How does Photoshop acquire the ability to pipe files on Windows when you start using Monad, without being changed to do so?
The same way photoshop on OS X does with bash, by using the standard APIs. Now I'm not sure that photoshop on Vista with Monad will do this today, but I bet a whole lot of software will. Note, as far as I know Monad does not have pipes, per se, more like it has the ability to pass objects which can be files. I have not had a chance to experiment very much with Monad yet and it does not yet ship with Windows. Once it does and it has stabilized, we'll see if it is actually usable for this purpose.
If you care enough to think that this is wrong, then you should care enough to not support that magazine at all. It goes for anything too. If the consumer would actually have and enforce his own values through his purchases, everything would work itself out.
The nature of capitalism is to capitalize upon human greed. That is to say, you can rely upon each individual to act in their own best, short term interests. PC Mag fired someone for not deceiving the customers, thus it is in customers own best interests not to buy the magazine, but to go with a competitor who gives them more accurate info. In general, capitalism takes time to work through high levels of misinformation, but eventually it happens. This has nothing to do with idealism on the part of purchasers, merely self-interest. An economic system that tries to rely upon idealism is extreme socialism, where theoretically everyone works for the benefit of all, but realistically people still act out of greed and put themselves first so you end up with inferior products and lots of corruption.
If you are %100 anti Microsoft then you should not use or support their products. If all consumers did that then companies would fold when they fuck up like this.
Microsoft has monopoly influence in the desktop OS market, and possibly the Web browser and office application markets. The problem with a monopoly is you can use your large amount of influence in the market to create artificial problems with competing products. For example, if I'm trying to compete in the music jukebox software market, but MS bundles their own competitor with the OS, forcing everyone to buy it when they buy Windows (WMP developers don't work for free and money from Windows sales pays them) then users will be forced to pay for two players if they buy my product, whereas they only have to pay for one when they buy MS's creating an artificial problem with my player (doubled cost). Since MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's, they can apply this to basically all of my customers. Those customers, acting not altruistically for the good of society, but merely in their own best interests will use the MS player because they don't feel like paying again. Thus capitalism fails.
That is the whole point of regulating the actions of monopolies, to stop them from breaking capitalism. You cannot rely upon unregulated capitalism or the idealism of consumers in real world markets.
If you really did not like Microsoft, you would find a way not to give them your money or support (in market share,etc).
Yeah and if people really cared about the value of human life we would not need laws making murder illegal. We could just rely upon the altruism of people to stand by their ideals and not kill. I don't see either that or not regulating monopolies as a real, practical option though, in a functional society.
Many Mac users shy away from X11 because it feels too different...
I'd say many mac users shy away from X11 applications, not because they are different, but because X11 applications tend to be very much inferior. They break numerous UI conventions of Aqua programs and are missing a lot of what is considered "standard" functionality, like key bindings, spellchecking, and integration with other applications and the OS. When I see X11, it tells me the program was a quick and dirty port, not a serious effort at making a mac application.
I use X11 applications, but usually not the same way as most OS X users. I've had a better experience running X11 applications under Kubuntu in a VM on top of OS X than I have running them "natively" on OS X. Some of them are even faster that way.
So let's review some of the useful utilities and features of cygwin in the midst of our baseless trashing of it, shall we?
What the hell are you talking about? Listen, cygwin is one of the first things I install on every Windows box. It is currently, absolutely essential for me. It is a great tool. That doesn't mean it does not have inherent limitations or that it is not a hack.
Sorry, but it pisses me off to hear someone say "Cygwin is a hack" when they obviously lack sufficient knowledge and experience to understand or even begin to appreciate what it offers, and then proceeds to criticize it based on some whacky, oddball special case scenario using straw-dog logic.
Let me guess, you don't know what the term "hack" means in the computer science context? A hack is a clever way to make software do something that it was not designed for. Hacking, is making software behave in ways the original design did not account for. The original design of Windows did not allow for a functional command shell or for a Linux compatibility environment. Cygwin is a hack to port a shell and useful CLI tools from Linux to compensate for that. It is not a way to properly introduce a native shell in Windows that integrates properly with applications on Windows. Monad, is an attempt by MS to alter the design of Windows to include a native shell that does integrate with Windows applications. Monad is not a hack.
Time will tell which is more useful and used, but recognizing that Cygwin is a hack is not a criticism, rather it is recognizing the type of design it is. Hacks are harder to make work really well, which speaks to all the effort the Cygwin team has done. They don't really have the option of making changes to Windows to facilitate a proper and formal design. Because it is a hack, it will almost certainly have some limitations, which Monad need not. I've already explained to you, in another part of this thread, what a major one of those limitations is and given examples of how the functionality is lacking in comparison to Monad's theoretical functionality.
You really need to stop being so defensive and trying to imply that everyone else simply must be ignorant, as a way to hide your own ignorance. No one knows everything and it is clear you simply don't know enough about this particular subject to understand what people are talking about. Rather than try to hide that fact and insult people, why not take it as an opportunity to learn?
On OS X it can, because the OS X version of it is built for OS X, which includes very basic support for stdin/stdout via/usr/bin/open. On Windows it can't because the Windows version does not integrate at all with Cygwin, as Cygwin is not part of Windows, just an add on. With Monad, you should be able to do the equivalent of piping files to photoshop.
The phrase "something is a non-sequitur" is common
Yup, I referenced that. It is referring to the fallacy as a noun. But you didn't refer to something as "a non-sequitur." You wrote "something is non sequitur here" which is using it as an an adjective, not a noun... a usage which makes no sense.
Your madlib attempts at being an ass [it does not follow].
I was just calling you on misapplying a term. "Non sequitur" is a specific term with a specific meaning, not a random way to call something "bad" in an unspecified way while trying to make it look like you have a big vocabulary. You still haven't explained what you thought was a non sequitur in my logical progressions.
First off, Greenpeace has not just singled out Apple. It has raised this issue with some other computer suppliers, some of whom rated better.
Greenpeace talked to other companies and published a report including them. They spent a pile of money and organized protests only against Apple. Now ask yourself, how did the other companies rate better? Are they using fewer toxins? Nope, most of the companies that got better scores than Apple use more toxins. They got better ratings because they promised certain improvements, many of which Apple has long since accomplished (as Jobs points out). In fact, Apple seems to have been singled out because they did not provide specific future plans especially in regard to one substance of very questionable environmental danger and which even the EU's new strict guidelines conclude is not a proven risk in the levels it is used.
Greenpeace is not working against these companies, it is really working with them to help reduce the environmental mess.
Really. On the points in the article did Greenpeace give Apple better or worse publicity because of being ahead of the others, or did it make up a lower score in an attempt to get press for themselves at the cost of the environment?
Highlighting environmental responsibility via the ipod sends a very strong message because the ipod is used by so many people.
Yup they created a lot of awareness, most of which was misleading. They also provided direct motivation for companies like the one I work for to ignore a comprehensive policy of improving the environmental friendliness of our products, but instead to concentrate on publishing promises since that results in more good press than actually making better products and procedures.
Perhaps in a while people will be prepared to pay a premium (??$5?? per ipod, ??$20?? per laptop etc) for proper environmental handling.
People in general won't even know what "proper handling" is. People are going to buy a product and they're going to compare features and prices. "environmental friendliness" is a feature, but only one of perception. If greenpeace publishes FUD that inaccurately portrays the relative friendliness of products, then people's buying power will result in less environmentally friendly purchases and hurt the environment. That is what they have accomplished with their campaign.
First, the cygwin project also supports an X11 implementation for the GUI interface to apps. Second, almost all Linux environment programs have a CLI component. Standard in and out is a universal concept to the OS, allowing you to use the command line to integrate different applications with one another.
If GIMP has been ported to Cygwin I would say that that is a pretty marginal, specialized usage of Cygwin for whatever you are trying to do.
Who cares if the example is GIMP. It could just as easily be LaTeX or XMLtoPDF or pretty much anything else. The point is, you can pipe data back and forth between apps running within Cygwin, but not to any native Windows applications, which seriously restricts the usefulness. Sure you can easily apply a regexp to the command line version of SVN running within Cygwin to get a lot of functionality. Now try getting that regexp to work from the bash shell with the Windows native TortioseCVS. Good luck.
To use that as an example invalidating the usefulness of Cygwin is in fact ridiculous.
No it isn't. An example is just that, one program where it is a problem. If you want to call that example ridiculously abnormal you have to show how that example differs from every other usage of that type in a way that invalidates the example. You've failed to do this. The fact that GIMP has a GUI is immaterial. I used it as an example because it is a real world example of where I use bash on OS X, but cannot use Cygwin on Windows for the same task.
I'm sure my mountain bike could also be adapted with a feature to make toast or something but I wouldn't trash its usefulness for riding on trails because it made inferior toast.
You asked how Cygwin was inferior. I gave you an example of real world use cases. I doubt anyone in the real world has to make toast with a mountain bike. Maybe you're feeling defensive because you simply don't understand the usage I'm describing, but that is no reason to make up absurd comparisons. Lets just leave it at, "cygwin fails because it runs Linux apps that don't integrate well with Windows apps" and the assumption that you don't understand in what way it fails to integrate.
Is it not possible that Greenpeace started this campaign to pressure Apple to become more green precisely because they figured Apple would be the computer company most likely to respond?
It is possible, but it doesn't actually help anything with regard to achieving Greenpeace's stated goals or benefitting the environment.
If so, it seems like Apple has done precisely what Greenpeace hoped they would do: they publicized their environmental impact to date, and promised to publicize further efforts to improve that impact in the future.
Yeah, we are all pretty well educated by Greenpeace now. All they care about is talk. You have to publish crap, or they'll come after you with incredibly misleading statements and by spending large amounts of money and manpower protesting you for only being way better than your competitors, but not publishing a bunch of marketing nonsense about it.
In this way, Apple now becomes a valuable part of Greenpeace's efforts to get all computer manufacturers to become more green.
How do you figure. They managed to generate a lot bad press for one company who was doing relatively well with regard to environmentalism, while not doing the same for companies that do poorly but publish promises that they're working on being better and in 10 years may meet the same goals Apple already has. If anything they've discouraged companies from being green, in favor of making empty, marketing promises. Seriously, as a businessman, that is the message they delivered to me loud and clear. Who cares if we just shipped a pile of environmentally unfriendly boxes overseas to avoid their environmental protection laws about to come into force. If Greenpeace calls about it, we can just publish a paper promising we'll stop that practice, while moving on with business as usual. It sure is cheaper and more effective from a marketing perspective than actually reducing the toxic chemicals in our products and packaging like Apple did.
does "interesting" include things like scripts that can check status of running services, starting, or stopping services, or scripts to synchronize data between locations?
I said "anything interesting that involves a Windows application and a CLI application." Do you need to use both for those? Nope, didn't think so.
what does "pipe[ing] output from GIMP straight to Photoshop" have to do with "anything that involves both Windows applications and CLI applications within Cygwin"?
Well, I'll explain it to you. You see, you can run GIMP from the command line within Cygwin in order to process images. Photoshop is a Windows native application. Thus piping data between them sort of has something to do with "both Windows applications and CLI applications within Cygwin." Are you trolling or are you really failing to comprehend here?
something is non-sequitur here...
Non Sequitur literally means "it does not follow." Thus your statement that "something is [it does not follow] here..." doesn't really make sense to me. You could argue that my logic is a non-sequitur (used as the informal noun to describe the logical fallacy), but I pretty much just presented facts, so you'll have a hard time making it apply.
Cygwin is a hack. It is an add on to Windows, not an integral part of it. On OS X I can pipe output from GIMP straight to Photoshop. Try that on Windows+Cygwin. Try doing anything interesting that involves both Windows applications and CLI applications within Cygwin.
How can he bash Cygwin (sorry, no pun intended) without even bothering to say anything about it?
I imagine because it is common knowledge. Cygwin is an attempt to compensate for the lack of a native shell in Windows, but it is a "good enough" work around.
It's not a soldier's job to disseminate information.
Yeah, and it's not a soldier's job to read the newspaper, or be informed about politics, or have sex. Does that justify banning those activities?
Soldier's do not know what is important to operational security and what isn't. A seemingly trivial bit of information may be a serious security breach, even though the information wasn't classified.
Great, why don't we cut all their tongues out? There are more important things than operational security, like living in a free society and having an informed populace that can make correct decisions about the direction of our government.
You wrote a long winded spiel to essentially admit "I have no fucking idea what I'm talking about". I have no idea why you think what you think, but every point you made without exception is wrong.
*golf clap* gee you managed to address exactly zero points I made. What a well thought out rebuttal. Golly, your momma must be proud. Learn to actually address the points, or stop wasting my time with your empty rhetoric. Seriously, go find every teacher you've ever had and ask them why they never taught you the rules of logic, or the rhetorical method.
No. But I think we can all agree that you are completely clueless about anything related to the military, military history, including even the most basic concept of what the military does and how it does it.
This is a pretty funny statement seeing as I'm an amateur historian who has read more about military history than probably 99% of the population.
When you join the service you lose all your rights as a citizen and all the protections of the Constitution...
Actually, certain rights are temporarily suspended, not lost, and that has nothing to do with the point I was making. If you don't agree that censoring military personal for political gain is wrong, then you fundamentally do not agree with freedom of expression as a basic human right, or you think political gain is more important than it. Either way, I think you're an idiot.
You can be ordered to do something suicidal and shot if you don't do it.
Yes you can. You can also be ordered to slowly peel the skin of of living babies. That isn't the point. The point is is it ethical for the military to order you to do that, only for the political gain of civilian politicians?
You see, what people like you don't understand is that even the seemingly most innocent comment can compromise operational security.
You see what people like you don't understand is that there are already regulations to prohibit releasing anything that could constitute a security risk, and even were that not the case, there are worse things than a security risk. Guess what, the US would be more secure if we banned all non-government controlled media, but then we've kind of already defeated ourselves haven't we?
The issue of political opinions is another matter. However, I'm not aware of this happening. Sure - it is possible this will happen. But the threat of such abuse of power has always existed within the military. Please cite an example where this is happening now.
You failed to address the point. I never said this was happening and given that the regulations have not yet been applied at all, there would be no evidence. I asked if we can agree that it happening is unethical and un-American. If you want to discuss the issue, that is fine, but you have to at least answer the questions as asked if any such discussion is to be useful.
If you can't agree that discouraging US citizens, in the military or not, from expressing their political opinions is unethical, then I understand why you're posting as a coward. At least we've reached our fundamental disagreement. I believe in freedom of expression as a basic human right, while you apparently do not.
My front end linux box (external access, http, ftp, mail, ntp, and some more services) is REGULARLY attacked. vsftpd is being attacked almost 24/7 these days (looking for insecure passwords). sshd also almost 24/7. We are talking about THOUSANDS of attacks per day. My incoming mail services gets hit (looking for open relaying) but not as much. My htpd get trolled (mostly for IIS vulnerabilities). Just a rough count: 500,000 attack attempts per day. How is this not being regularly attacked?
The attacks you describe are almost all targeted at any service running, not on a given OS. They apply equally to all platforms. SNMP attacks account for about 4% of activity. SSH accounts for about 2%. All other non-Windows Specific attacks together account for about 3%. That leaves 91% of all internet based, automated attacks being Windows specific. The vast majority of all worms, automated attacks and Web exploits only affect Windows. You may think the attacks you're subjected to are a lot, but realistically, it is a small portion.
The security mechanisms in Linux are certainly up to the task.
Yeah, the average Linux distro is up to the task of not failing to brute force attacks on SSH and FTP... but for that matter so is Windows. Hardened Linux distros are up to harder tasks of resisting some determined and directed attacks, but those are specifically what I was not talking about (I mentioned Ubuntu and OS X). If the average Linux distro for the desktop, out of the box, were subjected to as many real attacks on specific vulnerabilities in services, as Windows was, it would not currently be up to the task. I think it would quickly adapt to being up to the task, with common services and internet applications being contained by SELinux access controls or whatnot, but not as they currently exist.
No! You cannot apply the freedoms to the military that you do to the general public.
I'm not "applying freedoms to the military that apply to the general public." I'm making a statement about ethics. Just because the general public has a freedom does not mean that people in the military should not have it. I see no good reason why the military needs a rule to apply to non-classified data and non-combat situations when those are already covered by existing regulations.
You rejected my opinion that soldiers should not be restricted from corresponding about unclassified information. You said "no" to my opinion that they should not be discouraged from espousing political opinions that are are disliked by the incumbent political party. Okay then. Why? Back it up. What is your justification for claiming soldiers should be restricted from these things. How does it help America?
. Period.
Why would you type a period, then the word "period," then another period? Don't you think that is a little redundant?
The fact that you can't see that is very disconcerting.
I see that there need to be different rules. I don't see why there needs to be this rule. The fact that you don't understand that, despite my having specifically explained it is what is disconcerting.
And - damn it! - get rid of the damned Slashdot template...
This is the logical fallacy, "argument by association." Please stick to the point at hand, not what "all the people on slashdot" are doing/thinking.
I read TFA and there is NOTHING in there about politics, so stop trying to inject your own!
The rules were implemented by the executive branch of our government. That is politics. The results will affect the information accessible to the people, and that is a political issue.
This is absolutely nothing new and is not uncommon during a time of war.
Yes wartime censorship is nothing new, but it is also something that has historically been abused and resulted in needless death and suffering. That is why any given censorship should be discussed and evaluated to determine if it does more harm or good and for how dangerous abuse of that censorship can be. For reference on wartime censorship and one danger: http://www.historynewsnetwork.com/roundup/entries/ 5714.html
If fact, if you had bothered to read TFA, which you obviously did not, the one blogger that they specifcally mentioned is a "pro-victory" blogger, hardly someone who goes against the current administration.
That doesn't matter at all. The point is in enacting rules that are certain to be selectively enforced, as the the article mentions officers are already planning to do, and the potential for abuse by whomever has command of that particular branch or even whomever is controlling the executive branch that day. Perhaps the fact that pro-victory bloggers are being censored in such a way will prevent that opinion from being well transmitted to the public and that will result in less support for the war than there would be if the people were better informed. That is one danger of this policy that needs to be examined.
So, if anything this article demonstrates how this action goes against the views that are supported by the incumbent, political party!
The regulations have not yet been in effect for long enough to so how they will be used and how/if they will be abused. Worse, because of the censorship, we may never learn of any abuse.
Keep your baseless attempts to make everything political out of Slashdot and move them over to Digg where they belong.
You need to learn to read what other people write and actually address the points they make. You sound like a rabid fanboy... all enthusiasm and no logic. Please learn to think and discuss rationally.
This is not some big conspiracy theory as I'm sure many people here will immediately cry out about.
No, it does not seem like a conspiracy, just a political move to stifle dissent and misinform the people. I don't know that anyone was conspiring, just playing politics.
Far too easy to give away something that could compromise the security of a unit or a mission -- even if unintentionally. Taking this sort of precaution just makes common sense.
There are already rules designed to stop active duty soldiers from discussing anything that might compromise their missions. This is not an actionable regulation for security reasons. Do you truly believe every CO will be reading every letter and e-mail and blog posting from every soldier under them and looking for unintentional slips that might provide an enemy intel? This is all about having a regulation that can be selectively enforced. When someone writes something unpopular somewhere (whether it is that we should pull out of Iraq, or that we need more troops there) this gives the brass a way to punish the troop who wrote it since that soldier (like all soldiers) will be ignoring this rule. It also means they can make a few examples of soldiers until the troops get the message that they should not be posting anything that might be politically questionable, since that will make them a target for said selective enforcement.
Most of the blogs out there from troops are of a personal nature or in fact shed light on the fact that things are really not going as badly as is portrayed in our media here.
Yeah, and you'd better hope that no one in the brass dislikes what you're writing, since you're sure as hell not going to get every single blog posting approved by your CO.
However, as someone else mentioned, it's probably not going to be too realistic to enforce in the long run.
Its not realistic to enforce in the short run either, as even a simpleton can see. That's the whole problem. It is simply a rule designed to be ignored until they need a reason to shut down some particular opinion being expressed. That is completely un-American and unethical and that is why people are upset about this.
A lot of Slashdotters apparently don't know or conveniently forget that there's this little thing called the Uniform Code of Military Justice that effectively says, "You are no longer granted all of the freedoms that are granted to non-military personnel under the U.S. Constitution." The ability to say whatever you want is one of those lost freedoms once you sign on the dotted line.
I'd say that is rather orthogonal to the issue at hand.
But, hey, if it gives people the excuse to start spouting their holier-than-thou dogma about censorship, let's just let them do it and get that frustration out of their systems, 'kay?
Can we agree that creating military rules and using them to discourage military personal from providing unclassified information to other Americans and to discourage them from espousing political opinions that are are disliked by the incumbent political party is unethical, detrimental to the US, and thoroughly opposed to the American ideal of free speech?
This regulation is obviously unenforcable in general. The military does not have the manpower to police every communication by every military officer and family member. Why then, would such a rule be created? The only plausible explanation I have is so that they have a way to bust anyone who says something they don't like as a way of punishing people for saying any arbitrary thing they don't like and as a way to discourage members of the military from speaking their minds. Do you have a better explanation?
Now don't get me wrong. I understand the constitutionality of this and am not opposed to reasonable censorship of the military for purposes of security. This, however, seems more like a way to stifle dissenting opinions and prevent the american people from being accurately informed than an actual attempt at security. As such, I think it is a bad idea and the people involved should be demoted and or kicked out of office as that punishment applies.
I've heard that there are some hosting providers out there that are so well connected that any attempt to DDoS them just shuts down one of their upstream links, without any significant effect on global availablity of the web sites they host.
I can understand how such a thing might happen in the short term for a regular DoS attack, but why would a DDoS attack not be incoming on all their upstream links more or less equally? Obviously if you have enough bandwidth it will only clog your smaller pipes, but that is a lot more expensive of a proposition in several ways than mitigating the DDoS using standard routing techniques.
If I could buy a retail copy of OSX and install it on my AMD machine.
Legally, this is not going to happen. Apple will not and realistically cannot offer OS X for sale outside of bundling it with their hardware sales. To do so would put them in direct competition with MS's monopoly and that is a losing proposition. You simply cannot straight up compete against a monopoly. They kill you. Having a better and cheaper product is not good enough. The nature of a monopoly is such that it can introduce artificial problems with your own product, so even if it is better and cheaper it won't win most customers because those customers, acting in their own best interests, will choose the monopoly to avoid all the things the monopoly has artificially made wrong with your product (lack of interoperability, lack of support for proprietary protocols and formats that break standards, lack of support for add ons tied to those lock-in features, lack of support by other suppliers in the chain that the monopoly can strongarm).
The traditional way to compete with a monopoly is to build a separate, vertical chain of supply that bypasses them. Apple has done this. They compete against Dell and HP and Gateway, where there is no monopoly and they do a fair job of it.
Make no mistake though... the only way Apple will ever unbundle their OS and hardware is if MS's monopoly is broken or sufficiently weakened to permit real competition in the OS space and that is nowhere close to happening yet. To do so would be to cut their own throats in the market.
All things considered the logical response to targetting by a DDoS attack is to call the police first, then call a DDoS protection specialist. The only time it makes sense to pay up is if you can do a sting and get the perps arrested.
Hmm, I'd go for a slightly more proactive approach. Just get your pipes from an ISP that provides DoS protection. That way when they send the DDoS attack your ISP will call and say, "hey we're rate limiting some really suspicious traffic. Do you want to log on and take a look and decide what should be dropped?" Then you can call the police.
Not only that, but Apple doesn't consume enough chips to make it's business very interesting for AMD.
Actually, with their respective market shares a full on switch by Apple would result in something like an instant 20% jump in required production for AMD and they simply don't have enough chips to manage it without dropping the ball somewhere. AMD could scale up, of course, but not right away. That is plenty to interest AMD, but not necessarily practical.
IBM barely seemed to care when they lost Apple's business, and certainly they didn't care enough to bother making the low-power laptop CPUs that Apple desperately needed.
IBM was making its money selling high end server processors and in the embedded space. They figured out they could make more cash filling all the gaming consoles than filling all the Apple machines and they went for it. AMD, however, is focused pretty strongly on desktop and server markets.
Further, AMD barely survives at all through their intense focus on chasing Intel.
They are in trouble. That is for sure. I think they would take a hard look at Apple and would sure love to have them as a customer, although who knows about as a merger.
Apple would trash that focus, and likely cause AMD to go under.
Actually, Apple has been Intel's poster boy for new technology over the last year. Apple wants pretty much exactly what AMD is trying to create, perhaps with more focus on portables.
Steve Jobs may be a severe a-hole, but I doubt he's dumb enough to fall for a buyout of AMD.
That's the main reason I see this as improbable. AMD doesn't have the supply of chips Apple needs and their technology is frankly losing the war, especially in the portable market where Apple is focusing. What's in this deal for Apple? Why buy an unprofitable company that creates products you're not using now because they are not the best on the market? Why not maintain neutrality and buy from whoever is winning at any given time?
In the present scenario the potential extortionist has a choice - spam or extort. Spamming is currently more profitable, or so the argument goes, and therefore, there are fewer extortions.
That's a nice theory, but I don't think that is what happens in practice. From what I've seen no one runs a botnet that is constantly sending spam or performing attacks. They spend most of their time idle. If you know the right places to look there are some nice Web interfaces where you can transfer money from paypal to rent out control of a botnet for a set amount of time. The operator doesn't care if you're spamming or DDoSing people, only that he got paid. Thus, while people may find spamming more profitable, others will see a good extortion opportunity and take that as well, and still others will DDoS their competitors, or former employer, of government they dislike, or anyone else they are mad at.
Anyways, for every one extortionist, there are three script-kiddies hanging out in #l33tddos on EFnet wanting to see the level of damage he/she can impose......
Yeah, I've seen a number of session captures from botnet control networks. A lot of botnet operators are simply renting out time on their botnet and they don't care if you're sending spam for profit or trying to DDoS the americans. One session in particular was controlled by a guy attacking Denmark IP blocks during the whole mohammed cartoon debacle. It took the guy multiple tries to figure out the simple commands to launch an attack, he targeted a block of cable modems with no real value and he attacked on a port that was mostly unused anyway resulting in easy filtering and less damage. Even if no one ever pays extortion fees, there is still a lot of profit for botnet operators to rent them out to disgruntled people around the world.
Most, if not all, of the configuration-related "security problems" in Windows - the default Administrator user being a prominent one - are there expressly for the reason of keeping end users happy (eg: by not having all their badly written software refuse to work). Your argument doesn't stand up to analysis.
That is a trade off where MS chose to make easier design decisions, rather than expensive but correct design decisions. In any case, MS does respond to the demands of customers to some degree, just not usually to end users. You'll note their customers are purchasing agents for OEMs and enterprise businesses, not users.
Do you truly and honestly believe that if there were two manufacturers of Windows in competition with one another, both would not be working a hell of a lot harder on bringing security to users in a usable way?
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The same way photoshop on OS X does with bash, by using the standard APIs. Now I'm not sure that photoshop on Vista with Monad will do this today, but I bet a whole lot of software will. Note, as far as I know Monad does not have pipes, per se, more like it has the ability to pass objects which can be files. I have not had a chance to experiment very much with Monad yet and it does not yet ship with Windows. Once it does and it has stabilized, we'll see if it is actually usable for this purpose.
The nature of capitalism is to capitalize upon human greed. That is to say, you can rely upon each individual to act in their own best, short term interests. PC Mag fired someone for not deceiving the customers, thus it is in customers own best interests not to buy the magazine, but to go with a competitor who gives them more accurate info. In general, capitalism takes time to work through high levels of misinformation, but eventually it happens. This has nothing to do with idealism on the part of purchasers, merely self-interest. An economic system that tries to rely upon idealism is extreme socialism, where theoretically everyone works for the benefit of all, but realistically people still act out of greed and put themselves first so you end up with inferior products and lots of corruption.
If you are %100 anti Microsoft then you should not use or support their products. If all consumers did that then companies would fold when they fuck up like this.Microsoft has monopoly influence in the desktop OS market, and possibly the Web browser and office application markets. The problem with a monopoly is you can use your large amount of influence in the market to create artificial problems with competing products. For example, if I'm trying to compete in the music jukebox software market, but MS bundles their own competitor with the OS, forcing everyone to buy it when they buy Windows (WMP developers don't work for free and money from Windows sales pays them) then users will be forced to pay for two players if they buy my product, whereas they only have to pay for one when they buy MS's creating an artificial problem with my player (doubled cost). Since MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's, they can apply this to basically all of my customers. Those customers, acting not altruistically for the good of society, but merely in their own best interests will use the MS player because they don't feel like paying again. Thus capitalism fails.
That is the whole point of regulating the actions of monopolies, to stop them from breaking capitalism. You cannot rely upon unregulated capitalism or the idealism of consumers in real world markets.
If you really did not like Microsoft, you would find a way not to give them your money or support (in market share,etc).Yeah and if people really cared about the value of human life we would not need laws making murder illegal. We could just rely upon the altruism of people to stand by their ideals and not kill. I don't see either that or not regulating monopolies as a real, practical option though, in a functional society.
I'd say many mac users shy away from X11 applications, not because they are different, but because X11 applications tend to be very much inferior. They break numerous UI conventions of Aqua programs and are missing a lot of what is considered "standard" functionality, like key bindings, spellchecking, and integration with other applications and the OS. When I see X11, it tells me the program was a quick and dirty port, not a serious effort at making a mac application.
I use X11 applications, but usually not the same way as most OS X users. I've had a better experience running X11 applications under Kubuntu in a VM on top of OS X than I have running them "natively" on OS X. Some of them are even faster that way.
What the hell are you talking about? Listen, cygwin is one of the first things I install on every Windows box. It is currently, absolutely essential for me. It is a great tool. That doesn't mean it does not have inherent limitations or that it is not a hack.
Sorry, but it pisses me off to hear someone say "Cygwin is a hack" when they obviously lack sufficient knowledge and experience to understand or even begin to appreciate what it offers, and then proceeds to criticize it based on some whacky, oddball special case scenario using straw-dog logic.Let me guess, you don't know what the term "hack" means in the computer science context? A hack is a clever way to make software do something that it was not designed for. Hacking, is making software behave in ways the original design did not account for. The original design of Windows did not allow for a functional command shell or for a Linux compatibility environment. Cygwin is a hack to port a shell and useful CLI tools from Linux to compensate for that. It is not a way to properly introduce a native shell in Windows that integrates properly with applications on Windows. Monad, is an attempt by MS to alter the design of Windows to include a native shell that does integrate with Windows applications. Monad is not a hack.
Time will tell which is more useful and used, but recognizing that Cygwin is a hack is not a criticism, rather it is recognizing the type of design it is. Hacks are harder to make work really well, which speaks to all the effort the Cygwin team has done. They don't really have the option of making changes to Windows to facilitate a proper and formal design. Because it is a hack, it will almost certainly have some limitations, which Monad need not. I've already explained to you, in another part of this thread, what a major one of those limitations is and given examples of how the functionality is lacking in comparison to Monad's theoretical functionality.
You really need to stop being so defensive and trying to imply that everyone else simply must be ignorant, as a way to hide your own ignorance. No one knows everything and it is clear you simply don't know enough about this particular subject to understand what people are talking about. Rather than try to hide that fact and insult people, why not take it as an opportunity to learn?
On OS X it can, because the OS X version of it is built for OS X, which includes very basic support for stdin/stdout via /usr/bin/open. On Windows it can't because the Windows version does not integrate at all with Cygwin, as Cygwin is not part of Windows, just an add on. With Monad, you should be able to do the equivalent of piping files to photoshop.
The phrase "something is a non-sequitur" is commonYup, I referenced that. It is referring to the fallacy as a noun. But you didn't refer to something as "a non-sequitur." You wrote "something is non sequitur here" which is using it as an an adjective, not a noun... a usage which makes no sense.
Your madlib attempts at being an ass [it does not follow].I was just calling you on misapplying a term. "Non sequitur" is a specific term with a specific meaning, not a random way to call something "bad" in an unspecified way while trying to make it look like you have a big vocabulary. You still haven't explained what you thought was a non sequitur in my logical progressions.
Greenpeace talked to other companies and published a report including them. They spent a pile of money and organized protests only against Apple. Now ask yourself, how did the other companies rate better? Are they using fewer toxins? Nope, most of the companies that got better scores than Apple use more toxins. They got better ratings because they promised certain improvements, many of which Apple has long since accomplished (as Jobs points out). In fact, Apple seems to have been singled out because they did not provide specific future plans especially in regard to one substance of very questionable environmental danger and which even the EU's new strict guidelines conclude is not a proven risk in the levels it is used.
Greenpeace is not working against these companies, it is really working with them to help reduce the environmental mess.Really. On the points in the article did Greenpeace give Apple better or worse publicity because of being ahead of the others, or did it make up a lower score in an attempt to get press for themselves at the cost of the environment?
Highlighting environmental responsibility via the ipod sends a very strong message because the ipod is used by so many people.Yup they created a lot of awareness, most of which was misleading. They also provided direct motivation for companies like the one I work for to ignore a comprehensive policy of improving the environmental friendliness of our products, but instead to concentrate on publishing promises since that results in more good press than actually making better products and procedures.
Perhaps in a while people will be prepared to pay a premium (??$5?? per ipod, ??$20?? per laptop etc) for proper environmental handling.People in general won't even know what "proper handling" is. People are going to buy a product and they're going to compare features and prices. "environmental friendliness" is a feature, but only one of perception. If greenpeace publishes FUD that inaccurately portrays the relative friendliness of products, then people's buying power will result in less environmentally friendly purchases and hurt the environment. That is what they have accomplished with their campaign.
First, the cygwin project also supports an X11 implementation for the GUI interface to apps. Second, almost all Linux environment programs have a CLI component. Standard in and out is a universal concept to the OS, allowing you to use the command line to integrate different applications with one another.
If GIMP has been ported to Cygwin I would say that that is a pretty marginal, specialized usage of Cygwin for whatever you are trying to do.Who cares if the example is GIMP. It could just as easily be LaTeX or XMLtoPDF or pretty much anything else. The point is, you can pipe data back and forth between apps running within Cygwin, but not to any native Windows applications, which seriously restricts the usefulness. Sure you can easily apply a regexp to the command line version of SVN running within Cygwin to get a lot of functionality. Now try getting that regexp to work from the bash shell with the Windows native TortioseCVS. Good luck.
To use that as an example invalidating the usefulness of Cygwin is in fact ridiculous.No it isn't. An example is just that, one program where it is a problem. If you want to call that example ridiculously abnormal you have to show how that example differs from every other usage of that type in a way that invalidates the example. You've failed to do this. The fact that GIMP has a GUI is immaterial. I used it as an example because it is a real world example of where I use bash on OS X, but cannot use Cygwin on Windows for the same task.
I'm sure my mountain bike could also be adapted with a feature to make toast or something but I wouldn't trash its usefulness for riding on trails because it made inferior toast.You asked how Cygwin was inferior. I gave you an example of real world use cases. I doubt anyone in the real world has to make toast with a mountain bike. Maybe you're feeling defensive because you simply don't understand the usage I'm describing, but that is no reason to make up absurd comparisons. Lets just leave it at, "cygwin fails because it runs Linux apps that don't integrate well with Windows apps" and the assumption that you don't understand in what way it fails to integrate.
It is possible, but it doesn't actually help anything with regard to achieving Greenpeace's stated goals or benefitting the environment.
If so, it seems like Apple has done precisely what Greenpeace hoped they would do: they publicized their environmental impact to date, and promised to publicize further efforts to improve that impact in the future.Yeah, we are all pretty well educated by Greenpeace now. All they care about is talk. You have to publish crap, or they'll come after you with incredibly misleading statements and by spending large amounts of money and manpower protesting you for only being way better than your competitors, but not publishing a bunch of marketing nonsense about it.
In this way, Apple now becomes a valuable part of Greenpeace's efforts to get all computer manufacturers to become more green.How do you figure. They managed to generate a lot bad press for one company who was doing relatively well with regard to environmentalism, while not doing the same for companies that do poorly but publish promises that they're working on being better and in 10 years may meet the same goals Apple already has. If anything they've discouraged companies from being green, in favor of making empty, marketing promises. Seriously, as a businessman, that is the message they delivered to me loud and clear. Who cares if we just shipped a pile of environmentally unfriendly boxes overseas to avoid their environmental protection laws about to come into force. If Greenpeace calls about it, we can just publish a paper promising we'll stop that practice, while moving on with business as usual. It sure is cheaper and more effective from a marketing perspective than actually reducing the toxic chemicals in our products and packaging like Apple did.
I said "anything interesting that involves a Windows application and a CLI application." Do you need to use both for those? Nope, didn't think so.
what does "pipe[ing] output from GIMP straight to Photoshop" have to do with "anything that involves both Windows applications and CLI applications within Cygwin"?Well, I'll explain it to you. You see, you can run GIMP from the command line within Cygwin in order to process images. Photoshop is a Windows native application. Thus piping data between them sort of has something to do with "both Windows applications and CLI applications within Cygwin." Are you trolling or are you really failing to comprehend here?
something is non-sequitur here...Non Sequitur literally means "it does not follow." Thus your statement that "something is [it does not follow] here..." doesn't really make sense to me. You could argue that my logic is a non-sequitur (used as the informal noun to describe the logical fallacy), but I pretty much just presented facts, so you'll have a hard time making it apply.
Cygwin is a hack. It is an add on to Windows, not an integral part of it. On OS X I can pipe output from GIMP straight to Photoshop. Try that on Windows+Cygwin. Try doing anything interesting that involves both Windows applications and CLI applications within Cygwin.
How can he bash Cygwin (sorry, no pun intended) without even bothering to say anything about it?I imagine because it is common knowledge. Cygwin is an attempt to compensate for the lack of a native shell in Windows, but it is a "good enough" work around.
Yeah, and it's not a soldier's job to read the newspaper, or be informed about politics, or have sex. Does that justify banning those activities?
Soldier's do not know what is important to operational security and what isn't. A seemingly trivial bit of information may be a serious security breach, even though the information wasn't classified.Great, why don't we cut all their tongues out? There are more important things than operational security, like living in a free society and having an informed populace that can make correct decisions about the direction of our government.
You wrote a long winded spiel to essentially admit "I have no fucking idea what I'm talking about". I have no idea why you think what you think, but every point you made without exception is wrong.*golf clap* gee you managed to address exactly zero points I made. What a well thought out rebuttal. Golly, your momma must be proud. Learn to actually address the points, or stop wasting my time with your empty rhetoric. Seriously, go find every teacher you've ever had and ask them why they never taught you the rules of logic, or the rhetorical method.
This is a pretty funny statement seeing as I'm an amateur historian who has read more about military history than probably 99% of the population.
When you join the service you lose all your rights as a citizen and all the protections of the Constitution...Actually, certain rights are temporarily suspended, not lost, and that has nothing to do with the point I was making. If you don't agree that censoring military personal for political gain is wrong, then you fundamentally do not agree with freedom of expression as a basic human right, or you think political gain is more important than it. Either way, I think you're an idiot.
You can be ordered to do something suicidal and shot if you don't do it.Yes you can. You can also be ordered to slowly peel the skin of of living babies. That isn't the point. The point is is it ethical for the military to order you to do that, only for the political gain of civilian politicians?
You see, what people like you don't understand is that even the seemingly most innocent comment can compromise operational security.You see what people like you don't understand is that there are already regulations to prohibit releasing anything that could constitute a security risk, and even were that not the case, there are worse things than a security risk. Guess what, the US would be more secure if we banned all non-government controlled media, but then we've kind of already defeated ourselves haven't we?
You failed to address the point. I never said this was happening and given that the regulations have not yet been applied at all, there would be no evidence. I asked if we can agree that it happening is unethical and un-American. If you want to discuss the issue, that is fine, but you have to at least answer the questions as asked if any such discussion is to be useful.
If you can't agree that discouraging US citizens, in the military or not, from expressing their political opinions is unethical, then I understand why you're posting as a coward. At least we've reached our fundamental disagreement. I believe in freedom of expression as a basic human right, while you apparently do not.
The attacks you describe are almost all targeted at any service running, not on a given OS. They apply equally to all platforms. SNMP attacks account for about 4% of activity. SSH accounts for about 2%. All other non-Windows Specific attacks together account for about 3%. That leaves 91% of all internet based, automated attacks being Windows specific. The vast majority of all worms, automated attacks and Web exploits only affect Windows. You may think the attacks you're subjected to are a lot, but realistically, it is a small portion.
The security mechanisms in Linux are certainly up to the task.Yeah, the average Linux distro is up to the task of not failing to brute force attacks on SSH and FTP... but for that matter so is Windows. Hardened Linux distros are up to harder tasks of resisting some determined and directed attacks, but those are specifically what I was not talking about (I mentioned Ubuntu and OS X). If the average Linux distro for the desktop, out of the box, were subjected to as many real attacks on specific vulnerabilities in services, as Windows was, it would not currently be up to the task. I think it would quickly adapt to being up to the task, with common services and internet applications being contained by SELinux access controls or whatnot, but not as they currently exist.
I'm not "applying freedoms to the military that apply to the general public." I'm making a statement about ethics. Just because the general public has a freedom does not mean that people in the military should not have it. I see no good reason why the military needs a rule to apply to non-classified data and non-combat situations when those are already covered by existing regulations.
You rejected my opinion that soldiers should not be restricted from corresponding about unclassified information. You said "no" to my opinion that they should not be discouraged from espousing political opinions that are are disliked by the incumbent political party. Okay then. Why? Back it up. What is your justification for claiming soldiers should be restricted from these things. How does it help America?
. Period.Why would you type a period, then the word "period," then another period? Don't you think that is a little redundant?
The fact that you can't see that is very disconcerting.I see that there need to be different rules. I don't see why there needs to be this rule. The fact that you don't understand that, despite my having specifically explained it is what is disconcerting.
And - damn it! - get rid of the damned Slashdot template...This is the logical fallacy, "argument by association." Please stick to the point at hand, not what "all the people on slashdot" are doing/thinking.
I read TFA and there is NOTHING in there about politics, so stop trying to inject your own!The rules were implemented by the executive branch of our government. That is politics. The results will affect the information accessible to the people, and that is a political issue.
This is absolutely nothing new and is not uncommon during a time of war.Yes wartime censorship is nothing new, but it is also something that has historically been abused and resulted in needless death and suffering. That is why any given censorship should be discussed and evaluated to determine if it does more harm or good and for how dangerous abuse of that censorship can be. For reference on wartime censorship and one danger: http://www.historynewsnetwork.com/roundup/entries/ 5714.html
If fact, if you had bothered to read TFA, which you obviously did not, the one blogger that they specifcally mentioned is a "pro-victory" blogger, hardly someone who goes against the current administration.That doesn't matter at all. The point is in enacting rules that are certain to be selectively enforced, as the the article mentions officers are already planning to do, and the potential for abuse by whomever has command of that particular branch or even whomever is controlling the executive branch that day. Perhaps the fact that pro-victory bloggers are being censored in such a way will prevent that opinion from being well transmitted to the public and that will result in less support for the war than there would be if the people were better informed. That is one danger of this policy that needs to be examined.
So, if anything this article demonstrates how this action goes against the views that are supported by the incumbent, political party!The regulations have not yet been in effect for long enough to so how they will be used and how/if they will be abused. Worse, because of the censorship, we may never learn of any abuse.
Keep your baseless attempts to make everything political out of Slashdot and move them over to Digg where they belong.You need to learn to read what other people write and actually address the points they make. You sound like a rabid fanboy... all enthusiasm and no logic. Please learn to think and discuss rationally.
No, it does not seem like a conspiracy, just a political move to stifle dissent and misinform the people. I don't know that anyone was conspiring, just playing politics.
Far too easy to give away something that could compromise the security of a unit or a mission -- even if unintentionally. Taking this sort of precaution just makes common sense.There are already rules designed to stop active duty soldiers from discussing anything that might compromise their missions. This is not an actionable regulation for security reasons. Do you truly believe every CO will be reading every letter and e-mail and blog posting from every soldier under them and looking for unintentional slips that might provide an enemy intel? This is all about having a regulation that can be selectively enforced. When someone writes something unpopular somewhere (whether it is that we should pull out of Iraq, or that we need more troops there) this gives the brass a way to punish the troop who wrote it since that soldier (like all soldiers) will be ignoring this rule. It also means they can make a few examples of soldiers until the troops get the message that they should not be posting anything that might be politically questionable, since that will make them a target for said selective enforcement.
Most of the blogs out there from troops are of a personal nature or in fact shed light on the fact that things are really not going as badly as is portrayed in our media here.Yeah, and you'd better hope that no one in the brass dislikes what you're writing, since you're sure as hell not going to get every single blog posting approved by your CO.
However, as someone else mentioned, it's probably not going to be too realistic to enforce in the long run.Its not realistic to enforce in the short run either, as even a simpleton can see. That's the whole problem. It is simply a rule designed to be ignored until they need a reason to shut down some particular opinion being expressed. That is completely un-American and unethical and that is why people are upset about this.
I'd say that is rather orthogonal to the issue at hand.
But, hey, if it gives people the excuse to start spouting their holier-than-thou dogma about censorship, let's just let them do it and get that frustration out of their systems, 'kay?Can we agree that creating military rules and using them to discourage military personal from providing unclassified information to other Americans and to discourage them from espousing political opinions that are are disliked by the incumbent political party is unethical, detrimental to the US, and thoroughly opposed to the American ideal of free speech?
This regulation is obviously unenforcable in general. The military does not have the manpower to police every communication by every military officer and family member. Why then, would such a rule be created? The only plausible explanation I have is so that they have a way to bust anyone who says something they don't like as a way of punishing people for saying any arbitrary thing they don't like and as a way to discourage members of the military from speaking their minds. Do you have a better explanation?
Now don't get me wrong. I understand the constitutionality of this and am not opposed to reasonable censorship of the military for purposes of security. This, however, seems more like a way to stifle dissenting opinions and prevent the american people from being accurately informed than an actual attempt at security. As such, I think it is a bad idea and the people involved should be demoted and or kicked out of office as that punishment applies.
I can understand how such a thing might happen in the short term for a regular DoS attack, but why would a DDoS attack not be incoming on all their upstream links more or less equally? Obviously if you have enough bandwidth it will only clog your smaller pipes, but that is a lot more expensive of a proposition in several ways than mitigating the DDoS using standard routing techniques.
Legally, this is not going to happen. Apple will not and realistically cannot offer OS X for sale outside of bundling it with their hardware sales. To do so would put them in direct competition with MS's monopoly and that is a losing proposition. You simply cannot straight up compete against a monopoly. They kill you. Having a better and cheaper product is not good enough. The nature of a monopoly is such that it can introduce artificial problems with your own product, so even if it is better and cheaper it won't win most customers because those customers, acting in their own best interests, will choose the monopoly to avoid all the things the monopoly has artificially made wrong with your product (lack of interoperability, lack of support for proprietary protocols and formats that break standards, lack of support for add ons tied to those lock-in features, lack of support by other suppliers in the chain that the monopoly can strongarm).
The traditional way to compete with a monopoly is to build a separate, vertical chain of supply that bypasses them. Apple has done this. They compete against Dell and HP and Gateway, where there is no monopoly and they do a fair job of it.
Make no mistake though... the only way Apple will ever unbundle their OS and hardware is if MS's monopoly is broken or sufficiently weakened to permit real competition in the OS space and that is nowhere close to happening yet. To do so would be to cut their own throats in the market.
Hmm, I'd go for a slightly more proactive approach. Just get your pipes from an ISP that provides DoS protection. That way when they send the DDoS attack your ISP will call and say, "hey we're rate limiting some really suspicious traffic. Do you want to log on and take a look and decide what should be dropped?" Then you can call the police.
Actually, with their respective market shares a full on switch by Apple would result in something like an instant 20% jump in required production for AMD and they simply don't have enough chips to manage it without dropping the ball somewhere. AMD could scale up, of course, but not right away. That is plenty to interest AMD, but not necessarily practical.
IBM barely seemed to care when they lost Apple's business, and certainly they didn't care enough to bother making the low-power laptop CPUs that Apple desperately needed.IBM was making its money selling high end server processors and in the embedded space. They figured out they could make more cash filling all the gaming consoles than filling all the Apple machines and they went for it. AMD, however, is focused pretty strongly on desktop and server markets.
Further, AMD barely survives at all through their intense focus on chasing Intel.They are in trouble. That is for sure. I think they would take a hard look at Apple and would sure love to have them as a customer, although who knows about as a merger.
Apple would trash that focus, and likely cause AMD to go under.Actually, Apple has been Intel's poster boy for new technology over the last year. Apple wants pretty much exactly what AMD is trying to create, perhaps with more focus on portables.
Steve Jobs may be a severe a-hole, but I doubt he's dumb enough to fall for a buyout of AMD.That's the main reason I see this as improbable. AMD doesn't have the supply of chips Apple needs and their technology is frankly losing the war, especially in the portable market where Apple is focusing. What's in this deal for Apple? Why buy an unprofitable company that creates products you're not using now because they are not the best on the market? Why not maintain neutrality and buy from whoever is winning at any given time?
That's a nice theory, but I don't think that is what happens in practice. From what I've seen no one runs a botnet that is constantly sending spam or performing attacks. They spend most of their time idle. If you know the right places to look there are some nice Web interfaces where you can transfer money from paypal to rent out control of a botnet for a set amount of time. The operator doesn't care if you're spamming or DDoSing people, only that he got paid. Thus, while people may find spamming more profitable, others will see a good extortion opportunity and take that as well, and still others will DDoS their competitors, or former employer, of government they dislike, or anyone else they are mad at.
Yeah, I've seen a number of session captures from botnet control networks. A lot of botnet operators are simply renting out time on their botnet and they don't care if you're sending spam for profit or trying to DDoS the americans. One session in particular was controlled by a guy attacking Denmark IP blocks during the whole mohammed cartoon debacle. It took the guy multiple tries to figure out the simple commands to launch an attack, he targeted a block of cable modems with no real value and he attacked on a port that was mostly unused anyway resulting in easy filtering and less damage. Even if no one ever pays extortion fees, there is still a lot of profit for botnet operators to rent them out to disgruntled people around the world.
That is a trade off where MS chose to make easier design decisions, rather than expensive but correct design decisions. In any case, MS does respond to the demands of customers to some degree, just not usually to end users. You'll note their customers are purchasing agents for OEMs and enterprise businesses, not users.
Do you truly and honestly believe that if there were two manufacturers of Windows in competition with one another, both would not be working a hell of a lot harder on bringing security to users in a usable way?