You might be surprised. How "compatible" with the platform is the browser? If it happily hands things like "browser help objects" to the system underneath you are hosed. If you have Macromedia flash and Windows Media working with Firefox, then Firefox is handing your system content mixed with executable code.
As a (fellow?) Brit, I have to say this is the most accurate expression of Britishness ever seen on Slashdot. Ever.
Re:That's not an obvious exercise.
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Apologies for replying to myself, just a correction: Microsoft does appear in 2 places, once referencing ActiveX as a possible foundation for building a VoIP app, and again citing Microsoft NetMeeting. That's it.
Re:That's not an obvious exercise.
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No, makers of non free software seek to own ideas and implementations of those ideas, like ip telephony,
Did you read the article that you linked to? Look at the patent filing. It says "Intel". Microsoft appears nowhere. Intel are hardly well known for their non-free software.
Practitioners of other professions like engineering, medicine, law even cooking, have competed to publish their knowledge. They are secure in their ability to practice. Non free software has never been about practicing a profession, it's always been a greedy grab by "owners" of programs often developed at public expense.
Yeah, how dare people try to profit off of something they can sell. HOW DARE THEY.
The result of "owning" medical and engineering ideas would be catastrophic.
And this is a different matter, one of patents, on which I agree with you. Software patents are a shitty idea, patents on drugs only slightly less shitty as they are in some sense inventions.
There is a difference between Dell not selling AMD chips and not selling PPC chips. The demand for AMD chips is obviously extremely high, considering they make up about 50% of all desktops (or somesuch, that's the split in the Valve Hardware Survey). The demand for PPC chips is not, as no bugger buys them (Macs excepted, and even that's not applicable any more).
By the way, Linux PCs have been on sale for years now in places like WalMart, oftentimes a lot cheaper than competing Windows PCs. They've not sold very well...I know this may be hard for you to hear, but maybe people want Windows?
(By the way, please stop linking to Slashdot articles as evidence for anything. Kindly link to reputable tech journals or some such instead, as Slashdot on its own isn't reputable in the slightest. Not that what you linked to has any relevance to the issue at hand, but still...)
Hmmm, how about a nice Dell Power PC, preloaded with Debian? What, I can't buy such a nice hardware and software combination from the world's bigest PC maker? What gives? Oh yeah, the M$ monopoly I had almost forgoten about.
More because the number of people wanting Power PCs with Debian would be so small as to be inconsequential, and to make the whole affair commercially unviable.
Now that's a straw man. I have nothing against the GPL, and Stallman has done a lot of good things. However, the man himself is a complete prick and he annoys me to no end.
The comparisons with Microsoft are just a little bit irrelevant as well.
Probably the bank, but you can bet that the banks will fight any attempt to get compensation out of them every step of the way. Part of the beauty of the new Chip and PIN (EMV) system in the UK is that the liability for fraud is shifted from the bank (they thought the fraudster was a legitimate customer) to the cardholder (who can't prove they didn't make the payments). I presume the same deal applies here.
Yes, I think that. A trojan that relies on human action is slow growing, even if the instructions are universally correct.
Agreed, however it depends how high the bar for "human action" is. If you think about something like Ubuntu, where the Wiki/online docs endlessly require copying and pasting of console commands, people might not think twice about it. (That requires familiarity with Ubuntu of course.)
Because all the user's files are in one place under Linux. Program configurations, mail, pictures, music, you know everything.
C:\Documents and Settings\Username. Entire profile and My Documents folder for a user (give or take a few very very stupid applications, usually ones written before Windows 2000 and XP became widespread). This is of course unless you save files elsewhere or have them on another partition (I have my files on a seperate partition just in case.)
It takes about 20 minutes to install Mepis fresh from a CD. Your data and configurations will be untouched.
And, for me, it takes about 45 minutes to install Windows XP, all the drivers for things that I need and a few essentials (VideoLAN, Firefox, Thunderbird, Windows Live Messenger, Gimp for Windows among others). Your point?
Whether your configuration will be untouched (on Windows OR Linux) depends, again, on how things are set up.
Don't kid yourelf. Your box is probably part of someone's botnet.
HAHAHAHA. Of course. All XP users are in botnets. I am, he is, everyone in the friggin world that uses Windows is part of one massive botnet. Or perhaps you just talk shit.
I believe GNOME, at least, has an option to run script files regardless of permissions if double-clicked on (looking for the #!/bin/sh part at the top, I assume). Not entirely sure though, haven't used Linux (or GNOME at least) in a while.
I replied quite visibly to the "stalker" comment, and utterly debunked everything you said. Does it hurt, shooting yourself in the foot this much?
Apparently I posted the "filthy writing" there. Twitter, I NEVER post as an AC unless undoubtedly necessary, and absolutely never ever if replying to you. I prefer to sign my name on posts. My "mark of quality" (haha). So I'd stop with the baseless assertions if I were you. More to the point, I have better things to post in reply to you than years-old trolls.
Talking of baseless assertions, "fuck off back to Redmond"? I've posted, quite visibly, in reply to you, my MySpace profile where it says I work for a supermarket, including photos of me in said supermarket's uniform and a little sarcastic comment about me apparently working for "M$". You clearly didn't notice, or didn't want to notice.
Your turn, twit. I expect you to run away now and never reply to this comment, or even acknowledge it exists (except as some sort of proof that I stalk you about 2 months in the future, obviously), as is your wont, but maybe, just maybe, you'll grow a pair and perhaps admit that you might have been talking just a teensy bit of crap.
These things don't exist in the Unix world, which includes plenty of granmothers on Mac OS X. There's a reason for that and it's not some silly market share issue.
I think you'll find it is. If you're looking to set up a botnet, which would you rather target, the ~10% (guesstimate) of desktop users using Mac OS X and Linux (who would generally know how to use PCs and avoid trojans anyway) or the 90% using Windows, a lot of whom aren't particularly technically adept?
Like I said, hard to do, limited in scope and unable to create a botnet.
Thinking logically here:
1. Trojan extracts executable to some deeply rooted and obscure hidden directory. 2. Trojan adds KDE and GNOME autostart entries for executable (iirc KDE does this with.desktop files and such...) 3.... 4. Botnet!
Easy to root out, perhaps, but definitely feasible and very easy to do.
This can be contrasted to the Winblows world where content and executable code are mixed, your browser and email client run both without asking you and the OS has services you can't turn off that listen to the network when they should not. A billion dollar "security" industry has not been able to cover all of these holes.
My browser and email client run executable code without asking? My, that's news to me.
The OS has services that listen to the network...riiiight. Like Messenger (firewalled off and probably disabled by default in SP2) and the file and print sharing service (firewalled by default in SP2). Other than those two very obvious ones, care to explain which services these are?
Like Office formats forcing a new Office that only runs worth a damn on the new OS which requires two to three times the computer you have now?
You can easily read files written in Office 2003 in Office 2000. The format hasn't majorly changed for years now. Do keep up.
I've never had any problems with O2003 being slower than O2000 on the same hardware, but then YMMV.
The only difference this time is that they are admitting things won't work before they launch both!
Vista's not released yet. I sincerely doubt Microsoft would be stupid enough to not release Zune software for their flagship product, and they will do in time...probably closer to the release of Vista.
APM was designed by Microsoft and Intel. ACPI was developed by HP, Intel, Microsoft, Phoenix and Toshiba. If you want to piss, rant and rave about Microsoft's pisspoor implementation of ACPI then, by all means, go ahead, I'm not going to stop you as that was a colossal fuckup. But talking about MS alone fucking up the entire design of it is more than a little bit stupid.
And of course it didn't bash Microsoft hard enough for you. Unless they're bashed into the ground tirelessly, it's never enough.
Vista isn't even out yet. It stands to reason that MS wouldn't have gone so far as to sort their player out for an OS that isn't even released to businesses, let alone consumers, yet. Indeed, the page at Zune's website pretty much says that they're working on it.
But of course, that doesn't make as good a headline on Slashdot, and doesn't inspire the same sort of 99%-baseless M$ bashing bukkake sessions that we seem to witness on Slashdot every fucking night.
Yes, Microsoft is still "committed" to business in China.
Nasty and unethical, yes (and so is Google's commitment to business in China; let's not even mention the adoption of Linux in China, shall we? That would be the sort of dishonesty you would employ) but completely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Even if Vista has less than 66% backwards compatibility with current Windows applications, that's still a fuckload more than the percentage that will run on Linux, even with WINE.
Where I work, store cards aren't either, they get processed with other payment methods and then ignored forever...
Anyway, enough nitpicking, you're correct. RFID won't affect any of those things. All of this is FUD...if it helps reduce stock take time (stock take is where you count the stock of everything in the shop at once, which takes an ungodly amount of time-last I heard at my work it took them pretty much all night...) then I don't see how anyone (in retail at least) could NOT be in favour of an RFID system.
Retailers don't store credit/debit card numbers longer than necessary (i.e until the funds clear and are audited), and even then they aren't even linked in the backend with specific purchased products, just a total.
It's a public place. A person could feasibly stand out in the open and look at you doing something, therefore you have no reasonable right to privacy. As soon as you enter a private premises though, you have all the privacy the owner of that premises (be they you or someone else) wishes you to have.
Slashdot Mirror
You might be surprised. How "compatible" with the platform is the browser? If it happily hands things like "browser help objects" to the system underneath you are hosed. If you have Macromedia flash and Windows Media working with Firefox, then Firefox is handing your system content mixed with executable code.
Because Linux has no browser plugins. Ever.
As a (fellow?) Brit, I have to say this is the most accurate expression of Britishness ever seen on Slashdot. Ever.
Apologies for replying to myself, just a correction: Microsoft does appear in 2 places, once referencing ActiveX as a possible foundation for building a VoIP app, and again citing Microsoft NetMeeting. That's it.
No, makers of non free software seek to own ideas and implementations of those ideas, like ip telephony,
Did you read the article that you linked to? Look at the patent filing. It says "Intel". Microsoft appears nowhere. Intel are hardly well known for their non-free software.
Practitioners of other professions like engineering, medicine, law even cooking, have competed to publish their knowledge. They are secure in their ability to practice. Non free software has never been about practicing a profession, it's always been a greedy grab by "owners" of programs often developed at public expense.
Yeah, how dare people try to profit off of something they can sell. HOW DARE THEY.
The result of "owning" medical and engineering ideas would be catastrophic.
And this is a different matter, one of patents, on which I agree with you. Software patents are a shitty idea, patents on drugs only slightly less shitty as they are in some sense inventions.
There is a difference between Dell not selling AMD chips and not selling PPC chips. The demand for AMD chips is obviously extremely high, considering they make up about 50% of all desktops (or somesuch, that's the split in the Valve Hardware Survey). The demand for PPC chips is not, as no bugger buys them (Macs excepted, and even that's not applicable any more).
By the way, Linux PCs have been on sale for years now in places like WalMart, oftentimes a lot cheaper than competing Windows PCs. They've not sold very well...I know this may be hard for you to hear, but maybe people want Windows?
(By the way, please stop linking to Slashdot articles as evidence for anything. Kindly link to reputable tech journals or some such instead, as Slashdot on its own isn't reputable in the slightest. Not that what you linked to has any relevance to the issue at hand, but still...)
Hmmm, how about a nice Dell Power PC, preloaded with Debian? What, I can't buy such a nice hardware and software combination from the world's bigest PC maker? What gives? Oh yeah, the M$ monopoly I had almost forgoten about.
More because the number of people wanting Power PCs with Debian would be so small as to be inconsequential, and to make the whole affair commercially unviable.
Now that's a straw man. I have nothing against the GPL, and Stallman has done a lot of good things. However, the man himself is a complete prick and he annoys me to no end.
The comparisons with Microsoft are just a little bit irrelevant as well.
Virtual RMS? For fucks sake, we already have one real one, and that's bad enough!
Probably the bank, but you can bet that the banks will fight any attempt to get compensation out of them every step of the way. Part of the beauty of the new Chip and PIN (EMV) system in the UK is that the liability for fraud is shifted from the bank (they thought the fraudster was a legitimate customer) to the cardholder (who can't prove they didn't make the payments). I presume the same deal applies here.
Oh of course. I sit in my bedroom aaaall day silently refreshing your user page, for hours at a time.
Or I could just find it really amusing to point out all the stupid shit you say for a few minutes after work.
Now, hows about responding to the rest of the stuff in that post, or are you too pussy to admit you fucked up?
Yes, I think that. A trojan that relies on human action is slow growing, even if the instructions are universally correct.
Agreed, however it depends how high the bar for "human action" is. If you think about something like Ubuntu, where the Wiki/online docs endlessly require copying and pasting of console commands, people might not think twice about it. (That requires familiarity with Ubuntu of course.)
Because all the user's files are in one place under Linux. Program configurations, mail, pictures, music, you know everything.
C:\Documents and Settings\Username. Entire profile and My Documents folder for a user (give or take a few very very stupid applications, usually ones written before Windows 2000 and XP became widespread). This is of course unless you save files elsewhere or have them on another partition (I have my files on a seperate partition just in case.)
It takes about 20 minutes to install Mepis fresh from a CD. Your data and configurations will be untouched.
And, for me, it takes about 45 minutes to install Windows XP, all the drivers for things that I need and a few essentials (VideoLAN, Firefox, Thunderbird, Windows Live Messenger, Gimp for Windows among others). Your point?
Whether your configuration will be untouched (on Windows OR Linux) depends, again, on how things are set up.
Don't kid yourelf. Your box is probably part of someone's botnet.
HAHAHAHA. Of course. All XP users are in botnets. I am, he is, everyone in the friggin world that uses Windows is part of one massive botnet. Or perhaps you just talk shit.
I believe GNOME, at least, has an option to run script files regardless of permissions if double-clicked on (looking for the #!/bin/sh part at the top, I assume). Not entirely sure though, haven't used Linux (or GNOME at least) in a while.
Ahem. Excuse me.
Allow me to point out a few things.
Your turn, twit. I expect you to run away now and never reply to this comment, or even acknowledge it exists (except as some sort of proof that I stalk you about 2 months in the future, obviously), as is your wont, but maybe, just maybe, you'll grow a pair and perhaps admit that you might have been talking just a teensy bit of crap.
These things don't exist in the Unix world, which includes plenty of granmothers on Mac OS X. There's a reason for that and it's not some silly market share issue.
.desktop files and such...) ...
I think you'll find it is. If you're looking to set up a botnet, which would you rather target, the ~10% (guesstimate) of desktop users using Mac OS X and Linux (who would generally know how to use PCs and avoid trojans anyway) or the 90% using Windows, a lot of whom aren't particularly technically adept?
Like I said, hard to do, limited in scope and unable to create a botnet.
Thinking logically here:
1. Trojan extracts executable to some deeply rooted and obscure hidden directory.
2. Trojan adds KDE and GNOME autostart entries for executable (iirc KDE does this with
3.
4. Botnet!
Easy to root out, perhaps, but definitely feasible and very easy to do.
This can be contrasted to the Winblows world where content and executable code are mixed, your browser and email client run both without asking you and the OS has services you can't turn off that listen to the network when they should not. A billion dollar "security" industry has not been able to cover all of these holes.
My browser and email client run executable code without asking? My, that's news to me.
The OS has services that listen to the network...riiiight. Like Messenger (firewalled off and probably disabled by default in SP2) and the file and print sharing service (firewalled by default in SP2). Other than those two very obvious ones, care to explain which services these are?
...what?
Oh wait, it doesn't have to make sense, it just has to bash Microsoft. Gotcha.
WOOOO!!! I like this.
Like Office formats forcing a new Office that only runs worth a damn on the new OS which requires two to three times the computer you have now?
You can easily read files written in Office 2003 in Office 2000. The format hasn't majorly changed for years now. Do keep up.
I've never had any problems with O2003 being slower than O2000 on the same hardware, but then YMMV.
The only difference this time is that they are admitting things won't work before they launch both!
Vista's not released yet. I sincerely doubt Microsoft would be stupid enough to not release Zune software for their flagship product, and they will do in time...probably closer to the release of Vista.
You, sir, are a fucking moron.
APM was designed by Microsoft and Intel. ACPI was developed by HP, Intel, Microsoft, Phoenix and Toshiba. If you want to piss, rant and rave about Microsoft's pisspoor implementation of ACPI then, by all means, go ahead, I'm not going to stop you as that was a colossal fuckup. But talking about MS alone fucking up the entire design of it is more than a little bit stupid.
And of course it didn't bash Microsoft hard enough for you. Unless they're bashed into the ground tirelessly, it's never enough.
Vista isn't even out yet. It stands to reason that MS wouldn't have gone so far as to sort their player out for an OS that isn't even released to businesses, let alone consumers, yet. Indeed, the page at Zune's website pretty much says that they're working on it.
But of course, that doesn't make as good a headline on Slashdot, and doesn't inspire the same sort of 99%-baseless M$ bashing bukkake sessions that we seem to witness on Slashdot every fucking night.
Yes, Microsoft is still "committed" to business in China.
Nasty and unethical, yes (and so is Google's commitment to business in China; let's not even mention the adoption of Linux in China, shall we? That would be the sort of dishonesty you would employ) but completely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Even if Vista has less than 66% backwards compatibility with current Windows applications, that's still a fuckload more than the percentage that will run on Linux, even with WINE.
Where I work, store cards aren't either, they get processed with other payment methods and then ignored forever...
Anyway, enough nitpicking, you're correct. RFID won't affect any of those things. All of this is FUD...if it helps reduce stock take time (stock take is where you count the stock of everything in the shop at once, which takes an ungodly amount of time-last I heard at my work it took them pretty much all night...) then I don't see how anyone (in retail at least) could NOT be in favour of an RFID system.
No. They can't.
Retailers don't store credit/debit card numbers longer than necessary (i.e until the funds clear and are audited), and even then they aren't even linked in the backend with specific purchased products, just a total.
Wait until the Daily Mail or some other shitrag publishes an alarmist story (much like this one) in a day or two...
Attach the picture to the camera so the camera sees only the picture. They'll just record an empty street all day.
Or darkness and/or fuzziness, because your picture blocks out most of the light and is too close to the camera to be in focus.
It's a public place. A person could feasibly stand out in the open and look at you doing something, therefore you have no reasonable right to privacy. As soon as you enter a private premises though, you have all the privacy the owner of that premises (be they you or someone else) wishes you to have.
I thought this was common sense...