"They want to run any damn thing they please, but they want the OS to stop it from doing anything malicious."
These two goals are fundamentally in conflict, since "malicious" cannot be objectively and programmatically defined.
No, they are not. Only a user knows what they want to do, but it is the OS's responsibility to tell them what is happening and give them the control to do what they want. It may not be possible to define malicious, "but it is possible to programmatically define "uncommon" and "without asking the user."
No, it wouldn't. You have proposed the standard "dialog box storm" solution to security, and it doesn't work.
Useless dialogue boxes, written in cryptic language, that don't provide the needed information or options, and which train the user to select one of the same two options over and over again, don't work. That does not mean a well made system cannot, work, only that a certain horrible, half-assed implementation of it does not. Reasonable default permissions should result in fewer, not more dialogue boxes than a user is subjected to today.
Primarily because users are lazy, but also because they're ignorant and simply uninterested in acquiring sufficient knowledge to make educated decisions.
First, users have never been given the information or the level of control needed. Until then, branding them as "lazy" or "ignorant" is absurd. A user should not need a PhD to operate an everyday tool, which is about equivalent to the level of knowledge required to actually work around all the security holes and poor design decisions of most OS's today. It is the job of the OS to give them the information and the present them with choices.
Even with a PhD, it is nearly impossible so safely run an untrusted binary on Windows XP, for example, without downloading third-part tools. If I have a random game called "mutant blast" and I want to play it, but not let it modify my personal files, or my OS, or communicate on the internet I have to create a whole new user account, then restrict the permission on that account severely, then install the program and then play it. It may or may not run at this point, regardless of if it is malware or a legitimate game and if it is malware, it can probably still escalate privileges and ruin my system. Until the average user can easily and safely run random programs, we will always be at risk from trojans, since users will sacrifice security, for functionality... a choice they should never have to make. In any case, a user does not want to create a new identity, they just want to safely run a game. Why does that have to be so hard?
Asking the user "are you sure" three times is not more secure than asking them "are you sure" twice.
You shouldn't be asking the "are you sure." You should be asking when a program wishes to do something unusual or using more permissions than the user has configured for it. For example, by default no programs should access the local user's files, except the program that generated it. If something I download from the internet wants to read my.doc files, the computer should present a legible dialogue with real actions as options. "The program 'web accelerator" wants to read your personal, word-processing files. (Stop it from doing so.)(Let it read, but not write to them, them this one time.)(always let it read, but not write, these files.)(Advanced Options)." How about, "the program 'naked pictures' wants to access your IM buddy list. (stop it from reading your buddy list)(let it read your buddy list once)(always let it read your buddy list)(Advanced Options)."
A normal user can understand those dialogues and they are given real choices, not the ridiculously poorly designed (OK)(Cancel) crap. This type of system will stop 99% of all malware propagation today and actually give users the information and granular control they need to use their computer. It will also appear very rarely in a well designed system, with well designed so
...our job is simple: keep unauthorized software off of the users' machines.
This epitomizes MS culture and why they constantly fail. By making themselves the gatekeepers of "authorized" software, MS realizes anew way to take money away from developers. It completely ignores what users want. User's don't want to be restricted to a subset of software that is "authorized." They want to run any damn thing they please, but they want the OS to stop it from doing anything malicious.
I've said it before... new software on Windows should be running in a jail or sandbox or VM or something and by default should not be allowed to touch anything without the user being informed in real English and given the option to granularly deny the software, without stopping that software from running in most cases. This would solve the vast majority of Window's and IE's security problems. If they cared about security they would have leveraged one of the many VM companies they have bought out and fixed it, instead of developing their own malware scanning product and making money off of it.
Some, yes. Some of the hooks existed already as part of Microsoft's great failure: placing "user-friendly" over security.
User-friendly and secure are not polar opposites. Letting your user know a downloaded file has multiple extensions and is really a program, not a bunch of pictures, is user friendly. Not letting random code from the Web execute and install spyware and malware is user friendly. Not providing an easy way to block ads is not user friendly. Where do you get this idea that IE is more user friendly? It is not.
That is ultimately what has made their software so vulnerable: in the interest of maintaining their hold on the market, they made their OS as easy to use as possible.
Horse hockey. Their interests were in making things as proprietary as possible on the Web and tying to more markets, like Web services and their server offerings. The reason their security is crap is because they had no motivation to fix it, so they ignored it and did the minimum work possible while concentrating on more profitable monopoly abuses.
What the telcos want is to be able to charge a different amount based on the type of traffic. Less for html, more for netmeeting, voip.
They can already do that and are doing that. What they want is to charge different amounts for the same type of traffic, depending upon who the customer is and how much they need a given service. This will make them more money, but it also directly violates the principal of a "common carrier" and the only justification for granting them all the common carrier privileges they now enjoy.
Since I can hide my voip traffic by tunneling it on port 80, for example, the only way to do this is to charge more for guaranteed latency and then slow everything else down and deliver it out of order.
So long as it is encrypted, this is mostly true, but they can identify the endpoints of the tunnel and make good guesses based upon those endpoints. Mostly though, what they are likely to do is look for companies with critical services and then extort them for traffic they know they need. HTTP for Google. Encrypted tunnels for a company that makes a lot of VoIP calls. More importantly, they can discover rival companies, like Google and MSN search and make them bid for which one gets more consistent and faster delivery of the same kind of traffic. Individuals won't have to worry about this for a while, except in that it effects their communication with said companies.
I wouldn't dream of writing a large document in anything other than LaTeX; the learning curve may be a bit steep but once you're up to speed you'll be amazed and thankful for the gobs of work the system will save you.
I like Latex and use it for some projects, but the language itself is very cludgy and dated. You have to use hacks to insert graphics or even color text. Now these hacks are very well known and explained, but it is still a huge pain. It also is problematic if your project ever becomes large enough that you need to add multiple writers. Finding a secondary writer/editor who can use Latex, or is willing to learn will probably move you to the upper half of the pay range among writers (something that can be a problem if you just want a part-time helper or are budget constrained). Sometimes a GUI front end can mitigate this (like Lyx) but it is still not ideal.
It is very nice for revision control and collaboration, subethaedit is a godsend for the latter. Maybe I just haven't found the right tools for Latex, but I've certainly looked. Viewing the positioning and sizing of graphics in real-time and being able to drag and drop them is pretty basic functionality for most layout tools, but I haven't seen a way to do it in the Latex tools I've worked with. It makes the usability and learnability somewhat below par.
Do companies make money from their proprietary instant messengers? Is it just ad revenue?
Both. Some companies sell "pro" IM clients and a number get ad revenue from the download page or from ads embedded in the client. The real money, of course, is in dominating the entire space so you can begin charging for access or tying to other features. No one has managed that and hopefully Google will get them to give up on it.
However, when will it be that instant messenging gets a standard protocol (or regains it, i.e. IRC)? When I want to email someone, I know their address and I can email them, I don't have to think about which program they are using to read/write their email. When I want to call someone on the phone, I dial their phone number to reach them anywhere in the world.
Additionally a standard protocols allows an individual or company to run their own server for security and stability reasons. Luckily, such a protocol exists. It is called Jabber and is an approved, open standard. Google has implemented it for their GTalk IM system and Apple has implemented it in their iChat program. I think GAIM supports it as does Trillian (pro only?). The difficulty is, since the existing protocols and social networks are closed, people can't easily migrate away without the ability to interchange. Hopefully, Google will take over enough of the market that other companies will see the value in being able to intercommunicate and we will all get that standard protocol and a defacto standard as well. You can already send messages via the Jabber protocol to anyone who has a Gmail account and the IM client is built into the Webmail interface to it. It works the same as e-mail for addressing, (username@gmail.com or username@somedomain.foo).
Maybe google will have one.
They already do. Also, Jabber is widely deployed in enterprise businesses for secure, internal messaging.
If you're trying to give up drinking you don't take an occasional belt from your hip flask, even if everyone else around you is still drunk off their ass.
So you're comparing Windows to an addiction? I think your analogy is flawed. These are tools we're talking about. Here's a different analogy. When working in the garden using a roto-tiller, sometimes it is tempting to use a shovel for certain tasks. This is wrong, because soon you'll find that using a shovel is easier in some cases.
People should use whatever tool is most suited to their needs.
Then they surf the web a bit with Firefox and may or may not notice how much better it runs under Windows. Reluctantly they reboot into Linux and feel the withdrawl symptoms. Soon they're installing VMware or Cedega but it's just not as good as the raw experience.
If their Web browsing and application availability in Linux is inferior, why should they use it? I mean, I use Linux for various server roles, but I'm certainly not going to use it as my default workstation if I have a tool better suited to that task. Depending upon my needs, I pick the right tool. Why should anyone pick an inferior tool for some task? Why does strapping a shovel to the side of your roto-tiller upset you so? It adds functionality. If you find that you end up suing the shovel a lot more often than the roto-tiller, well good for you.
Really, I'm surprised Y! Messenger's not dead already. I think I have maybe one contact that uses Yahoo's messenger. Just about everyone I know uses MSN. Even ICQ's less ubiquitous than it was six years ago.
Yahoo still has about 20% of the market. ICQ is less ubiquitous because it is now owned by AOL, who integrated it with AIM. The problem with IM, in general, is everyone is looking for the big win and wants their little walled garden to take over so they can make money as the gatekeeper of all IM communications. They should just all announce they are moving to open standard protocols, like jabber, and then we would not need cumbersome work arounds like multi-protocol clients. Use Trillian, but try to migrate everyone to Jabber, either by running your own server or using Google Gtalk. It will end this madness.
Planning and writing good, maintainable documentation is not a really simple task. I'd really recommend you find a contractor with real experience to build a workflow to meet your needs. It will probably save you money in the long run. Assuming that is not an option, you can use many of the same techniques you do for coding. Write out a specification for your toolset. What platforms need to be able to edit the docs? What formats do you need to output? Do you need to reuse content? Do you need conditional text for multiple releases (like rebranded OEM versions). What level of training will the writers and editors have? Do you need spelling and grammar checkers? Will multiple people be collaborating on it and do you need versioning? How long will it be? Will it include a large number of graphics? Are their compliance requirements from the government, partners, or handicapped accessibility?
Once these criteria are determined you can evaluate tools. For some jobs OpenOffice or even MSWord is appropriate. For others, Framemaker+Webworks, InDesign, or Quark would be better. For still others Latex or just a plain old XML editor is ideal. Then there are more integrated solutions like AuthorIT. There are a lot of people who devote their careers to understanding these tools and workflows. Most of the tools have demo versions or are free. The defacto standard in the industry is Framemaker, which is a pretty conservative bet for any project and very "middle of the road." It only works properly on Windows, so you might need to buy a dedicated box for it in some environments.
Once you have built a workflow around some tools, the job of maintaining the documentation becomes much easier. Again, I highly recommend you hire a pro to set it up, otherwise you may end up doing it all over again as you run into tool limitations and realize you failed to follow industry best practices and now have to migrate everything or customize every tool you use.
What do you mean "he did no real testing"? What the heck do you think predictive hypotheses are?
They are hypothesis, not experiments (AKA tests). He composed a number of hypothesis, but others tested them with experiments by observing natural phenomenon that matched his hypothesis.
Of course that is real testing. To say otherwise is ridiculous.
I don't particularly want to engage in a semantic argument. I don't think it is ridiculous at all.
one common mistake is that people use darwins[sic] theories to say evolution is correct, but all his theories say is that if you survive better then something else, then you become dominant.
Have you read Darwin's work? He postulates a number of things. One is that animals that survive better breed more. One is that hereditary traits make an animal more or less likely to survive. He postulates specifically that species subjected to a specific stress will adapt based upon these two mechanisms. He calls this, "evolution."
darwins[sic] theories were not tested with wide mutated genetic variables, all of his theories were done with regular genetic variation.
Darwin did not do any real testing, only observation and hypothesis. Others tested his theories via a wide range of mechanisms, from predictions about the fossil record to direct induction of large amounts of mutagens and specific stresses. I''m not sure what you mean by "regular genetic variation" as applied to this particular subject. What Darwin did not theorize about (in his popular written works), but which is often erroneously attributed to him is a theory of the origin of life. Maybe you're thinking of Lavorkian, who proposed evolution based not upon heredity, but upon changes in a creature within its lifespan?
How long will it take for this to be dragged into the Intelligent Design community as "proof" that "Darwinism" is wrong for some reason?
You are misjudging fundamentalist christians. They don't talk about butterflies. The subject is just a little too 'flamboyant' and their rampant homophobia will stifle any conversation that might lead others to think, for any reason, that they might secretly be aroused by the thought of butt sex.
How viable are they as a species if they are unable to find partners for mating?
They mean 'viable' in the sense that they can breed and are not sterile, like many hybrid animals (think donkeys) are. The wing patterns are probably mentioned because presumably these butterflies will breed with their own in the wild, building up a population of the species without merging with the parent species by interbreeding back with them until they are indistinguishable.
The moral is watch what people do, don't listen to what they say.
This is a good point. MS has been legally obligated under court orders in several countries to interoperate with others by providing others with access to Exchange protocol documentation, but have been judged failing in that compliance by both the US and the EU. If they won't interoperate when the courts specifically order them to, why should be expect them to do so in other areas?
Regardless of the reasons why Microsoft donated the software the end result is that the kids are the winners.
Did you read that from a marketing brochure?
Their schools are now going to have some money that would have been spent on software that can now be spent on other things to improve their education.
Except the alternative software is free, so the cost for both of these is basically support. Oh, and if they are using all MS software, that means it does not interact with any other, so they have to pay MS whenever they get new stuff, rather than getting it free. Oh and MS software intentionally makes it hard to switch to anything else, so if in the future MS does not decide to be generous again you're faced with choosing between a large cost to buy more from them or an even larger cost to scrap your current systems and migrate everything to a free solution.
I still feel, it is not a good decision, looking at huge market (over 1 billion people) of India.
I'm confused. They did not stop selling in India, in fact they just inked new distribution deals there. They just pulled out of hiring a significant number of developers and support staff there. Consider how many of those billion people are competent programmers versus how many are currently in demand. It is already nearly impossible to hold onto a good programmer there and a dozen major companies announcing that they are building big operations over there is not going to help. Apple is a smaller company which, luckily is pretty nimble. They can go somewhere else without taking a huge loss, unlike IBM and the like who react more slowly. I suspect smaller scale outsourcing to other places can yield much greater returns.
...I think it was a bad move by Apple. IBM CEO & executives are much more experienced and powerful in the corporate world than Apple executives are.
Or maybe they did not feel like competing for the scarce, good programmers with IBM and a few hundred other companies. Really, there are better, cheaper places for outsourcing and outsourcing itself has significant drawbacks. As for the relative competence of IBM and Apple executives, I think you may wish to review the track records in the last 5 years.
Of course, it occurs to me that the MPAA is whining because they want to charge MORE than that. Oy vey. The problem with ITunes is that there's no damn tail...A dollar (or ten) is too much for 80% of the stuff that could be sold.
Retail CDs stores are at the mercy of the RIAA. They charge what they are told or they die. The RIAA has been convicted numerous times of price fixing. Thus when Apple started the ITMS they included a flat rate in the contracts. This eliminated the possibility of price fixing and, incidentally showed the promise of removing some of the RIAA's leverage over artists. If they can't threaten jack up the prices to make your album tank, then they lose a lot of sway.
It worked and despite the high prices, iTunes offered more granularity and convenience and is a success. Now the RIAA is scared. They see the possibility that the distribution chain will shift significantly to online, thus making them more useless weight than ever.
Enter the recording industry. Looking at this same possibility, they demand tiered pricing so that should the store become successful (which they don't want) then they can still fine tune sales with higher prices and effectively kill it.
I'm unsure of what exactly it means to be advantaging themselves in the 'music jukebox software' space. Their music jukebox software is free.
Are the developers who work on it paid? If so, then it is not free, it is "bundled." That is to say, you pay the cost of it when you buy other products. This is fine and people use this technique all the time, right up until you bundle it with something you have a monopoly on and for which there is an existing, competitive market.
The question at hand is whether their owning the iPod and using that to encourage users to utilize a particular service for content (iTMS) is illegal/wrong.
Bundling is the first form of tying used as an example in US law, when discussing illegal actions for a monopoly. EU law treats it just the same way. MS was convicted of giving their media player away for free with Windows. How is Apple giving their iTunes program away with iPods and different? (assuming Apple is ruled to have a monopoly)?
Apple makes money selling/licensing songs. That is pretty clearly a market. Lots of other people also sell song downloads. If Apple gains an advantage due to an existing monopoly, they are breaking the law.
All of the anti-trust arguments rest on Apple's market share. In turn, in order for the iTMS to be relevant, it seems to me that you'd have to prove the availability of iTMS on the iPod and NOT on other players to be a factor in the purchasing decision of the iPod.
No. No. No. Antitrust law isn't about stopping a monopoly from maintaining that monopoly. It is about stopping them from leveraging that monopoly into more monopolies and thereby bypassing the competitive marketplace. Assuming Apple has a monopoly with the iPod and they tie the iPod to ITMS (which they do), then Apple gains an advantage. Suppose ITMS and the Napster service are both about the same quality. In a free market, customers would decide which is better and everyone would win as they struggle against one another to make better services and lower prices. Because Apple has a monopoly on iPods and because ITMS is tied to the iPod, it gains an advantage. This is not because it is better, just because Apple has tied it to the iPod and won't let Napster do the same. So maybe Napster loses in the market instead of wins. An inferior product has gained market share. Customers end up using that inferior product. The market has failed.
Fast forward five years. Apple has a monopoly on both music players and music downloads. They tie each to another new product and take over two more markets, despite not innovating a better product in that market. This can continue ad infinitum until only a few monopolies dominate all markets. That is why it is illegal.
The iPod was a massive hit before iTMS was doing well, and iTMS is an effort to capitalize on a much bigger product - the sale of iPOD hardware.
And that is fine, right up until Apple has a monopoly on that first product... then it becomes illegal for them to capitalize upon it to take over new markets.
Rather, they're using their market position to encourage people to buy music through iTMS, because it's easier than ripping CDs. Making things easier is not monopolistic; making *other* things *harder* deliberately is. The former is innovation. The latter is anticompetitive.
You don't seem to understand antitrust law at all, either the purpose or the laws themselves. Using a monopoly market position to encourage people to buy anything in another market is illegal, because it stifles innovation in the other market. Why should Apple make a better music service if they can more easily gain market share by leveraging the iPod and bundling it with their monopoly? You definition of monopolistic is way off. Monopolistic does not mean "bad" it means controlling an entire market.
Leveraging a market position to sell more of something is not illegal.
Leveraging a monopoly market position to sell more of something in anot
Try talking to someone who's actually implemented a public-key system with a large number of users. It's very difficult to do properly, and it gets more difficult as the number of users increases. With a large pool of uneducated users, I doubt that it's feasible.
It's feasible, but it has to start from the other end to really work. That is to say, AOL and Comcast and Microsoft and Apple and several other big players need to agree on a standard first. Then they all need to implement it, by default, in their mail clients, both web based and otherwise. I know implementing it as a single organization trying to communicate with the world is a pain. That is why we need a real standard and buy in from the major players. (Self-signing is just fine.)
Meanwhile, MS may have actually made a rational choice by shipping software that's a security disaster -- since they're a monopoly, they won't gain any market share by improving security.
Mostly true, certainly not significant market share versus the cost.
They are already guaranteed 100%. The only way you can get less is by giving/selling away your rights.
Suppose you're a musician. Your goal is to get the world to hear your music and you'd like to make a living at it. You're really good. So you decide to sell your music and use copyright, as intended, to make money doing so. After a few weeks you realize that a cartel (legally defined as such) owns the distribution chains needed to reach more than a tiny segment of the population. Without their buy-in you will never sell your music in any major store, be played on the radio, or on television and basically you'll be shut out. Now this cartel exists and has been convicted of their illegal behaviors numerous times. You go to them and they say, "sure, even though you did 90% of the work we want you to sign this complex contract giving away somewhere between 90% and 130% of the profit, depending upon how many copies sell." After careful review you realize even if you do fairly well for sales, you'll actually end up owing them money for giving up your copyright to them. But, your goal is to be heard, so you have to suck it up and hope you can make enough money selling t-shirts and doing other things to pay them back and maybe make enough to live on.
I think this situation is sickening. If you don't, well go to hell.
It probably has something to do with the fact that it is being created at a faster rate.
Nope. It has to do with infinitely long copyright durations. Ever see the movie, "It's a wonderful life" at christmas time? It is a timeless classic. If its copyright had not expired and PBS did not air it, you'd never have heard of it. It was a box office flop and the studio threw it in a box never to be seen again (until it entered the public domain). That was back when copyrights only lasted 14 years. No movie, book, music, etc. has entered the public domain for over 40 years and it is likely none ever will again. Over 40 years sitting in a warehouse, things decay. The last copies of many works are now gone. How many of them would have become timeless classics? The majority of great works are not recognized as such until long after they are initially presented. The vast majority of those great works, will now never enter the public eye or be recognized. We all know how wonderful media executives are at picking the best things for us to see. That is why of the top 10, best selling TV series on DVD, 4 were cancelled in the first season. How many never make it to DVD and how many will never be recognized for how wonderful they are? How many books? How many songs?
Copyright law is doing the exact opposite of what it is intended and because of the wording of the constitution, congress just has to claim that they are incompetently trying, rather than maliciously ignoring the stated purpose of copyright and the supreme court is powerless. Our descendants' artistic heritage is going down the shitter. They don't even keep reference copies anymore. Welcome to the new dark ages, all for the meager profit on that half a percent of works that still make money after 10 years.
And you are wrong, because you assume ice always floats.
I made no such assumption, in fact I mentioned kinds of ice that don't float earlier in this thread, if you bothered to read it. For example, ice weighed down by impurities, or attached to a land mass, and even rare cases of very dense ice. Now as to whether non-floating ice which is not on a land mass makes up a significant factor, I doubt it.
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"They want to run any damn thing they please, but they want the OS to stop it from doing anything malicious."
These two goals are fundamentally in conflict, since "malicious" cannot be objectively and programmatically defined.
No, they are not. Only a user knows what they want to do, but it is the OS's responsibility to tell them what is happening and give them the control to do what they want. It may not be possible to define malicious, "but it is possible to programmatically define "uncommon" and "without asking the user."
No, it wouldn't. You have proposed the standard "dialog box storm" solution to security, and it doesn't work.
Useless dialogue boxes, written in cryptic language, that don't provide the needed information or options, and which train the user to select one of the same two options over and over again, don't work. That does not mean a well made system cannot, work, only that a certain horrible, half-assed implementation of it does not. Reasonable default permissions should result in fewer, not more dialogue boxes than a user is subjected to today.
Primarily because users are lazy, but also because they're ignorant and simply uninterested in acquiring sufficient knowledge to make educated decisions.
First, users have never been given the information or the level of control needed. Until then, branding them as "lazy" or "ignorant" is absurd. A user should not need a PhD to operate an everyday tool, which is about equivalent to the level of knowledge required to actually work around all the security holes and poor design decisions of most OS's today. It is the job of the OS to give them the information and the present them with choices.
Even with a PhD, it is nearly impossible so safely run an untrusted binary on Windows XP, for example, without downloading third-part tools. If I have a random game called "mutant blast" and I want to play it, but not let it modify my personal files, or my OS, or communicate on the internet I have to create a whole new user account, then restrict the permission on that account severely, then install the program and then play it. It may or may not run at this point, regardless of if it is malware or a legitimate game and if it is malware, it can probably still escalate privileges and ruin my system. Until the average user can easily and safely run random programs, we will always be at risk from trojans, since users will sacrifice security, for functionality... a choice they should never have to make. In any case, a user does not want to create a new identity, they just want to safely run a game. Why does that have to be so hard?
Asking the user "are you sure" three times is not more secure than asking them "are you sure" twice.
You shouldn't be asking the "are you sure." You should be asking when a program wishes to do something unusual or using more permissions than the user has configured for it. For example, by default no programs should access the local user's files, except the program that generated it. If something I download from the internet wants to read my .doc files, the computer should present a legible dialogue with real actions as options. "The program 'web accelerator" wants to read your personal, word-processing files. (Stop it from doing so.)(Let it read, but not write to them, them this one time.)(always let it read, but not write, these files.)(Advanced Options)." How about, "the program 'naked pictures' wants to access your IM buddy list. (stop it from reading your buddy list)(let it read your buddy list once)(always let it read your buddy list)(Advanced Options)."
A normal user can understand those dialogues and they are given real choices, not the ridiculously poorly designed (OK)(Cancel) crap. This type of system will stop 99% of all malware propagation today and actually give users the information and granular control they need to use their computer. It will also appear very rarely in a well designed system, with well designed so
This epitomizes MS culture and why they constantly fail. By making themselves the gatekeepers of "authorized" software, MS realizes anew way to take money away from developers. It completely ignores what users want. User's don't want to be restricted to a subset of software that is "authorized." They want to run any damn thing they please, but they want the OS to stop it from doing anything malicious.
I've said it before... new software on Windows should be running in a jail or sandbox or VM or something and by default should not be allowed to touch anything without the user being informed in real English and given the option to granularly deny the software, without stopping that software from running in most cases. This would solve the vast majority of Window's and IE's security problems. If they cared about security they would have leveraged one of the many VM companies they have bought out and fixed it, instead of developing their own malware scanning product and making money off of it.
Some, yes. Some of the hooks existed already as part of Microsoft's great failure: placing "user-friendly" over security.
User-friendly and secure are not polar opposites. Letting your user know a downloaded file has multiple extensions and is really a program, not a bunch of pictures, is user friendly. Not letting random code from the Web execute and install spyware and malware is user friendly. Not providing an easy way to block ads is not user friendly. Where do you get this idea that IE is more user friendly? It is not.
That is ultimately what has made their software so vulnerable: in the interest of maintaining their hold on the market, they made their OS as easy to use as possible.
Horse hockey. Their interests were in making things as proprietary as possible on the Web and tying to more markets, like Web services and their server offerings. The reason their security is crap is because they had no motivation to fix it, so they ignored it and did the minimum work possible while concentrating on more profitable monopoly abuses.
What the telcos want is to be able to charge a different amount based on the type of traffic. Less for html, more for netmeeting, voip.
They can already do that and are doing that. What they want is to charge different amounts for the same type of traffic, depending upon who the customer is and how much they need a given service. This will make them more money, but it also directly violates the principal of a "common carrier" and the only justification for granting them all the common carrier privileges they now enjoy.
Since I can hide my voip traffic by tunneling it on port 80, for example, the only way to do this is to charge more for guaranteed latency and then slow everything else down and deliver it out of order.
So long as it is encrypted, this is mostly true, but they can identify the endpoints of the tunnel and make good guesses based upon those endpoints. Mostly though, what they are likely to do is look for companies with critical services and then extort them for traffic they know they need. HTTP for Google. Encrypted tunnels for a company that makes a lot of VoIP calls. More importantly, they can discover rival companies, like Google and MSN search and make them bid for which one gets more consistent and faster delivery of the same kind of traffic. Individuals won't have to worry about this for a while, except in that it effects their communication with said companies.
I wouldn't dream of writing a large document in anything other than LaTeX; the learning curve may be a bit steep but once you're up to speed you'll be amazed and thankful for the gobs of work the system will save you.
I like Latex and use it for some projects, but the language itself is very cludgy and dated. You have to use hacks to insert graphics or even color text. Now these hacks are very well known and explained, but it is still a huge pain. It also is problematic if your project ever becomes large enough that you need to add multiple writers. Finding a secondary writer/editor who can use Latex, or is willing to learn will probably move you to the upper half of the pay range among writers (something that can be a problem if you just want a part-time helper or are budget constrained). Sometimes a GUI front end can mitigate this (like Lyx) but it is still not ideal.
It is very nice for revision control and collaboration, subethaedit is a godsend for the latter. Maybe I just haven't found the right tools for Latex, but I've certainly looked. Viewing the positioning and sizing of graphics in real-time and being able to drag and drop them is pretty basic functionality for most layout tools, but I haven't seen a way to do it in the Latex tools I've worked with. It makes the usability and learnability somewhat below par.
Do companies make money from their proprietary instant messengers? Is it just ad revenue?
Both. Some companies sell "pro" IM clients and a number get ad revenue from the download page or from ads embedded in the client. The real money, of course, is in dominating the entire space so you can begin charging for access or tying to other features. No one has managed that and hopefully Google will get them to give up on it.
However, when will it be that instant messenging gets a standard protocol (or regains it, i.e. IRC)? When I want to email someone, I know their address and I can email them, I don't have to think about which program they are using to read/write their email. When I want to call someone on the phone, I dial their phone number to reach them anywhere in the world.
Additionally a standard protocols allows an individual or company to run their own server for security and stability reasons. Luckily, such a protocol exists. It is called Jabber and is an approved, open standard. Google has implemented it for their GTalk IM system and Apple has implemented it in their iChat program. I think GAIM supports it as does Trillian (pro only?). The difficulty is, since the existing protocols and social networks are closed, people can't easily migrate away without the ability to interchange. Hopefully, Google will take over enough of the market that other companies will see the value in being able to intercommunicate and we will all get that standard protocol and a defacto standard as well. You can already send messages via the Jabber protocol to anyone who has a Gmail account and the IM client is built into the Webmail interface to it. It works the same as e-mail for addressing, (username@gmail.com or username@somedomain.foo).
Maybe google will have one.
They already do. Also, Jabber is widely deployed in enterprise businesses for secure, internal messaging.
If you're trying to give up drinking you don't take an occasional belt from your hip flask, even if everyone else around you is still drunk off their ass.
So you're comparing Windows to an addiction? I think your analogy is flawed. These are tools we're talking about. Here's a different analogy. When working in the garden using a roto-tiller, sometimes it is tempting to use a shovel for certain tasks. This is wrong, because soon you'll find that using a shovel is easier in some cases.
People should use whatever tool is most suited to their needs.
Then they surf the web a bit with Firefox and may or may not notice how much better it runs under Windows. Reluctantly they reboot into Linux and feel the withdrawl symptoms. Soon they're installing VMware or Cedega but it's just not as good as the raw experience.
If their Web browsing and application availability in Linux is inferior, why should they use it? I mean, I use Linux for various server roles, but I'm certainly not going to use it as my default workstation if I have a tool better suited to that task. Depending upon my needs, I pick the right tool. Why should anyone pick an inferior tool for some task? Why does strapping a shovel to the side of your roto-tiller upset you so? It adds functionality. If you find that you end up suing the shovel a lot more often than the roto-tiller, well good for you.
Really, I'm surprised Y! Messenger's not dead already. I think I have maybe one contact that uses Yahoo's messenger. Just about everyone I know uses MSN. Even ICQ's less ubiquitous than it was six years ago.
Yahoo still has about 20% of the market. ICQ is less ubiquitous because it is now owned by AOL, who integrated it with AIM. The problem with IM, in general, is everyone is looking for the big win and wants their little walled garden to take over so they can make money as the gatekeeper of all IM communications. They should just all announce they are moving to open standard protocols, like jabber, and then we would not need cumbersome work arounds like multi-protocol clients. Use Trillian, but try to migrate everyone to Jabber, either by running your own server or using Google Gtalk. It will end this madness.
Planning and writing good, maintainable documentation is not a really simple task. I'd really recommend you find a contractor with real experience to build a workflow to meet your needs. It will probably save you money in the long run. Assuming that is not an option, you can use many of the same techniques you do for coding. Write out a specification for your toolset. What platforms need to be able to edit the docs? What formats do you need to output? Do you need to reuse content? Do you need conditional text for multiple releases (like rebranded OEM versions). What level of training will the writers and editors have? Do you need spelling and grammar checkers? Will multiple people be collaborating on it and do you need versioning? How long will it be? Will it include a large number of graphics? Are their compliance requirements from the government, partners, or handicapped accessibility?
Once these criteria are determined you can evaluate tools. For some jobs OpenOffice or even MSWord is appropriate. For others, Framemaker+Webworks, InDesign, or Quark would be better. For still others Latex or just a plain old XML editor is ideal. Then there are more integrated solutions like AuthorIT. There are a lot of people who devote their careers to understanding these tools and workflows. Most of the tools have demo versions or are free. The defacto standard in the industry is Framemaker, which is a pretty conservative bet for any project and very "middle of the road." It only works properly on Windows, so you might need to buy a dedicated box for it in some environments.
Once you have built a workflow around some tools, the job of maintaining the documentation becomes much easier. Again, I highly recommend you hire a pro to set it up, otherwise you may end up doing it all over again as you run into tool limitations and realize you failed to follow industry best practices and now have to migrate everything or customize every tool you use.
What do you mean "he did no real testing"? What the heck do you think predictive hypotheses are?
They are hypothesis, not experiments (AKA tests). He composed a number of hypothesis, but others tested them with experiments by observing natural phenomenon that matched his hypothesis.
Of course that is real testing. To say otherwise is ridiculous.
I don't particularly want to engage in a semantic argument. I don't think it is ridiculous at all.
It's just not my day. First I mix up donkeys and mules, then I completely botch that name. Maybe I should sleep more than 5 hours a night.
Whoops, I always get those confused.
one common mistake is that people use darwins[sic] theories to say evolution is correct, but all his theories say is that if you survive better then something else, then you become dominant.
Have you read Darwin's work? He postulates a number of things. One is that animals that survive better breed more. One is that hereditary traits make an animal more or less likely to survive. He postulates specifically that species subjected to a specific stress will adapt based upon these two mechanisms. He calls this, "evolution."
darwins[sic] theories were not tested with wide mutated genetic variables, all of his theories were done with regular genetic variation.
Darwin did not do any real testing, only observation and hypothesis. Others tested his theories via a wide range of mechanisms, from predictions about the fossil record to direct induction of large amounts of mutagens and specific stresses. I''m not sure what you mean by "regular genetic variation" as applied to this particular subject. What Darwin did not theorize about (in his popular written works), but which is often erroneously attributed to him is a theory of the origin of life. Maybe you're thinking of Lavorkian, who proposed evolution based not upon heredity, but upon changes in a creature within its lifespan?
How long will it take for this to be dragged into the Intelligent Design community as "proof" that "Darwinism" is wrong for some reason?
You are misjudging fundamentalist christians. They don't talk about butterflies. The subject is just a little too 'flamboyant' and their rampant homophobia will stifle any conversation that might lead others to think, for any reason, that they might secretly be aroused by the thought of butt sex.
How viable are they as a species if they are unable to find partners for mating?
They mean 'viable' in the sense that they can breed and are not sterile, like many hybrid animals (think donkeys) are. The wing patterns are probably mentioned because presumably these butterflies will breed with their own in the wild, building up a population of the species without merging with the parent species by interbreeding back with them until they are indistinguishable.
The moral is watch what people do, don't listen to what they say.
This is a good point. MS has been legally obligated under court orders in several countries to interoperate with others by providing others with access to Exchange protocol documentation, but have been judged failing in that compliance by both the US and the EU. If they won't interoperate when the courts specifically order them to, why should be expect them to do so in other areas?
Regardless of the reasons why Microsoft donated the software the end result is that the kids are the winners.
Did you read that from a marketing brochure?
Their schools are now going to have some money that would have been spent on software that can now be spent on other things to improve their education.
Except the alternative software is free, so the cost for both of these is basically support. Oh, and if they are using all MS software, that means it does not interact with any other, so they have to pay MS whenever they get new stuff, rather than getting it free. Oh and MS software intentionally makes it hard to switch to anything else, so if in the future MS does not decide to be generous again you're faced with choosing between a large cost to buy more from them or an even larger cost to scrap your current systems and migrate everything to a free solution.
Motives aside, is that such a bad thing?
Yes.
I still feel, it is not a good decision, looking at huge market (over 1 billion people) of India.
I'm confused. They did not stop selling in India, in fact they just inked new distribution deals there. They just pulled out of hiring a significant number of developers and support staff there. Consider how many of those billion people are competent programmers versus how many are currently in demand. It is already nearly impossible to hold onto a good programmer there and a dozen major companies announcing that they are building big operations over there is not going to help. Apple is a smaller company which, luckily is pretty nimble. They can go somewhere else without taking a huge loss, unlike IBM and the like who react more slowly. I suspect smaller scale outsourcing to other places can yield much greater returns.
Or maybe they did not feel like competing for the scarce, good programmers with IBM and a few hundred other companies. Really, there are better, cheaper places for outsourcing and outsourcing itself has significant drawbacks. As for the relative competence of IBM and Apple executives, I think you may wish to review the track records in the last 5 years.
Of course, it occurs to me that the MPAA is whining because they want to charge MORE than that. Oy vey. The problem with ITunes is that there's no damn tail...A dollar (or ten) is too much for 80% of the stuff that could be sold.
Retail CDs stores are at the mercy of the RIAA. They charge what they are told or they die. The RIAA has been convicted numerous times of price fixing. Thus when Apple started the ITMS they included a flat rate in the contracts. This eliminated the possibility of price fixing and, incidentally showed the promise of removing some of the RIAA's leverage over artists. If they can't threaten jack up the prices to make your album tank, then they lose a lot of sway.
It worked and despite the high prices, iTunes offered more granularity and convenience and is a success. Now the RIAA is scared. They see the possibility that the distribution chain will shift significantly to online, thus making them more useless weight than ever.
Enter the recording industry. Looking at this same possibility, they demand tiered pricing so that should the store become successful (which they don't want) then they can still fine tune sales with higher prices and effectively kill it.
I'm unsure of what exactly it means to be advantaging themselves in the 'music jukebox software' space. Their music jukebox software is free.
Are the developers who work on it paid? If so, then it is not free, it is "bundled." That is to say, you pay the cost of it when you buy other products. This is fine and people use this technique all the time, right up until you bundle it with something you have a monopoly on and for which there is an existing, competitive market.
The question at hand is whether their owning the iPod and using that to encourage users to utilize a particular service for content (iTMS) is illegal/wrong.
Bundling is the first form of tying used as an example in US law, when discussing illegal actions for a monopoly. EU law treats it just the same way. MS was convicted of giving their media player away for free with Windows. How is Apple giving their iTunes program away with iPods and different? (assuming Apple is ruled to have a monopoly)?
Apple makes money selling/licensing songs. That is pretty clearly a market. Lots of other people also sell song downloads. If Apple gains an advantage due to an existing monopoly, they are breaking the law.
All of the anti-trust arguments rest on Apple's market share. In turn, in order for the iTMS to be relevant, it seems to me that you'd have to prove the availability of iTMS on the iPod and NOT on other players to be a factor in the purchasing decision of the iPod.
No. No. No. Antitrust law isn't about stopping a monopoly from maintaining that monopoly. It is about stopping them from leveraging that monopoly into more monopolies and thereby bypassing the competitive marketplace. Assuming Apple has a monopoly with the iPod and they tie the iPod to ITMS (which they do), then Apple gains an advantage. Suppose ITMS and the Napster service are both about the same quality. In a free market, customers would decide which is better and everyone would win as they struggle against one another to make better services and lower prices. Because Apple has a monopoly on iPods and because ITMS is tied to the iPod, it gains an advantage. This is not because it is better, just because Apple has tied it to the iPod and won't let Napster do the same. So maybe Napster loses in the market instead of wins. An inferior product has gained market share. Customers end up using that inferior product. The market has failed.
Fast forward five years. Apple has a monopoly on both music players and music downloads. They tie each to another new product and take over two more markets, despite not innovating a better product in that market. This can continue ad infinitum until only a few monopolies dominate all markets. That is why it is illegal.
The iPod was a massive hit before iTMS was doing well, and iTMS is an effort to capitalize on a much bigger product - the sale of iPOD hardware.
And that is fine, right up until Apple has a monopoly on that first product... then it becomes illegal for them to capitalize upon it to take over new markets.
Rather, they're using their market position to encourage people to buy music through iTMS, because it's easier than ripping CDs. Making things easier is not monopolistic; making *other* things *harder* deliberately is. The former is innovation. The latter is anticompetitive.
You don't seem to understand antitrust law at all, either the purpose or the laws themselves. Using a monopoly market position to encourage people to buy anything in another market is illegal, because it stifles innovation in the other market. Why should Apple make a better music service if they can more easily gain market share by leveraging the iPod and bundling it with their monopoly? You definition of monopolistic is way off. Monopolistic does not mean "bad" it means controlling an entire market.
Leveraging a market position to sell more of something is not illegal.
Leveraging a monopoly market position to sell more of something in anot
Try talking to someone who's actually implemented a public-key system with a large number of users. It's very difficult to do properly, and it gets more difficult as the number of users increases. With a large pool of uneducated users, I doubt that it's feasible.
It's feasible, but it has to start from the other end to really work. That is to say, AOL and Comcast and Microsoft and Apple and several other big players need to agree on a standard first. Then they all need to implement it, by default, in their mail clients, both web based and otherwise. I know implementing it as a single organization trying to communicate with the world is a pain. That is why we need a real standard and buy in from the major players. (Self-signing is just fine.)
Meanwhile, MS may have actually made a rational choice by shipping software that's a security disaster -- since they're a monopoly, they won't gain any market share by improving security.
Mostly true, certainly not significant market share versus the cost.
These attacks all seem to be manual, targeting specific companies using info they gathered about those companies to spoof a real e-mail address.
They are already guaranteed 100%. The only way you can get less is by giving/selling away your rights.
Suppose you're a musician. Your goal is to get the world to hear your music and you'd like to make a living at it. You're really good. So you decide to sell your music and use copyright, as intended, to make money doing so. After a few weeks you realize that a cartel (legally defined as such) owns the distribution chains needed to reach more than a tiny segment of the population. Without their buy-in you will never sell your music in any major store, be played on the radio, or on television and basically you'll be shut out. Now this cartel exists and has been convicted of their illegal behaviors numerous times. You go to them and they say, "sure, even though you did 90% of the work we want you to sign this complex contract giving away somewhere between 90% and 130% of the profit, depending upon how many copies sell." After careful review you realize even if you do fairly well for sales, you'll actually end up owing them money for giving up your copyright to them. But, your goal is to be heard, so you have to suck it up and hope you can make enough money selling t-shirts and doing other things to pay them back and maybe make enough to live on.
I think this situation is sickening. If you don't, well go to hell.
It probably has something to do with the fact that it is being created at a faster rate.
Nope. It has to do with infinitely long copyright durations. Ever see the movie, "It's a wonderful life" at christmas time? It is a timeless classic. If its copyright had not expired and PBS did not air it, you'd never have heard of it. It was a box office flop and the studio threw it in a box never to be seen again (until it entered the public domain). That was back when copyrights only lasted 14 years. No movie, book, music, etc. has entered the public domain for over 40 years and it is likely none ever will again. Over 40 years sitting in a warehouse, things decay. The last copies of many works are now gone. How many of them would have become timeless classics? The majority of great works are not recognized as such until long after they are initially presented. The vast majority of those great works, will now never enter the public eye or be recognized. We all know how wonderful media executives are at picking the best things for us to see. That is why of the top 10, best selling TV series on DVD, 4 were cancelled in the first season. How many never make it to DVD and how many will never be recognized for how wonderful they are? How many books? How many songs?
Copyright law is doing the exact opposite of what it is intended and because of the wording of the constitution, congress just has to claim that they are incompetently trying, rather than maliciously ignoring the stated purpose of copyright and the supreme court is powerless. Our descendants' artistic heritage is going down the shitter. They don't even keep reference copies anymore. Welcome to the new dark ages, all for the meager profit on that half a percent of works that still make money after 10 years.
And you are wrong, because you assume ice always floats.
I made no such assumption, in fact I mentioned kinds of ice that don't float earlier in this thread, if you bothered to read it. For example, ice weighed down by impurities, or attached to a land mass, and even rare cases of very dense ice. Now as to whether non-floating ice which is not on a land mass makes up a significant factor, I doubt it.