But... but... the summary says "analysts believe". That's right up there with "researchers have discovered" and "scientists have proven", where if journalists say those words, you aren't allowed doubt the rest of the story, no matter how absurd it sounds.
Hence I firmly believe that the argument of "Linux will not be desktop ready until you don't need the command line" to be complete rubbish. One will always need the command line - in fact I deem it a good thing to have a command line available to hack Vista in case something went pear shaped because of user error.
Well, I think that argument about Linux not being ready applied back when you couldn't install a system and get it working without mucking around in the command line. I don't think that anyone was suggesting that command lines weren't going to continue to be useful for power users and administrators. The issue was whether you could reasonably hand an install CD to a savvy computer user (but not computer geek) and have any expectation that they might be able to get themselves a functional and useful desktop install going without feeling overwhelmed by the complexity.
But really, that argument against Linux has been dead for a few years now. I would say that there are multiple Linux distros that are at least as easy to install and maintain as Windows. In a lot of cases, it's easier, if only because Windows tends to make you go around hunting down drivers. Even wireless networking is getting easier in recent Linux releases.
Most of what would be difficult these days in moving people from Windows to Linux is application support, and not anything bad about the OS itself.
But I wasn't suggesting that Linux wasn't ready for the desktop. It's very competitive in terms of features and ease of use. In terms of flexibility, it's fantastic. But even if we assume that Linux is a better desktop OS than Windows, that doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't even mean that there aren't things that Windows does better. There's plenty of room for improvement.
And yeah, I'd say the same thing about Windows and OSX. I've supported all three, and for each of them, there is plenty of room for improvement.
One of the reasons I like Linux so much is that there's so little to complain about. Everything just works. Occasionally there's a driver hunt or compatibility issue, getting a scanner to work, but overall, once it's set up and working, smooth sailing.
I don't mean to offend you or anyone else, but I think you might be a bit overly-optimistic. There are a lot of valid complaints about Linux. Not that I see a lot of constant show-stopper bugs in major distros or anything, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of smaller problems, annoyances, and missed opportunities to do things better.
I'd say Linux does a very good job at loads of things *relative other currently available operating systems* (i.e. other operating systems have their share of problems, too). But computing in general still has a lot of room for improvement. If any Linux developers out there think Linux is perfect and feel like they're running out of things to improve, let me know. I can help you find things.
That was the way Windows used to be. Everything would install and just work, while the Linux tinkerers spent hours chasing down compatibility issues and combing through HCL's.
I'll grant you that Windows was a good desktop OS for its time, back around 2000. At the time, nothing was doing a better job of meeting most users' needs. But it has always been far from perfect, and each version has had plenty of technical/design problems..
I didn't say it was "flawed", I said it was "stupid".
For example, if I wanted to prevent unauthorized access to my data, I could unplug my machine from all networking, fill the case with concrete, and sink it at the bottom of the ocean. The security approach wouldn't necessarily be "flawed"-- it might be the most certain way to prevent unauthorized access. But it'd be stupid.
Ok, you're done, I'm done, we're al done. When I say "admin", I mean whoever has administrative rights. Saying the admin is "not admin" but "ops" is pretty meaningless. They don't have the knowledge to be malicious? So if you get a smart ops who knows a bit more than the average, and you're just as screwed. Relying on people with admin rights to be stupid, untrained, and ignorant isn't a good security policy either.
I think his point is not that there was danger in sending the public key, but that there was no attempt made to verify even that he was connected with the domain. So if you go to a website and submit a certificate request, and then they send back the public key to an e-mail address at the domain the certificate is for, then there's at least some pretense of verification. You've demonstrated that you at least have access to an e-mail address at that domain in order to get that public key. (or else you've done something else clever)
If, on the other hand, they're willing to send that cert to some random gmail address, then I can probably pick any random website I want and get a certificate for that site, without having *any* connection or contact with that site. There's not even a weak pretense of verification.
I can't speak for the mods, but maybe that (paired with essentially calling the guy an idiot) is why your other post got modded down?
I didn't realize I had to be so specific to stop fanboys from picking apart very simple, obvious statements.
Yeah, It may be obvious, but it also happens to be wrong-headed. I didn't realize that I was going to be flamed to stating something better than what's obvious-- something insightful.
Apple has plenty of competition. They're primarily a hardware vendor of generic Intel hardware. That's a competitive market. You're trying to claim that Apple can charge "whatever they want for their hardware" because they have no competition. Obviously that's not at all true. If they charged $5k for the bottom-rung macbook, then people wouldn't buy them. They've made their money by producing laptops that are *very* competitive with Dell/HP based on quality, features, and design. One of the features just happens to be an OS that they built specifically in order to market their computer hardware.
So complaining that "hardware that runs OSX is not [competitve]" would be a little like complaining "Laptops built by Dell is not a competitive market, because Dell has a 100% monopoly". I mean, yeah, it's kind of true, but it's also not meaningful.
I understand you want to complain because you would like to be able to install OSX on non-Apple machines. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong or immoral with Apple refusing to license their OS.
Well, if someone actually gains full access to the servers that are serving mybank.com, then they have access to the certificate's private keys, so the SSL cert won't help you. But then, what do you expect SSL to do in that case?
But ignoring that, it does give you more security than confirming you "dialed the correct number". What happens (roughly) is that when you go to mybank.com using HTTPS, it might say, "You can trust me, because I have this certificate. It was issued by Verisign, and it'll let you confirm who I am".
So your browser then goes to Verisign and says, "Hey, mybank.com is saying you gave them this certificate. Is that true? Is this certificate the correct one that mybank.com should be giving me?" Verisign checks the certificate and says, "Yup. That checks out." And then you can trust that mybank.com actually is mybank.com-- at least as much as you can trust Verisign.
So if someone else hijacked your DNS and pointed mybank.com to some other server, that server can provide a fake certificate, and your browser can't really tell whether it's real without checking with the CA (in this case, Verisign). But if they do try to provide you with a fake certificate, your computer will take that certificate to Verisign and Verisign will say, "Nope, that's wrong". Your browser will give you warnings.
Now of course, you're very clever, and you ask, "Well this is just circular. Well how do I know that someone hasn't hijacked my DNS and pointed Verisign to some other server? Who do I check Verisign's certificate with to make sure that *they* are really Verisign?" Well, Mozilla has a Verisign certificate that they built into your browser. So when you go to Verisign, it checks against the built-in Verisign certificate. So ultimately, you're trusting mybank.com because you trust Verisign, and you're trusting Verisign because you trust Mozilla.
If you can't trust Mozilla, then you're in trouble.
All CACert does is verify that you have control of the domain name you're trying to get a certificate for before issuing a certificate.
So? That's all most SSL certs are doing. And isn't that better than nothing?
If I'm putting my private information out over the internet, I really have 2 separate concerns. First, that the traffic can't be intercepted, and second that the end-point I'm sending it to is reputable. Now you might use SSL for both purposes, but I'd rather take care of the first one than have neither.
I wasn't willing to shell out $100 (about half my yearly profit!) for the stupid certificate.
It's not quite as bad as all that. Namecheap offers "RapidSSL" for $13 a year. They even have a deal where you can get a free SSL cert with registration or transfer of a domain.
Still, yeah, SSL certificates are kind of a racket.
Because you can't. It still requires some very specific hardware to run OS X, in particular the motherboard has to support the next generation of BIOS
EFI?
Incidentally, finding out if the motherboard will work with OS X is the hardest part of the whole process because support for those features isn't really important to anyone but someone trying to run OS X on it
Ok. I was under the impression that you could get OSX running on pretty normal hardware, but if you say so.
Still, it seems to me like they'd be cutting their audience if you could just easy software to take care of the hacking-the-OS part. As it is, their audience is anyone who wants OSX but doesn't want to buy Apple hardware. That seems like it might be a pretty wide audience. However, if they make some software available that allows you to somehow slipstream the patches to the OS, then their audience shrinks down to people who:
want OSX
don't want to buy from Apple
are willing to install their own OS
don't want to find the right motherboard and build their own system
I mean, it's not quite that simple, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at. People who really want OSX but don't like the idea of being restricted to buying from Apple also aren't going to be too likely to want to be restricted to buying from Psystar. They'll want to build their own. People who are just looking for "Apple but cheaper" and don't want to build their own system probably won't be eager to install their own OS.
There might still be a niche market there, but it's probably not too big.
Yes, I'm sure that would lessen the legal problem-- if they shipped the computers without OSX installed, but with some program that was capable of installing OSX on generic hardware. Of course, if they were to do that, then why would anyone bother to buy the computer for Psystar? All you have to do is get ahold of their program to install OSX, and then you can install OSX on whatever machine you want.
Yeah, I read an interview years ago with Todd McFarlane, I think after one of the Schumacher movies. He said what he disliked about a lot of modern depictions of Batman was that there was little or no exploration of Bruce's craziness. Essentially, you have this highly talented super-rich guy who chooses to spend his time going out at 3am, dressed in a halloween costume, in the hopes of scaring the crap out of random muggers.
Whackjob indeed.
Any interesting depiction of Batman should really address the question, "What would possess a man to do that?" Parents getting murdered doesn't really cover it-- I'm sure there are kids who have seen their parents murdered and not gone through all that. I think these new Batman movies are doing a decent job of addressing the issue, partially by explaining that he knows it's kind of crazy, but has studies the criminal mindset and believes he needs some theatrics in order to be effective. But still... It's pretty crazy.
On the other hand, it's not as though McFarlane's movie was so hot, either.
Frankly, its probably not even in the scope of most slashdotters to end up being ATHF's Meatwad... after all, Meatwad makes the money, see; Meatwad gets the honeys, G...
Yeah, but he has to deal with all that ice on his fingers and his toes.
With cloud computing you outsource *all* your hardware. So, any application where you are not physically talking about what software runs on which piece of hardware is cloud computing to me.
Yeah, I think my impression was that it was sort of like what used to be called "utility computing". The idea being that someone else has taken care of the hardware and resource allocation, and maybe even the OS. If you're setting up an OS, you're doing it on a virtual machine or something, so you aren't really worried about setting things up, supporting them, what's running where, what kind of hardware it's running on, etc.
The reason you call it a "cloud" is because it's amorphous. When I feed multiple computing tasks into "the cloud", I don't know where it's happening, whether they're all happening in the same place, or how the resources are being divided. All I know is that each task is getting done on some computer somewhere, somehow.
Now, I don't know if that's what's actually meant by "cloud computing", and it doesn't seem like a highly technical term. It seems like a loose descriptive term. Like if I say something is being processed in "a black box" (which is a term I've heard before), it means I'm feeding data into something and getting data out, but I don't necessarily know by what mechanisms the data is being processed. I think "cloud computing" is like that. It's saying, "the computing is happening out there, somewhere, I don't know where." And your not-knowing isn't because you haven't bothered to learn, but because the process is being distributed in such a way that you can't know, and it doesn't matter.
I have a couple things to note. First, my original use of the steak metaphor was to point out that you can't have a monopoly on *your product*. It doesn't make sense. A monopoly is when you prevent someone from selling a competing product, not when you restrict their ability to sell your own product. Your modifications don't seem to me to take away from that.
But also, I'd say the focus of your metaphor is a bit off, partially because there's no connection between the steak and the plate. There's no real reason why they should be sold together, whereas an OS is a bit connected to the hardware it's running on. You can't really use the software without some kind of hardware. Also, part of the issue involves copyright infringement, and not just buying and selling physical goods.
Anyway, I'm not sure it helps to continually message these metaphors, because none of them are going to be accurate. But I'll give it one more shot anyway: Let's say, instead of plates, my steak comes with a special sauce. So I'm really selling the steak, but it comes with special sauce on it, or you can ask the waiter for extra special-sauce if you want more. So the owner of the restaurant next door comes over and says, "Hey, your special sauce is great. In fact, I think people only buy your steak for that sauce. Can I buy a bunch of it from you to put on my hamburgers?" And I say "No way. You're right that some people are only buying my steak in order to get the special sauce, which is why I developed the recipe in the first place. To sell steak."
So later that night, the owner next door sneaks into my restaurant and steals my special sauce, puts extra sugar in it, and then starts selling it on his hamburgers. He even advertises his burgers saying, "Now with nine-times' special sauce!" When I ask him to stop, he says, "I'm within my rights. I paid the same amount for the sauce that your customers paid. You were giving it to your customers for free! You only charged them for the steak."
Now there are lots of things wrong with what he did. First, he stole the sauce without my permission (in the case of Psystar, copyright infringement without a license). Also, he's advertising the sauce as *my* sauce, which is made worse by the fact that he modified it so it isn't really the same as my sauce. You might say it's better with extra sugar, but that's beside the point.
Still not a perfect metaphor (I don't like equating copyright infringement with stealing), but it's closer to what's actually going on.
OK, so with software it's a bit different - 'making' them is as simple as copying the data, insofaras manufacture goes. But no company can make something and offer no help or support, period. That's not legal. If they want to lay old tech to rest, then that's their decision.
You make a good point, but it seems like software is a particular place. Like you said, it takes nothing for them to "make" new copies. Also, nothing in particular is keeping me from building my own duplicate PPC Mac for my own personal use, provided I have the materials and expertise. But with software, the materials and expertise are respectively "hard drive space" and "the ability to operate a mouse". But, on the other hand, there's copyright legally preventing me from doing that.
But there's also a greater need to continue to use an older version of software than an older version of a car. Consumers might have a lot tied up with old software. In the case of an operating system, they might have old applications that won't work on newer operating systems, old hardware that isn't supported by anything else, old data files that aren't supported by anything but those old applications, etc.
Personally, I kind of feel like there should be *something* to protect consumers in that sense. I'm not sure how you would craft a law that would be fair to everyone, but it seems reasonable to me that, if Microsoft doesn't feel like there's any money left to be made selling/supporting Windows XP, maybe they should be forced at some point to release the thing to the public domain? I know this is a radical suggestion, but sometimes it seems reasonable to me that, at the very least, companies should lose the copyright to abandonware. You aren't marketing it, you aren't distributing it, you aren't making money off of it, so go ahead and let people have it. After all, copyrights aren't a god-given right, they're a concession made by the government for the purpose of encouraging innovation, and thereby promoting the common good.
I don't think it's a silly argument. My point was never, "I want unsecured web browsing on my servers!" It's not, "Windows servers are poorly designed because I can't use the web!" My argument is that Microsoft's design is stupid. They force you to install IE, refuse to let you uninstall it, but that lock it down to the point of being unusable, even to someone with an admin account, because you shouldn't be using a web browser on a server anyway.
If they're acknowledging that you shouldn't be browsing the web on a server anyway, and acknowledging that having a browser on a server is a security concern, then let me remove it! Don't put it on at all!
I don't usually reply to ACs, but yes, I do use Linux. No, I don't generally install X11 or Firefox on my servers. But if Debian couldn't be administered effectively and easily from a command line, I would install a GUI. If I was admin on a Debian machine with a GUI and I bothered to install Firefox (for some reason), I would expect that Firefox would allow me to download things. If aptitude required ActiveX and root was forbidden from using ActiveX in Debian's default security policy, that would seem silly to me.
So, yeah, in answer to your question, as of Windows 2003, the designated way to fetch updates (even security updates) on a stand-alone server was to use Windows Update. Windows Update required ActiveX. The administrator account was not allowed to use ActiveX without special configuration or whitelisting, and Windows Update wasn't in the whitelist by default. That's why I might want to use ActiveX on a server.
You could argue that any one of those things is sensible, but taken together, it seems like a slightly silly design.
I don't know if we are making progress. If everyone touching the machine is an expert at following procedure, and the procedure doesn't include the steps "(1) open IE (2) download malware (3) install it", then why does IE need to be locked down? I agree that whoever has admin access to your computer, whether they're "admins" or "ops", needs to either know what they're doing or else to be able to do only what they're trained to do, and nothing else. If that's the case, then you don't need security policies that give you the illusion of security without real benefit. If that's not the case, then those security policies won't stop them because *they're the admin*. They can undo the security policy if they want to.
Actually -- if you need to use *trust* for an extended period of time *that* is bad security
Nope, you need trust either way. If I have admin rights on your server and I'm either malicious or stupid, I can screw you over. There's really no way around that. The only way to lock me out from doing damage is to make it so I don't have administrative rights, which is a good thing to do in any case where you can't trust the user/administrator.
But beyond that, part of my point is that, sure, special security measures are necessary depending on your particular situation, and there should be sensible defaults that should apply to *everyone*, and have the admins lock it down more tightly if need be. If you really need such high security, then you should have security experts auditing the systems anyway, and not relying on the default settings to protect the systems from bad people with admin rights. It's bad security design. I'm not complaining because I have particular daily problem with these things. I'm just saying it's laughable security procedure to have IE installed by default on every computer, but cripples so as not to work, with the explanation that "you shouldn't be browsing the web on a server anyway!"
If you bought 100 copies of the book, tore out the last 20 pages and inserted your own and marked it as such...you'd be on firmer ground.
First, I'm not sure that's the case. I'm pretty sure they could still sue me (if they wanted) and that they would win. Like if I bought 10,000 copies of the last Harry Potter book and rewrote the ending so that it turned into a big orgy, reselling it as "Harry Potter: Sexy Addition", you don't think I'd get sued?
Second, in this case, the analog would be... scratching out part of the DVD and then trying to overwrite the scratched-out part? See, because copying a modified version to a new DVD is *copying*, and you're only allowed to copy (and then distribute the copies) if you're the copyright owner or have a license to do so. Also, installing the OS is copying it. Psystar is being sued, apparently, for pre-installing on non-Apple hardware.
So it's not like buying 100 copies, tearing out the last 20 pages, etc. Assuming they're distributing the original discs along with these computers, it's more like buying the books, reprinting a book with an altered ending, and then selling both the original copy and the altered copy together to the same customer.
Dude! It does not work like this in the real world. Have you seen the reams of change management you need to go through to actually make changes to a server that does real commerce (I'm talking Sarbox regulations and such). Many companies have policies that are even stricter than SarBox. This ad-hoc "maybe i'm doing this, or maybe i'm doing that" is a very vague requirement for a server OS (though it's valid for an end-user OS).
Dude! I'm not saying that I don't know what I'm doing with the server, I'm saying MS doesn't know.
I want to run a server that handles real data or real commerce, and should be rock-solid-reliable with the smallest possible attack surface -- that's a requirement for a server OS.
Then wouldn't you want a server OS that didn't have IE installed at all, rather than one that that has it installed with absurd security policies? Hell, if you want to argue that Windows is a bad server OS because it comes with all sorts of bullshit installed that shouldn't be installed on a server, we'll have a different discussion. When I install a Linux server, I don't install any GUI-- but I might install a web browser. But if Debian came with a default security policy where even logged in as root, Links refused to download files, I'd think that was a pretty stupid design.
Slashdot Mirror
But... but... the summary says "analysts believe". That's right up there with "researchers have discovered" and "scientists have proven", where if journalists say those words, you aren't allowed doubt the rest of the story, no matter how absurd it sounds.
Hence I firmly believe that the argument of "Linux will not be desktop ready until you don't need the command line" to be complete rubbish. One will always need the command line - in fact I deem it a good thing to have a command line available to hack Vista in case something went pear shaped because of user error.
Well, I think that argument about Linux not being ready applied back when you couldn't install a system and get it working without mucking around in the command line. I don't think that anyone was suggesting that command lines weren't going to continue to be useful for power users and administrators. The issue was whether you could reasonably hand an install CD to a savvy computer user (but not computer geek) and have any expectation that they might be able to get themselves a functional and useful desktop install going without feeling overwhelmed by the complexity.
But really, that argument against Linux has been dead for a few years now. I would say that there are multiple Linux distros that are at least as easy to install and maintain as Windows. In a lot of cases, it's easier, if only because Windows tends to make you go around hunting down drivers. Even wireless networking is getting easier in recent Linux releases.
Most of what would be difficult these days in moving people from Windows to Linux is application support, and not anything bad about the OS itself.
But I wasn't suggesting that Linux wasn't ready for the desktop. It's very competitive in terms of features and ease of use. In terms of flexibility, it's fantastic. But even if we assume that Linux is a better desktop OS than Windows, that doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't even mean that there aren't things that Windows does better. There's plenty of room for improvement.
And yeah, I'd say the same thing about Windows and OSX. I've supported all three, and for each of them, there is plenty of room for improvement.
One of the reasons I like Linux so much is that there's so little to complain about. Everything just works. Occasionally there's a driver hunt or compatibility issue, getting a scanner to work, but overall, once it's set up and working, smooth sailing.
I don't mean to offend you or anyone else, but I think you might be a bit overly-optimistic. There are a lot of valid complaints about Linux. Not that I see a lot of constant show-stopper bugs in major distros or anything, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of smaller problems, annoyances, and missed opportunities to do things better.
I'd say Linux does a very good job at loads of things *relative other currently available operating systems* (i.e. other operating systems have their share of problems, too). But computing in general still has a lot of room for improvement. If any Linux developers out there think Linux is perfect and feel like they're running out of things to improve, let me know. I can help you find things.
That was the way Windows used to be. Everything would install and just work, while the Linux tinkerers spent hours chasing down compatibility issues and combing through HCL's.
I'll grant you that Windows was a good desktop OS for its time, back around 2000. At the time, nothing was doing a better job of meeting most users' needs. But it has always been far from perfect, and each version has had plenty of technical/design problems..
I didn't say it was "flawed", I said it was "stupid".
For example, if I wanted to prevent unauthorized access to my data, I could unplug my machine from all networking, fill the case with concrete, and sink it at the bottom of the ocean. The security approach wouldn't necessarily be "flawed"-- it might be the most certain way to prevent unauthorized access. But it'd be stupid.
Ok, you're done, I'm done, we're al done. When I say "admin", I mean whoever has administrative rights. Saying the admin is "not admin" but "ops" is pretty meaningless. They don't have the knowledge to be malicious? So if you get a smart ops who knows a bit more than the average, and you're just as screwed. Relying on people with admin rights to be stupid, untrained, and ignorant isn't a good security policy either.
I think his point is not that there was danger in sending the public key, but that there was no attempt made to verify even that he was connected with the domain. So if you go to a website and submit a certificate request, and then they send back the public key to an e-mail address at the domain the certificate is for, then there's at least some pretense of verification. You've demonstrated that you at least have access to an e-mail address at that domain in order to get that public key. (or else you've done something else clever)
If, on the other hand, they're willing to send that cert to some random gmail address, then I can probably pick any random website I want and get a certificate for that site, without having *any* connection or contact with that site. There's not even a weak pretense of verification.
I can't speak for the mods, but maybe that (paired with essentially calling the guy an idiot) is why your other post got modded down?
I didn't realize I had to be so specific to stop fanboys from picking apart very simple, obvious statements.
Yeah, It may be obvious, but it also happens to be wrong-headed. I didn't realize that I was going to be flamed to stating something better than what's obvious-- something insightful.
Apple has plenty of competition. They're primarily a hardware vendor of generic Intel hardware. That's a competitive market. You're trying to claim that Apple can charge "whatever they want for their hardware" because they have no competition. Obviously that's not at all true. If they charged $5k for the bottom-rung macbook, then people wouldn't buy them. They've made their money by producing laptops that are *very* competitive with Dell/HP based on quality, features, and design. One of the features just happens to be an OS that they built specifically in order to market their computer hardware.
So complaining that "hardware that runs OSX is not [competitve]" would be a little like complaining "Laptops built by Dell is not a competitive market, because Dell has a 100% monopoly". I mean, yeah, it's kind of true, but it's also not meaningful.
I understand you want to complain because you would like to be able to install OSX on non-Apple machines. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong or immoral with Apple refusing to license their OS.
Well, if someone actually gains full access to the servers that are serving mybank.com, then they have access to the certificate's private keys, so the SSL cert won't help you. But then, what do you expect SSL to do in that case?
But ignoring that, it does give you more security than confirming you "dialed the correct number". What happens (roughly) is that when you go to mybank.com using HTTPS, it might say, "You can trust me, because I have this certificate. It was issued by Verisign, and it'll let you confirm who I am".
So your browser then goes to Verisign and says, "Hey, mybank.com is saying you gave them this certificate. Is that true? Is this certificate the correct one that mybank.com should be giving me?" Verisign checks the certificate and says, "Yup. That checks out." And then you can trust that mybank.com actually is mybank.com-- at least as much as you can trust Verisign.
So if someone else hijacked your DNS and pointed mybank.com to some other server, that server can provide a fake certificate, and your browser can't really tell whether it's real without checking with the CA (in this case, Verisign). But if they do try to provide you with a fake certificate, your computer will take that certificate to Verisign and Verisign will say, "Nope, that's wrong". Your browser will give you warnings.
Now of course, you're very clever, and you ask, "Well this is just circular. Well how do I know that someone hasn't hijacked my DNS and pointed Verisign to some other server? Who do I check Verisign's certificate with to make sure that *they* are really Verisign?" Well, Mozilla has a Verisign certificate that they built into your browser. So when you go to Verisign, it checks against the built-in Verisign certificate. So ultimately, you're trusting mybank.com because you trust Verisign, and you're trusting Verisign because you trust Mozilla.
If you can't trust Mozilla, then you're in trouble.
All CACert does is verify that you have control of the domain name you're trying to get a certificate for before issuing a certificate.
So? That's all most SSL certs are doing. And isn't that better than nothing?
If I'm putting my private information out over the internet, I really have 2 separate concerns. First, that the traffic can't be intercepted, and second that the end-point I'm sending it to is reputable. Now you might use SSL for both purposes, but I'd rather take care of the first one than have neither.
I wasn't willing to shell out $100 (about half my yearly profit!) for the stupid certificate.
It's not quite as bad as all that. Namecheap offers "RapidSSL" for $13 a year. They even have a deal where you can get a free SSL cert with registration or transfer of a domain. Still, yeah, SSL certificates are kind of a racket.
Because you can't. It still requires some very specific hardware to run OS X, in particular the motherboard has to support the next generation of BIOS
EFI?
Incidentally, finding out if the motherboard will work with OS X is the hardest part of the whole process because support for those features isn't really important to anyone but someone trying to run OS X on it
Ok. I was under the impression that you could get OSX running on pretty normal hardware, but if you say so.
Still, it seems to me like they'd be cutting their audience if you could just easy software to take care of the hacking-the-OS part. As it is, their audience is anyone who wants OSX but doesn't want to buy Apple hardware. That seems like it might be a pretty wide audience. However, if they make some software available that allows you to somehow slipstream the patches to the OS, then their audience shrinks down to people who:
I mean, it's not quite that simple, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at. People who really want OSX but don't like the idea of being restricted to buying from Apple also aren't going to be too likely to want to be restricted to buying from Psystar. They'll want to build their own. People who are just looking for "Apple but cheaper" and don't want to build their own system probably won't be eager to install their own OS.
There might still be a niche market there, but it's probably not too big.
Yes, I'm sure that would lessen the legal problem-- if they shipped the computers without OSX installed, but with some program that was capable of installing OSX on generic hardware. Of course, if they were to do that, then why would anyone bother to buy the computer for Psystar? All you have to do is get ahold of their program to install OSX, and then you can install OSX on whatever machine you want.
Yeah, I read an interview years ago with Todd McFarlane, I think after one of the Schumacher movies. He said what he disliked about a lot of modern depictions of Batman was that there was little or no exploration of Bruce's craziness. Essentially, you have this highly talented super-rich guy who chooses to spend his time going out at 3am, dressed in a halloween costume, in the hopes of scaring the crap out of random muggers.
Whackjob indeed.
Any interesting depiction of Batman should really address the question, "What would possess a man to do that?" Parents getting murdered doesn't really cover it-- I'm sure there are kids who have seen their parents murdered and not gone through all that. I think these new Batman movies are doing a decent job of addressing the issue, partially by explaining that he knows it's kind of crazy, but has studies the criminal mindset and believes he needs some theatrics in order to be effective. But still... It's pretty crazy.
On the other hand, it's not as though McFarlane's movie was so hot, either.
Frankly, its probably not even in the scope of most slashdotters to end up being ATHF's Meatwad... after all, Meatwad makes the money, see; Meatwad gets the honeys, G...
Yeah, but he has to deal with all that ice on his fingers and his toes.
This about the guy who drags a 12 year old boy and a teenage girl into fist-fights with psychopathic killers. Yeah, great moral compass.
With cloud computing you outsource *all* your hardware. So, any application where you are not physically talking about what software runs on which piece of hardware is cloud computing to me.
Yeah, I think my impression was that it was sort of like what used to be called "utility computing". The idea being that someone else has taken care of the hardware and resource allocation, and maybe even the OS. If you're setting up an OS, you're doing it on a virtual machine or something, so you aren't really worried about setting things up, supporting them, what's running where, what kind of hardware it's running on, etc.
The reason you call it a "cloud" is because it's amorphous. When I feed multiple computing tasks into "the cloud", I don't know where it's happening, whether they're all happening in the same place, or how the resources are being divided. All I know is that each task is getting done on some computer somewhere, somehow.
Now, I don't know if that's what's actually meant by "cloud computing", and it doesn't seem like a highly technical term. It seems like a loose descriptive term. Like if I say something is being processed in "a black box" (which is a term I've heard before), it means I'm feeding data into something and getting data out, but I don't necessarily know by what mechanisms the data is being processed. I think "cloud computing" is like that. It's saying, "the computing is happening out there, somewhere, I don't know where." And your not-knowing isn't because you haven't bothered to learn, but because the process is being distributed in such a way that you can't know, and it doesn't matter.
They employ Mechanical Turk?
I don't know... That's just what came to mind when I read "cloud staffing".
I have a couple things to note. First, my original use of the steak metaphor was to point out that you can't have a monopoly on *your product*. It doesn't make sense. A monopoly is when you prevent someone from selling a competing product, not when you restrict their ability to sell your own product. Your modifications don't seem to me to take away from that.
But also, I'd say the focus of your metaphor is a bit off, partially because there's no connection between the steak and the plate. There's no real reason why they should be sold together, whereas an OS is a bit connected to the hardware it's running on. You can't really use the software without some kind of hardware. Also, part of the issue involves copyright infringement, and not just buying and selling physical goods.
Anyway, I'm not sure it helps to continually message these metaphors, because none of them are going to be accurate. But I'll give it one more shot anyway: Let's say, instead of plates, my steak comes with a special sauce. So I'm really selling the steak, but it comes with special sauce on it, or you can ask the waiter for extra special-sauce if you want more. So the owner of the restaurant next door comes over and says, "Hey, your special sauce is great. In fact, I think people only buy your steak for that sauce. Can I buy a bunch of it from you to put on my hamburgers?" And I say "No way. You're right that some people are only buying my steak in order to get the special sauce, which is why I developed the recipe in the first place. To sell steak."
So later that night, the owner next door sneaks into my restaurant and steals my special sauce, puts extra sugar in it, and then starts selling it on his hamburgers. He even advertises his burgers saying, "Now with nine-times' special sauce!" When I ask him to stop, he says, "I'm within my rights. I paid the same amount for the sauce that your customers paid. You were giving it to your customers for free! You only charged them for the steak."
Now there are lots of things wrong with what he did. First, he stole the sauce without my permission (in the case of Psystar, copyright infringement without a license). Also, he's advertising the sauce as *my* sauce, which is made worse by the fact that he modified it so it isn't really the same as my sauce. You might say it's better with extra sugar, but that's beside the point.
Still not a perfect metaphor (I don't like equating copyright infringement with stealing), but it's closer to what's actually going on.
OK, so with software it's a bit different - 'making' them is as simple as copying the data, insofaras manufacture goes. But no company can make something and offer no help or support, period. That's not legal. If they want to lay old tech to rest, then that's their decision.
You make a good point, but it seems like software is a particular place. Like you said, it takes nothing for them to "make" new copies. Also, nothing in particular is keeping me from building my own duplicate PPC Mac for my own personal use, provided I have the materials and expertise. But with software, the materials and expertise are respectively "hard drive space" and "the ability to operate a mouse". But, on the other hand, there's copyright legally preventing me from doing that.
But there's also a greater need to continue to use an older version of software than an older version of a car. Consumers might have a lot tied up with old software. In the case of an operating system, they might have old applications that won't work on newer operating systems, old hardware that isn't supported by anything else, old data files that aren't supported by anything but those old applications, etc.
Personally, I kind of feel like there should be *something* to protect consumers in that sense. I'm not sure how you would craft a law that would be fair to everyone, but it seems reasonable to me that, if Microsoft doesn't feel like there's any money left to be made selling/supporting Windows XP, maybe they should be forced at some point to release the thing to the public domain? I know this is a radical suggestion, but sometimes it seems reasonable to me that, at the very least, companies should lose the copyright to abandonware. You aren't marketing it, you aren't distributing it, you aren't making money off of it, so go ahead and let people have it. After all, copyrights aren't a god-given right, they're a concession made by the government for the purpose of encouraging innovation, and thereby promoting the common good.
Yes-- that might be more of a trademark issue than copyright, but it's a similar idea.
I don't think it's a silly argument. My point was never, "I want unsecured web browsing on my servers!" It's not, "Windows servers are poorly designed because I can't use the web!" My argument is that Microsoft's design is stupid. They force you to install IE, refuse to let you uninstall it, but that lock it down to the point of being unusable, even to someone with an admin account, because you shouldn't be using a web browser on a server anyway.
If they're acknowledging that you shouldn't be browsing the web on a server anyway, and acknowledging that having a browser on a server is a security concern, then let me remove it! Don't put it on at all!
I don't usually reply to ACs, but yes, I do use Linux. No, I don't generally install X11 or Firefox on my servers. But if Debian couldn't be administered effectively and easily from a command line, I would install a GUI. If I was admin on a Debian machine with a GUI and I bothered to install Firefox (for some reason), I would expect that Firefox would allow me to download things. If aptitude required ActiveX and root was forbidden from using ActiveX in Debian's default security policy, that would seem silly to me.
So, yeah, in answer to your question, as of Windows 2003, the designated way to fetch updates (even security updates) on a stand-alone server was to use Windows Update. Windows Update required ActiveX. The administrator account was not allowed to use ActiveX without special configuration or whitelisting, and Windows Update wasn't in the whitelist by default. That's why I might want to use ActiveX on a server.
You could argue that any one of those things is sensible, but taken together, it seems like a slightly silly design.
I don't know if we are making progress. If everyone touching the machine is an expert at following procedure, and the procedure doesn't include the steps "(1) open IE (2) download malware (3) install it", then why does IE need to be locked down? I agree that whoever has admin access to your computer, whether they're "admins" or "ops", needs to either know what they're doing or else to be able to do only what they're trained to do, and nothing else. If that's the case, then you don't need security policies that give you the illusion of security without real benefit. If that's not the case, then those security policies won't stop them because *they're the admin*. They can undo the security policy if they want to.
Actually -- if you need to use *trust* for an extended period of time *that* is bad security
Nope, you need trust either way. If I have admin rights on your server and I'm either malicious or stupid, I can screw you over. There's really no way around that. The only way to lock me out from doing damage is to make it so I don't have administrative rights, which is a good thing to do in any case where you can't trust the user/administrator.
But beyond that, part of my point is that, sure, special security measures are necessary depending on your particular situation, and there should be sensible defaults that should apply to *everyone*, and have the admins lock it down more tightly if need be. If you really need such high security, then you should have security experts auditing the systems anyway, and not relying on the default settings to protect the systems from bad people with admin rights. It's bad security design. I'm not complaining because I have particular daily problem with these things. I'm just saying it's laughable security procedure to have IE installed by default on every computer, but cripples so as not to work, with the explanation that "you shouldn't be browsing the web on a server anyway!"
If you bought 100 copies of the book, tore out the last 20 pages and inserted your own and marked it as such...you'd be on firmer ground.
First, I'm not sure that's the case. I'm pretty sure they could still sue me (if they wanted) and that they would win. Like if I bought 10,000 copies of the last Harry Potter book and rewrote the ending so that it turned into a big orgy, reselling it as "Harry Potter: Sexy Addition", you don't think I'd get sued?
Second, in this case, the analog would be... scratching out part of the DVD and then trying to overwrite the scratched-out part? See, because copying a modified version to a new DVD is *copying*, and you're only allowed to copy (and then distribute the copies) if you're the copyright owner or have a license to do so. Also, installing the OS is copying it. Psystar is being sued, apparently, for pre-installing on non-Apple hardware.
So it's not like buying 100 copies, tearing out the last 20 pages, etc. Assuming they're distributing the original discs along with these computers, it's more like buying the books, reprinting a book with an altered ending, and then selling both the original copy and the altered copy together to the same customer.
Dude! It does not work like this in the real world. Have you seen the reams of change management you need to go through to actually make changes to a server that does real commerce (I'm talking Sarbox regulations and such). Many companies have policies that are even stricter than SarBox. This ad-hoc "maybe i'm doing this, or maybe i'm doing that" is a very vague requirement for a server OS (though it's valid for an end-user OS).
Dude! I'm not saying that I don't know what I'm doing with the server, I'm saying MS doesn't know.
I want to run a server that handles real data or real commerce, and should be rock-solid-reliable with the smallest possible attack surface -- that's a requirement for a server OS.
Then wouldn't you want a server OS that didn't have IE installed at all, rather than one that that has it installed with absurd security policies? Hell, if you want to argue that Windows is a bad server OS because it comes with all sorts of bullshit installed that shouldn't be installed on a server, we'll have a different discussion. When I install a Linux server, I don't install any GUI-- but I might install a web browser. But if Debian came with a default security policy where even logged in as root, Links refused to download files, I'd think that was a pretty stupid design.