So what do you do when you're at Starbucks with your PowerBook and you want to ensure that *ALL* connections are closed except TCP, ports (80, 443)?
Umm, I don't want to, since it disables some pretty nice services I use, services that are sandboxed for added security anyway. If I did I'd configure the firewall with those settings. Note: ZeroConf (AKA Bonjour) rules at the coffee shop. There is nothing like being able to send an IM to all the mac users on the local LAN and see if anyone has a Firewire cable I can borrow.
Maybe you would like to quickly change your settings to this scenario in a nice GUI without having to writing new ipfw rules you can't remember off the top of your head while sipping your quad latte.
There are several third party, GUIs to configure the firewall for 10.4, including at least one that allows you to save multiple configurations and automatically switch between them based upon location. I don't know if 10.5 allows you to do this without an added GUI, but seeing as it is something rarely desired by average users, I don't see it as a big concern.
Microsoft wanted to make their software appear user friendly and easy to use. They went ahead and created ActiveX and in numerous places like with network shares, setup the default permissions so that everyone could use it.
There is a significant difference between Apple's firewall settings and MS's use of DirectX. Apple changed the way the firewall worked to be application level and sandboxed the services that it let by the firewall. Unfortunately they misleadingly labeled that setting. When users tested it, they became upset. Apple needs to keep customers happy in order to make money, so they changed it to conform to what customers wanted. It is good business and the way the market is supposed to work. Apple wants to make money, so acting out of what could be called avarice, they give users what they want.
Microsoft has monopoly influence in the desktop OS market as well as a few other markets. They included ActiveX partly to motivate sales, but also partly to try to make Web applications tied to their monopoly to lock in customers and help leverage that OS monopoly into a Web monopoly and into the online media and services markets. It makes them a lot of money, even if it brings negative consequences to users. Users don't want to be locked in making migrations and cross-platform tools hard. Users don't gain benefit from MS taking over other markets. Because MS has a monopoly, however, it doesn't matter what users want. Since they don't have to keep users happy, MS has literally no financial motivation to fix the security problems ActiveX creates and they have significant financial motivation to not fix it.
On a very basic level, a monopolist will almost always be worse at innovating and giving users what they want than a company competing in a healthy market. The #1 best way I can think of to fix all of Window's security problems is to break up MS. Split the company into two new companies, forbid them from any non-public communication or collusion, and give both the rights to all the code, copyrights, trademarks, and patents in Windows. Users want security and both will start making real improvements since otherwise the other will be getting the money from consumers. It is my firm belief that until MS's monopoly is broken one way or another, MS will never be able to compete with Apple or Linux when it comes to security. They just aren't motivated.
But... can anyone here honestly say that if you took the entire story about the 'dodgy' firewall and replaced Apple with Microsoft that there wouldn't be people literally screaming themselves blue in the face about how insecure MS is _by_design_?
Umm, people were screaming themselves blue about how Apple's firewall was broken or fundamentally flawed or misleading. There were dozens of articles about it and hundreds of postings in discussion groups.
The difference between Apple and MS (or for that matter Linux developers and MS) is that Apple does not have a monopoly so they actually have to listen to their users and make changes to make them happy. They very quickly made sensible changes to make it clearer how the firewall behaves and addressed pretty much everyone's concerns, even those of people who really didn't know what they were talking about.
But they should not be forgiven for creating the problem in the first place because their hearts were in the right place. That kind of thinking leads to bad places.
Security is a journey not a destination. Security is about trying to allow users to do what they want while stopping things they don't want from happening. There will always be security holes and room for improvement. Concentrating on mistakes made by any vendor is counter productive. So long as the vendor responds and fixes the problem and takes a responsible attitude, they're doing fine by me.
Anyone who has even a glimmer of technical knowledge (supposedly everyone on this forum) could tell you how impossible that is on a shared network.
It is not the job of the consumer to second guess the promises advertised based upon whether or not it is possible. They could, indeed, guarantee traffic levels by customer using current technology. The consumer should not have to investigate how many people are on their same local net, nor should they be disconnected for trying to actually use the service as advertised. In case you didn't notice, Comcast sells to people who are not Slashdot readers and who do not have any expertise.
*Especially using a protocol like P2P.
Please note, P2P is not a protocol, it is a type of protocol. There are a large variety of them.
Now, you could say that all the ISPs should have enough backbone to supply each of us with full time use of the bandwidth that the ISP talks about providing.
Nope. ISPs should, however, be required to advertise what they're actually offering rather than misleading potential customers.
The problem is that this would cost a HUGE amount of money and your bill would up 10-50 times what you now pay (depending on your ISPs contention factor).
Please. Comcast does not charge cost plus a markup for service. They charge what maximized profit because in many locations they have a government enforced monopoly and because their infrastructure was subsidized by our tax dollars to the tune of billions. They don't compete because no one else can get access to the last mile public right of ways needed to lay lines and because the government won't shell out billions more to establish a second player and won't require Comcast share the lines with competitors.
The so called "net neutrality" debate is mis-named.
Net neutrality is a different issue altogether, despite propaganda trying to confuse the topic. Net neutrality is simply advocating a law that says ISPs can't treat traffic differently depending upon the source and destination of the traffic. That is to say, they can throttle all bittorrent traffic, but they can't throttle all bittorrent traffic except traffic to a service they are offering or service to a company they get paid extra by.
The question is who pays for the cost of infrastructure and who makes the profits?
The entrenched telecos make the profits, because their lobbying dollars are more influential than the threat to politicians posed by the chance that voters will be informed of how new laws affect them and vote on the issue. The infrastructure has already been paid for largely by the US taxpayer. In fact, we've already paid more per person than Sweden, which has similar population density and who subsidized the entire infrastructure and have much more widespread coverage. They have faster speeds and pay a fraction of what we do. This is despite a huge misappropriation scandal there. That means in the US we pay more monthly. after having paid more in taxes, and we have a significantly inferior system. What does that tell you aside from the fact that telecos in the US are more greedy and our government is significantly more corrupt.
Finally, we have granted these big companies immunity from prosecution for breaking a huge number of laws like copyright violation, child pornography laws, libel and slander laws, etc. We grant them this protection under the guise of their being "common carriers" but many of them are not officially bound by the restrictions we place on other common carriers. Instead they have all the benefits of common carriers, but eschew the responsibility (to carry all traffic impartially without censorship or discrimination). It is clear to me that our current laws and the way these companies operate is not in the interests of the people, but only in the interests of milking as much money as possible. If we can publicize what is happening and get people to care about how far the US is falling behind other industrialized nations, maybe we can see some real improvement and move back to the top 10 internet enabled countries in the world, where we need to be if we hope to salvage our economy.
It may not meet an RFC, but not following standards normally isn't fraud.
Not following standards is not inherently fraud, but that does not mean you cannot commit fraud by intentionally breaking standards.
It may not meet an RFC, but not following standards normally isn't fraud.
Abuse is subjective in this case. If Comcast advertises unlimited use, 24/7 at a given rate and someone tries to actually use that rate 24/7 they are not being abusive, they're trying to get their money's worth.
Leopard Claims Half the Japanese OS Market In October - most misleading slashdot title ever? Does this mean that half of Japanese computer users use Mac OSX? No.
Umm, you do know the difference between a "market" and an "install base," right? When the headline reads, "Apple claims 8% of US computer sales" that means they sold 8% of the computers in the last quarter or month or year or whatever they're using as a measure. It does not mean Apple machines make up 8% of all the computers in the US. Apple claimed half the market in Japan last quarter. They did not claim half the install base or even half the combined market for OS's and OS+hardware bundles. Maybe you just need a better understanding of the terms used.
He might be right in his claim that Mozilla is independent with or without Google's $56 million, but without the $56M Mozilla is a very different company, probably one that cannot support 120 million users or pay developers or CEOs.
Well, a lot of the contributors to Firefox are already paid by someone else, but that aside I bet both Microsoft and Yahoo would happily bid for the default search position and a whole lot of companies/portals would bid on being the default home page. Aside from that source of income, a lot of companies have a vested interest in there being a full-featured Web browser not controlled by Microsoft. I bet Sun, Adobe, and IBM would all provide either funding or developers if the need arose.
My final point is, Firefox is not necessary. Webkit and Opera are both available to pick up the slack and keep up the competition. I just don't see Google's sponsorship as being a significant risk.
But you have got to be fooling yourself if you think that the average n00b had any reason to other than fashion ditch their 8gb iPod in favor of a 20 40 80 whatever.
The earbuds look the same on both. For the most part, that is all anyone sees. I only know two people who bought video ipods, both because they wanted to use them for watching video (one while commuting, one at a night job).
...but I somehow doubt Joe sixpack is ready to pay $12,000 on iTunes, or even rip 12,000 of his own songs, or even use his pod as a usb drive to transfer files.
Last time I saw numbers, something like 1.5% of music on iPods came from the iTunes Music Store. The rest was from CDs and from downloads (P2P, other music services). I know a lot of people with more than 8 Gb on their iPod.
The features, the convenience, the interface did NOT sell iPods.
So why did iPods become popular and a fashion item in the first place?
Look at the commercials. Look at the Mac store. If you still say it is not about fashion first and technology second, I guess I lost ya.
They certainly market them as "cool" but so does everyone else with their products. The Apple store seems to have people ready to demo features and all the sales pitches I've heard deal with what they can do, not how they look.
Beyond occasional searching for music to play a particular song, I have not really met anyone who needed a slick interface on their Music files, they just hit random and go.
Being able to operate it one handed with ease, while jogging is of use to people. Having software to easily rip CDs and load the songs onto the iPod is of a lot of use to people. I knew a guy with a doctorate in satellite imaging who had so much trouble getting his CDs ripped using Windows, included software, and the software that came with his mp3 player he loaded iTunes just for that purpose.
For a whole lot of people having a slick interface lowers the barrier to entry and learning curve enough so that it is convenient enough for them.
Not only that, but how many people bought an iPod because it was the greatest thing ever and N-E-V-E-R use it?
I don't know. Do you?
If the iPhone was exactly an iPod with no new interface but with a simple cellphone built in, I believe the success would be very similar.
If the iPhone was a phone without an iPod function, but it worked as well and easily as the iPhone I think it would still be a success. I don't own either an iPhone or an iPod, but as a user interface expert I certainly admire the work that went into them and I wish any of the cell phones I've ever owned had an interface that was even close to as easy to use.
I'm probably responding to a troll, but, Apple makes hardware/software/service solution that are usable for the average person. The iPod created the mainstream market for portable digital music players because it was the first one where the entire user experience was easy enough for the average person (who until then was using a portable CD player). Until Apple stepped in it was too hard for most people to buy music online, rip CDs, and load that onto the player.
The iPhone is the same thing all over again, but replacing "portable music player" with "smartphone." It is the first cell phone with Web and e-mail, an organizer, a music player, SMS, and a few apps that is actually usable for the average Joe.
A lot of people don't understand Apple's success and try to dismiss it. They look at bullet points of features and the price and think Apple is providing too little for too much money. For some people, especially technical people that like to tinker, that is true. For the average person, however there is a lot of value in a polished user interface and overall experience.
Google makes software that works.
My experience is Google makes online services that work, and mediocre software to interface with them.
Google has been taken to task concerning Serious Privacy Issues (as I'm sure you have heard).
Nope. I know they sort through a lot of data in an automated fashion. I know they allow people to find public information some people might wish was not public. I don't have a problem with either of those and I don't see how they would be "evil." As far as I know they have a pretty good track record with regard to not handing over the data they collect to anyone without a proper warrant. Would you care to cite a few specific examples of what you consider evil that they've done?
the bottom line is that they are a for-profit publicly traded corporation whose PRIMARY BUSINESS is not Feel-Good Software For The People, but technology based advertising.
Don't consider running a for-profit business evil. It is not altruistic or "good" but not specifically evil either. I also don't find advertising particularly evil, especially when they provide less annoying advertising than I used to be subjected to. I rather like that they've helped shift part of the advertising market to text ads and ads targeted well enough that I might actually have some interest in them.
They are not in the business of saving starving children in Africa...
Yeah, and you haven't cured cancer yet. Does that make you evil or unethical?
They in fact work with China just as Yahoo does.
Actually, from what I recall, Yahoo gave the Chinese authorities information without a formal request (warrant) whereas Google provided only the data required of them under the law. As to whether or not doing business in China at all is ethical, well that is a matter of debate. Does it do more good for the people, or hurt them more? I could argue it either way and it is certainly not a black and white issue.
I can't believe no one has an English word negativity index with a Web interface. The words I can think of that could have been used include: Boss, CEO, Chairman, Director, and Head. I'm not sure I'm convinced "boss" is more negatively associated than any of the others, nor am I convinced the usage was intentionally negative instead of accidentally or subconsciously. It could be, but I see no evidence of it.
Keep on sayn' that... But actual actions (as opposed to PR smoke) show that Google is ethically about the same as most huge publically traded megacorps.
Do you have any examples or are you just making shit up? What actions have they taken that you object to? I've heard complaints. The most recent was about their acquisition of a Website statistical analysis company, whose users complained Google had stopped improving the service and left them out in the cold. Of course right after the complaints made news, someone at Google announced they had heard the complaints and were going to push new features out to those users. That right there seems a lot less evil than most corporations I have to deal with.
Thanks for the link, that answers a number of my questions.
Likewise, where do you get your figures? How large a majority of the people who own iPhones did not previously own a smartphone, and just who conducted the study?
That has been remarked upon by a number of analysts, but it can also be easily inferred simply by smart phone sales numbers. Blackberry sales did not decrease. Palm sales did, but not enough to account for more than a small fraction of iPhone buyers. Just looking at the smart phone market shows that the iPhone, as expected, largely reached their target market of people with regular cell phones instead of smart phones.
What justification do you have for the idea that a large percentage of those people never sent SMS messages?
Again, just look at the numbers of Americans using SMS regularly. A quick Google search will show you studies with numbers ranging between 25% and 45% of people in the US ever having sent an SMS message, with lower numbers for regular use. Apple's design and marketing strategy for the iPhone was to target users who don't use the advanced features of phones, because it is inconvenient, hard to use, or hard to learn. The idea is to expand the smart phone market by making it accessible to those who currently avoid it. It is the same strategy they used with the iPod, to woo portable CD player users by offering an mp3 player the average person could use easily.
Think of it this way, half of all iPhones sold to people 35 years of age or older. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project study, only about 30% of users in that age group have sent even one SMS message.
The point is, before anyone tries to use this data to support a particular causation, the study should be redone with a larger, random sampling of people, each of whom is given a particular phone, tested with it, uses it for a month or so, and then retested with it.
That's not a double standard. Nobody likes Microsoft or DoubleClick or their business practices. Google has shown themselves to be at least somewhat ethical as a company and beneficial to the advancement of technology. With Google buying DoubleClick, most of us have taken a "wait and see" approach to see if Google reforms some of DoubleClick's least ethical practices, or if it is business as usual. After the acquisition goes through (assuming it does) expect a stink about "do no evil" and some of their practices, with geek outcries here on Slashdot increasing as time goes on without reforms.
First, consider the methodology of this study. The sample size was 20 people, per device type. Who knows what the error bars on that look like? Next, nowhere do they list what they define as an error. Do common SMS abbreviations count against a user?
Another thing to consider is the target market of the iPhone. The main appeal of the iPhone is that it makes tasks easy for users, thus opening up the smartphone market to people who have never tried using advanced phone features before. The majority of the people buying iPhones previously owned a regular cell phone, not a smartphone. That means they did not have a keyboard at all and a large percentage probably never sent any SMS messages because the learning curve for figuring our how to type letters on a number pad was too high. This means, even assuming the study is accurate, the causality is by no means certain.
Last I heard, the closest Google came to being a monopoly was holding 56% of the "internet search advertising" market. That is significantly less market than the general guidelines for investigation into anti-trust normally follow (70% or higher is the norm). The acquisition of Doubleclick is a vertical acquisition. That is to say, acquiring them does not gain Google any more share of that market. Rather it is a complementary market that actually hosts the ads on the cheap and is unrelated to searching. If you broaden the market to either online marketing or marketing in general to include Doubleclick, Google holds a much, much, much smaller share and calling them a monopoly makes no sense at all.
If Google had a monopoly, there might be concern that they were spreading that monopoly into this new market. As it is, however, one of their main competitors is Microsoft, does have a legally recognized monopoly and has quite obviously tied their monopoly to their internet search ad business via the bundled inclusion of IE and IE's default search settings. So far, the EU has not even bothered addressing that abuse, even though it effects this same market. Of course this is just one of the many monopoly abuses of MS they have not gotten around to yet.
Please, please, please for the love of Buddha, do not respond to this comment with a reply about Google search in Firefox until you're prepared to explain which one is a monopoly and understand what bundling is and why it is illegal only for monopolies. I'm so tired of explaining Econ 101 here.
I find your hypothetical, unbelievable. Most Walmart customers (and computer users in general) don't know what an "operating system" is. If you ask them if they're running Windows some will say that they think so, but very few will be able to tell you which version and I doubt if most running Linux will know it isn't Windows.
Probably they're trying to use a differential pricing scheme for different countries, would be my guess. Alternately, they could be including it just to get statistics back on where their users are and since they modeled the iPod touch on the same platform as the iPhone it was just as easy to have it included to acquire that intelligence.
If that is not a jibe against Linux then nothing one can show you will convince you otherwise (after all the other 2 major OSes in the desktop are fully supported out of the box).
Windows is supported because without it their market is completely gone. OS X is supported, because Apple is using this to push OS X and make money and because OS X makes up an non-trivial portion of the market (8% in the US, concentrated among home users with disposable income). What, exactly is their incentive to port iTunes to Linux? It is between.5% and 3% of the market worldwide, with probably a much smaller share of the home market. It would be nice, but I doubt it would be profitable for Apple.
Sorry, but it just doesn't pay, yet, for Apple to consider desktop Linux at all when making business decisions. Hopefully that will change some day, but that day has not yet come.
One thing I've suspected for awhile, is that the "Linux Revolution" (Linux taking off as a desktop alternative) would NOT happen at businesses or with high-end users. It will happen much like the "Windows Revolution" happened back in the 90's. It will start with the "Walmart buyer". Ordinary people making ordinary FINANCIAL decisions to buy a cheap PC.
I'd argue that the Linux revolution started with the business crowd quite a while ago. There are quite a few large businesses that have moved some or all of their workstations to Linux as a cost saving measure. I think some uptake by the low-end home user is a good thing, but I don't expect it to be a major influence for a while (although if Walmart really pushes it, that could change). The truth is, Linux machines for the home have more drawbacks than Linux machines for office workers in many fields. Home users still want to play games and use Windows only services. Even for applications where there are free applications on Linux, many users don't know how to find them and if it isn't on the shelf at Walmart (which they aren't right now) they might as well not exist.
The popularity of this machine is a good sign, but I don't see penetration from this direction as a likely major factor for a while.
They wouldn't push so hard not to ever have Linux support on their ipods or even release specs, you know...
Apple hasn't done anything to make it easier for Linux users to use iPods, but I've never heard of them actively doing anything to stop it either. Maybe you have a persecution complex? From the evidence I see, Apple is indifferent to Linux.
No, they're just probably the single largest contributor to the GNU codebase.
So which is it? It can't be both. Mozilla makes decisions based upon revenue from the labour of its employees, does it not?
The Mozilla foundation is not capitalist and is a nonprofit. Theoretically they make decisions based upon what does the most good for their cause. The software development lead by the Mozilla foundation, however, is a largely capitalist venture funded and staffed in order to make a profit for a variety of companies, like Google.
Would you say that your company's code is crucial to Linux, or any of those other projects? Or to put it differently, if your company's code was removed tomorrow, would those projects collapse with no direction and nothing to show?
No, but our company is only a few hundred employees so our contribution is proportionally small. However, if you removed all the code contributed by employees paid to work on it by commercial entities like our company, the project would slow to a crawl. That's the point of using OSS in your business model, your expenditure on tools that contribute to (but are not themselves your core value as a company) is a shared expense with all the other project contributors. No one company outputs all the expense or faces all the risk, thus it can be a very efficient and effective way to cut costs.
Here's a quote regarding Linux development from this summer: "In his presentation at OSCON, "Current State of the Linux Kernel," Greg Kroah-Hartman made the point that... roughly 18% of contributions come from this group[Unknown Individuals], and 13% come from another group called "Amateurs." But, a member of the audience pointed out that this means the work of nearly 70% of contributors is being sponsored by industry. " Imagine if 70% of the Linux contributors, including Linus stopped working tomorrow. Would you foresee Linux continuing to be as rapidly developed and a contender?
It's also unclear to me how companies supposedly control the thousands of projects which have no legal company structure to begin with.
But they don't control the projects, they drive the projects. They help determine the direction of projects by the people they hire to work on them and the types of improvements they contribute. If you want a really good example, look at most embedded Linux distributions or look at OpenOffice.
OSS is big business, for profit and has been that way largely since its inception. Sure their are a lot of hobbyists who contribute code and a lot of users who contribute QA work, but by and large as projects become bigger and more complex, hobbyists are less effective and groups of full time coders are a necessity.
Safari? The browser whose web-search box is the most limited of any modern browser because it's locked into Google?
You can change the search by editing the XML preference file, or you can install the plug-in "AcidSearch" which will let you select multiple search providers from the GUI.
I wonder if anyone has bothered adding additional search options as a feature request on Apple's Web site? I imagine a few people want this option, but probably not too many.
Then go Safari!... err, it comes from apple which is just the second biggest Linux hater...
???
Apple hates Linux? From what evidence do you infer that? Apple doesn't even compete (financially) with Linux directly, although they do compete with products based upon Linux. I have a hard time thinking of a company that "hates" Linux. The closest I can come to other than MS, is Wind River who has to compete with it in the embedded space, but last I heard even they were looking to offer a Linux based RTOS.
It's a beta, for God's sake. It even says beta on the web site! Could it be that, when unveiling a new service, it's important to get the kinks worked out on the dominant platform before working on other platforms?
The aspect I was referring to was tying themselves to MS and WMF. Beta means "feature complete." Choosing the DRM and format is an architectural decision, unlikely to change once a beta is released.
When the 1.0 release comes, then your statement will have some validity. Not before.
Bull. They're supporting a format that is owned and controlled by MS. It is not likely to change with the 1.0 release. Sure they might add other formats eventually, but so long as they're supporting WMF they're providing MS with the opportunity to expand their power and lock in their users. Every download weakens their position relative to MS.
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Umm, I don't want to, since it disables some pretty nice services I use, services that are sandboxed for added security anyway. If I did I'd configure the firewall with those settings. Note: ZeroConf (AKA Bonjour) rules at the coffee shop. There is nothing like being able to send an IM to all the mac users on the local LAN and see if anyone has a Firewire cable I can borrow.
Maybe you would like to quickly change your settings to this scenario in a nice GUI without having to writing new ipfw rules you can't remember off the top of your head while sipping your quad latte.There are several third party, GUIs to configure the firewall for 10.4, including at least one that allows you to save multiple configurations and automatically switch between them based upon location. I don't know if 10.5 allows you to do this without an added GUI, but seeing as it is something rarely desired by average users, I don't see it as a big concern.
There is a significant difference between Apple's firewall settings and MS's use of DirectX. Apple changed the way the firewall worked to be application level and sandboxed the services that it let by the firewall. Unfortunately they misleadingly labeled that setting. When users tested it, they became upset. Apple needs to keep customers happy in order to make money, so they changed it to conform to what customers wanted. It is good business and the way the market is supposed to work. Apple wants to make money, so acting out of what could be called avarice, they give users what they want.
Microsoft has monopoly influence in the desktop OS market as well as a few other markets. They included ActiveX partly to motivate sales, but also partly to try to make Web applications tied to their monopoly to lock in customers and help leverage that OS monopoly into a Web monopoly and into the online media and services markets. It makes them a lot of money, even if it brings negative consequences to users. Users don't want to be locked in making migrations and cross-platform tools hard. Users don't gain benefit from MS taking over other markets. Because MS has a monopoly, however, it doesn't matter what users want. Since they don't have to keep users happy, MS has literally no financial motivation to fix the security problems ActiveX creates and they have significant financial motivation to not fix it.
On a very basic level, a monopolist will almost always be worse at innovating and giving users what they want than a company competing in a healthy market. The #1 best way I can think of to fix all of Window's security problems is to break up MS. Split the company into two new companies, forbid them from any non-public communication or collusion, and give both the rights to all the code, copyrights, trademarks, and patents in Windows. Users want security and both will start making real improvements since otherwise the other will be getting the money from consumers. It is my firm belief that until MS's monopoly is broken one way or another, MS will never be able to compete with Apple or Linux when it comes to security. They just aren't motivated.
Umm, people were screaming themselves blue about how Apple's firewall was broken or fundamentally flawed or misleading. There were dozens of articles about it and hundreds of postings in discussion groups.
The difference between Apple and MS (or for that matter Linux developers and MS) is that Apple does not have a monopoly so they actually have to listen to their users and make changes to make them happy. They very quickly made sensible changes to make it clearer how the firewall behaves and addressed pretty much everyone's concerns, even those of people who really didn't know what they were talking about.
But they should not be forgiven for creating the problem in the first place because their hearts were in the right place. That kind of thinking leads to bad places.Security is a journey not a destination. Security is about trying to allow users to do what they want while stopping things they don't want from happening. There will always be security holes and room for improvement. Concentrating on mistakes made by any vendor is counter productive. So long as the vendor responds and fixes the problem and takes a responsible attitude, they're doing fine by me.
It is not the job of the consumer to second guess the promises advertised based upon whether or not it is possible. They could, indeed, guarantee traffic levels by customer using current technology. The consumer should not have to investigate how many people are on their same local net, nor should they be disconnected for trying to actually use the service as advertised. In case you didn't notice, Comcast sells to people who are not Slashdot readers and who do not have any expertise.
*Especially using a protocol like P2P.Please note, P2P is not a protocol, it is a type of protocol. There are a large variety of them.
Nope. ISPs should, however, be required to advertise what they're actually offering rather than misleading potential customers.
The problem is that this would cost a HUGE amount of money and your bill would up 10-50 times what you now pay (depending on your ISPs contention factor).Please. Comcast does not charge cost plus a markup for service. They charge what maximized profit because in many locations they have a government enforced monopoly and because their infrastructure was subsidized by our tax dollars to the tune of billions. They don't compete because no one else can get access to the last mile public right of ways needed to lay lines and because the government won't shell out billions more to establish a second player and won't require Comcast share the lines with competitors.
The so called "net neutrality" debate is mis-named.Net neutrality is a different issue altogether, despite propaganda trying to confuse the topic. Net neutrality is simply advocating a law that says ISPs can't treat traffic differently depending upon the source and destination of the traffic. That is to say, they can throttle all bittorrent traffic, but they can't throttle all bittorrent traffic except traffic to a service they are offering or service to a company they get paid extra by.
The question is who pays for the cost of infrastructure and who makes the profits?The entrenched telecos make the profits, because their lobbying dollars are more influential than the threat to politicians posed by the chance that voters will be informed of how new laws affect them and vote on the issue. The infrastructure has already been paid for largely by the US taxpayer. In fact, we've already paid more per person than Sweden, which has similar population density and who subsidized the entire infrastructure and have much more widespread coverage. They have faster speeds and pay a fraction of what we do. This is despite a huge misappropriation scandal there. That means in the US we pay more monthly. after having paid more in taxes, and we have a significantly inferior system. What does that tell you aside from the fact that telecos in the US are more greedy and our government is significantly more corrupt.
Finally, we have granted these big companies immunity from prosecution for breaking a huge number of laws like copyright violation, child pornography laws, libel and slander laws, etc. We grant them this protection under the guise of their being "common carriers" but many of them are not officially bound by the restrictions we place on other common carriers. Instead they have all the benefits of common carriers, but eschew the responsibility (to carry all traffic impartially without censorship or discrimination). It is clear to me that our current laws and the way these companies operate is not in the interests of the people, but only in the interests of milking as much money as possible. If we can publicize what is happening and get people to care about how far the US is falling behind other industrialized nations, maybe we can see some real improvement and move back to the top 10 internet enabled countries in the world, where we need to be if we hope to salvage our economy.
Not following standards is not inherently fraud, but that does not mean you cannot commit fraud by intentionally breaking standards.
It may not meet an RFC, but not following standards normally isn't fraud.Abuse is subjective in this case. If Comcast advertises unlimited use, 24/7 at a given rate and someone tries to actually use that rate 24/7 they are not being abusive, they're trying to get their money's worth.
Umm, you do know the difference between a "market" and an "install base," right? When the headline reads, "Apple claims 8% of US computer sales" that means they sold 8% of the computers in the last quarter or month or year or whatever they're using as a measure. It does not mean Apple machines make up 8% of all the computers in the US. Apple claimed half the market in Japan last quarter. They did not claim half the install base or even half the combined market for OS's and OS+hardware bundles. Maybe you just need a better understanding of the terms used.
Well, a lot of the contributors to Firefox are already paid by someone else, but that aside I bet both Microsoft and Yahoo would happily bid for the default search position and a whole lot of companies/portals would bid on being the default home page. Aside from that source of income, a lot of companies have a vested interest in there being a full-featured Web browser not controlled by Microsoft. I bet Sun, Adobe, and IBM would all provide either funding or developers if the need arose.
My final point is, Firefox is not necessary. Webkit and Opera are both available to pick up the slack and keep up the competition. I just don't see Google's sponsorship as being a significant risk.
The earbuds look the same on both. For the most part, that is all anyone sees. I only know two people who bought video ipods, both because they wanted to use them for watching video (one while commuting, one at a night job).
...but I somehow doubt Joe sixpack is ready to pay $12,000 on iTunes, or even rip 12,000 of his own songs, or even use his pod as a usb drive to transfer files.Last time I saw numbers, something like 1.5% of music on iPods came from the iTunes Music Store. The rest was from CDs and from downloads (P2P, other music services). I know a lot of people with more than 8 Gb on their iPod.
The features, the convenience, the interface did NOT sell iPods.So why did iPods become popular and a fashion item in the first place?
Look at the commercials. Look at the Mac store. If you still say it is not about fashion first and technology second, I guess I lost ya.They certainly market them as "cool" but so does everyone else with their products. The Apple store seems to have people ready to demo features and all the sales pitches I've heard deal with what they can do, not how they look.
Beyond occasional searching for music to play a particular song, I have not really met anyone who needed a slick interface on their Music files, they just hit random and go.Being able to operate it one handed with ease, while jogging is of use to people. Having software to easily rip CDs and load the songs onto the iPod is of a lot of use to people. I knew a guy with a doctorate in satellite imaging who had so much trouble getting his CDs ripped using Windows, included software, and the software that came with his mp3 player he loaded iTunes just for that purpose.
For a whole lot of people having a slick interface lowers the barrier to entry and learning curve enough so that it is convenient enough for them.
Not only that, but how many people bought an iPod because it was the greatest thing ever and N-E-V-E-R use it?I don't know. Do you?
If the iPhone was exactly an iPod with no new interface but with a simple cellphone built in, I believe the success would be very similar.If the iPhone was a phone without an iPod function, but it worked as well and easily as the iPhone I think it would still be a success. I don't own either an iPhone or an iPod, but as a user interface expert I certainly admire the work that went into them and I wish any of the cell phones I've ever owned had an interface that was even close to as easy to use.
I'm probably responding to a troll, but, Apple makes hardware/software/service solution that are usable for the average person. The iPod created the mainstream market for portable digital music players because it was the first one where the entire user experience was easy enough for the average person (who until then was using a portable CD player). Until Apple stepped in it was too hard for most people to buy music online, rip CDs, and load that onto the player.
The iPhone is the same thing all over again, but replacing "portable music player" with "smartphone." It is the first cell phone with Web and e-mail, an organizer, a music player, SMS, and a few apps that is actually usable for the average Joe.
A lot of people don't understand Apple's success and try to dismiss it. They look at bullet points of features and the price and think Apple is providing too little for too much money. For some people, especially technical people that like to tinker, that is true. For the average person, however there is a lot of value in a polished user interface and overall experience.
Google makes software that works.My experience is Google makes online services that work, and mediocre software to interface with them.
Nope. I know they sort through a lot of data in an automated fashion. I know they allow people to find public information some people might wish was not public. I don't have a problem with either of those and I don't see how they would be "evil." As far as I know they have a pretty good track record with regard to not handing over the data they collect to anyone without a proper warrant. Would you care to cite a few specific examples of what you consider evil that they've done?
the bottom line is that they are a for-profit publicly traded corporation whose PRIMARY BUSINESS is not Feel-Good Software For The People, but technology based advertising.Don't consider running a for-profit business evil. It is not altruistic or "good" but not specifically evil either. I also don't find advertising particularly evil, especially when they provide less annoying advertising than I used to be subjected to. I rather like that they've helped shift part of the advertising market to text ads and ads targeted well enough that I might actually have some interest in them.
They are not in the business of saving starving children in Africa...Yeah, and you haven't cured cancer yet. Does that make you evil or unethical?
They in fact work with China just as Yahoo does.Actually, from what I recall, Yahoo gave the Chinese authorities information without a formal request (warrant) whereas Google provided only the data required of them under the law. As to whether or not doing business in China at all is ethical, well that is a matter of debate. Does it do more good for the people, or hurt them more? I could argue it either way and it is certainly not a black and white issue.
I can't believe no one has an English word negativity index with a Web interface. The words I can think of that could have been used include: Boss, CEO, Chairman, Director, and Head. I'm not sure I'm convinced "boss" is more negatively associated than any of the others, nor am I convinced the usage was intentionally negative instead of accidentally or subconsciously. It could be, but I see no evidence of it.
Do you have any examples or are you just making shit up? What actions have they taken that you object to? I've heard complaints. The most recent was about their acquisition of a Website statistical analysis company, whose users complained Google had stopped improving the service and left them out in the cold. Of course right after the complaints made news, someone at Google announced they had heard the complaints and were going to push new features out to those users. That right there seems a lot less evil than most corporations I have to deal with.
Thanks for the link, that answers a number of my questions.
Likewise, where do you get your figures? How large a majority of the people who own iPhones did not previously own a smartphone, and just who conducted the study?That has been remarked upon by a number of analysts, but it can also be easily inferred simply by smart phone sales numbers. Blackberry sales did not decrease. Palm sales did, but not enough to account for more than a small fraction of iPhone buyers. Just looking at the smart phone market shows that the iPhone, as expected, largely reached their target market of people with regular cell phones instead of smart phones.
What justification do you have for the idea that a large percentage of those people never sent SMS messages?Again, just look at the numbers of Americans using SMS regularly. A quick Google search will show you studies with numbers ranging between 25% and 45% of people in the US ever having sent an SMS message, with lower numbers for regular use. Apple's design and marketing strategy for the iPhone was to target users who don't use the advanced features of phones, because it is inconvenient, hard to use, or hard to learn. The idea is to expand the smart phone market by making it accessible to those who currently avoid it. It is the same strategy they used with the iPod, to woo portable CD player users by offering an mp3 player the average person could use easily.
Think of it this way, half of all iPhones sold to people 35 years of age or older. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project study, only about 30% of users in that age group have sent even one SMS message.
The point is, before anyone tries to use this data to support a particular causation, the study should be redone with a larger, random sampling of people, each of whom is given a particular phone, tested with it, uses it for a month or so, and then retested with it.
That's not a double standard. Nobody likes Microsoft or DoubleClick or their business practices. Google has shown themselves to be at least somewhat ethical as a company and beneficial to the advancement of technology. With Google buying DoubleClick, most of us have taken a "wait and see" approach to see if Google reforms some of DoubleClick's least ethical practices, or if it is business as usual. After the acquisition goes through (assuming it does) expect a stink about "do no evil" and some of their practices, with geek outcries here on Slashdot increasing as time goes on without reforms.
First, consider the methodology of this study. The sample size was 20 people, per device type. Who knows what the error bars on that look like? Next, nowhere do they list what they define as an error. Do common SMS abbreviations count against a user?
Another thing to consider is the target market of the iPhone. The main appeal of the iPhone is that it makes tasks easy for users, thus opening up the smartphone market to people who have never tried using advanced phone features before. The majority of the people buying iPhones previously owned a regular cell phone, not a smartphone. That means they did not have a keyboard at all and a large percentage probably never sent any SMS messages because the learning curve for figuring our how to type letters on a number pad was too high. This means, even assuming the study is accurate, the causality is by no means certain.
Last I heard, the closest Google came to being a monopoly was holding 56% of the "internet search advertising" market. That is significantly less market than the general guidelines for investigation into anti-trust normally follow (70% or higher is the norm). The acquisition of Doubleclick is a vertical acquisition. That is to say, acquiring them does not gain Google any more share of that market. Rather it is a complementary market that actually hosts the ads on the cheap and is unrelated to searching. If you broaden the market to either online marketing or marketing in general to include Doubleclick, Google holds a much, much, much smaller share and calling them a monopoly makes no sense at all.
If Google had a monopoly, there might be concern that they were spreading that monopoly into this new market. As it is, however, one of their main competitors is Microsoft, does have a legally recognized monopoly and has quite obviously tied their monopoly to their internet search ad business via the bundled inclusion of IE and IE's default search settings. So far, the EU has not even bothered addressing that abuse, even though it effects this same market. Of course this is just one of the many monopoly abuses of MS they have not gotten around to yet.
Please, please, please for the love of Buddha, do not respond to this comment with a reply about Google search in Firefox until you're prepared to explain which one is a monopoly and understand what bundling is and why it is illegal only for monopolies. I'm so tired of explaining Econ 101 here.
I find your hypothetical, unbelievable. Most Walmart customers (and computer users in general) don't know what an "operating system" is. If you ask them if they're running Windows some will say that they think so, but very few will be able to tell you which version and I doubt if most running Linux will know it isn't Windows.
Probably they're trying to use a differential pricing scheme for different countries, would be my guess. Alternately, they could be including it just to get statistics back on where their users are and since they modeled the iPod touch on the same platform as the iPhone it was just as easy to have it included to acquire that intelligence.
If that is not a jibe against Linux then nothing one can show you will convince you otherwise (after all the other 2 major OSes in the desktop are fully supported out of the box).Windows is supported because without it their market is completely gone. OS X is supported, because Apple is using this to push OS X and make money and because OS X makes up an non-trivial portion of the market (8% in the US, concentrated among home users with disposable income). What, exactly is their incentive to port iTunes to Linux? It is between .5% and 3% of the market worldwide, with probably a much smaller share of the home market. It would be nice, but I doubt it would be profitable for Apple.
Sorry, but it just doesn't pay, yet, for Apple to consider desktop Linux at all when making business decisions. Hopefully that will change some day, but that day has not yet come.
I'd argue that the Linux revolution started with the business crowd quite a while ago. There are quite a few large businesses that have moved some or all of their workstations to Linux as a cost saving measure. I think some uptake by the low-end home user is a good thing, but I don't expect it to be a major influence for a while (although if Walmart really pushes it, that could change). The truth is, Linux machines for the home have more drawbacks than Linux machines for office workers in many fields. Home users still want to play games and use Windows only services. Even for applications where there are free applications on Linux, many users don't know how to find them and if it isn't on the shelf at Walmart (which they aren't right now) they might as well not exist.
The popularity of this machine is a good sign, but I don't see penetration from this direction as a likely major factor for a while.
Apple hasn't done anything to make it easier for Linux users to use iPods, but I've never heard of them actively doing anything to stop it either. Maybe you have a persecution complex? From the evidence I see, Apple is indifferent to Linux.
No, they're just probably the single largest contributor to the GNU codebase.
So which is it? It can't be both. Mozilla makes decisions based upon revenue from the labour of its employees, does it not?The Mozilla foundation is not capitalist and is a nonprofit. Theoretically they make decisions based upon what does the most good for their cause. The software development lead by the Mozilla foundation, however, is a largely capitalist venture funded and staffed in order to make a profit for a variety of companies, like Google.
Would you say that your company's code is crucial to Linux, or any of those other projects? Or to put it differently, if your company's code was removed tomorrow, would those projects collapse with no direction and nothing to show?No, but our company is only a few hundred employees so our contribution is proportionally small. However, if you removed all the code contributed by employees paid to work on it by commercial entities like our company, the project would slow to a crawl. That's the point of using OSS in your business model, your expenditure on tools that contribute to (but are not themselves your core value as a company) is a shared expense with all the other project contributors. No one company outputs all the expense or faces all the risk, thus it can be a very efficient and effective way to cut costs.
Here's a quote regarding Linux development from this summer: "In his presentation at OSCON, "Current State of the Linux Kernel," Greg Kroah-Hartman made the point that... roughly 18% of contributions come from this group[Unknown Individuals], and 13% come from another group called "Amateurs." But, a member of the audience pointed out that this means the work of nearly 70% of contributors is being sponsored by industry. " Imagine if 70% of the Linux contributors, including Linus stopped working tomorrow. Would you foresee Linux continuing to be as rapidly developed and a contender?
It's also unclear to me how companies supposedly control the thousands of projects which have no legal company structure to begin with.But they don't control the projects, they drive the projects. They help determine the direction of projects by the people they hire to work on them and the types of improvements they contribute. If you want a really good example, look at most embedded Linux distributions or look at OpenOffice.
OSS is big business, for profit and has been that way largely since its inception. Sure their are a lot of hobbyists who contribute code and a lot of users who contribute QA work, but by and large as projects become bigger and more complex, hobbyists are less effective and groups of full time coders are a necessity.
You can change the search by editing the XML preference file, or you can install the plug-in "AcidSearch" which will let you select multiple search providers from the GUI.
I wonder if anyone has bothered adding additional search options as a feature request on Apple's Web site? I imagine a few people want this option, but probably not too many.
???
Apple hates Linux? From what evidence do you infer that? Apple doesn't even compete (financially) with Linux directly, although they do compete with products based upon Linux. I have a hard time thinking of a company that "hates" Linux. The closest I can come to other than MS, is Wind River who has to compete with it in the embedded space, but last I heard even they were looking to offer a Linux based RTOS.
The aspect I was referring to was tying themselves to MS and WMF. Beta means "feature complete." Choosing the DRM and format is an architectural decision, unlikely to change once a beta is released.
When the 1.0 release comes, then your statement will have some validity. Not before.Bull. They're supporting a format that is owned and controlled by MS. It is not likely to change with the 1.0 release. Sure they might add other formats eventually, but so long as they're supporting WMF they're providing MS with the opportunity to expand their power and lock in their users. Every download weakens their position relative to MS.