Many other programs allow print to PDF so why should MS be excluded and why should they charge for it?
There are several reasons. First, MS apparently signed an contract with Adobe long ago concerning their use of PDF. Second, no one is stopping MS from producing PDF generation tools. What they are doing is pointing out that it is illegal to bundle them with their OS due to antitrust laws and legally, MS has to offer them as separate products, not bundled into Windows. Adobe apparently offered some sort of a compromise, by which they would not take MS to court in exchange for a cut, but all of that is very unsubstantiated and the only "real" news is that MS announced they expect Adobe to take them to court.
Say MS includes PDF writing (and maybe reading) ability into Word. And MS decides that its PDF can also support any arbitrary feature that Adobe didn't plan to implement. Suddenly, Adobe would have to redo MS's work to stay compatible to its own format! Yes, it wouldn't be "official" standard, but since MS-Office is so widely used, whatever MS-Word sets as the PDF standard would be the de facto standard.
This is the standard, "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy MS has used for years, but I don't think that is their plan. They applied this to HTML with some success, but the format, like PDF is already widely deployed so it is hard to lock people in. Many users switch to Firefox, for example. Also, because of the way PDF is licensed and because they have a powerful corporate advocate, MS would be in fairly serious legal trouble in short order. It is much more clear cut than antitrust law.
Rather, I think they plan to go for the gold. They want to introduce tools that support both PDF and their new competing format. Since it is bundled, people will not bother to download Adobe's tools and they will fall by the wayside. Then, when they have sufficient market share, they deprecate writing to PDF and tell all users to switch to their proprietary format (called XPS I think?). What do users do? The path of least resistance is to stay with the same tools and switch formats. this locks them in over time both to the format and the tools and the OS. It would be like replacing HTML with a new MS created, proprietary format. I think Adobe sees it to and is fighting back hard now, in the hopes they will still be in business when the legal process gets in motion.
I think that PDF is a great standard but the Adobe Acrobat that you currently pay for is a horrible application.
Agreed, luckily right now you can choose from among dozens of competitors.
Adobe I think here is making a huge mistake, they should just license the damn format to Microsoft for a $20 per unit royalty under a restriction that MSFT doesnt include their "pdf-killer" format and ditch the Acrobat pro line.
MS does not need to "license" the format. It is an open standard. What they do need to do is comply with antitrust law and with contracts they already signed with Adobe. Adobe is not making any mistake here.
In picking this fight with Microsoft now they certainly have awoken the sleeping dragon and I'm sure they are pissed.
Umm, MS just announced they are illegally bundling a competitor to your product with their monopoly OS, thus forcing all of your customers to buy their product, whether or not they then go on to pay even more for your product. Why would you be so foolish as to pick a fight with MS?
Allowing Apple and Sun to do something (MSFTs biggest competitors) but changing the rules for Microsoft?
Apple, MS, Sun, and everyone else are all allowed to do the same thing. They can all freely use the PDF format provided they have not signed any contracts saying they won't and they aren't breaking some other law in so doing. What Apple, MS, Sun, and everyone else can't do is bundle the PDF format with a monopoly product as that would be breaking anti-trust law. Adobe should definitely pursue legal action against any of these companies that do that, since it would be breaking the law and undercutting the free market.
The Gates borg army has been on R&R for a while but I think he's going to restore all the troops into active duty to kill Adobe now. Expect Microsoft to release a really good professional grade video and graphics suites while railing hard against PDF with their new format.
If MS is allowed to bundle their new format into Windows, the fight is already over. If they can blatantly break the law, you can't compete against them. It is basic economics. What Adobe is doing, is making the transition harder while they try to get the glacially slow legal system to act before the damage is irreversible.
bubye Adobe, was nice to know ya!
I have plenty of issues with Adobe, but I have even more issues with competition being destroyed. While you applaud being locked into yet another proprietary format that will lock you into MS's OS and tools and which will be the crappiest offering on the market in 5 years, after they lose all incentive to improve it (see IE), I'd rather support their fight against this law-breaking monopoly. I'll support it not for their sake, but for my own, since I'll have to deal with the aftermath.
I would like to be able to generate PDF files from within a web-application. However, internally a PDF document is a mess. I for one would welcome an overlord who gave us a open alternative... So, now MS comes up with an XML based standard, but I will not use what they come up with until it is both good AND they behave themselves.
So there's this thing called "competition" that tends to provide better products. You see when multiple companies have to "compete" they try to make a better product and the market gets to decide the winners and losers based upon which they prefer. It works pretty well. The only problem is, a long time ago it was discovered that if one company had a monopoly on one product for any reason, then they could use it to bypass competition in other markets and instead of the market and competition deciding, they could gain market share, even with an inferior product. We took care of that by making it illegal.
I don't care what MS's offering is. I don't care if it is currently better or worse. I just want them to be stopped from bundling and tying and forced to compete on even ground. Let them offer their generation tools and format as downloads, the same as Adobe, and if they are ever better they will gain market share and if they are ever worse they will lose market share. Why is it so hard for 80% of the people here to understand this concept?
What Adobe's worried about is if a program that about 90% of people have can make.pdfs, then will anyone actually buy their.pdf maker?
I disagree. What Adobe is worried about is when 95% of the world has switched to using MS's PDF generator, what happens when MS deprecates PDF and tells everyone to switch the their new, proprietary, competitive format for writing files.
Of course, I think it's all bullshit. They let Apple and OOo use.pdf, so they shouldn't be able to change the rules for Microsoft.
They didn't "change the rules." The PDF license is open for all to use. MS can make PDFs just as well as anyone else, but that does not mean they are immune to other laws. You might as well complain if Adobe went to the police because MS execs had sent them a death threat in PDF format. But PDF is open, what right does Adobe have to complain? This has nothing to do with PDF licensing and everything to do with MS breaking anti-trust law. MS can make their own PDF generation software and their own competitive format generation software. What they can't do is bundle it with Windows. What they probably can't do is bundle it with MS Office, since MS office is illegally tied to Windows.
MS Office 2007 can do PDFs better than either the postscript route or OOo (sans any custom macros.)
Great then there is no reason for them to rely upon illegal bundling to promote it, right? They can just offer their PDF generation tools for download the same as Adobe and since MS's are better the market will move towards them. Heck, they can even bundle it with MS Office just as soon as they strip out the already illegal tying to Windows.
MS does not want to make the best product and win because of that. They don't want maintain the best product. They want to bundle a good enough product. Even if it is better now, they want to make sure it has the majority of the market if it ever becomes inferior to other offerings. IE was probably the best browser once. It certainly isn't any more, but it is the most used because competition has been bypassed. Expect the same for MS's PDF competitor in 5 years when everyone is locked in and MS has no incentive to improve it, since it is bundled.
Adobe's market share in PDF creation software is similar to Microsoft's marketshare in desktop OSes for intel-compatible CPUs.
Are you kidding? That is not even remotely true. What makes you believe this? In any case, MS is a convicted monopolist and is clearly bundling. Assuming Adobe has a monopoly on PDF generation, what exactly are they bundling it with that MS is competing against? How is Adobe locking people in to their other products, seeing as PDF is an open standard and is already implemented by dozens of other companies? You know it isn't illegal to have a monopoly, right? It is illegal to abuse one. It is clear how MS is abusing theirs, but how do you believe Adobe is abusing the monopoly you claim they have?
Adobe, wanting to protect their "quasi-monopoly", was willing to allow Microsoft Office 2007 to export PDF if Microsoft charged extra for that functionality so as to not undercut the price of Adobe's own PDF creation software.
The above is just speculation, but even if it is true, what's the problem? Adobe wanted them to provide a market force, since MS was bypassing the market.
3. Microsoft wasn't bastardizing PDF. What would be the point, since Microsoft is not producing any PDF reader? Since Microsoft isn't creating their own reader, any PDF document producted by Microsoft Office would have to be readable by other readers (and printable by printers), so why bastardize the format? Think logically.
MS can't bastardize the format since Adobe's free license and patent protection for the standard only applies to the exact standard. Instead MS's plan is to implement both PDF and XPS, until their tools take over the market (which they will if they are bundled). Then they will slowly kill PDF support, locking people into their platform and tools.
Guess what, it's perfectly readable by Acrobat Reader and any other PDF compliant reader.
Of course, MS has no real choice. They need to get the market before they break compatibility. They are on stage one, "embrace" after which them move on to "extend," or more likely in this case, "replace."
Regarding XPS, XPS is a PDF competitor based on XML.. XPS is part of Vista...
MS is bundling a competitor to existing tools with their OS, which the law has established they have a monopoly on. Has there ever been a more clear-cut case of bundling?
XPS's role in Vista is similar to PDF's role in Mac OS X. Microsoft has shared with Adobe info on XPS for several years.
How are either of these relevant? Apple has no monopoly. Adobe doesn't care about shared info, especially since their is no guarantee they can even implement it legally.
...is removing from Office 2007 built-in support for both PDF and XPS. Furthermore, Microsoft is leaving it up to OEMs as to whether they want to include XPS support in Vista itself (except for XPS's role as a spool file format for Vista's printing enhacements).
Translation: MS is trying to do the least possible to try to appear to comply with the law. And we're supposed to applaud this? MS has OEMs balls in a vice and they know it. Now they give them the choice of including a bundled item or not. Which one costs more? How much of a discount is MS giving OEMs for not including XPS support, or are they just charging them for all the development costs regardless of whether or not it is included?
Lastly, Microsoft is still going to provide PDF and XPS export support in Office 2007 as free downloadable plug-ins.
This, at least, is legal and is the only way MS can legally provide this product. All the others are breaking anti-trust law.
Lastly, please don't you (or the state of MA) ever refer to PDF as "open" in the future. If it's not open for all, then it's not truly open, period.
See, this right here shows your ignorance. Is HTML open? But MS was taken to court for bundling IE, how can HTML be open? This has nothing to do with open. Water is an open standard for drinking, but it is still illegal to bundle with a monopolized product. Get a clue.
PDF support is built into OS X, who has no monopoly and are thus in the clear.
I really believe Windows is going to disappear entirely from the desktop within the next 5 years, so Adobe's maneuver becomes moot.
This is a tactic to lock more people into Windows and make it harder for them to move to another platform. It is a slightly modified embrace, extend, extinguish. I doubt Windows will lose the desktop in the next 5 years, but assuming that is true, why begrudge Adobe fair competition?
No one uses (and most have never heard of) XPS.
No one used or had heard of Direct X before MS bundled it either.
I think you are being foolishly optimistic. MS has a monopoly. It does not matter that their product is inferior. They have already killed several superior OS's that tried to compete with them and are gaining, not losing desktop market share.
That's true, but (read-only) viewers for the other formats are available for free download from microsoft.com.
So what? Are you not understanding the concept of "bundled?" One is there by default (which 99% of users will never remove). One is not there by default and 99% of users will never know to download it. The.doc format and the MS Office suite in general are given an advantage. Don't forget the tying via the exchange format either (of which they have already been convicted).
Well, IANAL so I can't comment on what anti-trust law says, but that's not how I would expect it to work.
I'm not a lawyer either but I can read. You aren't allowed to enter a new market by leveraging your existing monopoly. If MS does this they will be entering the portable document generation market and gaining market share not through having a better format or a better implementation of PDF (not that they don't necessarily) but through bundling and tying with their existing monopoly.
If MS feels it has a better format than PDF fine. If they feel they have a better PDF generator, fine again. Let them compete on even ground by offering both as a separate product, just like Adobe has to. If it is better the market will move towards it.
To me, PDF is just another document format, and I don't see why MS Office shouldn't be able to understand it especially given that OOo already understands it.
OpenOffice is not a monopoly. Windows is. Thus, they can't bundle it with Windows. MS Office is tied illegally to Windows, thus they probably can't bundle it there either. This is not really all that hard. Just think in terms of markets. Are they entering a new market? If so, are they benefiting from having a Windows in any way (like bundling or tying). If not, they're in the clear. If so, they are breaking the law.
If they are not stopped here is what is going to happen. Most users will never buy or download PDF generation tools from third parties and MS will own most of the PDF market in a few years. MS will also provide their own PDF competitor right along with it. Then, when they have enough of the market, MS will deprecate PDF and tell everyone to move to their new format and only read, not write PDF. Since most people don't want to change tools (and are locked in anyway) they will go along. Slowly the market shifts from the Open PDF standard, readable and writable for all programs and platforms, to a closed format owned by MS. Users will be further locked into Windows and Word. Eventually, MS will kill all support for PDF, maybe going so far as to intentionally make it hard to implement a third-party reader or intentionally breaking Adobe products (as they have been caught doing in the past). Other Word processors like OpenOffice will not be an option. Since they will no longer have any incentive, MS will completely stop adding new features and improving the format or the tools, although they may add anti-features, like DRM.
And all of this will not be due to their coming up with a better product, but because they have leveraged their existing monopoly. We've already seen it happen with Internet Explorer and HTML. Right now Firefox is much, much better, but most people don't even know it exists and IE is "good enough" that they don't look for something better. We've gone from the open standard HTML to an intentionally broken version of HTML written and read by MS tools. And when was the last time MS upgraded their support for HTML? They still partially implement 6 year old standards and are single-handedly responsible for holding back development of Web technologies and retarding progress in the name of locking people in to their proprietary platform and tools. Lets think this through and not let them do it again people.
Apple wasn't trying to solve security problems with existing apps, and they didn't.
I'm hoping this isn't MS's attempt to solve security problem either, as this is one small step, when a few good leaps are needed. Anyone who thinks this will solve MS's security woes is about to be sadly disabused of that notion.
Rather than Classic, virtualizing XP on Vista would be like virtualizing MacOS X 10.2 on top of 10.4. It would be a load of complex bloat with twice the security issues and no "incentive" for the user not to run the virutal environment.
Judging by the system requirements, I disagree. For memory usage and disk space XP is but a fraction of the size. Further, they are already building virtualization for their server products and it can bring enormous security benefits if properly implemented.
How does the Vista security prompts not do this?
They are written largely in technobabble, and don't have a proper UI. The buttons provided are always the same, training users to always click "continue" to make it work and discouraging them from reading the dialogues. Further, they will be a huge annoyance to many users, using the most up to date software available, thus users will be encouraged to train themselves to click through them without reading or find a way to bypass them. A few months after Vista ship there will be people on forums telling everyone to shut off the security prompts and why the security prompts don't actually help and only hinder (and they will be right in many cases). This attitude will persist long after most software developers have come around. Finally, these prompts still only break security down to the user and admin levels and don't provide users with the option to run software they feel is insecure, but restrict its actions. As a result users will still just agree to let the software run because it is a gamble they have to take if they want it to work. A VM environment could provide real and useful restriction of apps to the point of giving them dummy data while restricting access to commonly abused files.
UPnP is ZeroConf. It's one of the handful of service discovery protocols that fall under the umbrella of the name "ZeroConf."
You're mistaken. ZeroConf is an IETF standard protocol. UPnP is a non-standard prtotocol and suite of software that attempts to provide many of the same features. From Answers.com, "UPnP shares some features with Zeroconf, a widely used zero configuration technology implemented by Apple with its Bonjour software and by others. They both use link-local addressing for IP assignment and both provide service discovery, but each use different protocols (see Zeroconf)."
Well, the way I see it MS aren't bundling PDF software with their system - they were planning on including it with Office.
From what I read they were planning on including it with their OS. They are definitely planning on including their competitor to PDF in their OS. Both of those are direct bundling. MS Office is in violation of antitrust law in that it is illegally tied to Windows (Windows has a bundled in.doc reader but not one for all the other document formats). Thus adding a PDF generator to a program that is already illegally tied to their monopoly OS, is in itself tying. So, yes they certainly are using their monopoly to leverage both their PDF tools, MS Office, and their new PDF competitor.
I don't see how anti-trust applies in that case, as other office suites already do the same (eg OOo)...
What their competitors are doing does not matter. The OpenOffice team does not have a monopoly so they can't bundle anything with that monopoly. Even if your competitors are bundling non monopolized products together does not mean you can bundle monopolized and non-monopolized products together.
...usability is all about using things, whereas security by definition is there to prevent you from using things.
This is wrong. Security is about preventing other people from using things. Security should never stop the owner of a system from doing what they want, only stop other people from doing what they want. For example, a user might want to play a game and a malware author might want to send spam using a trojan disguised as a game. The point of both security and usability is to let the user play the game (if it exists), without sending spam messages they don't want to. In order for this to happen, the user needs to know what given software is doing and be able to control it. Don't buy into the fallacy that these things are in any way in opposition.
It wasn't true, by default (mostly, there was a one classic instantiation limit), but there were plenty of hacks to restrict it. More importantly, there is no reason why a VM on or beside the regular Windows environment would need to be implemented that way.
A XP app isn't any less "native" than a Vista app, so there is really no incentive.
Sure it is, or easily could be. Running in VM XP-like can cause a speed hit, and lack access to some of the new features. They could even limit them to the classic UI.
These companies have had 13 years to fix these stupid permission issues, and it hasn't happened because they keep working as Administrator.
They haven't fixed it because doing so was pointless. Windows itself and core MS programs did not work unless you were admin and users were not prompted to set up both an admin and non-admin account on install/setup.
Virtualizing XP just gives them another 13 years to ignore the root problem -- all while leaving all the old security holes on the system.
Look, all they need is an incentive. Make it useful and build with that in mind. It worked fine for Apple. Customers and developers were happy and the problem is solved.
it's more secure, it's compatible, and there's an incentive for people to fix their apps short of busting them.
The situation now provides users with more incentive to run as admin than it does developers to change their code. By the time all software bothers to have a new release half the users will be running as admin in order to have their software work. The point is to provide an incentive short of breaking them, one that will allow users to run as a non-admin user but also bring developers around. The current solution will just cause more problems.
Realistically, that's not going to happen. Before the switch to Intel processors they were ideally positioned for a partnership. It would have been relatively easy for Macs to ship with the ability to run all Nintendo games, thus bolstering both Nintendo game sales, and Mac OS's deficient game lineup. Now, it would be a bit harder and I think it less likely. Apple could buy a few gaming companies or otherwise arrange for some exclusive titles, but I'm not sure it would be enough. Rather I see two factors making a difference. First, game developers can now use the technology behind WINE to make quick and dirty ports that run about as fast on OS X as Windows and with little effort. Second, virtualization will allow Windows apps to run almost as fast under OS X as Windows, thus making most games run just fine without a port. Which this will be depends mostly on whether Apple builds in the virtualization or leaves it to third parties.
I agree they are a good fit as companies go, but Nintendo will likely not give up its independence. The wildcard in all this is an Apple entry into the TV/home entertainment/PVR/downloadable video market. That would make for another convergence point that could make or break such a partnership.
The idea has merit, but again, it's hardly foolproof.
True, but it is much, much better than nothing and it restricts the needed user education to a reasonably small set, rather than the PhD worth of info you need now.
So Jo Sixpack installs Weather Buddy Widget, and lo, Windows pops up a dialogue warning him that it's trying to make a network connection. Well, of course it is - it's trying to download the weather forecast, right? Or is it establishing its place in the zombie botnet and awaiting its first spam to send out or DDoS target? How does Jo Sixpack (who's already naive enough to download and install the thing in the first place, remember) know which?
The application "Weather Buddy Widget" is sending an unusually high amount outgoing traffic for non-server application. (restrict the traffic level)(stop the internet connection)(allow the traffic to continue as it is).
Warning, the application "Weather Buddy Widget" is sending traffic in a way that is normally used to send large numbers of e-mails. (restrict the traffic level)(stop the internet connection)(allow the traffic to continue as it is).
It's accessing "My Documents" - well, yeah, it's trying to write config data; or trying to scan all your documents for juicy looking data?
That is why you don't store any config data in "My Documents" and throw a warning when an application tries to access any file it did not create, without the user directing it to do so. Let them go to file and open and open a file, but if it tries to look in something else in the "My Documents" folder without user interaction throw a warning. After all, it is for documents, not configurations and any program breaking that convention is suspicious.
I'll grant you that accessing your email address book should be a giveaway. So you don't write Weather Buddy Widget to do that; you write Comet Contact Manager to do that.
Ahh, but then you have to get them to install two pieces of software in order to propagate and you throw an alert when they try to talk to one another. "Weather Buddy Widget" wants to get data from "Comet Contact Manager" (allow them to share)(stop them from sharing).
Better information about what's being accessed by what might well help catch some of these things, but by no means all.
Right now, properly written, it would stop all but a few and with a little education it should stop nearly all of them going forward.
I've also seen programmers with a couple of decades experience absently-mindedly click "ok" on a dialogue, then realise the stupid mistake they've made. People make mistakes, misread things, are in a hurry, don't care, or just plain don't understand.
Users don't like these interruptions, so they will tend to avoid software that creates them, thus programs move towards better practices. By not providing an "OK" button prevents people from acting reflexively. They actually have to read the dialogue to pick a choice. Making it plain English lets them make a good choice. Will some choose randomly, maybe, but they will get unpredictable responses. Given that on a well made system, with good software these should appear very rarely I think it is very workable.
...all it would do is trigger a brief lull as the crapware spewing idiots upped their game and wrote new malware that asked for reasonable-sounding access, then abused it.
I disagree. How do you make access to personal information and files and propagation behavior sound "reasonable?" Give users the power and the information and most of this malware will be dead in the water. Sure, malware will still crop up, but it will be very crippled, and almost impossible to hide.
There's only so much an OS can do, as long as the person sat at the keyboard has insufficient knowledge and the administrative password.
So it is time to give them the knowledge, both directly from the OS and then with a small amount of educati
Yes, Classic adequately solved the compatibility issue. However it did not resolve the inherit insecurity of the old MacOS, which is today's topic.
It removed a roadblock to a smooth transition from insecure apps to secure apps. It also allowed insecure apps to run within a single user's space, thus restricting them.
Of course MS could just virtualize XP on top of Vista, but that does nothing to fix the underlying problems with applications expecting admin rights. Instead it just carries all of XP's baggage forward for basically forever (unlike Apple who dropped Classic after 5 years without complaints from their small customerbase.)
Yes it would. It would allow people with legacy apps to transition forward in a usable environment. People will prefer native apps so companies would be motivated to change, but old apps could still run safely in a VM without access to the rest of the system.
And people do complain about classic dropping with the new processors, its just that most users are transitioning to another emulator for those needed apps.
There is one very good reason and it is why Vista does this: because the dialog actually appears on a special secure desktop that no other processes can interact with, preventing elementary UAC dialog spoofing, button-pushing, and keylogging tactics.
If they can't secure their dialogue from keylogging and other processes without a UI lockup, then they should get out of the business. Making it slightly harder to spoof is a weak reason.
It may be inconvenient, but good security often is.
Again, I disagree. Ignoring the human component in security is an elementary mistake. Making it inconvenient, but applying it unnecessarily will make users find ways around it, even if that way is clicking "Continue" or entering a password reflexively every time they see such a dialogue.
Security and usability are not polar opposites as so many people, like MS, would have you believe. I still disagree, fundamentally with this choice.
In a word, no. How is the OS supposed to know that that cute little systray weather forecast app you downloaded and installed is actually a trojan?
The only person who knows what they expect the software to do is the user. The problem is, most OS's neither tell the user what the program is doing, nor let them restrict the behaviors of that software. The second ability is a solved problem, but what is lacking is a good user interface to inform the user. Microsoft is not the one to look to for a good UI design. Hopefully, however, someone else will write on and MS can copy it.
As long as a user can download and install/run software, the system is vulnerable, and there's nothing it can do about it.
Horse crap. There is plenty of low hanging fruit here. Just warning the user the first time new software tries to access their personal files, address book, IM list, internet, or system files and forcing them to choose what level of permission to grant, with a good UI would stop 90% of the trojans out there right now.
The program "Weather Widget" wants to read your e-mail address book. (Stop it from reading the address book)(Allow it to read the address book once)(Allow it to read the address book always)(Advanced options).
Poof! Problem solved. This is what MS should have done years ago. All of this "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah (OK)(Cancel)" crap over and over again is useless and just trains users to always click "OK" without reading anything.
Well, Apple required everyone to rebuild their applications for OS X, and when they did so, they fixed all the stupid single-user assumptions. Which is great so long as your apps were ported to OS X. Windows, on the other hand, has hundreds of thousands of apps that expect to be administrator. The software companies don't want to fix them, and Microsoft doesn't want to break them.
You missed a step. Apple also created and supported for years a "classic" environment that was basically an emulator of their earlier environment that allowed old applications to work, with some appropriate sandboxing. Thus, people did not have to obtain newer versions of software and small and customer applications that were never updated still functioned.
MS has swallowed how many emulator and virtualization companies now? You'd think they'd be able to provide a similar environment rather than making their UI an unusable mess.
i have dealt with some difficult customers, but this slashdot crowd right now is just utterly ridiculous. there are a few that are willing to go against the grain and give vista a chance before dismissing it entirely, but the vast majority of the slashdotters lately are as close-minded and biased as any group i have ever seen.
What exactly do you think all these Vista articles are about? They are discussions of what MS has done, what they have right and what they've screwed up. If you see a preponderance of what they got wrong, well that is partly human nature and it is partly because MS has gotten a lot wrong lately and not so much right.
if MS adds a feature that you all love from another OS or application, they are copying. if they don't add it, they are behind the times.
Both of the above are true. Are you implying copying is a bad thing?
if MS tries to beef up security, they are doing too little too late, and it probably won't be effective anyway.
What!?! This is a discussion about such a security feature, and one that a lot of people are having problems with, which MS acknowledges and has asked for feedback on. So you think discussing why it has problems is somehow biased? Facts aren't biased, your opinions of them might be. MS implemented more strongly user level security, something other OS's have had for a long time. A lot of it, they have done less well than other OS's which is what is causing a lot of the problems. The alerts are too frequent due to architectural decisions and some poor decisions in the implementation. The UI is terrible and a huge hole in this security. Pointing this out is a good thing and it lets MS know where to start fixing things.
if MS releases a patch for IE, it is yet more proof that their software was flawed in the first place. if they don't release the patch, they are too slow to react to security threats, and are failing their users.
There is a right way to handle vulnerabilities and exploits, but MS neglects it in favor of the most profitable way. They deserve to be taken to task for that.
f they open up to a beta group and ask for suggestions, they are skimping out on doing actual work and getting us, the computer elite, to do their design for them. if they don't open up to a beta and take suggestions, they are ignoring their users.
They certainly should ask for suggestions, but at the same time, due to some of their very unethical business practices, a lot of people would rather not help them. Where's the conflict?
i could go on, but i think you catch the drift.
I do indeed. You claim people here are close minded, but all of your complaints amount to people stating facts as they see them and having different opinions. That sounds like the opposite of close minded to me.
i get it, you guys hate MS.
Most people who love computers have a strong dislike for MS. They have single-handedly done more damage to the industry than anyone would have thought possible. People in the industry see that and are forced to deal with the consequences. That has nothing to do with this discussion of how they implemented a feature, other than whether or not some people are willing to provide them with helpful feedback. If you want to take issue with someone's opinion here, go ahead, but actually address one. Don't whine that people don't have the same opinions as you, or they have unspecified things to say that you don't like.
i thought this was a forum for open-minded people to share ideas and learn from each other, but if you want to just sit around and play target practice on a company that you have decided a long time ago that you will hate for life, then i might just have to give up on getting any more actual insight from reading the comments on slashdot, particularly on MS related stories.
Since you don't seem to have any insightful or even useful opinions about the discussion, maybe we'd all prefer it if you did ta
This ensures ALL users and majority of services are running UNPRIVILEGED, which means viruses/malware/etc can't do jack shit to the system.
I applaud MS implementing this feature, but it really is a kludgy attempt at feature parity, rather than a solution to malware. You see, most malware doesn't need any more permissions than an average user. It can do a lot of damage by editing or deleting your files. It can send spam. It can send a DoS attack. It might be able to work as a key logger and certainly can for particular programs. Worse, because of the implementation it is not going to work very well. The UI is so poorly designed as to train users to just click "Continue" over and over again. It does not properly inform users and it gets in the way. Worse yet, it locks up the UI so users can't even look up references to find out what the obscure dialogues mean. It is another "me too" feature they hope is "good enough" to keep people from going elsewhere.
What they should have done is implemented real Mandatory Access Controls for each and every application, restricting what files, resources, and other applications it can talk to by user. Then, they should have built a really good UI that is in regular English, only pops up when doing something unusual (like running a program for the first time) and which forces the user to read the dialogue and make a real choice.
When vista final is released, it will be the most secure windows release to date.
Perhaps, but that really isn't saying much. Look, Linux and OS X are already ahead of this and some of the really secure distributions have real and useful controls like this. Windows is the one under attack and it is still lagging behind. This is just too little too late.
This is NOT security! It's just a bunch of meaningless dialogs, that everybody in the world will learn to click "OK" to, thus making them even more meaningless.
Sir, you are wrong! Everybody in the world will learn to click "Continue." Everybody is already trained to click "OK" at random intervals so they used a different button name that is always the same.
For the record, Gnome on Ubuntu 6.06 does lock the screen until you enter a password... Pretty reasonable.
Hmm, I disagree. There is no good reason to lock up the UI until the password is entered and a number of reasons not to. The biggest I can think of is it makes for less informed users. If a dialogue asks for my permission to do something and I don't understand it, the first thing I'm going to do is Google it. If the UI is locked up, that option is gone, so I'm making a less informed choice which is more likely to lead to a bad decision.
No, this isn't even close to be the same. Vista asks you for confirmation of nearly everything you can possible do on the computer. At no point did OS X do this.
Agreed, the previous poster overstated this by quite a bit.
Vista seemingly asks you to confirm the same type of function, triggered in the same way, but by different applications. Look, if I want port 80 HTTP requests to go through, I want them to go through all the frickin' time.
Not me. I want my Web browser to be able to get to port 80. I don't want some random script I got in an e-mail to do so.
Maybe it's the horrible presentation of the dialogs that does it? They offer ZERO information about what *application* (in English instead of seemingly random strings of letters and numbers!!!!) wants your attention. It also offers no real understanding of what is being asked of you.
This is the hardest part, making a good, usable UI that explains things in simple English and gives you real choices. It is also something Microsoft has always been abysmal at.
They need readable program names. They need rare instances of this sort of thing. They need to restrict new applications by default, but maybe offer templates to ease the security. The installer should be a standard OS feature and should ask what type of applications something is: internet application, game, online game, office app, system utility, or miscellaneous. It should provide security boxes with real English and buttons that are actions not "Continue/Cancel." Having them all the same will train people to always click the same option, just as it did with "OK/Cancel."
The program Photoshop would like to connect to the internet on port 1080 (stop it from connecting once)(allow it to connect once)(always allow it to connect)(always stop it from connecting)(advanced options).
Further, for each application in the application manager there should be a configuration page listing what files, services, and other programs it is allowed to access.
First, don't assume everything is a threat and scare a user into confirming something that is not needed.
I think all new software should be restricted by default with a template that allows only normal behaviors for that app type. It would not hurt if programs came with a description of all the resources they would need (network ports, directories, dlls, etc.) in human readable form so that it would be easy to approve things at install time and programs could not hide call home features and the like. The default, however, should be to block everything until the user gets a chance to make an informed decision.
Second, improve the presentation.
Yes. Fewer dialogues, plain English, and buttons that are actions specific to each privilege.
Third, figure out how to discen[sic] between Malware and your own software!
Pre-installed software should be pre-configured, but hey this is a beta you're looking at.
Slashdot Mirror
Many other programs allow print to PDF so why should MS be excluded and why should they charge for it?
There are several reasons. First, MS apparently signed an contract with Adobe long ago concerning their use of PDF. Second, no one is stopping MS from producing PDF generation tools. What they are doing is pointing out that it is illegal to bundle them with their OS due to antitrust laws and legally, MS has to offer them as separate products, not bundled into Windows. Adobe apparently offered some sort of a compromise, by which they would not take MS to court in exchange for a cut, but all of that is very unsubstantiated and the only "real" news is that MS announced they expect Adobe to take them to court.
Say MS includes PDF writing (and maybe reading) ability into Word. And MS decides that its PDF can also support any arbitrary feature that Adobe didn't plan to implement. Suddenly, Adobe would have to redo MS's work to stay compatible to its own format! Yes, it wouldn't be "official" standard, but since MS-Office is so widely used, whatever MS-Word sets as the PDF standard would be the de facto standard.
This is the standard, "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy MS has used for years, but I don't think that is their plan. They applied this to HTML with some success, but the format, like PDF is already widely deployed so it is hard to lock people in. Many users switch to Firefox, for example. Also, because of the way PDF is licensed and because they have a powerful corporate advocate, MS would be in fairly serious legal trouble in short order. It is much more clear cut than antitrust law.
Rather, I think they plan to go for the gold. They want to introduce tools that support both PDF and their new competing format. Since it is bundled, people will not bother to download Adobe's tools and they will fall by the wayside. Then, when they have sufficient market share, they deprecate writing to PDF and tell all users to switch to their proprietary format (called XPS I think?). What do users do? The path of least resistance is to stay with the same tools and switch formats. this locks them in over time both to the format and the tools and the OS. It would be like replacing HTML with a new MS created, proprietary format. I think Adobe sees it to and is fighting back hard now, in the hopes they will still be in business when the legal process gets in motion.
I think that PDF is a great standard but the Adobe Acrobat that you currently pay for is a horrible application.
Agreed, luckily right now you can choose from among dozens of competitors.
Adobe I think here is making a huge mistake, they should just license the damn format to Microsoft for a $20 per unit royalty under a restriction that MSFT doesnt include their "pdf-killer" format and ditch the Acrobat pro line.
MS does not need to "license" the format. It is an open standard. What they do need to do is comply with antitrust law and with contracts they already signed with Adobe. Adobe is not making any mistake here.
In picking this fight with Microsoft now they certainly have awoken the sleeping dragon and I'm sure they are pissed.
Umm, MS just announced they are illegally bundling a competitor to your product with their monopoly OS, thus forcing all of your customers to buy their product, whether or not they then go on to pay even more for your product. Why would you be so foolish as to pick a fight with MS?
Allowing Apple and Sun to do something (MSFTs biggest competitors) but changing the rules for Microsoft?
Apple, MS, Sun, and everyone else are all allowed to do the same thing. They can all freely use the PDF format provided they have not signed any contracts saying they won't and they aren't breaking some other law in so doing. What Apple, MS, Sun, and everyone else can't do is bundle the PDF format with a monopoly product as that would be breaking anti-trust law. Adobe should definitely pursue legal action against any of these companies that do that, since it would be breaking the law and undercutting the free market.
The Gates borg army has been on R&R for a while but I think he's going to restore all the troops into active duty to kill Adobe now. Expect Microsoft to release a really good professional grade video and graphics suites while railing hard against PDF with their new format.
If MS is allowed to bundle their new format into Windows, the fight is already over. If they can blatantly break the law, you can't compete against them. It is basic economics. What Adobe is doing, is making the transition harder while they try to get the glacially slow legal system to act before the damage is irreversible.
bubye Adobe, was nice to know ya!
I have plenty of issues with Adobe, but I have even more issues with competition being destroyed. While you applaud being locked into yet another proprietary format that will lock you into MS's OS and tools and which will be the crappiest offering on the market in 5 years, after they lose all incentive to improve it (see IE), I'd rather support their fight against this law-breaking monopoly. I'll support it not for their sake, but for my own, since I'll have to deal with the aftermath.
I would like to be able to generate PDF files from within a web-application. However, internally a PDF document is a mess. I for one would welcome an overlord who gave us a open alternative... So, now MS comes up with an XML based standard, but I will not use what they come up with until it is both good AND they behave themselves.
So there's this thing called "competition" that tends to provide better products. You see when multiple companies have to "compete" they try to make a better product and the market gets to decide the winners and losers based upon which they prefer. It works pretty well. The only problem is, a long time ago it was discovered that if one company had a monopoly on one product for any reason, then they could use it to bypass competition in other markets and instead of the market and competition deciding, they could gain market share, even with an inferior product. We took care of that by making it illegal.
I don't care what MS's offering is. I don't care if it is currently better or worse. I just want them to be stopped from bundling and tying and forced to compete on even ground. Let them offer their generation tools and format as downloads, the same as Adobe, and if they are ever better they will gain market share and if they are ever worse they will lose market share. Why is it so hard for 80% of the people here to understand this concept?
What Adobe's worried about is if a program that about 90% of people have can make .pdfs, then will anyone actually buy their .pdf maker?
I disagree. What Adobe is worried about is when 95% of the world has switched to using MS's PDF generator, what happens when MS deprecates PDF and tells everyone to switch the their new, proprietary, competitive format for writing files.
Of course, I think it's all bullshit. They let Apple and OOo use .pdf, so they shouldn't be able to change the rules for Microsoft.
They didn't "change the rules." The PDF license is open for all to use. MS can make PDFs just as well as anyone else, but that does not mean they are immune to other laws. You might as well complain if Adobe went to the police because MS execs had sent them a death threat in PDF format. But PDF is open, what right does Adobe have to complain? This has nothing to do with PDF licensing and everything to do with MS breaking anti-trust law. MS can make their own PDF generation software and their own competitive format generation software. What they can't do is bundle it with Windows. What they probably can't do is bundle it with MS Office, since MS office is illegally tied to Windows.
MS Office 2007 can do PDFs better than either the postscript route or OOo (sans any custom macros.)
Great then there is no reason for them to rely upon illegal bundling to promote it, right? They can just offer their PDF generation tools for download the same as Adobe and since MS's are better the market will move towards them. Heck, they can even bundle it with MS Office just as soon as they strip out the already illegal tying to Windows.
MS does not want to make the best product and win because of that. They don't want maintain the best product. They want to bundle a good enough product. Even if it is better now, they want to make sure it has the majority of the market if it ever becomes inferior to other offerings. IE was probably the best browser once. It certainly isn't any more, but it is the most used because competition has been bypassed. Expect the same for MS's PDF competitor in 5 years when everyone is locked in and MS has no incentive to improve it, since it is bundled.
Adobe's market share in PDF creation software is similar to Microsoft's marketshare in desktop OSes for intel-compatible CPUs.
Are you kidding? That is not even remotely true. What makes you believe this? In any case, MS is a convicted monopolist and is clearly bundling. Assuming Adobe has a monopoly on PDF generation, what exactly are they bundling it with that MS is competing against? How is Adobe locking people in to their other products, seeing as PDF is an open standard and is already implemented by dozens of other companies? You know it isn't illegal to have a monopoly, right? It is illegal to abuse one. It is clear how MS is abusing theirs, but how do you believe Adobe is abusing the monopoly you claim they have?
Adobe, wanting to protect their "quasi-monopoly", was willing to allow Microsoft Office 2007 to export PDF if Microsoft charged extra for that functionality so as to not undercut the price of Adobe's own PDF creation software.
The above is just speculation, but even if it is true, what's the problem? Adobe wanted them to provide a market force, since MS was bypassing the market.
3. Microsoft wasn't bastardizing PDF. What would be the point, since Microsoft is not producing any PDF reader? Since Microsoft isn't creating their own reader, any PDF document producted by Microsoft Office would have to be readable by other readers (and printable by printers), so why bastardize the format? Think logically.
MS can't bastardize the format since Adobe's free license and patent protection for the standard only applies to the exact standard. Instead MS's plan is to implement both PDF and XPS, until their tools take over the market (which they will if they are bundled). Then they will slowly kill PDF support, locking people into their platform and tools.
Guess what, it's perfectly readable by Acrobat Reader and any other PDF compliant reader.
Of course, MS has no real choice. They need to get the market before they break compatibility. They are on stage one, "embrace" after which them move on to "extend," or more likely in this case, "replace."
Regarding XPS, XPS is a PDF competitor based on XML.. XPS is part of Vista...
MS is bundling a competitor to existing tools with their OS, which the law has established they have a monopoly on. Has there ever been a more clear-cut case of bundling?
XPS's role in Vista is similar to PDF's role in Mac OS X. Microsoft has shared with Adobe info on XPS for several years.
How are either of these relevant? Apple has no monopoly. Adobe doesn't care about shared info, especially since their is no guarantee they can even implement it legally.
Translation: MS is trying to do the least possible to try to appear to comply with the law. And we're supposed to applaud this? MS has OEMs balls in a vice and they know it. Now they give them the choice of including a bundled item or not. Which one costs more? How much of a discount is MS giving OEMs for not including XPS support, or are they just charging them for all the development costs regardless of whether or not it is included?
Lastly, Microsoft is still going to provide PDF and XPS export support in Office 2007 as free downloadable plug-ins.
This, at least, is legal and is the only way MS can legally provide this product. All the others are breaking anti-trust law.
Lastly, please don't you (or the state of MA) ever refer to PDF as "open" in the future. If it's not open for all, then it's not truly open, period.
See, this right here shows your ignorance. Is HTML open? But MS was taken to court for bundling IE, how can HTML be open? This has nothing to do with open. Water is an open standard for drinking, but it is still illegal to bundle with a monopolized product. Get a clue.
Office on Mac makes pdfs just fine.
PDF support is built into OS X, who has no monopoly and are thus in the clear.
I really believe Windows is going to disappear entirely from the desktop within the next 5 years, so Adobe's maneuver becomes moot.
This is a tactic to lock more people into Windows and make it harder for them to move to another platform. It is a slightly modified embrace, extend, extinguish. I doubt Windows will lose the desktop in the next 5 years, but assuming that is true, why begrudge Adobe fair competition?
No one uses (and most have never heard of) XPS.
No one used or had heard of Direct X before MS bundled it either.
I think you are being foolishly optimistic. MS has a monopoly. It does not matter that their product is inferior. They have already killed several superior OS's that tried to compete with them and are gaining, not losing desktop market share.
That's true, but (read-only) viewers for the other formats are available for free download from microsoft.com.
So what? Are you not understanding the concept of "bundled?" One is there by default (which 99% of users will never remove). One is not there by default and 99% of users will never know to download it. The .doc format and the MS Office suite in general are given an advantage. Don't forget the tying via the exchange format either (of which they have already been convicted).
Well, IANAL so I can't comment on what anti-trust law says, but that's not how I would expect it to work.
I'm not a lawyer either but I can read. You aren't allowed to enter a new market by leveraging your existing monopoly. If MS does this they will be entering the portable document generation market and gaining market share not through having a better format or a better implementation of PDF (not that they don't necessarily) but through bundling and tying with their existing monopoly.
If MS feels it has a better format than PDF fine. If they feel they have a better PDF generator, fine again. Let them compete on even ground by offering both as a separate product, just like Adobe has to. If it is better the market will move towards it.
To me, PDF is just another document format, and I don't see why MS Office shouldn't be able to understand it especially given that OOo already understands it.
OpenOffice is not a monopoly. Windows is. Thus, they can't bundle it with Windows. MS Office is tied illegally to Windows, thus they probably can't bundle it there either. This is not really all that hard. Just think in terms of markets. Are they entering a new market? If so, are they benefiting from having a Windows in any way (like bundling or tying). If not, they're in the clear. If so, they are breaking the law.
If they are not stopped here is what is going to happen. Most users will never buy or download PDF generation tools from third parties and MS will own most of the PDF market in a few years. MS will also provide their own PDF competitor right along with it. Then, when they have enough of the market, MS will deprecate PDF and tell everyone to move to their new format and only read, not write PDF. Since most people don't want to change tools (and are locked in anyway) they will go along. Slowly the market shifts from the Open PDF standard, readable and writable for all programs and platforms, to a closed format owned by MS. Users will be further locked into Windows and Word. Eventually, MS will kill all support for PDF, maybe going so far as to intentionally make it hard to implement a third-party reader or intentionally breaking Adobe products (as they have been caught doing in the past). Other Word processors like OpenOffice will not be an option. Since they will no longer have any incentive, MS will completely stop adding new features and improving the format or the tools, although they may add anti-features, like DRM.
And all of this will not be due to their coming up with a better product, but because they have leveraged their existing monopoly. We've already seen it happen with Internet Explorer and HTML. Right now Firefox is much, much better, but most people don't even know it exists and IE is "good enough" that they don't look for something better. We've gone from the open standard HTML to an intentionally broken version of HTML written and read by MS tools. And when was the last time MS upgraded their support for HTML? They still partially implement 6 year old standards and are single-handedly responsible for holding back development of Web technologies and retarding progress in the name of locking people in to their proprietary platform and tools. Lets think this through and not let them do it again people.
Apple wasn't trying to solve security problems with existing apps, and they didn't.
I'm hoping this isn't MS's attempt to solve security problem either, as this is one small step, when a few good leaps are needed. Anyone who thinks this will solve MS's security woes is about to be sadly disabused of that notion.
Rather than Classic, virtualizing XP on Vista would be like virtualizing MacOS X 10.2 on top of 10.4. It would be a load of complex bloat with twice the security issues and no "incentive" for the user not to run the virutal environment.
Judging by the system requirements, I disagree. For memory usage and disk space XP is but a fraction of the size. Further, they are already building virtualization for their server products and it can bring enormous security benefits if properly implemented.
How does the Vista security prompts not do this?
They are written largely in technobabble, and don't have a proper UI. The buttons provided are always the same, training users to always click "continue" to make it work and discouraging them from reading the dialogues. Further, they will be a huge annoyance to many users, using the most up to date software available, thus users will be encouraged to train themselves to click through them without reading or find a way to bypass them. A few months after Vista ship there will be people on forums telling everyone to shut off the security prompts and why the security prompts don't actually help and only hinder (and they will be right in many cases). This attitude will persist long after most software developers have come around. Finally, these prompts still only break security down to the user and admin levels and don't provide users with the option to run software they feel is insecure, but restrict its actions. As a result users will still just agree to let the software run because it is a gamble they have to take if they want it to work. A VM environment could provide real and useful restriction of apps to the point of giving them dummy data while restricting access to commonly abused files.
UPnP is ZeroConf. It's one of the handful of service discovery protocols that fall under the umbrella of the name "ZeroConf."
You're mistaken. ZeroConf is an IETF standard protocol. UPnP is a non-standard prtotocol and suite of software that attempts to provide many of the same features. From Answers.com, "UPnP shares some features with Zeroconf, a widely used zero configuration technology implemented by Apple with its Bonjour software and by others. They both use link-local addressing for IP assignment and both provide service discovery, but each use different protocols (see Zeroconf)."
Well, the way I see it MS aren't bundling PDF software with their system - they were planning on including it with Office.
From what I read they were planning on including it with their OS. They are definitely planning on including their competitor to PDF in their OS. Both of those are direct bundling. MS Office is in violation of antitrust law in that it is illegally tied to Windows (Windows has a bundled in .doc reader but not one for all the other document formats). Thus adding a PDF generator to a program that is already illegally tied to their monopoly OS, is in itself tying. So, yes they certainly are using their monopoly to leverage both their PDF tools, MS Office, and their new PDF competitor.
I don't see how anti-trust applies in that case, as other office suites already do the same (eg OOo)...
What their competitors are doing does not matter. The OpenOffice team does not have a monopoly so they can't bundle anything with that monopoly. Even if your competitors are bundling non monopolized products together does not mean you can bundle monopolized and non-monopolized products together.
This is wrong. Security is about preventing other people from using things. Security should never stop the owner of a system from doing what they want, only stop other people from doing what they want. For example, a user might want to play a game and a malware author might want to send spam using a trojan disguised as a game. The point of both security and usability is to let the user play the game (if it exists), without sending spam messages they don't want to. In order for this to happen, the user needs to know what given software is doing and be able to control it. Don't buy into the fallacy that these things are in any way in opposition.
That's not true.
It wasn't true, by default (mostly, there was a one classic instantiation limit), but there were plenty of hacks to restrict it. More importantly, there is no reason why a VM on or beside the regular Windows environment would need to be implemented that way.
A XP app isn't any less "native" than a Vista app, so there is really no incentive.
Sure it is, or easily could be. Running in VM XP-like can cause a speed hit, and lack access to some of the new features. They could even limit them to the classic UI.
These companies have had 13 years to fix these stupid permission issues, and it hasn't happened because they keep working as Administrator.
They haven't fixed it because doing so was pointless. Windows itself and core MS programs did not work unless you were admin and users were not prompted to set up both an admin and non-admin account on install/setup.
Virtualizing XP just gives them another 13 years to ignore the root problem -- all while leaving all the old security holes on the system.
Look, all they need is an incentive. Make it useful and build with that in mind. It worked fine for Apple. Customers and developers were happy and the problem is solved.
it's more secure, it's compatible, and there's an incentive for people to fix their apps short of busting them.
The situation now provides users with more incentive to run as admin than it does developers to change their code. By the time all software bothers to have a new release half the users will be running as admin in order to have their software work. The point is to provide an incentive short of breaking them, one that will allow users to run as a non-admin user but also bring developers around. The current solution will just cause more problems.
Apple should buy Nintendo...
Realistically, that's not going to happen. Before the switch to Intel processors they were ideally positioned for a partnership. It would have been relatively easy for Macs to ship with the ability to run all Nintendo games, thus bolstering both Nintendo game sales, and Mac OS's deficient game lineup. Now, it would be a bit harder and I think it less likely. Apple could buy a few gaming companies or otherwise arrange for some exclusive titles, but I'm not sure it would be enough. Rather I see two factors making a difference. First, game developers can now use the technology behind WINE to make quick and dirty ports that run about as fast on OS X as Windows and with little effort. Second, virtualization will allow Windows apps to run almost as fast under OS X as Windows, thus making most games run just fine without a port. Which this will be depends mostly on whether Apple builds in the virtualization or leaves it to third parties.
I agree they are a good fit as companies go, but Nintendo will likely not give up its independence. The wildcard in all this is an Apple entry into the TV/home entertainment/PVR/downloadable video market. That would make for another convergence point that could make or break such a partnership.
The idea has merit, but again, it's hardly foolproof.
True, but it is much, much better than nothing and it restricts the needed user education to a reasonably small set, rather than the PhD worth of info you need now.
So Jo Sixpack installs Weather Buddy Widget, and lo, Windows pops up a dialogue warning him that it's trying to make a network connection. Well, of course it is - it's trying to download the weather forecast, right? Or is it establishing its place in the zombie botnet and awaiting its first spam to send out or DDoS target? How does Jo Sixpack (who's already naive enough to download and install the thing in the first place, remember) know which?
The application "Weather Buddy Widget" is sending an unusually high amount outgoing traffic for non-server application. (restrict the traffic level)(stop the internet connection)(allow the traffic to continue as it is).
Warning, the application "Weather Buddy Widget" is sending traffic in a way that is normally used to send large numbers of e-mails. (restrict the traffic level)(stop the internet connection)(allow the traffic to continue as it is).
It's accessing "My Documents" - well, yeah, it's trying to write config data; or trying to scan all your documents for juicy looking data?
That is why you don't store any config data in "My Documents" and throw a warning when an application tries to access any file it did not create, without the user directing it to do so. Let them go to file and open and open a file, but if it tries to look in something else in the "My Documents" folder without user interaction throw a warning. After all, it is for documents, not configurations and any program breaking that convention is suspicious.
I'll grant you that accessing your email address book should be a giveaway. So you don't write Weather Buddy Widget to do that; you write Comet Contact Manager to do that.
Ahh, but then you have to get them to install two pieces of software in order to propagate and you throw an alert when they try to talk to one another. "Weather Buddy Widget" wants to get data from "Comet Contact Manager" (allow them to share)(stop them from sharing).
Better information about what's being accessed by what might well help catch some of these things, but by no means all.
Right now, properly written, it would stop all but a few and with a little education it should stop nearly all of them going forward.
I've also seen programmers with a couple of decades experience absently-mindedly click "ok" on a dialogue, then realise the stupid mistake they've made. People make mistakes, misread things, are in a hurry, don't care, or just plain don't understand.
Users don't like these interruptions, so they will tend to avoid software that creates them, thus programs move towards better practices. By not providing an "OK" button prevents people from acting reflexively. They actually have to read the dialogue to pick a choice. Making it plain English lets them make a good choice. Will some choose randomly, maybe, but they will get unpredictable responses. Given that on a well made system, with good software these should appear very rarely I think it is very workable.
I disagree. How do you make access to personal information and files and propagation behavior sound "reasonable?" Give users the power and the information and most of this malware will be dead in the water. Sure, malware will still crop up, but it will be very crippled, and almost impossible to hide.
There's only so much an OS can do, as long as the person sat at the keyboard has insufficient knowledge and the administrative password.
So it is time to give them the knowledge, both directly from the OS and then with a small amount of educati
Yes, Classic adequately solved the compatibility issue. However it did not resolve the inherit insecurity of the old MacOS, which is today's topic.
It removed a roadblock to a smooth transition from insecure apps to secure apps. It also allowed insecure apps to run within a single user's space, thus restricting them.
Of course MS could just virtualize XP on top of Vista, but that does nothing to fix the underlying problems with applications expecting admin rights. Instead it just carries all of XP's baggage forward for basically forever (unlike Apple who dropped Classic after 5 years without complaints from their small customerbase.)
Yes it would. It would allow people with legacy apps to transition forward in a usable environment. People will prefer native apps so companies would be motivated to change, but old apps could still run safely in a VM without access to the rest of the system.
And people do complain about classic dropping with the new processors, its just that most users are transitioning to another emulator for those needed apps.
There is one very good reason and it is why Vista does this: because the dialog actually appears on a special secure desktop that no other processes can interact with, preventing elementary UAC dialog spoofing, button-pushing, and keylogging tactics.
If they can't secure their dialogue from keylogging and other processes without a UI lockup, then they should get out of the business. Making it slightly harder to spoof is a weak reason.
It may be inconvenient, but good security often is.
Again, I disagree. Ignoring the human component in security is an elementary mistake. Making it inconvenient, but applying it unnecessarily will make users find ways around it, even if that way is clicking "Continue" or entering a password reflexively every time they see such a dialogue.
Security and usability are not polar opposites as so many people, like MS, would have you believe. I still disagree, fundamentally with this choice.
In a word, no. How is the OS supposed to know that that cute little systray weather forecast app you downloaded and installed is actually a trojan?
The only person who knows what they expect the software to do is the user. The problem is, most OS's neither tell the user what the program is doing, nor let them restrict the behaviors of that software. The second ability is a solved problem, but what is lacking is a good user interface to inform the user. Microsoft is not the one to look to for a good UI design. Hopefully, however, someone else will write on and MS can copy it.
As long as a user can download and install/run software, the system is vulnerable, and there's nothing it can do about it.
Horse crap. There is plenty of low hanging fruit here. Just warning the user the first time new software tries to access their personal files, address book, IM list, internet, or system files and forcing them to choose what level of permission to grant, with a good UI would stop 90% of the trojans out there right now.
The program "Weather Widget" wants to read your e-mail address book. (Stop it from reading the address book)(Allow it to read the address book once)(Allow it to read the address book always)(Advanced options).
Poof! Problem solved. This is what MS should have done years ago. All of this "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah (OK)(Cancel)" crap over and over again is useless and just trains users to always click "OK" without reading anything.
Well, Apple required everyone to rebuild their applications for OS X, and when they did so, they fixed all the stupid single-user assumptions. Which is great so long as your apps were ported to OS X. Windows, on the other hand, has hundreds of thousands of apps that expect to be administrator. The software companies don't want to fix them, and Microsoft doesn't want to break them.
You missed a step. Apple also created and supported for years a "classic" environment that was basically an emulator of their earlier environment that allowed old applications to work, with some appropriate sandboxing. Thus, people did not have to obtain newer versions of software and small and customer applications that were never updated still functioned.
MS has swallowed how many emulator and virtualization companies now? You'd think they'd be able to provide a similar environment rather than making their UI an unusable mess.
i have dealt with some difficult customers, but this slashdot crowd right now is just utterly ridiculous. there are a few that are willing to go against the grain and give vista a chance before dismissing it entirely, but the vast majority of the slashdotters lately are as close-minded and biased as any group i have ever seen.
What exactly do you think all these Vista articles are about? They are discussions of what MS has done, what they have right and what they've screwed up. If you see a preponderance of what they got wrong, well that is partly human nature and it is partly because MS has gotten a lot wrong lately and not so much right.
if MS adds a feature that you all love from another OS or application, they are copying. if they don't add it, they are behind the times.
Both of the above are true. Are you implying copying is a bad thing?
if MS tries to beef up security, they are doing too little too late, and it probably won't be effective anyway.
What!?! This is a discussion about such a security feature, and one that a lot of people are having problems with, which MS acknowledges and has asked for feedback on. So you think discussing why it has problems is somehow biased? Facts aren't biased, your opinions of them might be. MS implemented more strongly user level security, something other OS's have had for a long time. A lot of it, they have done less well than other OS's which is what is causing a lot of the problems. The alerts are too frequent due to architectural decisions and some poor decisions in the implementation. The UI is terrible and a huge hole in this security. Pointing this out is a good thing and it lets MS know where to start fixing things.
if MS releases a patch for IE, it is yet more proof that their software was flawed in the first place. if they don't release the patch, they are too slow to react to security threats, and are failing their users.
There is a right way to handle vulnerabilities and exploits, but MS neglects it in favor of the most profitable way. They deserve to be taken to task for that.
f they open up to a beta group and ask for suggestions, they are skimping out on doing actual work and getting us, the computer elite, to do their design for them. if they don't open up to a beta and take suggestions, they are ignoring their users.
They certainly should ask for suggestions, but at the same time, due to some of their very unethical business practices, a lot of people would rather not help them. Where's the conflict?
i could go on, but i think you catch the drift.
I do indeed. You claim people here are close minded, but all of your complaints amount to people stating facts as they see them and having different opinions. That sounds like the opposite of close minded to me.
i get it, you guys hate MS.
Most people who love computers have a strong dislike for MS. They have single-handedly done more damage to the industry than anyone would have thought possible. People in the industry see that and are forced to deal with the consequences. That has nothing to do with this discussion of how they implemented a feature, other than whether or not some people are willing to provide them with helpful feedback. If you want to take issue with someone's opinion here, go ahead, but actually address one. Don't whine that people don't have the same opinions as you, or they have unspecified things to say that you don't like.
i thought this was a forum for open-minded people to share ideas and learn from each other, but if you want to just sit around and play target practice on a company that you have decided a long time ago that you will hate for life, then i might just have to give up on getting any more actual insight from reading the comments on slashdot, particularly on MS related stories.
Since you don't seem to have any insightful or even useful opinions about the discussion, maybe we'd all prefer it if you did ta
This ensures ALL users and majority of services are running UNPRIVILEGED, which means viruses/malware/etc can't do jack shit to the system.
I applaud MS implementing this feature, but it really is a kludgy attempt at feature parity, rather than a solution to malware. You see, most malware doesn't need any more permissions than an average user. It can do a lot of damage by editing or deleting your files. It can send spam. It can send a DoS attack. It might be able to work as a key logger and certainly can for particular programs. Worse, because of the implementation it is not going to work very well. The UI is so poorly designed as to train users to just click "Continue" over and over again. It does not properly inform users and it gets in the way. Worse yet, it locks up the UI so users can't even look up references to find out what the obscure dialogues mean. It is another "me too" feature they hope is "good enough" to keep people from going elsewhere.
What they should have done is implemented real Mandatory Access Controls for each and every application, restricting what files, resources, and other applications it can talk to by user. Then, they should have built a really good UI that is in regular English, only pops up when doing something unusual (like running a program for the first time) and which forces the user to read the dialogue and make a real choice.
When vista final is released, it will be the most secure windows release to date.
Perhaps, but that really isn't saying much. Look, Linux and OS X are already ahead of this and some of the really secure distributions have real and useful controls like this. Windows is the one under attack and it is still lagging behind. This is just too little too late.
This is NOT security! It's just a bunch of meaningless dialogs, that everybody in the world will learn to click "OK" to, thus making them even more meaningless.
Sir, you are wrong! Everybody in the world will learn to click "Continue." Everybody is already trained to click "OK" at random intervals so they used a different button name that is always the same.
For the record, Gnome on Ubuntu 6.06 does lock the screen until you enter a password... Pretty reasonable.
Hmm, I disagree. There is no good reason to lock up the UI until the password is entered and a number of reasons not to. The biggest I can think of is it makes for less informed users. If a dialogue asks for my permission to do something and I don't understand it, the first thing I'm going to do is Google it. If the UI is locked up, that option is gone, so I'm making a less informed choice which is more likely to lead to a bad decision.
No, this isn't even close to be the same. Vista asks you for confirmation of nearly everything you can possible do on the computer. At no point did OS X do this.
Agreed, the previous poster overstated this by quite a bit.
Vista seemingly asks you to confirm the same type of function, triggered in the same way, but by different applications. Look, if I want port 80 HTTP requests to go through, I want them to go through all the frickin' time.
Not me. I want my Web browser to be able to get to port 80. I don't want some random script I got in an e-mail to do so.
Maybe it's the horrible presentation of the dialogs that does it? They offer ZERO information about what *application* (in English instead of seemingly random strings of letters and numbers!!!!) wants your attention. It also offers no real understanding of what is being asked of you.
This is the hardest part, making a good, usable UI that explains things in simple English and gives you real choices. It is also something Microsoft has always been abysmal at.
They need readable program names. They need rare instances of this sort of thing. They need to restrict new applications by default, but maybe offer templates to ease the security. The installer should be a standard OS feature and should ask what type of applications something is: internet application, game, online game, office app, system utility, or miscellaneous. It should provide security boxes with real English and buttons that are actions not "Continue/Cancel." Having them all the same will train people to always click the same option, just as it did with "OK/Cancel."
The program Photoshop would like to connect to the internet on port 1080 (stop it from connecting once)(allow it to connect once)(always allow it to connect)(always stop it from connecting)(advanced options).
Further, for each application in the application manager there should be a configuration page listing what files, services, and other programs it is allowed to access.
First, don't assume everything is a threat and scare a user into confirming something that is not needed.
I think all new software should be restricted by default with a template that allows only normal behaviors for that app type. It would not hurt if programs came with a description of all the resources they would need (network ports, directories, dlls, etc.) in human readable form so that it would be easy to approve things at install time and programs could not hide call home features and the like. The default, however, should be to block everything until the user gets a chance to make an informed decision.
Second, improve the presentation.
Yes. Fewer dialogues, plain English, and buttons that are actions specific to each privilege.
Third, figure out how to discen[sic] between Malware and your own software!
Pre-installed software should be pre-configured, but hey this is a beta you're looking at.