But it's interesting to see how the pundits here spin things, we are hearing and reading about how this is just one more Microsoft trick to stick it to the consumer, but I would very safely bet that if a virus package had been included, we'd be hearing about unfair competition and anti-trust. Religion is blind.
It has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with criminals engaging in dubious business practices. MS has been convicted of criminally abusing their monopoly on desktop OS's. Then they intentionally enter into a market (anti-virus) that has a inherent conflict of interest. Whether they bundle the software or they sell it as a separate service, they are breaking anti-trust laws. MS should not be in the anti-virus market, because the industry is built upon flaws in a product for which they have a monopoly.
If MS wants to do something about the security of Windows systems then they should fix their flawed architecture, their insecure default settings, their additional software, and their permissions. Then they should fix their UI and add jails for untrusted programs.
If, however, they are interested in gouging their customers yet again by leveraging their illegal monopoly and if they don't care that they are breaking the law, they should move into the anti-virus market; which is, of course, what they are doing.
So these imbeciles, who have shown themselves incapable of learning basic maths not once but twice, should have to resit the exams or fail the course, yes? No.
While it is true that a lot of students are uninterested in learning, I think you should really think about this incident. If the majority of students in a college setting are failing to learn basic math, perhaps there is something seriously wrong with the teaching methods. I know my own experiences with education have been a very mixed bag. I had a number of excellent teachers and a number of teachers who were so awful they did more damage than good. Besides being physically abusive, drug addicts they managed to impart in students a hatred of the whole formalized education system. Instead of a teacher, the majority of my classes were run by glorified babysitters who recited from books and administered tests that taught nothing but the ability to memorize something for one week.
Even in senior level undergraduate engineering courses I had a professor whose tests included matching the picture to the caption (as photocopied from our textbook). Gee which of those four blurry, low-res pictures of people standing around machinery in lab coats was Intel engineers testing the first 8086 and which IBM engineers researching layered circuit board production capabilities? In general what I learned in a university setting I learned on my own and with the help of fellow students. The actual classroom work and lectures were pointless.
There is plenty of blame that can be assigned to students today, but just as much that can be assigned to teachers who don't teach and couldn't teach if their lives depended upon it.
I firmly believe that if death were guaranteed within 30 days of that sentence, it would have a deterrent effect.
This is possible, but I doubt it would have much affect. The truth is, people committing murder believe they will not be caught or are too desperate to care. As a result I believe the death penalty is not much of a deterrent even if it happens shortly after the conviction. I don't think most people advocating the death penalty understand the psychology behind the act and those that do are more interested in revenge than deterring others.
Your understanding is incorrect. Each time the EU received a set of documentation, they say it is not complaint, changes the requirements and demands a new set of changes, and sets an additional deadline.
I don't see any evidence to support your claim. I looked at four articles about this case and each one mentioned only one set of documents handed over thus far. Do you have any sources for this? Also, I only see one version of the requirements, which is pretty general and just says they must fully document the interface/protocol/APIs. I think you are misinformed.
To date Microsoft has provided over 14,000 pages of documentation. Yes, that's a 14 followed by 3 zeros.
What does the number of pages have to do with it? It is the completeness and accuracy of the data that is important. In fact, excessive amounts are detrimental. I once ran a project where my task was to give our customers so much useless documentation that they would not be able to read it in time to realize it was worthless. Old manuals, source code comments, and 30 coders typing in Word for three days later we handed them ten three ring binders, each filled with more than 12,000 pages of largely useless documentation.
The quantity alone is in no way indicative as to whether the documentation is compliant.
This is Microsoft's last attempt to reach compliance, and I suspect they're using it as a way to determine if the EU will really ever accept anything as compliant.
Then they are complete idiots. I don't actually think they are, mind you, I just think you are mistaken as to their intentions. The point of this documentation is so that competitors can compete on even footing in the server market, despite MS's illegal use of their existing monopoly. Licensing the source code, for an undetermined sum, without proper documentation and without revoking their rights to that intellectual property does not achieve that goal. Anyone who reads the source, under this license, is a legal liability to an open source project and opens up that project to lawsuits. Also, they are requiring payment, for complying with a court judgment against them. That is like an armed robber demanding to be paid hourly for his time in prison while saying, "some nights I'm going to go out, but my cousin will fill in." It is absurdly arrogant.
This is either a PR stunt, or an attempt to fool the EU judges. Hopefully it will not succeed.
If I understand the sequence of events, MS has offered documentation of the protocols as was requested. Next the requests kept coming for more and more and the bar for compliance was continuously raised. Giving the source code is the best possible addition to the documentation that could be given under this circumstance to get this settled once and for all. So now the EU has BOTH documentation AND source code to help anyone who wants to build competing technology.
They way it unfolded, as I read, was that MS delayed as long as possible on the documentation and then handed over painfully incomplete documentation, which the EU said (after review) was not good enough. Since that time, MS has not handed over any more documentation, but has been given two extensions on collecting the fines, under the claim that they were working on fixing it. Now they have proposed that they will instead license the source code, for a fee, and with significant legal implications for what could be done after viewing it; basically failing to comply with a big part of the ruling.
There are several possible reasons for this behavior. MS may be trying to trick the EU, or they may be trying to generate negative publicity by claiming they more than complied, when in fact they did not comply. It is also entirely possible, MS does not have any internal documentation on their protocols, beyond the mistake filled, incomplete documentation they handed over and they haven't bothered to write it to comply with the EU ruling.
Are you telling me you just spent a lot of time building a piece of software, which you've already licensed, and you've decided now is the time to come up with a business plan? That is pretty backwards, in my opinion.
There are a number of business plans for selling software and even a number of them for making money from Open Source Software:
Plan number one, sell licenses to closed source software. I think you've already missed this one and it has the disadvantage that it can't compete against an open source product in the long run.
Plan number two, get a company or conglomerate of companies to agree to pay you to develop and support a cheaper, better, more customizable alternative to their existing software. I think you missed this one two, if you already made the code public.
Plan number three, release code for free and try to get companies to adopt it and pay you for support and customization. This is probably your best bet at this point. You need to find out what current companies charge for support and what they charge for their software and meet or beat their prices; or, you need to provide significantly more functionality. You need to get some good sales guys and give them the advantages of your product over other products. Main advantages you hold include the fact that it is open and thus they can migrate to other systems and that you or they can customize it to meet their needs. Find out what their current software doesn't do that they would like and make yours do it, just for them. Emphasize the personal service as part of a support contract that is semi-annually renewed or whatever. This is your revenue. Drawbacks to this include that the better your software gets, the less likely they are to need support and they can always go with their own IT dept. or with a competitor for support. You have the edge in that you know it better than anyone and are someone external to blame/call.
Plan number four, release the product for free and promote it. Beg for donations from big companies that adopt it and other benefactors. If it becomes popular your reputation will be worth a lot to you for speaking engagements and other contract work.
The servers are the various Windows Server OS's and the protocol interactions with servers and applications on their Desktop OS.
And what makes you think that forcing Microsoft to open file format specs for its other products isn't next? After all, Microsoft has an unfair advantage with MS Office, that being that they're the market leader.
That is entirely possible, but a different issue. The reason, though is not that MS is a market leader for office suites. The reason to do that would be because MS is leveraging their Desktop OS monopoly to gain an advantage in office suite sales. They do this by bundling a program that reads the.doc format with their OS, which is not an option for their competitors who do not have a monopoly. This, of course, has nothing to do with the current rulings though and is completely theoretical (and something the EU courts seem to have missed).
If Microsoft had never been slapped with that anti-trust conviction, you'd have nothing to stand on, but they'd be the same company they are today.
And if a murderer was never caught they'd still be the same person. So what?
Exactly how long do you guys plan on holding the "convicted monopolist" thing against them anyway?
Well, I'd say the minimum amount of time would be until they stop breaking the law. Usually one of the first steps in a legal case is to order the criminal to put down the gun and stop shooting people. MS hasn't even gotten that far. They are still illegally bundling software with their OS. They still are using it to illegally leverage a number of products and they are still illegally driving competitors out of business.
no matter how much Microsoft cleaned up their act.
Do tell, how has MS "cleaned up their act?" They still have IE and WMP bundled. They have started bundling a number of new products. They are still using closed protocols and formats common to both their desktop OS monopoly and other offerings. No one is holding wrongdoing against them multiple times, but MS has done nothing to stop their actions and the courts have imposed basically no fines or restrictions yet. They haven't even addressed MS latest string of antitrust violations.
Broke the law and is still breaking the law. This hurts the industry and consumers every day. It hurts the whole world by slowing down the advancement of computing technology and depriving us of the benefits of competition. They have made an obscene profit doing so and ruined many great products and bankrupted many great companies. They need to be stopped and they need to make reparations. They need to be punished in such a way that the benefits of their crimes are taken from them and used to good causes. Until that happens, justice has not been done.
Suddenly you're trying to apply the open source concepts to closed source Microsoft software. Now everything that Microsoft does can be cloned exactly. Microsoft release "Exchange Server" and three months later I take their specs, clone their UI, and release "Share Server" for $19.95.
You know they only have to release the protocols right? All the rest of the program including the UI code can be completely closed. This is about open source versus closed source. This is about working to specs. Specs are great for industry but essential when you're dealing with a monopoly is trying to move into another market. If Ford gains a monopoly on car production, well that is legal. If Ford then starts putting an encrypted microchip in each tire they sell and a computer that refuses to start the car unless all the tires are Ford brand tires, then they have just broken the law. If they switch all their cars to run on a new top secret fuel formula and refuse to document that formula, they are breaking the law. For a non-predatory monopoly it is a legal trade secret, but for Ford it would be illegal. This makes a lot of sense, because the only reason we have a free trade economy is because it is the most efficient model we could come up with. It provides the benefits of competition to increase quality and decrease prices. Bypassing that competition leads to inferior products at inflated prices and no consumer choice. Sound familiar?
Suddenly the only money to be made is in "support", which is a less than stellar business model.
Ever seen a commodity exchange? You'll hear I'll buy for $5 and I'll buy for $4 and I'll buy for $3. At some point the most efficient developers with the best products win. If companies can make money making software and giving it away and making all their money on extras, then they should be winning a lot of bids. If MS can't compete then they should be losing sales.
Further, you don't seem to understand that open source is part of the free market. It is a company saying, "you know it is cheaper for us to hire someone to make this product and then let others add to it than it is to buy a pre-made version from those guys." MS is the one who chose to try to compete making an artificially scarce market and they chose to gain a monopoly and then break the law abusing that monopoly. Personally, I hope they stick around as one of many competitors, but it would be a very good lesson if the law punished them harshly enough that others were dissuaded from breaking the law in the first place. So far they have been an example to the world that big businesses breaking the law is profitable, even when caught and punished.
Let's imagine for a second that Microsoft Access stores its databases in some revolutionary new file format that increases query speeds by several orders of magnitude. Great, there's their competitive advantage! Whoops, sorry, because of the EU ruling, Microsoft has to open the specs on their proprietary file format in order to allow other companies to compete. Suddenly that competitive advantage goes out the window.
This is completely untrue. They have only been ordered to document how their server interacts with their monopoly desktop product. They just need to document the communication, not the format on the server.
A contrived example? Perhaps. But sometimes proprietary protocols and file formats CAN give you a competitive advantage.
Gee, then maybe they should just not break the law in the first place? Sorry, I just can't have any sympathy for MS. They went into this with their eyes open and a hundred lawyers telling them what they were doing was illegal. They gambled that it would pay off anyway and it has. They should be being fined billions, which is what their crimes has brought them. Or, they should be split into separate companies forbidden from collusion so that they can compete against one another. Complaining about the extremely lax judgement brought against them, that does not even fully even the playing field for existing criminal acts just shows you have no clue how badly MS has slowed down the progress of the computing industry for the last decade.
Even if they did, I doubt anyone would ever believe it's possible that Microsoft could write software that is faster and more secure than other competing software.
Yup, MS has developed a very poor reputation. That is one of the things you have to account for if you work in a free market. That is entirely a problem of their own making.
You just said it yourself. And the bottom line is always about money. People are willing to forgive a slower, less-compatible implementation if it's cheaper, or free. Look at OO.org for instance.
Yes, do look at OO.org. It has a lower adoption rate than Apple's Pages.app. People and companies are perfectly willing to pay for a more reliable, faster implementation and support and customization. If MS can't compete, then they should lose out in that market. It's call a free trade market.
Specs are traditionally released before an implementation exists.
This is true for traditional specs, where many companies agree on a spec and then implement it, but is not true in a number of cases, where one company maintains the spec. Just look at Java.
If Microsoft were to do the reverse, i.e., create a new version of their software and THEN release the spec, they'd get slammed. Why? Because they'd have a lead on their competitors, during which early adopters would get locked into multi-year contracts with Microsoft.
You're right it isn't fair, but I don't think that matters. MS has been asked to release the specs for software that has already been on the market for years. They may be forced to release and new specs as they release the software and I don't think anyone would find that unreasonable. The long term goal is to be able to compete fairly without intervention.
OK then, riddle me this. Let's assume that everything about Microsoft was the same, except for being ruled a monopoly. I assume you would be in complete opposition to the EU's rulings, since Microsoft isn't a monopoly, despite having a large portion of its respective markets?
If MS did not have a monopoly none of this would be an issue, because their bundling would not be causing any problems. You have your cart and horse all turned around. If MS were not a monopoly, they could publish or not publish their specs all they wanted.
Let's say I come up with some product that, out of sheer inertia, claims 95% of the market. I also use proprietary formats. The natural barriers to entry just flat out prevent other companies from competing with my product, but I am not engaging in any anti-competitive practices. Should I have to open up my specs to other competitors so they can compete? Why?
It is fine for you to do, right up until you become a monopoly and then move into a second market by leveraging the first monopoly in an unfair way. The minute you do that you go from being a legal monopoly to a predatory monopoly. Lets put it this way, you're just fine with your scenario, until you release another product in a separate market that functions in conjunction with your first product, and make the specifications for that interaction a secret. Because then people in the second market have to compete unfairly (you used your first monopoly to disadvantage them). This is exactly what MS did. They gained a monopoly on desktop OS's and then moved into the server market and made the way it interoperates with their desktop secret. That is what was illegal and this ruling is part of the punishment for that. The courts said they have to document that secret interaction so other server manufacturers can compete despite MS's monopoly on the desktop.
I don't agree with any company having to give out its secrets. I mean, what if Europe demanded to know the secret ingredients to certain food products.
What great analogy. Lets see, MS is being forced to "publish their ingredients" as a punishment for breaking the law. Sounds reasonable to me, and damn scary that the first response was "well, we kinda know what's in it" and the second response was, "we'll let you pay to come on the tour to see what we put in it, because we're not really sure ourselves."
but hey, uber powerful and rich or not, they still deserve their privacy to their source code.
Umm, no one asked for their source code. They are the ones offering it instead of what they were asked for, which is documentation on the protocols so that everyone can code to them evenly. Maybe you're not understanding, this is part of MS's punishment for intentionally and knowingly breaking the law and they're trying to haggle over it.
How exactly is Microsoft supposed to make a better product if they aren't allowed to have trade secrets in the form of protocols or proprietary file formats?
Gee I don't know. They could write better, more efficient code that runs faster, is more secure, and is more reliable. But that is not really the MS way is it?
Someone can just come along and reimplement whatever Microsoft wrote and sell it for less.
MS, as the first implementor of a standard and as the maker of most of the interoperating software can implement new features and has a time to market advantage on them, just like everyone else in the industry. You do know there are plenty of companies that actually do make products to open specs and do just fine right? And why should someone else be able to write code to do the same thing better and cheaper than the people who invented the standard? In addition to being slower to market, competitors have to take time to understand the spec.
Why aren't ALL companies doing business in the EU bound by the same rules? After all, I'm sure there are plenty of products that dominate their particular markets, and that just isn't fair!
What?!? Everyone is bound by the same standards. They are called laws. MS intentionally broke them as part of their business model. They fully expected that they would have to deal with the consequences, they are just betting it is more profitable to break the law and pay fines than it is to obey the law. Any company that creates a monopoly and then breaks the law and abuses that monopoly will face the same thing, and a number have done so in the past.
Your post basically comes down to, "It's not fair MS is punished for breaking laws while companies that did not break the law aren't. How can you expect MS to compete without being allowed to squash competition by further breaking the law?" Well here's an answer for you. I expect them to make a better product or lose money to those that do so. You know the way competition normally works in a free market.
Big picture view, I do believe Microsoft to be a monopoly. I do believe there needs to be some sort of repercussion for it but I think anyone asking them to give up THEIR intellectual property that they have developed is just proving their point... they are the best.
Do you have any idea what the point of anti-trust legislation is? It is to remove an unfair business advantage that allows an inferior product to dominate a market, because there is no ability for the customer to choose the competition. They were never asked to give up their intellectual property. They were asked to document their protocols so developers can compete on even ground for making software that works with Windows (since it is wholly unreasonable to expect everyone to switch away from Windows at the same time). They are offering to license their source code as an alternative, and a poor one at that.
Microsoft is not the devil, they do not stifle innovation and the people and organizations who claim they do are either on the loosing end or are just tyring to get a piece of the pie for themselves.
Internet Explorer holds 90% of the browser market. It is a piece of crap. It is insecure, ancient technology that cannot even properly render the six year old specifications it was originally implemented with. The mere fact that it dominate the market has held back internet standards, tabbed browsing, ad blocking and the Web in general for more than half a decade, despite numerous better alternatives is proof enough. As someone who has done fair bit of Web development I assert that anyone who claims MS is not stifling innovation does not know what they are talking about. That does not even count the dozens of other standards they have intentionally corrupted, or the dozens of companies they have bought out or driven out of business using their monopoly. It is awfully hard to sell a product when everyone is already forced to buy your competitor's. You have to be so much better that people will both go out of their way and find another product and pay for it again. This is called "bundling."
If someone out there was better than Microsoft, we would see that.... look at Firefox... it works WONDERFULLY on Windows XP, and its what I use.
Yep, it sure does. Now, ask yourself why is 90% of the market dominated by its inferior competitor? You do realize what MS is doing is illegal, right? And you don't think they should be punished in some way that might discourage them from doing the same thing in the future? Like with media players and antivirus software and every other market they decide to swallow.
I think the people asking Microsoft to "open up Windows" are just admitting defeat.
Here are a couple of facts for you: Most people will never by a stand alone OS. They will just use what is on their computer. There is basically zero possibility of convincing every business and individual to switch to another OS all at once. As a result of this, there is a need for any product to interoperate with Windows in order to gain market share. Unless their are published, implementable specifications for interoperability, this cannot happen and hence MS will always remain in its monopoly position. No one wants the source code. Everyone needs open API's, protocols, and formats. MS was ordered to provide some of the APIs. They have thus far refused and instead are trying to offer to sell, the right to view the source, with restrictions, for an undisclosed price. This is wholly unacceptable.
Rather than worry about "opening up Windows, or decoupling IE from Windows" isn't it time that people start innovating and competing with Microsoft?
That is the problem. You can't compete against a monopoly that bundles what you make. It is not economically feasible and even superior software you create will not win in the market, like Firefox. That is the whole point of the EU rulings, to try to make it possible to compete on even ground.
Im not really a M$ fan, but this is just stupid. I say M$ should just not license any of their software for use in the EU any more. Then let the people deal with their government.
Gee what a brilliant move. They should abandon billions in profit, maybe 30% of the companies bottom line, and make a move that not only guarantees a huge market for a competitor but opens them up to further antitrust actions while still not complying with the order and being fined millions. Yeah, that would work, for about ten minutes before the MS shareholders fired you and hired mobsters to burn off your testicles with a blowtorch for the billions of dollars you just cost them.
If I were capable of making decisions at Microsoft, I would just pull out of Europe completely. Yeah, that's a big hit to the bottom line, but the way things are going now, complying with the EU will mean that eventually Microsoft products will be done away with over there anyway.
And you'd be fired and someone would reverse your decision as quickly as the board of directors could throw together an emergency meeting. Complying with the requirements will make them compete fairly, and they may well slowly lose market share if they don't make a better product. Not complying will cost them millions in fines, but still only a fraction of the profits they pull out of Europe. Pulling all business from Europe would throw away all profit and guarantee a strong competitor in short order. Worse it would not only fail to comply with the order, but violate business contracts with literally thousands of international organizations and companies and be a slam dunk for further EU antitrust sanctions. They're probably seize MS's assets in the country, including IP rights and hand them over to either newly formed companies or existing competitors. In any case "pulling out" is about the stupidest move MS could make.
Is it too far-fetched to suggest that the E.C. actually wants MS to remain out-of-compliance, so they can continue to levy fines against them?
That seems very unlikely. They have had all the cause they need to levy the fines for many months, but have granted MS multiple extensions. If profit was their motive they could have millions in the bank right now; but they don't.
This one sentence makes clear your lack of experience. A "local" priv escalation makes ANY remote hole r00t explotable. It's serious, maybe more than most "remote" exploits!
The vast majority of malware infections are still from worms, usually ones that require no user interaction. The majority of exploits are for the purpose of sending spam or DoS attacks. Remote vulnerabilities make these possible. Escalations are unneeded to perform these functions. Obviously, local exploits are not desirable and they are a problem, especially within multi-user settings, like universities. They are not, however, nearly as high priority as a remote exploit. Any exploit that requires you to have a valid account and password or another (theoretical) vulnerability to work is just not that dangerous. As I said, MS does not even bother to fix these and there are hundreds outstanding for Windows.
As somebody who's spent days (hopefully) digging rootkits out of hacked systems, I can assure you that while remote holes are important, local priv exp holes are every bit as serious.
Maybe to you, but manually hacked systems are a tiny minority of cases and I'm sure there will always be unknown manual exploits for systems. The example you give is a good one, but it can be turned around just as easily. No matter how many local escalations are present, so long as there is no remote exploit, they are not going to infect a significant number of machines. Conversely, Spam and DoS bots generally will work with only a remote exploit, with no need for administrative privileges.
To answer your first question. See this post. There are a couple quotes from scientists there. However, it is by no means a conclusive list.
No kidding it not "conclusive." That is two scientists, one of whom is a biologist and who refuses to be named. That does not exactly make for a convincing argument that biologists or reputable scientists hold that belief.
I have to disagree with your opinion. The arguments are very valid as in the question. Did your house evolve?
My house is not alive and did not evolve. That, however has nothing to do with the two properties you were trying to relate, complexity and design. Non sequitur does indeed mean "it does not follow" but in a logical rhetoric it means that implying because one thing has properties that others must is in no way a logical conclusion. I might as well say, vanilla ice cream is white and sweet. Looking at how white clouds are, how can you claim they are not sweet? Do you see how the two have no definite relationship? Complexity is in no way indicative of a designer.
But think.... If humanity does not understand how to build a blade of grass, how in the world can humanity determine it was not designed?
Because their are many levels of understanding and because understanding is not the same thing has having the capability to do something. I understand that under extreme pressure and temperature a lump of carbon can become a diamond. I don't understand how to build a diamond making machine in my garage. More importantly I don't believe that all diamonds previous to the 50's were made by god, but when someone figured out the technology needed to make diamonds suddenly it was no longer the case. What is more probably, that diamonds are made by pressure within the earth, or that Jerry, the diamond fairy made them all? The first is a logical, scientific theory based upon studying geology and physics. The second is something I read in a fictional book. Truthfully I don't know for certain which is the case, but only the first one is really a logical working model.
I would ask you to expand on your hurricane comment. What point are you illustrating?
You claimed that because scientists could not create a blade of grass from non-living material that implied they were incorrect in their scientific model. I was illustrating that having a correct, but not necessarily complete scientific model does not necessarily mean you can replicate all things that are explained by that model, especially given current technology. I might further add, that biogenesis is actually outside the scope of the theory of evolution, which does not postulate a way life began.
It was a broad reaching statement regarding humility. Not all scientists or learned people fall into that category, but many do.
It was egotism. You were claiming you knew better in the same breath that you were chiding them for not being humble.
I think the article makes a good point and one that Apple needs to address. I've long had the impression that Apple does not do enough security auditing, especially of some of their inherited code and that some of their new software has not been as security minded as it could be. I've not heard any of the grumbling the author has about security researchers being treated poorly or response times being particularly slow, but he may be closer to such things than I.
That said, from the article it is unclear if any of the discovered bugs are remotely exploitable. The one concrete example given is just a local privilege escalation, which is not really all that serious. I do wish that Apple would pay more attention to security and I hope they have a team of elite hackers with their ears on IRC and their hours spent trying to hack boxes. I'm not sure that they do though. My suspicion is a lot of the security comes from the fact that many of the employees are old school UNIX guys that take it more seriously than management. This is, however, unlikely to really bite Apple given the giant target that is Windows where local privilege escalations like the one described here are so common no one reports on them and I don't think MS even bothers to fix them.
There's 2 conflicting reports, so automatically the one that makes the new macs sound bad is a premature that needs to be debunked, and the one that makes the new macs sound good is right and does that debunking.
Gee don't bother to RTFA or anything. It specifically addresses the previous report's results and why they are not a good sampling (mostly disk bound not processor). The summary does not even say the old report is wrong is says it may have been premature. From now on please at least read the article before making derogatory remarks about the summary.
If I ran a benchmark that involved modelling it would show no improvement in speed over a single chip machine. If I ran a render test would clock in around 4X faster. Both tests are accurate and simply reflect how the software is designed not how the chips themselves function.
This, of course assumes that the OS uses no CPU time and you are running no other applications. I don't know about you, but I have nine applications running right now and a total of 63 processes. I don't know how many threads. About 10% of my CPU is going to background processes while everything but my browser is more or less idle. When I'm actually getting work done, it is not at all uncommon for me to have multiple CPU intensive processes occurring.
If it is anything like their video service it will be horrible. Using the same type of DRM would make portable players useless since you need an internet connection to play them. Ridiculous and completely useless to me. Hopefully they will get a clue and move to a more workable system.
Newtonian physics has been falsified. Would you have it that Newtonian physics should not be taught?
Newtonian physics has not been falsified, it has been shown to be incomplete and then added to. By definition newtonian physics are the theories Newton proposed, but that by no means indicates that the underlying theories have not been extended.
I claim that Intelligent Design is amenable to all four, and thus should be taught.
Would you mind stating the particular theory of intelligent design you claim meets the criteria for being a scientific theory? There seem to be a plethora of them.
I would also like to know your opinion on "all true Scotsmen."
While not the previous poster, I'd like to postulate that "all true Scotsmen" pass out in the lawn. At least all those I know have a tendency to do so around 3AM after most of the beer is gone and the liquor really starts to kick in.
However, many biologists have concluded that biology proves we have a designer.
Really? I know a few biologists and have read a lot from others. I haven't ever seen anyone assert that. I'm sure some religious nuts do, but do you have any evidence that a significant number of biologists or any particularly well regarded scientists have come to this conclusion? What biological evidence have they shown?
If I told you my house was built by accident, would you believe me? Yet, the construction of my house is much more simple than the construction of DNA.
Ummm, this is what is known as a logical fallacy. Non Sequitur. Just because you house is complex and it was designed, does not mean all complex things were designed.
Many scientist believe that a blade of grass happened without intelligence. Yet, those same scientists the world over with all their combined knowledge could not create a blade of grass from non-living material, and they have intelligence.
So you're arguing that because some task is outside of the ability of current technology, it must have been accomplished by a divine power? What makes you think that? Right now it is beyond human technology to control the weather. Does that mean God killed a lot of people with the last big hurricane? I don't see any logic to your assertions.
Unfortunately, they often have more intelligence than they do humility.
How hypocritical of you. These people are very smart, but not smart enough to do X. Thus you conclude they are are not humble enough to know that you more intelligent than them and have figured out the real truth. Here's a tip. If you're an egotist like me, don't go around telling others they aren't humble enough. It makes you look like a real ass.
We have three choices essentially, and the best scientists and engineers in the world are explaining this to the president:
You obviously haven't been paying attention to Bush's appointments to science related positions. Bush has the best lobbyists and old friends explaining it to him.
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But it's interesting to see how the pundits here spin things, we are hearing and reading about how this is just one more Microsoft trick to stick it to the consumer, but I would very safely bet that if a virus package had been included, we'd be hearing about unfair competition and anti-trust. Religion is blind.
It has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with criminals engaging in dubious business practices. MS has been convicted of criminally abusing their monopoly on desktop OS's. Then they intentionally enter into a market (anti-virus) that has a inherent conflict of interest. Whether they bundle the software or they sell it as a separate service, they are breaking anti-trust laws. MS should not be in the anti-virus market, because the industry is built upon flaws in a product for which they have a monopoly.
If MS wants to do something about the security of Windows systems then they should fix their flawed architecture, their insecure default settings, their additional software, and their permissions. Then they should fix their UI and add jails for untrusted programs.
If, however, they are interested in gouging their customers yet again by leveraging their illegal monopoly and if they don't care that they are breaking the law, they should move into the anti-virus market; which is, of course, what they are doing.
So these imbeciles, who have shown themselves incapable of learning basic maths not once but twice, should have to resit the exams or fail the course, yes? No.
While it is true that a lot of students are uninterested in learning, I think you should really think about this incident. If the majority of students in a college setting are failing to learn basic math, perhaps there is something seriously wrong with the teaching methods. I know my own experiences with education have been a very mixed bag. I had a number of excellent teachers and a number of teachers who were so awful they did more damage than good. Besides being physically abusive, drug addicts they managed to impart in students a hatred of the whole formalized education system. Instead of a teacher, the majority of my classes were run by glorified babysitters who recited from books and administered tests that taught nothing but the ability to memorize something for one week.
Even in senior level undergraduate engineering courses I had a professor whose tests included matching the picture to the caption (as photocopied from our textbook). Gee which of those four blurry, low-res pictures of people standing around machinery in lab coats was Intel engineers testing the first 8086 and which IBM engineers researching layered circuit board production capabilities? In general what I learned in a university setting I learned on my own and with the help of fellow students. The actual classroom work and lectures were pointless.
There is plenty of blame that can be assigned to students today, but just as much that can be assigned to teachers who don't teach and couldn't teach if their lives depended upon it.
I firmly believe that if death were guaranteed within 30 days of that sentence, it would have a deterrent effect.
This is possible, but I doubt it would have much affect. The truth is, people committing murder believe they will not be caught or are too desperate to care. As a result I believe the death penalty is not much of a deterrent even if it happens shortly after the conviction. I don't think most people advocating the death penalty understand the psychology behind the act and those that do are more interested in revenge than deterring others.
Your understanding is incorrect. Each time the EU received a set of documentation, they say it is not complaint, changes the requirements and demands a new set of changes, and sets an additional deadline.
I don't see any evidence to support your claim. I looked at four articles about this case and each one mentioned only one set of documents handed over thus far. Do you have any sources for this? Also, I only see one version of the requirements, which is pretty general and just says they must fully document the interface/protocol/APIs. I think you are misinformed.
To date Microsoft has provided over 14,000 pages of documentation. Yes, that's a 14 followed by 3 zeros.
What does the number of pages have to do with it? It is the completeness and accuracy of the data that is important. In fact, excessive amounts are detrimental. I once ran a project where my task was to give our customers so much useless documentation that they would not be able to read it in time to realize it was worthless. Old manuals, source code comments, and 30 coders typing in Word for three days later we handed them ten three ring binders, each filled with more than 12,000 pages of largely useless documentation.
The quantity alone is in no way indicative as to whether the documentation is compliant.
This is Microsoft's last attempt to reach compliance, and I suspect they're using it as a way to determine if the EU will really ever accept anything as compliant.
Then they are complete idiots. I don't actually think they are, mind you, I just think you are mistaken as to their intentions. The point of this documentation is so that competitors can compete on even footing in the server market, despite MS's illegal use of their existing monopoly. Licensing the source code, for an undetermined sum, without proper documentation and without revoking their rights to that intellectual property does not achieve that goal. Anyone who reads the source, under this license, is a legal liability to an open source project and opens up that project to lawsuits. Also, they are requiring payment, for complying with a court judgment against them. That is like an armed robber demanding to be paid hourly for his time in prison while saying, "some nights I'm going to go out, but my cousin will fill in." It is absurdly arrogant.
This is either a PR stunt, or an attempt to fool the EU judges. Hopefully it will not succeed.
Selling software under a license/per-copy model makes a lot more sense.
He already GPL'd the software. Didn't you read the first two parts of my post?
If I understand the sequence of events, MS has offered documentation of the protocols as was requested. Next the requests kept coming for more and more and the bar for compliance was continuously raised. Giving the source code is the best possible addition to the documentation that could be given under this circumstance to get this settled once and for all. So now the EU has BOTH documentation AND source code to help anyone who wants to build competing technology.
They way it unfolded, as I read, was that MS delayed as long as possible on the documentation and then handed over painfully incomplete documentation, which the EU said (after review) was not good enough. Since that time, MS has not handed over any more documentation, but has been given two extensions on collecting the fines, under the claim that they were working on fixing it. Now they have proposed that they will instead license the source code, for a fee, and with significant legal implications for what could be done after viewing it; basically failing to comply with a big part of the ruling.
There are several possible reasons for this behavior. MS may be trying to trick the EU, or they may be trying to generate negative publicity by claiming they more than complied, when in fact they did not comply. It is also entirely possible, MS does not have any internal documentation on their protocols, beyond the mistake filled, incomplete documentation they handed over and they haven't bothered to write it to comply with the EU ruling.
Are you telling me you just spent a lot of time building a piece of software, which you've already licensed, and you've decided now is the time to come up with a business plan? That is pretty backwards, in my opinion.
There are a number of business plans for selling software and even a number of them for making money from Open Source Software:
Plan number one, sell licenses to closed source software. I think you've already missed this one and it has the disadvantage that it can't compete against an open source product in the long run.
Plan number two, get a company or conglomerate of companies to agree to pay you to develop and support a cheaper, better, more customizable alternative to their existing software. I think you missed this one two, if you already made the code public.
Plan number three, release code for free and try to get companies to adopt it and pay you for support and customization. This is probably your best bet at this point. You need to find out what current companies charge for support and what they charge for their software and meet or beat their prices; or, you need to provide significantly more functionality. You need to get some good sales guys and give them the advantages of your product over other products. Main advantages you hold include the fact that it is open and thus they can migrate to other systems and that you or they can customize it to meet their needs. Find out what their current software doesn't do that they would like and make yours do it, just for them. Emphasize the personal service as part of a support contract that is semi-annually renewed or whatever. This is your revenue. Drawbacks to this include that the better your software gets, the less likely they are to need support and they can always go with their own IT dept. or with a competitor for support. You have the edge in that you know it better than anyone and are someone external to blame/call.
Plan number four, release the product for free and promote it. Beg for donations from big companies that adopt it and other benefactors. If it becomes popular your reputation will be worth a lot to you for speaking engagements and other contract work.
Best of luck.
So what server would this be?
The servers are the various Windows Server OS's and the protocol interactions with servers and applications on their Desktop OS.
And what makes you think that forcing Microsoft to open file format specs for its other products isn't next? After all, Microsoft has an unfair advantage with MS Office, that being that they're the market leader.
That is entirely possible, but a different issue. The reason, though is not that MS is a market leader for office suites. The reason to do that would be because MS is leveraging their Desktop OS monopoly to gain an advantage in office suite sales. They do this by bundling a program that reads the .doc format with their OS, which is not an option for their competitors who do not have a monopoly. This, of course, has nothing to do with the current rulings though and is completely theoretical (and something the EU courts seem to have missed).
If Microsoft had never been slapped with that anti-trust conviction, you'd have nothing to stand on, but they'd be the same company they are today.
And if a murderer was never caught they'd still be the same person. So what?
Exactly how long do you guys plan on holding the "convicted monopolist" thing against them anyway?
Well, I'd say the minimum amount of time would be until they stop breaking the law. Usually one of the first steps in a legal case is to order the criminal to put down the gun and stop shooting people. MS hasn't even gotten that far. They are still illegally bundling software with their OS. They still are using it to illegally leverage a number of products and they are still illegally driving competitors out of business.
no matter how much Microsoft cleaned up their act.
Do tell, how has MS "cleaned up their act?" They still have IE and WMP bundled. They have started bundling a number of new products. They are still using closed protocols and formats common to both their desktop OS monopoly and other offerings. No one is holding wrongdoing against them multiple times, but MS has done nothing to stop their actions and the courts have imposed basically no fines or restrictions yet. They haven't even addressed MS latest string of antitrust violations.
Broke the law and is still breaking the law. This hurts the industry and consumers every day. It hurts the whole world by slowing down the advancement of computing technology and depriving us of the benefits of competition. They have made an obscene profit doing so and ruined many great products and bankrupted many great companies. They need to be stopped and they need to make reparations. They need to be punished in such a way that the benefits of their crimes are taken from them and used to good causes. Until that happens, justice has not been done.
Suddenly you're trying to apply the open source concepts to closed source Microsoft software. Now everything that Microsoft does can be cloned exactly. Microsoft release "Exchange Server" and three months later I take their specs, clone their UI, and release "Share Server" for $19.95.
You know they only have to release the protocols right? All the rest of the program including the UI code can be completely closed. This is about open source versus closed source. This is about working to specs. Specs are great for industry but essential when you're dealing with a monopoly is trying to move into another market. If Ford gains a monopoly on car production, well that is legal. If Ford then starts putting an encrypted microchip in each tire they sell and a computer that refuses to start the car unless all the tires are Ford brand tires, then they have just broken the law. If they switch all their cars to run on a new top secret fuel formula and refuse to document that formula, they are breaking the law. For a non-predatory monopoly it is a legal trade secret, but for Ford it would be illegal. This makes a lot of sense, because the only reason we have a free trade economy is because it is the most efficient model we could come up with. It provides the benefits of competition to increase quality and decrease prices. Bypassing that competition leads to inferior products at inflated prices and no consumer choice. Sound familiar?
Suddenly the only money to be made is in "support", which is a less than stellar business model.
Ever seen a commodity exchange? You'll hear I'll buy for $5 and I'll buy for $4 and I'll buy for $3. At some point the most efficient developers with the best products win. If companies can make money making software and giving it away and making all their money on extras, then they should be winning a lot of bids. If MS can't compete then they should be losing sales.
Further, you don't seem to understand that open source is part of the free market. It is a company saying, "you know it is cheaper for us to hire someone to make this product and then let others add to it than it is to buy a pre-made version from those guys." MS is the one who chose to try to compete making an artificially scarce market and they chose to gain a monopoly and then break the law abusing that monopoly. Personally, I hope they stick around as one of many competitors, but it would be a very good lesson if the law punished them harshly enough that others were dissuaded from breaking the law in the first place. So far they have been an example to the world that big businesses breaking the law is profitable, even when caught and punished.
Let's imagine for a second that Microsoft Access stores its databases in some revolutionary new file format that increases query speeds by several orders of magnitude. Great, there's their competitive advantage! Whoops, sorry, because of the EU ruling, Microsoft has to open the specs on their proprietary file format in order to allow other companies to compete. Suddenly that competitive advantage goes out the window.
This is completely untrue. They have only been ordered to document how their server interacts with their monopoly desktop product. They just need to document the communication, not the format on the server.
A contrived example? Perhaps. But sometimes proprietary protocols and file formats CAN give you a competitive advantage.
Gee, then maybe they should just not break the law in the first place? Sorry, I just can't have any sympathy for MS. They went into this with their eyes open and a hundred lawyers telling them what they were doing was illegal. They gambled that it would pay off anyway and it has. They should be being fined billions, which is what their crimes has brought them. Or, they should be split into separate companies forbidden from collusion so that they can compete against one another. Complaining about the extremely lax judgement brought against them, that does not even fully even the playing field for existing criminal acts just shows you have no clue how badly MS has slowed down the progress of the computing industry for the last decade.
Even if they did, I doubt anyone would ever believe it's possible that Microsoft could write software that is faster and more secure than other competing software.
Yup, MS has developed a very poor reputation. That is one of the things you have to account for if you work in a free market. That is entirely a problem of their own making.
You just said it yourself. And the bottom line is always about money. People are willing to forgive a slower, less-compatible implementation if it's cheaper, or free. Look at OO.org for instance.
Yes, do look at OO.org. It has a lower adoption rate than Apple's Pages.app. People and companies are perfectly willing to pay for a more reliable, faster implementation and support and customization. If MS can't compete, then they should lose out in that market. It's call a free trade market.
Specs are traditionally released before an implementation exists.
This is true for traditional specs, where many companies agree on a spec and then implement it, but is not true in a number of cases, where one company maintains the spec. Just look at Java.
If Microsoft were to do the reverse, i.e., create a new version of their software and THEN release the spec, they'd get slammed. Why? Because they'd have a lead on their competitors, during which early adopters would get locked into multi-year contracts with Microsoft.
You're right it isn't fair, but I don't think that matters. MS has been asked to release the specs for software that has already been on the market for years. They may be forced to release and new specs as they release the software and I don't think anyone would find that unreasonable. The long term goal is to be able to compete fairly without intervention.
OK then, riddle me this. Let's assume that everything about Microsoft was the same, except for being ruled a monopoly. I assume you would be in complete opposition to the EU's rulings, since Microsoft isn't a monopoly, despite having a large portion of its respective markets?
If MS did not have a monopoly none of this would be an issue, because their bundling would not be causing any problems. You have your cart and horse all turned around. If MS were not a monopoly, they could publish or not publish their specs all they wanted.
Let's say I come up with some product that, out of sheer inertia, claims 95% of the market. I also use proprietary formats. The natural barriers to entry just flat out prevent other companies from competing with my product, but I am not engaging in any anti-competitive practices. Should I have to open up my specs to other competitors so they can compete? Why?
It is fine for you to do, right up until you become a monopoly and then move into a second market by leveraging the first monopoly in an unfair way. The minute you do that you go from being a legal monopoly to a predatory monopoly. Lets put it this way, you're just fine with your scenario, until you release another product in a separate market that functions in conjunction with your first product, and make the specifications for that interaction a secret. Because then people in the second market have to compete unfairly (you used your first monopoly to disadvantage them). This is exactly what MS did. They gained a monopoly on desktop OS's and then moved into the server market and made the way it interoperates with their desktop secret. That is what was illegal and this ruling is part of the punishment for that. The courts said they have to document that secret interaction so other server manufacturers can compete despite MS's monopoly on the desktop.
I don't agree with any company having to give out its secrets. I mean, what if Europe demanded to know the secret ingredients to certain food products.
What great analogy. Lets see, MS is being forced to "publish their ingredients" as a punishment for breaking the law. Sounds reasonable to me, and damn scary that the first response was "well, we kinda know what's in it" and the second response was, "we'll let you pay to come on the tour to see what we put in it, because we're not really sure ourselves."
but hey, uber powerful and rich or not, they still deserve their privacy to their source code.
Umm, no one asked for their source code. They are the ones offering it instead of what they were asked for, which is documentation on the protocols so that everyone can code to them evenly. Maybe you're not understanding, this is part of MS's punishment for intentionally and knowingly breaking the law and they're trying to haggle over it.
How exactly is Microsoft supposed to make a better product if they aren't allowed to have trade secrets in the form of protocols or proprietary file formats?
Gee I don't know. They could write better, more efficient code that runs faster, is more secure, and is more reliable. But that is not really the MS way is it?
Someone can just come along and reimplement whatever Microsoft wrote and sell it for less.
MS, as the first implementor of a standard and as the maker of most of the interoperating software can implement new features and has a time to market advantage on them, just like everyone else in the industry. You do know there are plenty of companies that actually do make products to open specs and do just fine right? And why should someone else be able to write code to do the same thing better and cheaper than the people who invented the standard? In addition to being slower to market, competitors have to take time to understand the spec.
Why aren't ALL companies doing business in the EU bound by the same rules? After all, I'm sure there are plenty of products that dominate their particular markets, and that just isn't fair!
What?!? Everyone is bound by the same standards. They are called laws. MS intentionally broke them as part of their business model. They fully expected that they would have to deal with the consequences, they are just betting it is more profitable to break the law and pay fines than it is to obey the law. Any company that creates a monopoly and then breaks the law and abuses that monopoly will face the same thing, and a number have done so in the past.
Your post basically comes down to, "It's not fair MS is punished for breaking laws while companies that did not break the law aren't. How can you expect MS to compete without being allowed to squash competition by further breaking the law?" Well here's an answer for you. I expect them to make a better product or lose money to those that do so. You know the way competition normally works in a free market.
Big picture view, I do believe Microsoft to be a monopoly. I do believe there needs to be some sort of repercussion for it but I think anyone asking them to give up THEIR intellectual property that they have developed is just proving their point... they are the best.
Do you have any idea what the point of anti-trust legislation is? It is to remove an unfair business advantage that allows an inferior product to dominate a market, because there is no ability for the customer to choose the competition. They were never asked to give up their intellectual property. They were asked to document their protocols so developers can compete on even ground for making software that works with Windows (since it is wholly unreasonable to expect everyone to switch away from Windows at the same time). They are offering to license their source code as an alternative, and a poor one at that.
Microsoft is not the devil, they do not stifle innovation and the people and organizations who claim they do are either on the loosing end or are just tyring to get a piece of the pie for themselves.
Internet Explorer holds 90% of the browser market. It is a piece of crap. It is insecure, ancient technology that cannot even properly render the six year old specifications it was originally implemented with. The mere fact that it dominate the market has held back internet standards, tabbed browsing, ad blocking and the Web in general for more than half a decade, despite numerous better alternatives is proof enough. As someone who has done fair bit of Web development I assert that anyone who claims MS is not stifling innovation does not know what they are talking about. That does not even count the dozens of other standards they have intentionally corrupted, or the dozens of companies they have bought out or driven out of business using their monopoly. It is awfully hard to sell a product when everyone is already forced to buy your competitor's. You have to be so much better that people will both go out of their way and find another product and pay for it again. This is called "bundling."
If someone out there was better than Microsoft, we would see that.... look at Firefox... it works WONDERFULLY on Windows XP, and its what I use.
Yep, it sure does. Now, ask yourself why is 90% of the market dominated by its inferior competitor? You do realize what MS is doing is illegal, right? And you don't think they should be punished in some way that might discourage them from doing the same thing in the future? Like with media players and antivirus software and every other market they decide to swallow.
I think the people asking Microsoft to "open up Windows" are just admitting defeat.
Here are a couple of facts for you: Most people will never by a stand alone OS. They will just use what is on their computer. There is basically zero possibility of convincing every business and individual to switch to another OS all at once. As a result of this, there is a need for any product to interoperate with Windows in order to gain market share. Unless their are published, implementable specifications for interoperability, this cannot happen and hence MS will always remain in its monopoly position. No one wants the source code. Everyone needs open API's, protocols, and formats. MS was ordered to provide some of the APIs. They have thus far refused and instead are trying to offer to sell, the right to view the source, with restrictions, for an undisclosed price. This is wholly unacceptable.
Rather than worry about "opening up Windows, or decoupling IE from Windows" isn't it time that people start innovating and competing with Microsoft?
That is the problem. You can't compete against a monopoly that bundles what you make. It is not economically feasible and even superior software you create will not win in the market, like Firefox. That is the whole point of the EU rulings, to try to make it possible to compete on even ground.
Im not really a M$ fan, but this is just stupid. I say M$ should just not license any of their software for use in the EU any more. Then let the people deal with their government.
Gee what a brilliant move. They should abandon billions in profit, maybe 30% of the companies bottom line, and make a move that not only guarantees a huge market for a competitor but opens them up to further antitrust actions while still not complying with the order and being fined millions. Yeah, that would work, for about ten minutes before the MS shareholders fired you and hired mobsters to burn off your testicles with a blowtorch for the billions of dollars you just cost them.
If I were capable of making decisions at Microsoft, I would just pull out of Europe completely. Yeah, that's a big hit to the bottom line, but the way things are going now, complying with the EU will mean that eventually Microsoft products will be done away with over there anyway.
And you'd be fired and someone would reverse your decision as quickly as the board of directors could throw together an emergency meeting. Complying with the requirements will make them compete fairly, and they may well slowly lose market share if they don't make a better product. Not complying will cost them millions in fines, but still only a fraction of the profits they pull out of Europe. Pulling all business from Europe would throw away all profit and guarantee a strong competitor in short order. Worse it would not only fail to comply with the order, but violate business contracts with literally thousands of international organizations and companies and be a slam dunk for further EU antitrust sanctions. They're probably seize MS's assets in the country, including IP rights and hand them over to either newly formed companies or existing competitors. In any case "pulling out" is about the stupidest move MS could make.
Is it too far-fetched to suggest that the E.C. actually wants MS to remain out-of-compliance, so they can continue to levy fines against them?
That seems very unlikely. They have had all the cause they need to levy the fines for many months, but have granted MS multiple extensions. If profit was their motive they could have millions in the bank right now; but they don't.
This one sentence makes clear your lack of experience. A "local" priv escalation makes ANY remote hole r00t explotable. It's serious, maybe more than most "remote" exploits!
The vast majority of malware infections are still from worms, usually ones that require no user interaction. The majority of exploits are for the purpose of sending spam or DoS attacks. Remote vulnerabilities make these possible. Escalations are unneeded to perform these functions. Obviously, local exploits are not desirable and they are a problem, especially within multi-user settings, like universities. They are not, however, nearly as high priority as a remote exploit. Any exploit that requires you to have a valid account and password or another (theoretical) vulnerability to work is just not that dangerous. As I said, MS does not even bother to fix these and there are hundreds outstanding for Windows.
As somebody who's spent days (hopefully) digging rootkits out of hacked systems, I can assure you that while remote holes are important, local priv exp holes are every bit as serious.
Maybe to you, but manually hacked systems are a tiny minority of cases and I'm sure there will always be unknown manual exploits for systems. The example you give is a good one, but it can be turned around just as easily. No matter how many local escalations are present, so long as there is no remote exploit, they are not going to infect a significant number of machines. Conversely, Spam and DoS bots generally will work with only a remote exploit, with no need for administrative privileges.
To answer your first question. See this post. There are a couple quotes from scientists there. However, it is by no means a conclusive list.
No kidding it not "conclusive." That is two scientists, one of whom is a biologist and who refuses to be named. That does not exactly make for a convincing argument that biologists or reputable scientists hold that belief.
I have to disagree with your opinion. The arguments are very valid as in the question. Did your house evolve?
My house is not alive and did not evolve. That, however has nothing to do with the two properties you were trying to relate, complexity and design. Non sequitur does indeed mean "it does not follow" but in a logical rhetoric it means that implying because one thing has properties that others must is in no way a logical conclusion. I might as well say, vanilla ice cream is white and sweet. Looking at how white clouds are, how can you claim they are not sweet? Do you see how the two have no definite relationship? Complexity is in no way indicative of a designer.
But think.... If humanity does not understand how to build a blade of grass, how in the world can humanity determine it was not designed?
Because their are many levels of understanding and because understanding is not the same thing has having the capability to do something. I understand that under extreme pressure and temperature a lump of carbon can become a diamond. I don't understand how to build a diamond making machine in my garage. More importantly I don't believe that all diamonds previous to the 50's were made by god, but when someone figured out the technology needed to make diamonds suddenly it was no longer the case. What is more probably, that diamonds are made by pressure within the earth, or that Jerry, the diamond fairy made them all? The first is a logical, scientific theory based upon studying geology and physics. The second is something I read in a fictional book. Truthfully I don't know for certain which is the case, but only the first one is really a logical working model.
I would ask you to expand on your hurricane comment. What point are you illustrating?
You claimed that because scientists could not create a blade of grass from non-living material that implied they were incorrect in their scientific model. I was illustrating that having a correct, but not necessarily complete scientific model does not necessarily mean you can replicate all things that are explained by that model, especially given current technology. I might further add, that biogenesis is actually outside the scope of the theory of evolution, which does not postulate a way life began.
It was a broad reaching statement regarding humility. Not all scientists or learned people fall into that category, but many do.
It was egotism. You were claiming you knew better in the same breath that you were chiding them for not being humble.
I think the article makes a good point and one that Apple needs to address. I've long had the impression that Apple does not do enough security auditing, especially of some of their inherited code and that some of their new software has not been as security minded as it could be. I've not heard any of the grumbling the author has about security researchers being treated poorly or response times being particularly slow, but he may be closer to such things than I.
That said, from the article it is unclear if any of the discovered bugs are remotely exploitable. The one concrete example given is just a local privilege escalation, which is not really all that serious. I do wish that Apple would pay more attention to security and I hope they have a team of elite hackers with their ears on IRC and their hours spent trying to hack boxes. I'm not sure that they do though. My suspicion is a lot of the security comes from the fact that many of the employees are old school UNIX guys that take it more seriously than management. This is, however, unlikely to really bite Apple given the giant target that is Windows where local privilege escalations like the one described here are so common no one reports on them and I don't think MS even bothers to fix them.
There's 2 conflicting reports, so automatically the one that makes the new macs sound bad is a premature that needs to be debunked, and the one that makes the new macs sound good is right and does that debunking.
Gee don't bother to RTFA or anything. It specifically addresses the previous report's results and why they are not a good sampling (mostly disk bound not processor). The summary does not even say the old report is wrong is says it may have been premature. From now on please at least read the article before making derogatory remarks about the summary.
If I ran a benchmark that involved modelling it would show no improvement in speed over a single chip machine. If I ran a render test would clock in around 4X faster. Both tests are accurate and simply reflect how the software is designed not how the chips themselves function.
This, of course assumes that the OS uses no CPU time and you are running no other applications. I don't know about you, but I have nine applications running right now and a total of 63 processes. I don't know how many threads. About 10% of my CPU is going to background processes while everything but my browser is more or less idle. When I'm actually getting work done, it is not at all uncommon for me to have multiple CPU intensive processes occurring.
If it is anything like their video service it will be horrible. Using the same type of DRM would make portable players useless since you need an internet connection to play them. Ridiculous and completely useless to me. Hopefully they will get a clue and move to a more workable system.
Newtonian physics has been falsified. Would you have it that Newtonian physics should not be taught?
Newtonian physics has not been falsified, it has been shown to be incomplete and then added to. By definition newtonian physics are the theories Newton proposed, but that by no means indicates that the underlying theories have not been extended.
I claim that Intelligent Design is amenable to all four, and thus should be taught.
Would you mind stating the particular theory of intelligent design you claim meets the criteria for being a scientific theory? There seem to be a plethora of them.
I would also like to know your opinion on "all true Scotsmen."
While not the previous poster, I'd like to postulate that "all true Scotsmen" pass out in the lawn. At least all those I know have a tendency to do so around 3AM after most of the beer is gone and the liquor really starts to kick in.
However, many biologists have concluded that biology proves we have a designer.
Really? I know a few biologists and have read a lot from others. I haven't ever seen anyone assert that. I'm sure some religious nuts do, but do you have any evidence that a significant number of biologists or any particularly well regarded scientists have come to this conclusion? What biological evidence have they shown?
If I told you my house was built by accident, would you believe me? Yet, the construction of my house is much more simple than the construction of DNA.
Ummm, this is what is known as a logical fallacy. Non Sequitur. Just because you house is complex and it was designed, does not mean all complex things were designed.
Many scientist believe that a blade of grass happened without intelligence. Yet, those same scientists the world over with all their combined knowledge could not create a blade of grass from non-living material, and they have intelligence.
So you're arguing that because some task is outside of the ability of current technology, it must have been accomplished by a divine power? What makes you think that? Right now it is beyond human technology to control the weather. Does that mean God killed a lot of people with the last big hurricane? I don't see any logic to your assertions.
Unfortunately, they often have more intelligence than they do humility.
How hypocritical of you. These people are very smart, but not smart enough to do X. Thus you conclude they are are not humble enough to know that you more intelligent than them and have figured out the real truth. Here's a tip. If you're an egotist like me, don't go around telling others they aren't humble enough. It makes you look like a real ass.
We have three choices essentially, and the best scientists and engineers in the world are explaining this to the president:
You obviously haven't been paying attention to Bush's appointments to science related positions. Bush has the best lobbyists and old friends explaining it to him.