Downfall to be replaced by what? I agree that I'm less than happy with where Adobe has gone culturally in the last few years, but they've got less competition than Microsoft. There is simply nothing to replace them, period.
This just isn't true. A lot of Adobe's products have valid competitors. Within the Last year or so, several low cost Photoshop competitors have started making headway. Pixelmator provides 75% of Photoshop's functionality for less than a tenth the price. Madcap looks to have a valid Framemaker alternative that has Adobe working on Framemaker once again. Inkscape and OmniGraffle have taken some of Illustrators customers. Quark has ramped up development and provides an alternative to InDesign.
The real problem is most customers for all these products are corporations. It is not too hard to get approval to purchase Adobe Creative Suite which costs a buttload. It is harder to get approval to buy lesser known competitors even though all of them together cost less; and then you have to justify each one separately so you often end up with fewer tools. The average user doesn't care how much the company pays so they don't put in the effort to end up with fewer tools. Maybe if all these companies got together and started offering a competing suite of tools, they'd have a chance, but for now they will cater to the price sensitive contractor market.
The part that bugs the hell out of me is that Adobe are the people with what's rapidly becoming the 'gatekeeper' of the web, namely Flash.
I don't know. They aren't nearly as detrimental as MS being the gatekeeper of the Web. Currently IE not being able to run SVG, forcing developers to turn to proprietary solutions. The alternatives are Flash and Silverlight. Personally, I'd rather opt for the former since otherwise, we still have MS holding back the Web. We know what they will do because they've been doing it for a decade. At least there is hope with Adobe.
Dallas eh? I saw it happen in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but it was in a CompUSA. Maybe the article inspired the actions of the person I saw. Afterward I tested it, by the way, and Office 2004 would function just fine when transferred in such a fashion. Office 2007, requires a serial unless you copy the Library files or something as well.
I really, really, really want to use products from a better company. Surely there MUST be developers out there who can make better products than Adobe.
If you're looking to replace Illustrator, try Inkscape.
If you're looking to replace Framemaker, MadCap is releasing Blaze very soon.
If you're looking to replace Adobe Acrobat Pro, there are about 10 different companies with products on the market.
If you're looking to replace InDesign, you could try Quark (but I'm not sure I'd recommend it).
If you're looking to replace Dreamweaver, there are several comparable editors depending upon your needs and platform
If you're looking to replace Photoshop, you can replace it on the low end with Pixelmator and for automated tasks with GraphicConverter or Gimp. For one off photo touch ups on the very high end, there really isn't a lot of competition yet.
I guess what I'm saying is, there is a competitor for most of their products for most workflows. A big part of the problem is the corporate culture that makes it so easy to get approval to buy Adobe CS suite for $2500, and so hard to get approval to buy a $60 copy of Pixelmator, which will be just as useful, but save the company money... and why should an employee bother to fight for savings for their company when it will give them fewer toys to play with?
OK, maybe you really did see that, but that story was on/. like 6 months after OSX was released;-)
It was quite a while ago when I saw it and I did mention it in comments here, but I don't think I submitted it as an article. A search of the old articles and comments on Slashdot isn't pulling up anything.
The difference between best buy and apple is best buy is selling everyone's stuff, apple is selling apple stuff.
That's 100% wrong. The Apple stores feature Apple products, but carry lots of products from other vendors. I mentioned MS Office as one of the pre-installed apps. Do you really think Apple makes Microsoft Office?
So it's a lot easier for apple stores to set up apple stuff with apple software (and a small amount of other stuff) then it is for best buy to set up other's people stuff with other people's software.
No it isn't. All Apple does is install a few common applications. BestBuy could easily look on Amazon to see what the top 5 or 10 applications they sell are and install those. They don't do that because they are cheap and don't take their demo machines seriously.
Gateway used to have stores, they were very similar to the apple stores now.
Gateway's retail venture was a flop, for many, very good reasons including they wouldn't sell you a computer. There's nothing like telling users the computer will be assembled and shipped to them to drive away impulse buyers. At that point they might as well go home and look on the internet and comparison shop.
There's just no way to take the apple store approach and apply it to a giant electronics/computer store.
We're not talking about "making the Apple store approach" work, we're talking about one very specific thing Apple does that other retail outlets don't take the time or effort to bother with. There is absolutely nothing keeping BestBuy from pre-installing applications on their demo systems. Hell, they might even get the software vendors to give them the software for free or pay them, as it is some pretty prime advertising. They don't do it, because no one with authority there is smart enough to copy what works from Apple.
The thing about Apple stores is that actually have software which you can try out on their computers.
Quite a while ago I was in a CompUSA and I saw someone plug an iPod into one of the demo machines, drag MS Office onto the iPod icon, and walk out with it. remember thinking that OS X made application installation and transfer easy, something that was great for users, but which retailers probably had not considered.
Apple's working with a very small potential software base.
Are you joking? There is so much software for OS X, Apple would need thousands of computers just to have enough hard drive space to fit them all. They don't install everything, just a few of the more popular software packages, like MS Office.
If Best Buy did that here in the states they would need to have, oh I don't know, 18,000 computers set up and running.
No, they just need to install a few, common applications so they have something for users to try out.
What I don't agree with is your idea that 40 years ago was more civilized.
You'll note I did not say it was more civilized. I postulated that there may have been more respect for both laws and police officers. I don't know that was the case, it is just a theory.
See if any of that (1967 +/- a few years) sounds more civilized.
There are always outrageous exceptions, but what about the general opinion of the populace. Did the average person 40 years ago have more respect for a police officer and for the law than today?
If you think police corruption &/or abuse of power is a new phenomenon... Well, I don't know you, but IMO, that is an incredibly naive position to have. If reading the link I gave you doesn't jog any memories, try finding someone who was black and had to deal with the police 40 years ago. They'll tell you all about abuse of power.
Power is always abused and police power has always been abused in this country. The thing is, 40 years ago, you could find police officers, both black and white who believed that breaking the law was betraying their sworn oath and who had strong objections to it. I've met quite a few police officers in my life and after 15 minutes of conversation it is obvious that none of them have held that belief, nor even thought it important to pretend they held that belief in casual conversation with strangers. I'm not saying abuse of power is worse than 40 years ago, I'm saying it is more widespread, although perhaps less severe in many of those cases.
Tossing all OS considerations, I think that Apple's hardware is traditionally much more robust and reliable than Dell's has been. I'm working in a shop that always buys Dell PCs and Apple iMacs. We have more problems with the Dells, hands down, than we do with the Apples.
Everyone has an anecdote to throw into this pool about how in their shop and the lot of systems they bought some brand is more reliable than some other brand. Anyone looking for objective data, however, should look at an independent study. I recommend Consumer Reports. Their methodology is not perfect, but it is better than anything else I've seen. They don't take ad money and they don't accept donated hardware from companies (who have been know to cherry pick models to send for review). They buy everything through regular retail channels, anonymously.
For their most recent report, Apple took the top spot for laptops and desktop reliability and support. Dell, did surprisingly well with laptops, moving into the same ballpark as Apple after years of being near the bottom, but their desktops still rank in the middle or lower on average.
For my personal experiences, buying lots of 100 (supposedly identical) Dell towers and finding out they actually have three different brands of hard drive, two different network cards, and two different video cards (only one of which had drivers for the OS we were using) was frustrating as hell, even when you don't count the 10% extra we had to order to keep on hand as replacements for the machines that were dead at any given time.
I would like to get a MAC, but some of the websites I have to use for work and online banking require Internet Explorer. Is there a work around?
Step one is sending an e-mail to the banking site telling them they're cutting off a good 10% of computer users by failing to adhere to standards, as well as most mobile phone users, like people with Blackberries, iPhones, and Palms. Maybe they'll fix it. After that you can install a VM and Windows on top of OS X just for IE and other Windows programs, or you can use one of the WINE emulators to just run IE without Windows. There are about three major variants, all of which run IE and two of which are free as in beer.
Which one will still be working 6 months after you buy it?
Apple was the highest rated vendor for hardware reliability of both desktops and laptops as of a few months ago when Consumer Reports issued their latest review. Dell actually did fairly well for laptops (way better than in 2006) but were still about middle of the road or worse for desktops.
I think the article is only arguing that the Dell hardware is nicer, not cheaper, nor a better overall computer.
By "nicer" you mean less powerful but in a prettier case? I wonder if the reviewers took into account hardware reliability, as Apple was the top rated vendor on consumer reports last survey, while Dell desktops came in about middle of the road, at best.
People have been repeating that mantra since time immemorial.
Agreed. Every generation thinks the next one will be the end of civilization. There are some great quotes from ancient Greeks to the affect.
When the USA turns into a failed state like Sudan or Chad, where warlords & tribal leaders are fighting for control, then maybe you'll have something to complain about.
This is crap. The "we're not as bad as China" has never eld any water. You can always point to someone worse, but that in no way mitigates how bad things are in a given place and we should always be looking to make things better by pointing out what is wrong and trying to correct it. Trying to excuse problems by pointing to others is a logical fallacy.
Crime rates have been trending downwards for quite some time now. The only thing that's been trending upwards are arrests for drug violations.
Crime statistics aren't too meaningful by themselves because so many things are crimes, including things we all do (speeding, swearing in public, having sex when not married). Laws are enforced or not and that can significantly influence the "crime rate." What I care more about are violent crime rates, since these are the real, serious offenses. Violent crime rates started going up in 2005, and have increased significantly in both 2006 and 2007 according to the FBI. It is disturbing as a societal trend but it actually fits with sociologists predictions. The strongest correlation with violent crime is wealth disparity. Wealth disparity has been increasing in the US, with the middle class shrinking, the upper class staying about the same size, but becoming richer, and the lower class growing. This trend boomed in about 2001, and after about the usual 5 year lag, violent crime rates have begun to boom as well.
You know what I find really sad? One of the most effective programs to reduce wealth disparity is socialized healthcare. Health care costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the US and costs of health care are a significant expense for the poor. Despite the clear statistical indications that this would lower crime rates, not a ingle politician on either side of the debate has had the balls to bring this topic up. They think anything that is a complex causality is beyond the comprehension of the voters, and they're probably right.
P.S. When exactly are these "more civilized times" you're referring to?
As to the original topic, respect for the police and the laws. Just the other day the cops started following a car I was in, then pulled us over when we tried to pull into our driveway. They claimed it was because our muffler sounded "a bit loud" but why then would they follow us around, through several turns before pulling us over? It was bullshit. They weren't trying to enforce a law, they were trying to pull people over in the hopes they could bust us for something. Previous to their following us, they were speeding, and changed lanes three times without using an indicator. When the police don't respect the laws or obey them, it erodes one's respect for both the police and the laws. When absurdly stupid laws are still on the books and occasionally enforced at the whim of those with power, it erodes one's respect for the laws.
I know an old, retired officer who is proud of the fact that he never broke any laws the entire time he was a cop. I know a dozen people who are cops today and every one brags about abusing their authority in a "funny" way and the fact that they can get away with breaking the laws whenever they want. My brother used to be a cop. One day he was puled over for speeding in his private car and when the cop saw who it was, he just chatted wit him and let him go, with no mention of the speeding. I'd say their is a trend towards lack of respect for police and laws in the US, and it is very justified by our current laws, enforcement practices, and police hiring practices. 90% of
Anyone who believes that either Microsoft or Google are serious bad guys has little knowledge of what goes on in the real world, even in the tech sector. There are vast numbers of companies that are far more evil.
"Evil" is a moral judgement. I'd argue that Google has (as of yet) done little to cause problems for mankind. Microsoft is another animal. Their monopoly on desktop OS's has had detrimental effects not only on that market, but upon many others near and dear to the average Slashdot reader. Monopolies are the bane of innovation and MS's monopoly has slowed the advancement of many fields including: desktop OS's, server OS's, Web technologies, digital media, internet technology, video games, and security technology. They have probably been the single most detrimental force in the computing industry for the last decade.
However, in this case, It doesn't matter whether Google gets Doubleclick or not.
I agree with that.
There is a basic principle in economics, that states the natural order of things is a duopoly, with one company with 60% and the other with 40& of the market.
I don't agree with this. There is a tendency for a market to remain balanced between two or more players with each catering primarily to different market segments. (In the absence of a monopoly at which point all markets tends to consolidate into that monopoly unless it is regulated by an outside influence). I don't however see what this has to do with the proposed merger, since it is not market consolidation, but a company entering a second market.
Google gets more than a 60% market share, customers will start pressuring for a alternative. They can't help it, institutions rule how they react en mass.
Google has about 40% of the online ad market. They have only a few percent of the total ad market. This merger does not increase that market share at all. Maybe in another four years Google will reach 60%, but until then your theory does not really apply.
The only result of this is that Google shareholders are going to be might upset in a few years when this doesn't give Google dominance over the market.
That doesn't seem to be Google's strategy. Instead they seem to be entering myriad related markets, some successfully and some not in the hopes of gaining revenue from them. I don't think their plan is to dominate and rest on their laurels. They're investing far too heavily in talent for that. They're an innovation company that has built a business plan on coming up with cool new Web technologies and hoping some of them turn into real revenue streams.
In the past few months, Google has gone from "Do no Evil" to suspicion of being very evil.
I don't think most advertising buyers or the general public care what Slashdot thinks. They go for what works for them, and "evil" has little or nothing to do with it.
But it is that I just wish Google leadership hired someone who had some idea of how to execute a strategy in the face of competitive intelligence operations, it is embarrassing how easily Google is being trashed.
Maybe there is some marketing working against them, but I really don't see it. All I see is conspiracy theories on Slashdot that add up to nothing substantial. If MS is concentrating their astroturf money here they're wasting it.
I'd like to note that personally, although MS has a bad reputation here, I'm inclined to agree with them.
Agree with them on what? I still can't make heads or tails of what they're claiming is the problem. I don't even see the market they're claiming Google is monopolizing, let alone what the specific abuse would be.
It's a bit frightening how big in the online ad market Google is becoming.
Yeah, they hit about 40% this year, which is a lot, but nowhere near a monopoly. Also, since this acquisition doesn't gain them any more share of that same market, I don't see why anyone would consider blocking the merger.
It's also easy to draw conclusions of how cool Microsoft was early on, and how evil they are now.
Umm, a rich kid who bought a low-end product and made it the dominant player through shrewd and ruthless business moves, while looking like jackass to the industry by complaining about how everyone was stealing it and by intentionally breaking competing products even in the early days. I don't know that they were ever "cool."
I'm already starting to see it happen with Google... They've already got the private information networking done, and now they're going after dominance and purchasing market via company mergers.
But they're moving into complimentary markets, not buying out competitors in the same market. Further, they're not using their "dominance" in any market to cause problems with competing products, as MS did.
You can say there is danger that Google will act illegally and anticompetitively, but until they actually do it, all you have is empty speculation.
While I do think Microsoft consistently abuses their monopoly in the OS market, I agree with you that it does not take away from the legitimacy of the anti-trust claims against Google.
True, but those claims seem pretty empty by themselves.
They're trying to use their search engine and advertising to tie in other features and expand into those markets.
They're using money to buy their way into a complimentary market. For anything to be anticompetitive, they have to have monopoly influence in an existing market and they have to be using that influence in a way companies without such influence cannot. So what do they have a monopoly on and what have they done a company without a monopoly could not?
My reasoning is that you seriously have a problem if the FTC actually holds up a merger to investigate anti-trust violations. Especially under the current administration, which is extremely pro-business.
The FTC routinely looks into and signs off on large mergers in the US, especially if there is a complaint. My father used to work for a lumber retailer and when they bought out a small, local chain the FTC held them up for month. Does anyone thing there is any danger of the retail lumber market being monopolized by a company 99% of people here have never heard of?
I don't see that anything you've said has actually provided any argument that MS has a case. Sure we shouldn't reject their claims because it is MS, but the fact the FTC looked into is not indicative of anything, especially since they agreed to the merger and found no reason to stop it.
What does this have to do with Google's take over of online advertising?
MS's actions with regard to IE were designed to use their monopoly to introduce artificial problems with the competition. Incorrectly rendering random parts of HTML so that developers are motivated to fail to adhere to standards is a way to artificially break the competition. Opera loads the same page and it looks broken, because of an intentional act of MS, only possible because they had monopoly influence. That is illegal. It is antitrust abuse.
This is relevant because for Google to be abusing a monopoly we need to know what they have a monopoly on and in what way they have abused it to artificially break the competition.
You may have a cheaper distribution path, but you have the same difficulty breaking into the market. Do you think that website X would rather go with a large, well established advertiser such as Google or DoubleClick, or with Advertiser Joe Shmo to serve ads on their page?
I think advertisers will go with whoever they think gives them the best results for the best price. I think the market is competitive and if someone has a great plan to sell highly localized and better targeted ads, they are motivated to bring it to market and if they have a better product they'll start to gain market share. I think if you expand that, you certainly can take market from Google. More importantly, I can't think of anything Google has done that will intentionally hinder you from bringing your service to market that they could not have done without a monopoly on whatever you think they have a monopoly on.
I know that we all despise our Monopolizing Micro$oft overlords and such, but that does not invalidate their argument.
What argument? I looked at their charts and they made no sense. What market are they claiming Google has a monopoly on? They have about 40% of the online advertising market and as far as I know that is their largest market. Google is acquiring an ad hosting provider, another market which is still healthy and competitive. I don't see the monopoly, let alone what MS is claiming is the abuse of that monopoly.
MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's (according to the courts). Google has sufficient market share in the Web browser market to constitute monopoly influence as (again) multiple courts have ruled. MS is using their influence in Web browsers, to promote their online search service by tying them together via making MSN the default search in IE. That is clearly illegal according to both US and EU law. If the EU has not stopped that behavior, where it is so clear cut, why should they interfere with Google's acquisition?
Are you sure that worms are a bigger threat than trojans?
The numbers aren't in for 2007 yet. We'll probably see them mid-january. For 2006, however, most exploits were the result of worms with no user interaction by a significant margin. Maybe this is changing, but I doubt that has happened yet. A lot of security people tend to focus a lot on threats that might affect them, like their network of WinXP SP2 systems, and forget that there is still a large ecosystem of older Windows systems out there that make up the lion's share of boxes being compromised.
What worms have you heard of that are in the wild now causing problems?
Over the last two weeks, a variation of the Slammer worm has been making the rounds and compromising a lot of machines. More generally Web services worms have been big, doing drive-by bot installations all year.
The article states that the code is doing many things in a UNIX style (getting the system directory name, etc.) and is written by someone with experience on non-windows systems.
Allow me to clarify. You're correct that some malware developers have *NIX experience. Many control networks run on compromised Linux machines and all the Web front ends I've seen used to rent botnets out are running on Apache. That said, I think this control system and those Web front ends are made by a much rarer breed than the average botnet herder. The average herder I've met (online) has a skill level a bit above the normal script kiddie. They rely heavily on code and tools they purchase or steal and adapt slightly themselves. The one thing they do that requires many hands is go through security mailings and fuzz Windows programs looking for new exploitable vulnerabilities. I think it would take a while for the malware community to adapt for other OS's. The motivation is already there for OS X. It is a juicy target no one is competing for, with a better selection of mineable financial info, but no one has managed to really tap it yet. There have been exploitable vulnerabilities, public and waiting for a worm, but they just haven't done it.
Most Windows users (at least on XP) run as root. Most linux users don't run as root. That's a heck of a lot more secure, at least in terms of losing control over your computer rather than just losing your files
I was thinking of Vista, but assuming we're talking about WinXP, then in either case the bot has plenty of permission as the user to be malicious and send spam, participate in a DDoS, or steal user data. The one thing it can't do that it might want to is disable anti-virus. That is slightly harder on Linux or Vista than on WinXP, but once you're in it is just a matter of breaching one more layer with a local escalation, and those are not really uncommon on Linux (and absurdly common on Vista right now). On could make the argument that in some cases Vista is more secure though in that some of the common things a bot wants to do are sandboxed, whereas while they could be in Linux with SELinux or something, they are not that way by default on any common distribution.
...suffice it to say, that once you convince a user that you're legitimate and that they want your eCard (that's how this malware spreads), you can just give them a command to copy/paste into the "Run Program" dialog box.
Your post seems predicated upon the assumption that the means of compromise is a trojan. Right now, that is not the common case, especially for bots. While there are more types of trojans out there, each compromises a fairly small number of boxes. Most boxes by number are still compromised by automated worms that have no user interaction component to them.
I think you're right that Linux is no more secure against trojans than Windows, maybe less so even, but you have to keep in mind that even if that is the case, that's still less than half of the exploits happening. You need to address the question of exposed services and ease of using a user application with a malicious payload to insert a useful bot.
...but i bet that some in that development can be translated to unix/mac systems (as is the user the one that mainly installs it, think in i.e. when was corrupted the SquirrelMail repository, if someone send spams away to make people to download it before it gets catched, and that installs in fact a trojan with that functionality).
Just to clarify, while there are lots of different trojans including those for Mac/Linux and they are in the wild, trojans are still not he biggest threat. While there are more trojans than worms, worms still compromise more machines than trojans and worms that exploit network services or applications, with no user interaction, are still the most common cause of a compromise; especially for zombies in a botnet.
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This just isn't true. A lot of Adobe's products have valid competitors. Within the Last year or so, several low cost Photoshop competitors have started making headway. Pixelmator provides 75% of Photoshop's functionality for less than a tenth the price. Madcap looks to have a valid Framemaker alternative that has Adobe working on Framemaker once again. Inkscape and OmniGraffle have taken some of Illustrators customers. Quark has ramped up development and provides an alternative to InDesign.
The real problem is most customers for all these products are corporations. It is not too hard to get approval to purchase Adobe Creative Suite which costs a buttload. It is harder to get approval to buy lesser known competitors even though all of them together cost less; and then you have to justify each one separately so you often end up with fewer tools. The average user doesn't care how much the company pays so they don't put in the effort to end up with fewer tools. Maybe if all these companies got together and started offering a competing suite of tools, they'd have a chance, but for now they will cater to the price sensitive contractor market.
I don't know. They aren't nearly as detrimental as MS being the gatekeeper of the Web. Currently IE not being able to run SVG, forcing developers to turn to proprietary solutions. The alternatives are Flash and Silverlight. Personally, I'd rather opt for the former since otherwise, we still have MS holding back the Web. We know what they will do because they've been doing it for a decade. At least there is hope with Adobe.
Dallas eh? I saw it happen in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but it was in a CompUSA. Maybe the article inspired the actions of the person I saw. Afterward I tested it, by the way, and Office 2004 would function just fine when transferred in such a fashion. Office 2007, requires a serial unless you copy the Library files or something as well.
If you're looking to replace Illustrator, try Inkscape.
If you're looking to replace Framemaker, MadCap is releasing Blaze very soon.
If you're looking to replace Adobe Acrobat Pro, there are about 10 different companies with products on the market.
If you're looking to replace InDesign, you could try Quark (but I'm not sure I'd recommend it).
If you're looking to replace Dreamweaver, there are several comparable editors depending upon your needs and platform
If you're looking to replace Photoshop, you can replace it on the low end with Pixelmator and for automated tasks with GraphicConverter or Gimp. For one off photo touch ups on the very high end, there really isn't a lot of competition yet.
I guess what I'm saying is, there is a competitor for most of their products for most workflows. A big part of the problem is the corporate culture that makes it so easy to get approval to buy Adobe CS suite for $2500, and so hard to get approval to buy a $60 copy of Pixelmator, which will be just as useful, but save the company money... and why should an employee bother to fight for savings for their company when it will give them fewer toys to play with?
It was quite a while ago when I saw it and I did mention it in comments here, but I don't think I submitted it as an article. A search of the old articles and comments on Slashdot isn't pulling up anything.
That's 100% wrong. The Apple stores feature Apple products, but carry lots of products from other vendors. I mentioned MS Office as one of the pre-installed apps. Do you really think Apple makes Microsoft Office?
So it's a lot easier for apple stores to set up apple stuff with apple software (and a small amount of other stuff) then it is for best buy to set up other's people stuff with other people's software.No it isn't. All Apple does is install a few common applications. BestBuy could easily look on Amazon to see what the top 5 or 10 applications they sell are and install those. They don't do that because they are cheap and don't take their demo machines seriously.
Gateway used to have stores, they were very similar to the apple stores now.Gateway's retail venture was a flop, for many, very good reasons including they wouldn't sell you a computer. There's nothing like telling users the computer will be assembled and shipped to them to drive away impulse buyers. At that point they might as well go home and look on the internet and comparison shop.
There's just no way to take the apple store approach and apply it to a giant electronics/computer store.We're not talking about "making the Apple store approach" work, we're talking about one very specific thing Apple does that other retail outlets don't take the time or effort to bother with. There is absolutely nothing keeping BestBuy from pre-installing applications on their demo systems. Hell, they might even get the software vendors to give them the software for free or pay them, as it is some pretty prime advertising. They don't do it, because no one with authority there is smart enough to copy what works from Apple.
Quite a while ago I was in a CompUSA and I saw someone plug an iPod into one of the demo machines, drag MS Office onto the iPod icon, and walk out with it. remember thinking that OS X made application installation and transfer easy, something that was great for users, but which retailers probably had not considered.
Are you joking? There is so much software for OS X, Apple would need thousands of computers just to have enough hard drive space to fit them all. They don't install everything, just a few of the more popular software packages, like MS Office.
If Best Buy did that here in the states they would need to have, oh I don't know, 18,000 computers set up and running.No, they just need to install a few, common applications so they have something for users to try out.
You'll note I did not say it was more civilized. I postulated that there may have been more respect for both laws and police officers. I don't know that was the case, it is just a theory.
See if any of that (1967 +/- a few years) sounds more civilized.There are always outrageous exceptions, but what about the general opinion of the populace. Did the average person 40 years ago have more respect for a police officer and for the law than today?
If you think police corruption &/or abuse of power is a new phenomenon... Well, I don't know you, but IMO, that is an incredibly naive position to have. If reading the link I gave you doesn't jog any memories, try finding someone who was black and had to deal with the police 40 years ago. They'll tell you all about abuse of power.Power is always abused and police power has always been abused in this country. The thing is, 40 years ago, you could find police officers, both black and white who believed that breaking the law was betraying their sworn oath and who had strong objections to it. I've met quite a few police officers in my life and after 15 minutes of conversation it is obvious that none of them have held that belief, nor even thought it important to pretend they held that belief in casual conversation with strangers. I'm not saying abuse of power is worse than 40 years ago, I'm saying it is more widespread, although perhaps less severe in many of those cases.
Everyone has an anecdote to throw into this pool about how in their shop and the lot of systems they bought some brand is more reliable than some other brand. Anyone looking for objective data, however, should look at an independent study. I recommend Consumer Reports. Their methodology is not perfect, but it is better than anything else I've seen. They don't take ad money and they don't accept donated hardware from companies (who have been know to cherry pick models to send for review). They buy everything through regular retail channels, anonymously.
For their most recent report, Apple took the top spot for laptops and desktop reliability and support. Dell, did surprisingly well with laptops, moving into the same ballpark as Apple after years of being near the bottom, but their desktops still rank in the middle or lower on average.
For my personal experiences, buying lots of 100 (supposedly identical) Dell towers and finding out they actually have three different brands of hard drive, two different network cards, and two different video cards (only one of which had drivers for the OS we were using) was frustrating as hell, even when you don't count the 10% extra we had to order to keep on hand as replacements for the machines that were dead at any given time.
Step one is sending an e-mail to the banking site telling them they're cutting off a good 10% of computer users by failing to adhere to standards, as well as most mobile phone users, like people with Blackberries, iPhones, and Palms. Maybe they'll fix it. After that you can install a VM and Windows on top of OS X just for IE and other Windows programs, or you can use one of the WINE emulators to just run IE without Windows. There are about three major variants, all of which run IE and two of which are free as in beer.
Apple was the highest rated vendor for hardware reliability of both desktops and laptops as of a few months ago when Consumer Reports issued their latest review. Dell actually did fairly well for laptops (way better than in 2006) but were still about middle of the road or worse for desktops.
By "nicer" you mean less powerful but in a prettier case? I wonder if the reviewers took into account hardware reliability, as Apple was the top rated vendor on consumer reports last survey, while Dell desktops came in about middle of the road, at best.
People have been repeating that mantra since time immemorial.
Agreed. Every generation thinks the next one will be the end of civilization. There are some great quotes from ancient Greeks to the affect.
When the USA turns into a failed state like Sudan or Chad, where warlords & tribal leaders are fighting for control, then maybe you'll have something to complain about.
This is crap. The "we're not as bad as China" has never eld any water. You can always point to someone worse, but that in no way mitigates how bad things are in a given place and we should always be looking to make things better by pointing out what is wrong and trying to correct it. Trying to excuse problems by pointing to others is a logical fallacy.
Crime rates have been trending downwards for quite some time now. The only thing that's been trending upwards are arrests for drug violations.
Crime statistics aren't too meaningful by themselves because so many things are crimes, including things we all do (speeding, swearing in public, having sex when not married). Laws are enforced or not and that can significantly influence the "crime rate." What I care more about are violent crime rates, since these are the real, serious offenses. Violent crime rates started going up in 2005, and have increased significantly in both 2006 and 2007 according to the FBI. It is disturbing as a societal trend but it actually fits with sociologists predictions. The strongest correlation with violent crime is wealth disparity. Wealth disparity has been increasing in the US, with the middle class shrinking, the upper class staying about the same size, but becoming richer, and the lower class growing. This trend boomed in about 2001, and after about the usual 5 year lag, violent crime rates have begun to boom as well.
You know what I find really sad? One of the most effective programs to reduce wealth disparity is socialized healthcare. Health care costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the US and costs of health care are a significant expense for the poor. Despite the clear statistical indications that this would lower crime rates, not a ingle politician on either side of the debate has had the balls to bring this topic up. They think anything that is a complex causality is beyond the comprehension of the voters, and they're probably right.
P.S. When exactly are these "more civilized times" you're referring to?
As to the original topic, respect for the police and the laws. Just the other day the cops started following a car I was in, then pulled us over when we tried to pull into our driveway. They claimed it was because our muffler sounded "a bit loud" but why then would they follow us around, through several turns before pulling us over? It was bullshit. They weren't trying to enforce a law, they were trying to pull people over in the hopes they could bust us for something. Previous to their following us, they were speeding, and changed lanes three times without using an indicator. When the police don't respect the laws or obey them, it erodes one's respect for both the police and the laws. When absurdly stupid laws are still on the books and occasionally enforced at the whim of those with power, it erodes one's respect for the laws.
I know an old, retired officer who is proud of the fact that he never broke any laws the entire time he was a cop. I know a dozen people who are cops today and every one brags about abusing their authority in a "funny" way and the fact that they can get away with breaking the laws whenever they want. My brother used to be a cop. One day he was puled over for speeding in his private car and when the cop saw who it was, he just chatted wit him and let him go, with no mention of the speeding. I'd say their is a trend towards lack of respect for police and laws in the US, and it is very justified by our current laws, enforcement practices, and police hiring practices. 90% of
"Evil" is a moral judgement. I'd argue that Google has (as of yet) done little to cause problems for mankind. Microsoft is another animal. Their monopoly on desktop OS's has had detrimental effects not only on that market, but upon many others near and dear to the average Slashdot reader. Monopolies are the bane of innovation and MS's monopoly has slowed the advancement of many fields including: desktop OS's, server OS's, Web technologies, digital media, internet technology, video games, and security technology. They have probably been the single most detrimental force in the computing industry for the last decade.
However, in this case, It doesn't matter whether Google gets Doubleclick or not.I agree with that.
There is a basic principle in economics, that states the natural order of things is a duopoly, with one company with 60% and the other with 40& of the market.I don't agree with this. There is a tendency for a market to remain balanced between two or more players with each catering primarily to different market segments. (In the absence of a monopoly at which point all markets tends to consolidate into that monopoly unless it is regulated by an outside influence). I don't however see what this has to do with the proposed merger, since it is not market consolidation, but a company entering a second market.
Google gets more than a 60% market share, customers will start pressuring for a alternative. They can't help it, institutions rule how they react en mass.Google has about 40% of the online ad market. They have only a few percent of the total ad market. This merger does not increase that market share at all. Maybe in another four years Google will reach 60%, but until then your theory does not really apply.
The only result of this is that Google shareholders are going to be might upset in a few years when this doesn't give Google dominance over the market.That doesn't seem to be Google's strategy. Instead they seem to be entering myriad related markets, some successfully and some not in the hopes of gaining revenue from them. I don't think their plan is to dominate and rest on their laurels. They're investing far too heavily in talent for that. They're an innovation company that has built a business plan on coming up with cool new Web technologies and hoping some of them turn into real revenue streams.
In the past few months, Google has gone from "Do no Evil" to suspicion of being very evil.I don't think most advertising buyers or the general public care what Slashdot thinks. They go for what works for them, and "evil" has little or nothing to do with it.
But it is that I just wish Google leadership hired someone who had some idea of how to execute a strategy in the face of competitive intelligence operations, it is embarrassing how easily Google is being trashed.Maybe there is some marketing working against them, but I really don't see it. All I see is conspiracy theories on Slashdot that add up to nothing substantial. If MS is concentrating their astroturf money here they're wasting it.
Agree with them on what? I still can't make heads or tails of what they're claiming is the problem. I don't even see the market they're claiming Google is monopolizing, let alone what the specific abuse would be.
It's a bit frightening how big in the online ad market Google is becoming.Yeah, they hit about 40% this year, which is a lot, but nowhere near a monopoly. Also, since this acquisition doesn't gain them any more share of that same market, I don't see why anyone would consider blocking the merger.
It's also easy to draw conclusions of how cool Microsoft was early on, and how evil they are now.Umm, a rich kid who bought a low-end product and made it the dominant player through shrewd and ruthless business moves, while looking like jackass to the industry by complaining about how everyone was stealing it and by intentionally breaking competing products even in the early days. I don't know that they were ever "cool."
I'm already starting to see it happen with Google... They've already got the private information networking done, and now they're going after dominance and purchasing market via company mergers.But they're moving into complimentary markets, not buying out competitors in the same market. Further, they're not using their "dominance" in any market to cause problems with competing products, as MS did.
You can say there is danger that Google will act illegally and anticompetitively, but until they actually do it, all you have is empty speculation.
Microsoft. Sorry for the typo.
True, but those claims seem pretty empty by themselves.
They're trying to use their search engine and advertising to tie in other features and expand into those markets.They're using money to buy their way into a complimentary market. For anything to be anticompetitive, they have to have monopoly influence in an existing market and they have to be using that influence in a way companies without such influence cannot. So what do they have a monopoly on and what have they done a company without a monopoly could not?
My reasoning is that you seriously have a problem if the FTC actually holds up a merger to investigate anti-trust violations. Especially under the current administration, which is extremely pro-business.The FTC routinely looks into and signs off on large mergers in the US, especially if there is a complaint. My father used to work for a lumber retailer and when they bought out a small, local chain the FTC held them up for month. Does anyone thing there is any danger of the retail lumber market being monopolized by a company 99% of people here have never heard of?
I don't see that anything you've said has actually provided any argument that MS has a case. Sure we shouldn't reject their claims because it is MS, but the fact the FTC looked into is not indicative of anything, especially since they agreed to the merger and found no reason to stop it.
MS's actions with regard to IE were designed to use their monopoly to introduce artificial problems with the competition. Incorrectly rendering random parts of HTML so that developers are motivated to fail to adhere to standards is a way to artificially break the competition. Opera loads the same page and it looks broken, because of an intentional act of MS, only possible because they had monopoly influence. That is illegal. It is antitrust abuse.
This is relevant because for Google to be abusing a monopoly we need to know what they have a monopoly on and in what way they have abused it to artificially break the competition.
You may have a cheaper distribution path, but you have the same difficulty breaking into the market. Do you think that website X would rather go with a large, well established advertiser such as Google or DoubleClick, or with Advertiser Joe Shmo to serve ads on their page?I think advertisers will go with whoever they think gives them the best results for the best price. I think the market is competitive and if someone has a great plan to sell highly localized and better targeted ads, they are motivated to bring it to market and if they have a better product they'll start to gain market share. I think if you expand that, you certainly can take market from Google. More importantly, I can't think of anything Google has done that will intentionally hinder you from bringing your service to market that they could not have done without a monopoly on whatever you think they have a monopoly on.
What argument? I looked at their charts and they made no sense. What market are they claiming Google has a monopoly on? They have about 40% of the online advertising market and as far as I know that is their largest market. Google is acquiring an ad hosting provider, another market which is still healthy and competitive. I don't see the monopoly, let alone what MS is claiming is the abuse of that monopoly.
MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's (according to the courts). Google has sufficient market share in the Web browser market to constitute monopoly influence as (again) multiple courts have ruled. MS is using their influence in Web browsers, to promote their online search service by tying them together via making MSN the default search in IE. That is clearly illegal according to both US and EU law. If the EU has not stopped that behavior, where it is so clear cut, why should they interfere with Google's acquisition?
The numbers aren't in for 2007 yet. We'll probably see them mid-january. For 2006, however, most exploits were the result of worms with no user interaction by a significant margin. Maybe this is changing, but I doubt that has happened yet. A lot of security people tend to focus a lot on threats that might affect them, like their network of WinXP SP2 systems, and forget that there is still a large ecosystem of older Windows systems out there that make up the lion's share of boxes being compromised.
What worms have you heard of that are in the wild now causing problems?Over the last two weeks, a variation of the Slammer worm has been making the rounds and compromising a lot of machines. More generally Web services worms have been big, doing drive-by bot installations all year.
Allow me to clarify. You're correct that some malware developers have *NIX experience. Many control networks run on compromised Linux machines and all the Web front ends I've seen used to rent botnets out are running on Apache. That said, I think this control system and those Web front ends are made by a much rarer breed than the average botnet herder. The average herder I've met (online) has a skill level a bit above the normal script kiddie. They rely heavily on code and tools they purchase or steal and adapt slightly themselves. The one thing they do that requires many hands is go through security mailings and fuzz Windows programs looking for new exploitable vulnerabilities. I think it would take a while for the malware community to adapt for other OS's. The motivation is already there for OS X. It is a juicy target no one is competing for, with a better selection of mineable financial info, but no one has managed to really tap it yet. There have been exploitable vulnerabilities, public and waiting for a worm, but they just haven't done it.
I was thinking of Vista, but assuming we're talking about WinXP, then in either case the bot has plenty of permission as the user to be malicious and send spam, participate in a DDoS, or steal user data. The one thing it can't do that it might want to is disable anti-virus. That is slightly harder on Linux or Vista than on WinXP, but once you're in it is just a matter of breaching one more layer with a local escalation, and those are not really uncommon on Linux (and absurdly common on Vista right now). On could make the argument that in some cases Vista is more secure though in that some of the common things a bot wants to do are sandboxed, whereas while they could be in Linux with SELinux or something, they are not that way by default on any common distribution.
...suffice it to say, that once you convince a user that you're legitimate and that they want your eCard (that's how this malware spreads), you can just give them a command to copy/paste into the "Run Program" dialog box.Your post seems predicated upon the assumption that the means of compromise is a trojan. Right now, that is not the common case, especially for bots. While there are more types of trojans out there, each compromises a fairly small number of boxes. Most boxes by number are still compromised by automated worms that have no user interaction component to them.
I think you're right that Linux is no more secure against trojans than Windows, maybe less so even, but you have to keep in mind that even if that is the case, that's still less than half of the exploits happening. You need to address the question of exposed services and ease of using a user application with a malicious payload to insert a useful bot.
...but i bet that some in that development can be translated to unix/mac systems (as is the user the one that mainly installs it, think in i.e. when was corrupted the SquirrelMail repository, if someone send spams away to make people to download it before it gets catched, and that installs in fact a trojan with that functionality).Just to clarify, while there are lots of different trojans including those for Mac/Linux and they are in the wild, trojans are still not he biggest threat. While there are more trojans than worms, worms still compromise more machines than trojans and worms that exploit network services or applications, with no user interaction, are still the most common cause of a compromise; especially for zombies in a botnet.