That proof you mention was a bit late in coming, as in they did a quick about-face when they saw the bad publicity they were getting. If you read the comments to your link you will see that many others came to the same conclusion.
And yes, I did RTFA. As always, they made a decision based on what there was a possibility of and didn't even bother to find out if they were right or wrong. After all, you just have to live by what they decided, no matter how much you pay them so it didn't make any difference to them. So my answer is still much the same - they should provide the service they're paid to and mind their own business. I don't pay anyone for a service and then let them refuse to provide that service and keep my money whenever the whim hits them. Would you?
At least you didn't have to buy their software and then get banned.
The more I heard about the way Blizzard runs WoW online the gladder I am I didn't buy it - I was thinking about this last Christmas for my husband, but got him an assortment of older games instead. They've proven themselves bigoted and now they're banning people for their hardware and/or OS? Why can't they just provide the software and service they've agreed to and keep their damned noses out of everyone's business?
Paint Shop Pro on steroids? That is Photoshop. Have you used PSP lately? Paint Shop Pro has many of the capabilties Photoshop is so highly regarded for... Which is why I don't see Microsoft getting very far into this market. Photoshop rules and most people don't know that many, if not all, of the features they love Photoshop for are to be had with alternatives. Certainly, there are still features that only PS has, but those are far fewer than almost anyone out there believes.
If you've never used antivirus and aren't using it now, how do you know that you don't have a virus at this very moment? A good trojan doesn't screw with your computer, spyware slows it down (but not so much that you might notice if you don't have a lot of spyware), a virus may cause problems but often nothing that seems unusual with Windows....
Exactly. If you don't want to install Windows, just use Knoppix and save your settings (including anything you download). It can make it's own directory on drive C to do that and it's directory is fully accessible under Windows.
A common misconception. First of all, some viruses/malware can download straight into your computer while you're just online (the infamous Blaster comes to mind). So obviously you need a firewall. And some programs that are tagged "clean" by some sites can contain trojans aanyway. The only solution against the latter besides antivirus would be to never buy or download any program that didn't come with Windows - and Windows comes with practically nothing as it is.
Uh, not exactly. If such a vulnerability were discovered in Windows and Microsoft fixed it in 24 hours, on a weekend, even a lot of MS-haters (such as myself) would express surpise and admiration. Bias against Microsoft? Yeah, but you and the other posters in this thread are greatly exaggerating to make your point.
Yes, but in this case? I don't think so. What appears to have happened is that he lied for the benefit of Microsoft and didn't get the compensation for it that he expected.
You get a bunch of people working for you and order them to put rootkits on people's computers and we'll see how fast you wind up in jail. Why the hell shouldn't Sony's CEO go to jail just like anyone else who told people in his employ to rootkit computers belonging to other people? Just because he's the CEO of a corporation? Do you realize what that means? It means the CEO of a corporation has immunity to prosecution from the crimes he commits that you don't. The same logic applies to the guys who developed the rootkit in the first place - why should they be immune to prosecution just because they work for a corporation? If you coded a rootkit for a hacker to use on people's computers, you'd go to jail.
About what I was thinking. Christ, the zombies weren't bad enough, now we have fossils rising from the grave too? I guess I need to go buy more bullets. Lots more.
You do have choice. Plenty of it. All you have to do is click the symbol in the left-hand corner of the search bar and choose another search engine. In addition, although Google is the default, there are other search engines included with Firefox without ever needing to add others. Plus you can change your start page from the orignal Google search anytime you want; mine is currently set at DeviantArt. Thus, you can change your start page from Google and your default search engine without even needing to download other search engines - that's there if you favorite isn't among the originals.
Skype doesn't work as well with AMD CPUs as it does with Intel CPUs and it was deliberately engineered to not work as well with AMD CPUs. In no way do I see Firefox limiting you as to the choice of search engines for use with the search bar (notice the link on the page for a more complete selection?) or preventing you from setting your home page to another site - which could be another search engine if you so choose. Even Yahoo or MSN.
"Paying big fines wouldn't sit well with shareholders either."
Excellent point. By defying the EU and paying these fines, Microsoft is opening themselves to a lawsuit from their shareholders. Imagine if, say, some 50+ unhappy shareholders got together and filed. What defense would Microsoft have in court against the charge of betraying the interests of the shareholders by defying the EU and paying huge fines?
There's no feature in *nix that allows a remote uers to run/install something on your system without your permission that I'm aware of. Windows has and has had several such features over the years - wmf, Active X, etc. Flaws that did allow such things to happen on *nix have occasionally been found and fixed, but it was never desinged to do so in the first place. Windows still has those "features", and the fact that Microsoft calls these features at all pretty much says everything about their models of security. Saying Linux is just as insecure as Windows is just plain bullshit - nothing on Linux is not desinged to make changes to your computer without your knowledge or consent, whereas it still is today on Windows.
Ok, now do the same comparison with Firefox and Opera. "Better than IE" isn't exactly a high pinnacle in greatness. And besides, they could try to make it the best all-around instead of just settling for "better than IE".
"If you have to use Fedora (read: can't afford RedHat Enterprise Linux), you're feeling a second class citizen."
As a Debian-user, I'm surprised people who use all of those distros that have a pro version don't feel this way if they're using the free version - SuSE, Mepis, Mandriva, Xandros, etc. This is part of why I don't use any of those distos. Why pay for a pro edition when I can apt-get anything I want (or compile if you're a Gentoo-user)? Just because the distro is harder to use? Yeah, well, the *nix-beginner ratio of "no problems at all" to "some problems" is about 1:3 in my experience in chat and on message boards with these easy-to-use distros. (I could get into a much lengthier discussion on this subject, but that would be off-topic. More importantly, I need to go use the bathroom.)
"It's a violation of the contract artists made with society."
Who agreed to that contract? I sure didn't. So artists have the right to force such a contract on us now? Why do they have more rights than I do?
"Bad people have a negative effect on a society."
People who take away our freedoms to protect the interests of the powerful and greedy have a far more negative effect. I should think that would be obvious, but apparently not. Especially if your interest lies with the powerful and greedy.
The fact that this piece of flamebait trolling got modded up shows exactly the one way Digg is superior to/. - no idiot mods. On Digg, the moderation now works by voting so the registered readers as a whole mod, not just a select few.
Don't think I'm bitching because I don't have mod points; I used my last earlier today and I've lost count of how many times I've received mod points. I meta-mod almost every day too. Yes, someone who mods is saying how much the mod system sucks! But I see this kind of crap here all the time and it's getting to where it just makes me sick. Trolls get modded up by those who agree with them and good posts modded down because the mod disagrees with the poster or was too dumb to understand the joke (or perhaps was simply a humorless jerk). THIS is what/. has to be embarassed aobut, more than anything else. How do you think a newcomer reacts when he sees some bigoted troll flaming a certain group of people modded up to +2 or even higher while insightful and genuinely funny posts are modded down?
Oh, by the way, you're an arrogant asshole. There, maybe now that I've flamed someone this post will get modded up too.
Re:"...treat women as a mysterious nut to crack."
on
Female Gamers Duke It Out
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Uh... you may be a nice guy and all, but I gotta you're wrong on this one. More than one woman has tried to break into the gaming industry only to get the very frank attitude "what could a chick know about gaming" from her new employers and peers. Saying women are welcome in the industry is like saying women are welcome at the local gentlemen's club, given the attitude in the industry. All too many may be willing to hire woman game designers but then expect them to work on tetris vriants and kids games, or the new "Barbie does whatever" style games. Women who get to work on games like Neverwinter Nights or even (gasp!) an FPS are the exception among women game designers, not the norm. Do some research and you'll see that I'm right; I've heard this over and over for years, and although it has improved, it is still happening to a lot to women who try to get a job in the industry. The attitude that a woman gamer or desinger has to prove herself as good as a guy is enough to piss most of us off right from the start - why should we have to prove anything? Yes, I'm quite aware of the attitudes towards women gamers and desingers in the industry, as I am a woman and I've been gaming longer than some of you (and some young desingers) have been alive.
Oh, Office XP does have one feature OOO doesn't: the instability. Word gets hung on pasting text and simply closing a document (while leaving Word open) all the time. Swriter doesn't. Well, I suppose Word does have another feature that swriter doesn't on Windows too - all those damned annoying macros that other apps will install to Word. If you don't want them, you can disable them and then Word prompts you for each diabled macro every single time you start it up afterward.
I got Office XP about three months after it came out. I used Word on average four times a week, sometimes quite a bit more. It often drove me nuts. At that time, OpenOffice.org on Windows didn't have the formatting capability that I wanted; that is, if I had a.doc formatted just the way I wanted it, when I opened it in swriter it would screw up the formatting. OpenOffice.org 2.0 fixed that and now it preserves formatting perfectly. A.doc made with swriter opens in Word without any problems and vice versa. Since 2.0 came out I have used it regularly. I still have Office XP but I almost never use it now. The next time I reinstall Windows I probably won't bother with Office XP.
Bright cutesy icons? You can keep 'em. If you consider those RAM-hogging glossy icons a feature, good for you, but I don't. I don't need that crap just to write out a document. Give me functionality over icons any day.
Lastly, there's no email client like Outlook with OpenOffice.org. I guess it's because he works for Microsoft that he seems to consider that a bad thing - any other sane person would be glad. I've never, and I do mean NEVER, met anyone online or off who liked Outlook. Many liked the concept of what Outlook was supposed to be, but not Outlook itself. It's a huge memory hog, unstable and has no spam controls whatsoever. Thunderbird does. And a PIM? You're better off doing that the old-fashioned way, a little book with a pencil. Far more portable, convenient and you don't have to worry about a laptop battery, instability or a virus wrecking your system and losing your important information. It's only because of our "tech is so much better!!!!" mentality that people seem to think they need a computerized PIM and never even think that simple paper and pencil might actually be better.
You're dead wrong there. It's an anti-competitive move on Intel's part with Skype's cooperation, which is both unethical and illegal. You think corporations should be able to screw people over however they want? Don't you get screwed over enough like everyone else?
You know what surprises me? That so many people seem surprised that they would do such a thing. This is the same company that produced the spyware-loaded Kazaa. Why would you expect anything resembling ethical business practices from them? If they'll put out applications with spyware in them to make money, of course they'll fix their application for another company's favor if it benefits them. They obviously don't give a shit about software quality or pleasing their customers - they proved that long before Skype.
"Exepct that Unix like operating systems aren't immune to many virus attacks too. They just haven't been the focus of attack in any significant way, so the true virus potential isn't know."
You seem to think *nix OSes are a lot less popular then they are. You do know that Unix was the most popular server OS until this year, right? You do know that when combined with Linux and BSD, the *nix OSes still outnumber Windows servers, don't you? And surely you've heard that Unix has been around about 35 years, haven't you? So.... where are all the Unix viruses? There should be a million of them at least but there aren't. There have been only 13 Unix viruses in computing history. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it has always been desinged to be secure from the start.
Did you know that on OSX if you don't like Safari you can uninstall it? And with virtually all Linux distributions you can uninstall the included media player, chat client and browser if you want. Microsft has fixed their OS so that these programs can't be uninstalled. That's what makes it anti-competitive. Anti-competitive = monopoly (or at least an attempt at one). You're the one who isn't getting it.
Btw, I'm one of many people who doesn't chat so a chat client is most certainly not a fundamental part of the computer experience.
You're missing the point. It is legal in China for the Chinese government to demand such records. The legal basis for the US government to do so is dodgy, if not downright illegal. And no, I'm not a Google fangirl - if you read some of my posts you'll see that I don't like them for obeying the government that masacred so many non-violent protesters. I'm actually boycotting them myself.
Perhaps the increasingly desperate tone of SCO's lawsuits are making potential customers believe that they don't have long to live. Maybe this has something to do with Windows selling more than Unix? We all know that Microsoft isn't going away anytime soon so they'll still be there two or three years after you buy a Windows server.
Slashdot Mirror
That proof you mention was a bit late in coming, as in they did a quick about-face when they saw the bad publicity they were getting. If you read the comments to your link you will see that many others came to the same conclusion.
And yes, I did RTFA. As always, they made a decision based on what there was a possibility of and didn't even bother to find out if they were right or wrong. After all, you just have to live by what they decided, no matter how much you pay them so it didn't make any difference to them. So my answer is still much the same - they should provide the service they're paid to and mind their own business. I don't pay anyone for a service and then let them refuse to provide that service and keep my money whenever the whim hits them. Would you?
At least you didn't have to buy their software and then get banned.
The more I heard about the way Blizzard runs WoW online the gladder I am I didn't buy it - I was thinking about this last Christmas for my husband, but got him an assortment of older games instead. They've proven themselves bigoted and now they're banning people for their hardware and/or OS? Why can't they just provide the software and service they've agreed to and keep their damned noses out of everyone's business?
Paint Shop Pro on steroids? That is Photoshop. Have you used PSP lately? Paint Shop Pro has many of the capabilties Photoshop is so highly regarded for... Which is why I don't see Microsoft getting very far into this market. Photoshop rules and most people don't know that many, if not all, of the features they love Photoshop for are to be had with alternatives. Certainly, there are still features that only PS has, but those are far fewer than almost anyone out there believes.
If you've never used antivirus and aren't using it now, how do you know that you don't have a virus at this very moment? A good trojan doesn't screw with your computer, spyware slows it down (but not so much that you might notice if you don't have a lot of spyware), a virus may cause problems but often nothing that seems unusual with Windows....
Exactly. If you don't want to install Windows, just use Knoppix and save your settings (including anything you download). It can make it's own directory on drive C to do that and it's directory is fully accessible under Windows.
A common misconception. First of all, some viruses/malware can download straight into your computer while you're just online (the infamous Blaster comes to mind). So obviously you need a firewall. And some programs that are tagged "clean" by some sites can contain trojans aanyway. The only solution against the latter besides antivirus would be to never buy or download any program that didn't come with Windows - and Windows comes with practically nothing as it is.
Uh, not exactly. If such a vulnerability were discovered in Windows and Microsoft fixed it in 24 hours, on a weekend, even a lot of MS-haters (such as myself) would express surpise and admiration. Bias against Microsoft? Yeah, but you and the other posters in this thread are greatly exaggerating to make your point.
Yes, but in this case? I don't think so. What appears to have happened is that he lied for the benefit of Microsoft and didn't get the compensation for it that he expected.
You get a bunch of people working for you and order them to put rootkits on people's computers and we'll see how fast you wind up in jail. Why the hell shouldn't Sony's CEO go to jail just like anyone else who told people in his employ to rootkit computers belonging to other people? Just because he's the CEO of a corporation? Do you realize what that means? It means the CEO of a corporation has immunity to prosecution from the crimes he commits that you don't. The same logic applies to the guys who developed the rootkit in the first place - why should they be immune to prosecution just because they work for a corporation? If you coded a rootkit for a hacker to use on people's computers, you'd go to jail.
About what I was thinking. Christ, the zombies weren't bad enough, now we have fossils rising from the grave too? I guess I need to go buy more bullets. Lots more.
You do have choice. Plenty of it. All you have to do is click the symbol in the left-hand corner of the search bar and choose another search engine. In addition, although Google is the default, there are other search engines included with Firefox without ever needing to add others. Plus you can change your start page from the orignal Google search anytime you want; mine is currently set at DeviantArt. Thus, you can change your start page from Google and your default search engine without even needing to download other search engines - that's there if you favorite isn't among the originals.
Skype doesn't work as well with AMD CPUs as it does with Intel CPUs and it was deliberately engineered to not work as well with AMD CPUs. In no way do I see Firefox limiting you as to the choice of search engines for use with the search bar (notice the link on the page for a more complete selection?) or preventing you from setting your home page to another site - which could be another search engine if you so choose. Even Yahoo or MSN.
"Paying big fines wouldn't sit well with shareholders either."
Excellent point. By defying the EU and paying these fines, Microsoft is opening themselves to a lawsuit from their shareholders. Imagine if, say, some 50+ unhappy shareholders got together and filed. What defense would Microsoft have in court against the charge of betraying the interests of the shareholders by defying the EU and paying huge fines?
There's no feature in *nix that allows a remote uers to run/install something on your system without your permission that I'm aware of. Windows has and has had several such features over the years - wmf, Active X, etc. Flaws that did allow such things to happen on *nix have occasionally been found and fixed, but it was never desinged to do so in the first place. Windows still has those "features", and the fact that Microsoft calls these features at all pretty much says everything about their models of security. Saying Linux is just as insecure as Windows is just plain bullshit - nothing on Linux is not desinged to make changes to your computer without your knowledge or consent, whereas it still is today on Windows.
Ok, now do the same comparison with Firefox and Opera. "Better than IE" isn't exactly a high pinnacle in greatness. And besides, they could try to make it the best all-around instead of just settling for "better than IE".
"If you have to use Fedora (read: can't afford RedHat Enterprise Linux), you're feeling a second class citizen."
As a Debian-user, I'm surprised people who use all of those distros that have a pro version don't feel this way if they're using the free version - SuSE, Mepis, Mandriva, Xandros, etc. This is part of why I don't use any of those distos. Why pay for a pro edition when I can apt-get anything I want (or compile if you're a Gentoo-user)? Just because the distro is harder to use? Yeah, well, the *nix-beginner ratio of "no problems at all" to "some problems" is about 1:3 in my experience in chat and on message boards with these easy-to-use distros. (I could get into a much lengthier discussion on this subject, but that would be off-topic. More importantly, I need to go use the bathroom.)
"It's a violation of the contract artists made with society."
Who agreed to that contract? I sure didn't. So artists have the right to force such a contract on us now? Why do they have more rights than I do?
"Bad people have a negative effect on a society."
People who take away our freedoms to protect the interests of the powerful and greedy have a far more negative effect. I should think that would be obvious, but apparently not. Especially if your interest lies with the powerful and greedy.
The fact that this piece of flamebait trolling got modded up shows exactly the one way Digg is superior to /. - no idiot mods. On Digg, the moderation now works by voting so the registered readers as a whole mod, not just a select few.
Don't think I'm bitching because I don't have mod points; I used my last earlier today and I've lost count of how many times I've received mod points. I meta-mod almost every day too. Yes, someone who mods is saying how much the mod system sucks! But I see this kind of crap here all the time and it's getting to where it just makes me sick. Trolls get modded up by those who agree with them and good posts modded down because the mod disagrees with the poster or was too dumb to understand the joke (or perhaps was simply a humorless jerk). THIS is what /. has to be embarassed aobut, more than anything else. How do you think a newcomer reacts when he sees some bigoted troll flaming a certain group of people modded up to +2 or even higher while insightful and genuinely funny posts are modded down?
Oh, by the way, you're an arrogant asshole. There, maybe now that I've flamed someone this post will get modded up too.
Uh... you may be a nice guy and all, but I gotta you're wrong on this one. More than one woman has tried to break into the gaming industry only to get the very frank attitude "what could a chick know about gaming" from her new employers and peers. Saying women are welcome in the industry is like saying women are welcome at the local gentlemen's club, given the attitude in the industry. All too many may be willing to hire woman game designers but then expect them to work on tetris vriants and kids games, or the new "Barbie does whatever" style games. Women who get to work on games like Neverwinter Nights or even (gasp!) an FPS are the exception among women game designers, not the norm. Do some research and you'll see that I'm right; I've heard this over and over for years, and although it has improved, it is still happening to a lot to women who try to get a job in the industry. The attitude that a woman gamer or desinger has to prove herself as good as a guy is enough to piss most of us off right from the start - why should we have to prove anything? Yes, I'm quite aware of the attitudes towards women gamers and desingers in the industry, as I am a woman and I've been gaming longer than some of you (and some young desingers) have been alive.
Oh, Office XP does have one feature OOO doesn't: the instability. Word gets hung on pasting text and simply closing a document (while leaving Word open) all the time. Swriter doesn't. Well, I suppose Word does have another feature that swriter doesn't on Windows too - all those damned annoying macros that other apps will install to Word. If you don't want them, you can disable them and then Word prompts you for each diabled macro every single time you start it up afterward.
I got Office XP about three months after it came out. I used Word on average four times a week, sometimes quite a bit more. It often drove me nuts. At that time, OpenOffice.org on Windows didn't have the formatting capability that I wanted; that is, if I had a .doc formatted just the way I wanted it, when I opened it in swriter it would screw up the formatting. OpenOffice.org 2.0 fixed that and now it preserves formatting perfectly. A .doc made with swriter opens in Word without any problems and vice versa. Since 2.0 came out I have used it regularly. I still have Office XP but I almost never use it now. The next time I reinstall Windows I probably won't bother with Office XP.
Bright cutesy icons? You can keep 'em. If you consider those RAM-hogging glossy icons a feature, good for you, but I don't. I don't need that crap just to write out a document. Give me functionality over icons any day.
Lastly, there's no email client like Outlook with OpenOffice.org. I guess it's because he works for Microsoft that he seems to consider that a bad thing - any other sane person would be glad. I've never, and I do mean NEVER, met anyone online or off who liked Outlook. Many liked the concept of what Outlook was supposed to be, but not Outlook itself. It's a huge memory hog, unstable and has no spam controls whatsoever. Thunderbird does. And a PIM? You're better off doing that the old-fashioned way, a little book with a pencil. Far more portable, convenient and you don't have to worry about a laptop battery, instability or a virus wrecking your system and losing your important information. It's only because of our "tech is so much better!!!!" mentality that people seem to think they need a computerized PIM and never even think that simple paper and pencil might actually be better.
You're dead wrong there. It's an anti-competitive move on Intel's part with Skype's cooperation, which is both unethical and illegal. You think corporations should be able to screw people over however they want? Don't you get screwed over enough like everyone else?
You know what surprises me? That so many people seem surprised that they would do such a thing. This is the same company that produced the spyware-loaded Kazaa. Why would you expect anything resembling ethical business practices from them? If they'll put out applications with spyware in them to make money, of course they'll fix their application for another company's favor if it benefits them. They obviously don't give a shit about software quality or pleasing their customers - they proved that long before Skype.
"Exepct that Unix like operating systems aren't immune to many virus attacks too. They just haven't been the focus of attack in any significant way, so the true virus potential isn't know."
You seem to think *nix OSes are a lot less popular then they are. You do know that Unix was the most popular server OS until this year, right? You do know that when combined with Linux and BSD, the *nix OSes still outnumber Windows servers, don't you? And surely you've heard that Unix has been around about 35 years, haven't you? So.... where are all the Unix viruses? There should be a million of them at least but there aren't. There have been only 13 Unix viruses in computing history. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it has always been desinged to be secure from the start.
Did you know that on OSX if you don't like Safari you can uninstall it? And with virtually all Linux distributions you can uninstall the included media player, chat client and browser if you want. Microsft has fixed their OS so that these programs can't be uninstalled. That's what makes it anti-competitive. Anti-competitive = monopoly (or at least an attempt at one). You're the one who isn't getting it.
Btw, I'm one of many people who doesn't chat so a chat client is most certainly not a fundamental part of the computer experience.
You're missing the point. It is legal in China for the Chinese government to demand such records. The legal basis for the US government to do so is dodgy, if not downright illegal. And no, I'm not a Google fangirl - if you read some of my posts you'll see that I don't like them for obeying the government that masacred so many non-violent protesters. I'm actually boycotting them myself.
"To say nothing of the plausible deniability of Microsoft being in the computer software business."
They are in the computer software business. They're just not in the business of good computer software.
Perhaps the increasingly desperate tone of SCO's lawsuits are making potential customers believe that they don't have long to live. Maybe this has something to do with Windows selling more than Unix? We all know that Microsoft isn't going away anytime soon so they'll still be there two or three years after you buy a Windows server.