrum was properly allocated, we could just use a home based transceiver instead of a cell phone when we are within range of the house (probably several km). It could switch to cell mode when out of range--assuming you want a cell carrier in the first place. Imagine essentially free phone calls near home.
Don't even get me started on how WiFi was pushed into a small band shared with microwave ovens...
Actually, I think popup blockers were created when people started abusing various "features" of javascript. Not only for advertising, but also just to be asses--such as cramming your system with tons of goatse.cx windows. A document being able to resize, move, take away menus, popup windows and such are practically asking for trojan horse javascript. Those "features" should never have been added. A HTML document should never be allowed to render or affect anything beyond the square space it has been given by the web browser.
I would assume since OO does not have the same code base, it will probably not be affected. However, it does not mean OO doesn't have exploits of its own. It all depends on how well coded and audited OO is.
Haiku looks like an interesting project. How well does it work so far?
So, GNU bash has had it for as long as I have been using it--since about 1996 or so. What is your point? Command line completion is hardly new.
Lusers complain it is annoying. Users who understand the need for security don't.
Well, if they did it right, the addresses would be truely random. It works because some exploits need to use a fixed address to jump to the right location. If the address is randomized, then the black hat can't predict where to make the jump and the exploit doesn't work. More likely it will just crash the program with a seg fault. Forcing a program to crash is much better than remote code execution...
I first heard about this with a security extension to Linux. I'm sure plenty of other systems do it too. There are lots of things like this floating around. I also remember a non-executable stack extension too. It was supposed to keep anything from running on the stack (which many buffer overflow exploits do). Though they had to do a workaround because gcc uses an optimization to jump Probably obsolete now, since new processors (AMD64?) now support separate read and execute flags. (Older ones would use the same flag for read and execute, so if you needed to read a page, you had to allow execution.)
I don't see how your conspiracy would pan out. The kernel can do things like that no matter where in memory the user program is located. A kernel can disable or modify anything it wants, so using a special key to generate the "random" value wouldn't be helpful at all.
It just goes to show, Vista isn't ready for the desktop.
or you could write your own code and bypass the MCSE script kiddies altogether..
Usenet does not have freedom of expression. Say the wrong thing to upset a troll, and they'll send a complaint to your isp. It doesn't matter what the complaint says because most ISPs cannot afford to higher enough employees to investigate, so you get cut off or whatever punishment your ISP does.
There is no free speech when any asshole can have your access taken away. Once I didn't endorse some fucker's favorite distro, so he sent a complaint to my ISP. All sorts of things like that happen all the time. I know of at least one FAQ maintainer whose ISP would receive complaints from various trolls and such. Luckily he knew the admins, so they knew the trolls were lying shitheads and ignored the complaints.
Yeah, the binary groups usually won't have people complain about you as long as you post good warez and movies and such, but the other groups will eat you alive just for posting. Doesn't matter how nice or helpful you are.
Linux is for the masses. Tivo is made with Linux.
Installing an OS is not for the masses, you need at least some knowledge about computers to do that. That is why computer vendors pre install the OS instead of just including the disk with the package and expecting the end user to do it.
MIDI?
Am I confused, or are you really trying to say audio CDs are not encoded as PCM data? They are--16 bit 44.1kHz 2 channel.
I meant it to be an option, I guess I didn't say it. If the ISP charges a fair price, downloading an ISO should still be cheaper than buying it through mail order, even if they only charge for the physical media and shipping.
Right now, they make downloading ISOs an iffy business. If they arbitrarily decide you used too much bandwidth, they will cut you off anyway.
I think only charging for the packets you send (aside from a base fee) would be the fairest option, however I don't think it will happen.
Slackware includes MD5sums too.
It was somewhere around v9 they also put in digital signatures, verifiable with a gpg key. I'm not sure, but I think RPMs support signatures embedded into the package file. I would assume Debian does (or will do) this as well. Why would they not?
I don't know what all this talk about warez is about. If a script kiddie cracks commerical software, there is nothing surprizing about them being able to insert malware. As the article says, do you really know if it is the software you think it is and not malware? How is this new?
I want to know where the discussions about computer vendors are located. What is so far fetched about someone buying a "discount" computer at a store, and the vendor put in a bunch of spyware and adware? For the most part, legit looking companies have only been doing this for maybe 5 or 10 years. Would it be surprizing if real unwanted malware (something more than crappy AOL icons/software being installed) were installed onto a computer from the beginning? It would be a real money maker. That is for sure.
I would not be surprised at all to see a computer vendor do this, if there are none which have done this already.
Knowing MS and other "commercial" software companies, I can't believe it will stay that way. Eventually, they'll "upgrade" it so you have to pay them a fee to get your data back or more likely, they'll try to lock you into their software packages with a nice "optional" upgrade cycle.
That is a load of crap. When I was on cable internet, it was shared in such a way where if lots of people were sending packets, then everyone on that segment would have problems sending too. Even if you are using the internet like a web based tv such as the media companies want, your browser/ip stack needs to send urls to fetch and acks and other crap. Asymmetrical connections just mean you have less usage on your entire segment before you are screwed. Not to mention the fact it encourages old fashoned one way communication similar to tv.
It would be better for the ISPs to charge per MB fees instead, perhaps with some sort of available setting to cut off at a certain point, so users wouldn't have to pay more than they were willing. That way anyone who's computer gets infected has to pay for the bandwidth they use. People will also have cause to sue malware authors for monetary losses due to wasted bandwidth. It would make being a malware author a very costly deal if they get caught.
It would also make them lift absurd bans on "servers" (really meaning two way internet) and similar crap. Then again, cable ISPs would probably set prices to absurd levels--way more than they pay, especially for upstream--just so they can lock you in to viewing their content. Also you wouldn't have to pay very much if you don't use much bandwidth, and you wouldn't have to worry about being arbitrarily cut off just because you use too much bandwidth or use bandwith in ways the ISP doesn't like--at least they wouldn't have a good excuse anymore...