Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.
Every major vendor would probably like their own product to dominate. The difference is not the motivation, but the methods. Some vendors honestly try to make the best product and win customers by so doing. MS prefers to leverage monopolies to artificially break competing products and prevent users from being able to choose based upon the individual merits of the products in question.
I have no problem with MS wanting their OS and office suite to dominate. I have a problem with their breaking the law and hurting the industry, innovation, and end users to make that happen.
I never understood why did they include speed in a browser test?
Because if you can't do it quickly it isn't functional. It's just like specifying video has to play at a given, acceptable frame rate to pass a test that confirms something can play said video. Playing it jerkily in an unwatchable way is not good enough
...but it would mean that the best browsers would fail on a slower computer, and the worst would pass on a faster one. This is not objective.
Which is why the ACID tests each specify reference hardware, like most respectable test suites do. That is objective. Just because you don't have or use that reference hardware and run the test more informally does not mean it is a flaw with the test instead of your procedure.
Not to mention that setting a threshold for speed is impossible. Who says how fast is fast?
The people who write the test pick a minimum acceptable rate and the feature is supposed to be able to function in a timely dependent manner. If it can't it doesn't work with the spec.
Right, which is why the latter is not sufficient for the assigned purpose, just as a Web browser that can render a background color, but it takes four hundred years, isn't in conformance with that specification for all practical purposes. When you're dealing with static elements, slow is pretty relative. When you're dealing with animations, time is a easily defined and crucial part of the spec.
Do you not know how to right click on back button?
For owners of some Apple brand notebook computers, right-clicking involves plugging in an external mouse.
It's called "chording" or it's "multitouch". If you're using a notebook without an external mouse, you're using a trackpad. Unlike mice, trackpads have a usability benefit from chording or multitouch. It's faster to leave two fingers on the trackpad and click then it is to move my other hand so my thumb can get to the second trackpad button. It's faster to hit option while clicking on the back button (because my fingers are already on the keyboard) than it is to move my other hand off the keyboard to hit the second trackpad button or stretch my thumb that far.
The only real drawback, which is significant one, is users have to learn how to use these features... but then anyone nerdy enough to be on Slashdot should not have an issue there.
Huh?
WebKit: Open source project with large dollop of corporate funding.
Gecko: Open source project with large dollop of corporate funding.
What's the difference?
Gecko's corporate funding is almost entirely from Google and the code comes from the Mozilla foundation and random community members.
Webkit's funding comes from Google, Apple, Nokia, Novell, and several others. Code comes from the same.
The basic difference is Gecko is pretty much funded by Google and used in Firefox. Webkit is funded by many companies and used in a wide variety of projects. This means more code shared and less work for each contributor... thus, theoretically, more time to work on new features and improvements.
Only if you want a secure browser with mouse gestures
Not to rain on your parade (I think Opera is an excellent browser on Windows), but mouse gestures are one of those features like spell checking, grammar checking, and language translation, that should be implemented at the OS level rather than the application level. It is really cool that Opera has mouse gestures, but it really sucks it only uses the Opera ones on OS X where you can use mouse gestures across the whole OS in all applications that use the standard APIs (which Opera doesn't).
The first time I set up a network laser printer, it went like this.
Funny. I set up a network printer in my home several years ago. The process was just plugging it into the network and turning it on. Then (invisible to the end user) ZeroConf advertised the service on my network, OS X noticed the service and already had a generic driver that worked fine, so it just added it to my available printers in my "print" dialogue boxes. Heck, you can unplug it and watch it disappear as an option, then plug it back in and watch it reappear. I guess it seems pretty funny then that you're touting the nine step process you used.
OS X even has Bash now. And people certainly used DOS when it was all that was there.
Umm, now? Did OS X ever ship without bash? I know it became the default user shell in 2004, but I'm pretty sure it was installed by default from day one.
GUI interfaces, wizards, everything will have to be "clicky clicky" and the simple fact is most developers and IT guys HATE that.
It doesn't matter -- the two are not mutually exclusive. What I hate is when "clicky clicky" is the only option.
Ideally there would be APIs that make a GUI and CLI way to do everything. I actually find OS X to be best in this regard. On Linux I still have to use the CLI to perform certain actions and on Windows there are certain actions basically impossible to script because there is no CLI interface. All OS's could use improvement though.
Have you ever fired up a modern distro, like Ubuntu? It is possible to use it without once opening up the commandline, except perhaps to copy and paste some commands...
Yeah, but that isn't good enough for modern users. Most don't want to resort to copy and pasting commands into the CLI and many fail at that because they don't understand the concepts involved so they do things like copy quotes or fail to recognize variables. Linux has come quite a ways, but honestly, using Ubuntu I do have to use the CLI to perform certain tasks. Often they are tasks I like the CLI for better, but I recognize that isn't the case for normal users.
I'm going to say that Linux actually has a better GUI, in many respects, than its competition. Apple is a close enough second that I can see why people would prefer it, as a matter of taste.
I've done professional UI design and usability testing. It is quite clear to me, most Linux distros don't do any significant, formal usability testing, nor do they adhere to the best practices of the UI design community. There are numerous UI elements that are examples of what not to do, and Linux does them (often copied from Windows, but that's another story). Certainly Linux is ahead of the competition in several areas of OS design, but I don't think the UI is one of them. I rank them as on par with or even behind Windows.
I really don't understand why people would prefer Windows, all other things being equal.
Familiarity, ease of instruction from peers, application availability, applications designed and tested for usability for normal people, and commercial application ecosystem are big in my mind.
But it has to be one of the oldest bits of FUD that you somehow can't use Linux without using the commandline, or that a UNIX commandline somehow precludes a decent GUI.
It certainly doesn't preclude a good GUI, in fact integration between the CLI and GUI is an important feature for me. That said, for a lot of normal people trying to perform normal tasks in the real world today, they will eventually have to use the CLI if Linux i their main OS, unless they are willing to compromise getting the software they want or performing all the tasks they want.
Yeah, thanks for the tip. I think we covered that in my emag courses.
In other words, we have a good handle on the correlation between nuclear plants and health effects in the population: there is absolutely no detectable correlation.
Umm, New Scientist, for one, disagrees with you. There have been three respectable, peer reviewed studies now finding a positive correlation between leukemia rates in young children and proximity to nuclear plants. No one has tested a good hypothesis for the causation, but the correlation is highly likely at this point. Until we understand what is going on, we need to be cautious in where we build them.
The most efficient Nuclear plant would be. 1: In the middle of a city.
Look, I'm a fan of nuclear power, but even I think plants should be in the middle of nowhere until we get a handle on the likely correlation with Leukemia.
I have a "stick up my butt" because i find it ridiculous that ANY company should be the defacto standard.
Umm, so you object to companies succeeding?
The crowd here gets pissed off that Microsoft pukes all over the OS world but is okay that apple does the same thing with MP3 players and that's perfectly okay because "its Apple!"
MS uses their monopoly influence on desktop OS's to ruin other markets and to lock people into proprietary formats. We complain about MS's use of proprietary formats to leverage their overwhelming share of the Office market, for example. If MS made ODF their default format for MS Office and complied with the standard, we wouldn't complain about it because others could compete fairly and interoperability would not be an issue. Apple is using an open standard for their music player and other companies can and do implement players that use that standard just as Apple does. With regard to file formats, Apple has done the right thing.
With regard to other items, like tying to the iTunes store and to the iTunes software, Apple is not behaving well, but then they don't have monopoly influence yet, so until they do they are legally in the clear. Understand?
I would recommend Zen or Sansa to anybody over an iPod. I don't hate iPods, they're decent players, but the other two companies just build better-working players.
"Better working" is a vague term. It could refer to hardware/software reliability or it could refer to usability. So far, most of the independent reviews I've seen favor the iPod in both categories. Note, I don't care. I don't even own an MP3 player. I just think this argument is weak and just a vague opinion.
I've never had to do TECH SUPPORT for a friend to get their Sansa working, or move their music to a new machine, etc; I have had to to that with an iPod.
I have had to do tech support for a friend to get their music collections onto their Zen. But hey, that's just another anecdote. They don't make for much of an argument either way.
You can have your favorites, and if you like the iPod better, that's fine; but you're blatantly wrong if you try to can claim as a fact that those other players are "crippling yourself".
The previous poster made a cogent argument. He included features of the iPod working with iTunes that are not available for either the Sansa or Zen. If you choose a Sansa or a Zen you are indeed "crippling yourself" with regard to those features. On could just as easily argue that one is "crippling oneself" by choosing an iPod that can't tune into FM radio and that is reasonable argument... but neither does it make the previous poster blatantly wrong.
http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/iphone-amarok/ [adaniels.nl] would appear to indicate otherwise.
That applies to the iPhone not the iPod. Well, technically it applies to the iPod touch, but that's not a normal iPod it's really just a crippled iPhone. Here is Amarok's supported iPods list. You'll notice they're all listed as working, except the iPhone and iPod touch, which work partially.
Unless the information there has become obsolete, you need to manipulate the device (at least the 'touch' generation of iPods) in a way Apple has taken steps to prevent you from doing. Generally I'd feel uncomfortable buying a device which has been designed to restrict how I can use it (even if the cost of the device is subsidised because of those restrictions).
Wait you want to buy a locked phone, restricted to one network by the demands of the network provider. You further want to buy a device that plays video and works with mainstream offerings of that video, but you don't want the provider to implement the DRM required by those selling the mainstream offerings?
The facts of doing business in the US are simple. If you're going to do business with the MPAA and cellphone providers you're going to have your device locked down and that will cause problems for people who want to use it in ways most people don't (installing music without using the software designed to interact with the device). What's interesting is this used to be the case with music and the RIAA as well, but that is no longer true, largely because of Apple's ability to leverage their market influence to that end. (Mind you this was also in their own financial best interest, I have no illusions they did this out of altruism).
My answer for you is simple. If you want a device without restrictions, buy a simple MP3 player like all the models of iPods except the Touch. If you want something that is more capable of other functions, lobby the government to rein in the corporations that require restrictions on devices. Apple sure doesn't want them, since they're making money selling hardware and every restriction means some people wont buy said hardware or will buy it then cost extra money with support calls trying to get it to work because of the unnecessary complexity caused by the restrictions.
He supported a partnership with iTunes with education in his state and a project to produce educational apps for the iPhone. I'm thinking he's a Mac, or at least a Mac user.
If we can't find a reason to hate this guy, there's going to be a lot of unhappy people.
I like some of Obama's appointees and others I strongly dislike. This is another one that at least doesn't seem terrible on the surface. We'll have to wait and see if he does any good.
What is his stance on the open source revolution? Linux/Open Office/Open Source solutions can contribute to massive savings for school districts but it's been beaten down/back by those with financial interests.
He seems to be fairly OSS neutral, at least as the Slashdot community would interpret it (which is very pro-OSS from the average). He has supported several projects in the past that provide some hope, including the open source physics textbook. He also has supported numerous innovative projects that use existing closed source technologies, like education partnerships with Apple using iTunes. He was recommended for the position by several strong OSS supporters and he seems fairly competent.
As for Linux and OpenOffice I don't know that he has shown any specific support for those projects.
The EU keeps fining Microsoft for the same thing. They just make shit up and say "Ok, actually, you have to pay 70 million MORE, then you're free". The EU is treating MS like a piggy bank, regardless of any violations they've actually committed.
I disagree. Everytime the EU has fined MS it has been for either a separate incident (they've committed antitrust abuse dozens of times and only gone to trial for a few of them) or because MS was still refusing to comply with a court order for them to change their behavior with regard to a particular act.
The one you're probably thinking of is their server/desktop APIs. The EU told them to document all communication between the two products such that other server makers could compete fairly and not be at any disadvantage in creating servers that interoperate with Windows on the desktop. MS, used to dealing with the US courts, first punted on the issue, providing a meager amount of documentation which was both unusable and in many instances completely wrong. The courts told them it was insufficient. They then claimed complying with the law was too hard. The courts didn't buy it, so MS stalled and appealed and ran expensive PR campaigns and tried to get US diplomats to change the minds of the EU, all the while racking up bigger and bigger fines for continued noncompliance. Finally, they provided documentation that was adequate and the courts tallied up their fines, sent them a bill, and that has been the end of it. Mind you they are still responsible for keeping that documentation up to date, so they could be fined again if they fail to meet those legal requirements.
Basically, I think your opinion on the matter is either uninformed or completely disingenuous. I don't know if you're a deluded fanboy or an astroturfer.
I'd be very surprised if they block other search engines out of competitive reasons, because they've been getting hammered by the EU for various anti-compition[sic] violations over the past few years.
Yeah, but few of those have been effective at stopping MS from continuing said antitrust actions and MS has committed numerous new, unaddressed violations of the law. They're still making more money breaking the law and paying fines, than complying. Why do you think they'd comply now?
If you use the Debian/Ubuntu repositories, I guarantee you won't get a trojan. Unfortunately, not everyone does...
First, that's not guaranteed at all since the software that makes it into the repositories is not vetted as well as it could be and developers could compromise software that makes it in. Second, the repositories do not include all the software I need, nor have developers been given the incentives to include their software in the repositories. Commercial software is simply not there for a variety of reasons and sorry, but it is not practical to forego the majority of commercial software and still get work done. You might as well tell people to only install software on Windows that they buy on disks from Bestbuy and then they won't get any trojans. Or only use software on OS X that is bought from the Apple store. It's not a practical or useful policy at this point.
Oh, and before you go into assigning blame mode for why commercial software isn't there... it doesn't matter. Who is to blame is not security. Reducing the number of compromises while allowing people to do what they want/need is security.
Not that I like it but UAC would give you about 50 alerts by the time that trojan managed to get online.
The problem with UAC is not the basic concept for the technology, but the terrible implementation. MS completely ignored the UI components and did not provide developers with the needed incentives. As a result, the false positive rate and conditioning of users makes it pretty useless to the average person. False positives are a security problem by themselves. In this instance they are mostly a way to assign blame for security failure instead of actually improve security.
If apps can be installed at a given level, malicious apps can be installed at that same level.
True, which is why we don't use levels but instead apply restrictive ACLs to all applications, preferably ACLs written by the software maker and verified by a third trusted party.
There is no way to say "Only good apps have permission."
No, but you can certainly say only signed and verified applications from known good sources have permission to access anything outside their own directory they didn't create. And only signed and certified apps can use more than FOO worth of disk space or CPU or memory. You can also prompt the user to assign a template ACL to unsigned apps, templates like "internet app" or "game" or "productivity". You can further decrease the number of exceptions that legitimate applications need by encouraging vendors to us signing an provide ACLs and by providing official services to take care of things like registration, licensing, and updates.
So suppose all apps could install as the user, or as a slightly privileged "app" level. What's that gain you?
If you assign them to a restrictive ACL by default, that protects all your user data unless you manually open the file with the sandboxed ACL and it prevents the sandboxed app from overwriting the version controlled copies, so even if it does mess up your files, you can restore them.
Are you REALLY going to trust that there isn't something deeper in the OS or would you reinstall anyhow for safety?
I trust VMs and other sandboxes to protect my data all the time. When my Windows install gets compromised, I don't reinstall my host OS, I just revert the VM to an earlier version before it was compromised and the VM doesn't have permission to remove copies of shared files from my version control. If an OS vendor builds sandboxing in and makes it a default, yeah I'll trust it if well implemented.
However on a single user system it's moot.
On most, popular production single user systems that's true. It isn't true on all of them, like SELinux or TrustedBSD systems and those technologies are already making their way into OS X. (OS X already has and uses ACLs, just in a limited fashion and not for new applications by default, nor does it use signing as a criteria or really implement my other suggestions yet.)
Maybe there needs to be a new level called app for applications but then you have to problem of libraries.
Levels are going out. ACLs are much more granular and useful for security and libraries aren't a big problem. OS X already has ACLs for sandboxing apps, but has only applied it to a few pre-installed services so far. Extending it to all applications will take some serious work, but is the most likely direction for security going forward.
Protect from what? What kind of behaviour in an app that you installed as root you should block that no rightful app should do?
Root, that's what carrots are right? Does that mean anything to a normal user? Programs ask for passwords and usually they work just as expected. Why shouldn't users type in their password to install this software?
Protect from what? What kind of behaviour in an app that you installed as root you should block that no rightful app should do? Connecting to hundreds of pcs? thats what any p2p do.
Right, which is why OS X has a new signing framework to verify the source of software. Combined with a good sandbox and some smart UI options you can make sure no program can connect to hundreds of PCs by default unless it is signed by the developer. If it is unsigned, users can manually allow it to connect, but even technologically clueless users might wonder why their word processor or photoshop wants to connect to hundreds of PCs and why they never get warnings like this about the other software they install (which is signed).
No OS is safe from that.
Actually, a few are, they just aren't in mainstream use because there isn't a demand outside high security settings. As malware becomes more of a problem, these technologies become more likely to be implemented.
But is not like it entered like an unpatched, OS-bundled hole, or that enabled the OS supplied browser to automatically execute something or disguise the real url you are visiting.
Security is a process. It is about finding what keeps the majority of machines doing what users want and not what they don't want. Finding a way to assign blame for compromised machines is not security... except maybe job security for people covering their asses. Finding ways to keep users informed about what their computers are doing and give them good choices to let it do what they want without doing what they don't is security.
You make a good point except for the fact that if I just hide malware in the installation file, neither of your tactics are secure. The user is the weakest link in most attacks.
The users is a weak link in many security chains, but a hard one to exploit on a large scale. OS X and Linux do better on security partly because of market share, but largely because most malware is spread by automated worms and the fewer and more hardened services running by default on OS X and Linux machines provide a much harder target.
For trojans such as we're discussing, no OS has a good solution in place, excepting maybe SELinux or the like which is fairly limited and hard to use because it really isn't in high demand so developers don't target it.
They totally intentionally installed the software. You can't make a machine Malware proof without also making it software proof... Anyone who tells you different is confusing the issue. OS X has plenty of problems, this isn't one of them.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. You can make OS's more resistant to malware and harder to write malware for without making it completely proof from malware. Apple is working on implementing more fully sandboxing, signing, and UI improvements all designed to make OS X less susceptible to this kind of malware. As malware and trojans become more of a problem for OS X users, more methods of mitigating those problems become important. There's no technological reason for unsigned software to have default access to all the functions of the OS outside a sandbox or why users would be conditioned to grant such access (given that they don't need to do so for 99.9% of legitimate software). The fact that OS X does not yet supply this functionality in a user friendly way is absolutely a deficiency of the OS (one they will probably correct if malware becomes a more serious problem for their customers).
I'm just guessing, but I think when he said "Technologically Uneducated Users" he was talking about Mac users, not developers. You might have missed the last 25 years where Macs claim to be more user friendly and cater to a less technologically inclined user-base...
When has Apple ever claimed Macs cater to a less technologically inclined user base? They certainly claim to be more user friendly, but all the ads I've seen on the subject (which are rare) claim to be more useful for the technologically savvy than Windows systems are.
In short, not all Mac users fit that profile, but the ones that do are contributing to the negative image that OSX and Macs in general enjoy among a significant portion of the populace. Think "AOL"...
There's a flaw in your analogy. AOL catered to the technologically incompetent, but was pretty much shunned by the competent because it offered them nothing but higher prices. Macs cater to both groups. To make your analogy apt you'd have to have a goodly chunk of security experts on the opposite end of the technological scale, using AOL... because that's the situation with Macs and anyone who's been to Defcon or Blackhat in the last five years can attest.
More importantly, however, I think that he was implying that the users that claim that Macs are completely impervious to malware and that therefore Mac users need not take any precautions against infection are making the Mac community, and by extension the Mac OS, a laughing stock of the computer technology community.
To date, Mac users have been at greater risk from installing antivirus software which has malfunctioned than from malware in the wild. The message presented by many is an oversimplification. Obviously Macs are not immune to security problems, but at the same time, diluting said message does a lot to prevent non-technological users from making a better decision. Technology savvy users should know better anyway and understand the more nuanced message.
In short, the OS is technologically impressive in many ways, but a vocal portion of the users frequently make claims about it that are factually impossible and socially irresponsible.
Actually, I don't think their claims are any more irresponsible than the claims of the fans of any OS. It' just fodder for people who get all emotional about defending their favorite OS, whether that is to claim OS X was written by the Buddha or FavoriteOS is better because OS X was written by Satan. In truth, even overstated claims about the security of using OS X, is probably of more benefit than harm to the average user.
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Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.
Every major vendor would probably like their own product to dominate. The difference is not the motivation, but the methods. Some vendors honestly try to make the best product and win customers by so doing. MS prefers to leverage monopolies to artificially break competing products and prevent users from being able to choose based upon the individual merits of the products in question.
I have no problem with MS wanting their OS and office suite to dominate. I have a problem with their breaking the law and hurting the industry, innovation, and end users to make that happen.
I never understood why did they include speed in a browser test?
Because if you can't do it quickly it isn't functional. It's just like specifying video has to play at a given, acceptable frame rate to pass a test that confirms something can play said video. Playing it jerkily in an unwatchable way is not good enough
...but it would mean that the best browsers would fail on a slower computer, and the worst would pass on a faster one. This is not objective.
Which is why the ACID tests each specify reference hardware, like most respectable test suites do. That is objective. Just because you don't have or use that reference hardware and run the test more informally does not mean it is a flaw with the test instead of your procedure.
Not to mention that setting a threshold for speed is impossible. Who says how fast is fast?
The people who write the test pick a minimum acceptable rate and the feature is supposed to be able to function in a timely dependent manner. If it can't it doesn't work with the spec.
Right, which is why the latter is not sufficient for the assigned purpose, just as a Web browser that can render a background color, but it takes four hundred years, isn't in conformance with that specification for all practical purposes. When you're dealing with static elements, slow is pretty relative. When you're dealing with animations, time is a easily defined and crucial part of the spec.
Do you not know how to right click on back button?
For owners of some Apple brand notebook computers, right-clicking involves plugging in an external mouse.
It's called "chording" or it's "multitouch". If you're using a notebook without an external mouse, you're using a trackpad. Unlike mice, trackpads have a usability benefit from chording or multitouch. It's faster to leave two fingers on the trackpad and click then it is to move my other hand so my thumb can get to the second trackpad button. It's faster to hit option while clicking on the back button (because my fingers are already on the keyboard) than it is to move my other hand off the keyboard to hit the second trackpad button or stretch my thumb that far.
The only real drawback, which is significant one, is users have to learn how to use these features... but then anyone nerdy enough to be on Slashdot should not have an issue there.
Huh? WebKit: Open source project with large dollop of corporate funding. Gecko: Open source project with large dollop of corporate funding. What's the difference?
Gecko's corporate funding is almost entirely from Google and the code comes from the Mozilla foundation and random community members.
Webkit's funding comes from Google, Apple, Nokia, Novell, and several others. Code comes from the same.
The basic difference is Gecko is pretty much funded by Google and used in Firefox. Webkit is funded by many companies and used in a wide variety of projects. This means more code shared and less work for each contributor... thus, theoretically, more time to work on new features and improvements.
Only if you want a secure browser with mouse gestures
Not to rain on your parade (I think Opera is an excellent browser on Windows), but mouse gestures are one of those features like spell checking, grammar checking, and language translation, that should be implemented at the OS level rather than the application level. It is really cool that Opera has mouse gestures, but it really sucks it only uses the Opera ones on OS X where you can use mouse gestures across the whole OS in all applications that use the standard APIs (which Opera doesn't).
The first time I set up a network laser printer, it went like this.
Funny. I set up a network printer in my home several years ago. The process was just plugging it into the network and turning it on. Then (invisible to the end user) ZeroConf advertised the service on my network, OS X noticed the service and already had a generic driver that worked fine, so it just added it to my available printers in my "print" dialogue boxes. Heck, you can unplug it and watch it disappear as an option, then plug it back in and watch it reappear. I guess it seems pretty funny then that you're touting the nine step process you used.
OS X even has Bash now. And people certainly used DOS when it was all that was there.
Umm, now? Did OS X ever ship without bash? I know it became the default user shell in 2004, but I'm pretty sure it was installed by default from day one.
GUI interfaces, wizards, everything will have to be "clicky clicky" and the simple fact is most developers and IT guys HATE that.
It doesn't matter -- the two are not mutually exclusive. What I hate is when "clicky clicky" is the only option.
Ideally there would be APIs that make a GUI and CLI way to do everything. I actually find OS X to be best in this regard. On Linux I still have to use the CLI to perform certain actions and on Windows there are certain actions basically impossible to script because there is no CLI interface. All OS's could use improvement though.
Have you ever fired up a modern distro, like Ubuntu? It is possible to use it without once opening up the commandline, except perhaps to copy and paste some commands...
Yeah, but that isn't good enough for modern users. Most don't want to resort to copy and pasting commands into the CLI and many fail at that because they don't understand the concepts involved so they do things like copy quotes or fail to recognize variables. Linux has come quite a ways, but honestly, using Ubuntu I do have to use the CLI to perform certain tasks. Often they are tasks I like the CLI for better, but I recognize that isn't the case for normal users.
I'm going to say that Linux actually has a better GUI, in many respects, than its competition. Apple is a close enough second that I can see why people would prefer it, as a matter of taste.
I've done professional UI design and usability testing. It is quite clear to me, most Linux distros don't do any significant, formal usability testing, nor do they adhere to the best practices of the UI design community. There are numerous UI elements that are examples of what not to do, and Linux does them (often copied from Windows, but that's another story). Certainly Linux is ahead of the competition in several areas of OS design, but I don't think the UI is one of them. I rank them as on par with or even behind Windows.
I really don't understand why people would prefer Windows, all other things being equal.
Familiarity, ease of instruction from peers, application availability, applications designed and tested for usability for normal people, and commercial application ecosystem are big in my mind.
But it has to be one of the oldest bits of FUD that you somehow can't use Linux without using the commandline, or that a UNIX commandline somehow precludes a decent GUI.
It certainly doesn't preclude a good GUI, in fact integration between the CLI and GUI is an important feature for me. That said, for a lot of normal people trying to perform normal tasks in the real world today, they will eventually have to use the CLI if Linux i their main OS, unless they are willing to compromise getting the software they want or performing all the tasks they want.
What? Radiation isn't magical.
Yeah, thanks for the tip. I think we covered that in my emag courses.
In other words, we have a good handle on the correlation between nuclear plants and health effects in the population: there is absolutely no detectable correlation.
Umm, New Scientist, for one, disagrees with you. There have been three respectable, peer reviewed studies now finding a positive correlation between leukemia rates in young children and proximity to nuclear plants. No one has tested a good hypothesis for the causation, but the correlation is highly likely at this point. Until we understand what is going on, we need to be cautious in where we build them.
The most efficient Nuclear plant would be. 1: In the middle of a city.
Look, I'm a fan of nuclear power, but even I think plants should be in the middle of nowhere until we get a handle on the likely correlation with Leukemia.
I have a "stick up my butt" because i find it ridiculous that ANY company should be the defacto standard.
Umm, so you object to companies succeeding?
The crowd here gets pissed off that Microsoft pukes all over the OS world but is okay that apple does the same thing with MP3 players and that's perfectly okay because "its Apple!"
MS uses their monopoly influence on desktop OS's to ruin other markets and to lock people into proprietary formats. We complain about MS's use of proprietary formats to leverage their overwhelming share of the Office market, for example. If MS made ODF their default format for MS Office and complied with the standard, we wouldn't complain about it because others could compete fairly and interoperability would not be an issue. Apple is using an open standard for their music player and other companies can and do implement players that use that standard just as Apple does. With regard to file formats, Apple has done the right thing.
With regard to other items, like tying to the iTunes store and to the iTunes software, Apple is not behaving well, but then they don't have monopoly influence yet, so until they do they are legally in the clear. Understand?
I would recommend Zen or Sansa to anybody over an iPod. I don't hate iPods, they're decent players, but the other two companies just build better-working players.
"Better working" is a vague term. It could refer to hardware/software reliability or it could refer to usability. So far, most of the independent reviews I've seen favor the iPod in both categories. Note, I don't care. I don't even own an MP3 player. I just think this argument is weak and just a vague opinion.
I've never had to do TECH SUPPORT for a friend to get their Sansa working, or move their music to a new machine, etc; I have had to to that with an iPod.
I have had to do tech support for a friend to get their music collections onto their Zen. But hey, that's just another anecdote. They don't make for much of an argument either way.
You can have your favorites, and if you like the iPod better, that's fine; but you're blatantly wrong if you try to can claim as a fact that those other players are "crippling yourself".
The previous poster made a cogent argument. He included features of the iPod working with iTunes that are not available for either the Sansa or Zen. If you choose a Sansa or a Zen you are indeed "crippling yourself" with regard to those features. On could just as easily argue that one is "crippling oneself" by choosing an iPod that can't tune into FM radio and that is reasonable argument... but neither does it make the previous poster blatantly wrong.
http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/iphone-amarok/ [adaniels.nl] would appear to indicate otherwise.
That applies to the iPhone not the iPod. Well, technically it applies to the iPod touch, but that's not a normal iPod it's really just a crippled iPhone. Here is Amarok's supported iPods list. You'll notice they're all listed as working, except the iPhone and iPod touch, which work partially.
Unless the information there has become obsolete, you need to manipulate the device (at least the 'touch' generation of iPods) in a way Apple has taken steps to prevent you from doing. Generally I'd feel uncomfortable buying a device which has been designed to restrict how I can use it (even if the cost of the device is subsidised because of those restrictions).
Wait you want to buy a locked phone, restricted to one network by the demands of the network provider. You further want to buy a device that plays video and works with mainstream offerings of that video, but you don't want the provider to implement the DRM required by those selling the mainstream offerings?
The facts of doing business in the US are simple. If you're going to do business with the MPAA and cellphone providers you're going to have your device locked down and that will cause problems for people who want to use it in ways most people don't (installing music without using the software designed to interact with the device). What's interesting is this used to be the case with music and the RIAA as well, but that is no longer true, largely because of Apple's ability to leverage their market influence to that end. (Mind you this was also in their own financial best interest, I have no illusions they did this out of altruism).
My answer for you is simple. If you want a device without restrictions, buy a simple MP3 player like all the models of iPods except the Touch. If you want something that is more capable of other functions, lobby the government to rein in the corporations that require restrictions on devices. Apple sure doesn't want them, since they're making money selling hardware and every restriction means some people wont buy said hardware or will buy it then cost extra money with support calls trying to get it to work because of the unnecessary complexity caused by the restrictions.
Let's not screw around here: Is he Mac or PC?
He supported a partnership with iTunes with education in his state and a project to produce educational apps for the iPhone. I'm thinking he's a Mac, or at least a Mac user.
If we can't find a reason to hate this guy, there's going to be a lot of unhappy people.
I like some of Obama's appointees and others I strongly dislike. This is another one that at least doesn't seem terrible on the surface. We'll have to wait and see if he does any good.
What is his stance on the open source revolution? Linux/Open Office/Open Source solutions can contribute to massive savings for school districts but it's been beaten down/back by those with financial interests.
He seems to be fairly OSS neutral, at least as the Slashdot community would interpret it (which is very pro-OSS from the average). He has supported several projects in the past that provide some hope, including the open source physics textbook. He also has supported numerous innovative projects that use existing closed source technologies, like education partnerships with Apple using iTunes. He was recommended for the position by several strong OSS supporters and he seems fairly competent.
As for Linux and OpenOffice I don't know that he has shown any specific support for those projects.
The EU keeps fining Microsoft for the same thing. They just make shit up and say "Ok, actually, you have to pay 70 million MORE, then you're free". The EU is treating MS like a piggy bank, regardless of any violations they've actually committed.
I disagree. Everytime the EU has fined MS it has been for either a separate incident (they've committed antitrust abuse dozens of times and only gone to trial for a few of them) or because MS was still refusing to comply with a court order for them to change their behavior with regard to a particular act.
The one you're probably thinking of is their server/desktop APIs. The EU told them to document all communication between the two products such that other server makers could compete fairly and not be at any disadvantage in creating servers that interoperate with Windows on the desktop. MS, used to dealing with the US courts, first punted on the issue, providing a meager amount of documentation which was both unusable and in many instances completely wrong. The courts told them it was insufficient. They then claimed complying with the law was too hard. The courts didn't buy it, so MS stalled and appealed and ran expensive PR campaigns and tried to get US diplomats to change the minds of the EU, all the while racking up bigger and bigger fines for continued noncompliance. Finally, they provided documentation that was adequate and the courts tallied up their fines, sent them a bill, and that has been the end of it. Mind you they are still responsible for keeping that documentation up to date, so they could be fined again if they fail to meet those legal requirements.
Basically, I think your opinion on the matter is either uninformed or completely disingenuous. I don't know if you're a deluded fanboy or an astroturfer.
Apple tells you to do exactly that, [wikipedia.org] and people do it!
Nah, that's only some people and only for their phone, not their general purpose computer.
I'd be very surprised if they block other search engines out of competitive reasons, because they've been getting hammered by the EU for various anti-compition[sic] violations over the past few years.
Yeah, but few of those have been effective at stopping MS from continuing said antitrust actions and MS has committed numerous new, unaddressed violations of the law. They're still making more money breaking the law and paying fines, than complying. Why do you think they'd comply now?
If you use the Debian/Ubuntu repositories, I guarantee you won't get a trojan. Unfortunately, not everyone does...
First, that's not guaranteed at all since the software that makes it into the repositories is not vetted as well as it could be and developers could compromise software that makes it in. Second, the repositories do not include all the software I need, nor have developers been given the incentives to include their software in the repositories. Commercial software is simply not there for a variety of reasons and sorry, but it is not practical to forego the majority of commercial software and still get work done. You might as well tell people to only install software on Windows that they buy on disks from Bestbuy and then they won't get any trojans. Or only use software on OS X that is bought from the Apple store. It's not a practical or useful policy at this point.
Oh, and before you go into assigning blame mode for why commercial software isn't there... it doesn't matter. Who is to blame is not security. Reducing the number of compromises while allowing people to do what they want/need is security.
Not that I like it but UAC would give you about 50 alerts by the time that trojan managed to get online.
The problem with UAC is not the basic concept for the technology, but the terrible implementation. MS completely ignored the UI components and did not provide developers with the needed incentives. As a result, the false positive rate and conditioning of users makes it pretty useless to the average person. False positives are a security problem by themselves. In this instance they are mostly a way to assign blame for security failure instead of actually improve security.
If apps can be installed at a given level, malicious apps can be installed at that same level.
True, which is why we don't use levels but instead apply restrictive ACLs to all applications, preferably ACLs written by the software maker and verified by a third trusted party.
There is no way to say "Only good apps have permission."
No, but you can certainly say only signed and verified applications from known good sources have permission to access anything outside their own directory they didn't create. And only signed and certified apps can use more than FOO worth of disk space or CPU or memory. You can also prompt the user to assign a template ACL to unsigned apps, templates like "internet app" or "game" or "productivity". You can further decrease the number of exceptions that legitimate applications need by encouraging vendors to us signing an provide ACLs and by providing official services to take care of things like registration, licensing, and updates.
So suppose all apps could install as the user, or as a slightly privileged "app" level. What's that gain you?
If you assign them to a restrictive ACL by default, that protects all your user data unless you manually open the file with the sandboxed ACL and it prevents the sandboxed app from overwriting the version controlled copies, so even if it does mess up your files, you can restore them.
Are you REALLY going to trust that there isn't something deeper in the OS or would you reinstall anyhow for safety?
I trust VMs and other sandboxes to protect my data all the time. When my Windows install gets compromised, I don't reinstall my host OS, I just revert the VM to an earlier version before it was compromised and the VM doesn't have permission to remove copies of shared files from my version control. If an OS vendor builds sandboxing in and makes it a default, yeah I'll trust it if well implemented.
However on a single user system it's moot.
On most, popular production single user systems that's true. It isn't true on all of them, like SELinux or TrustedBSD systems and those technologies are already making their way into OS X. (OS X already has and uses ACLs, just in a limited fashion and not for new applications by default, nor does it use signing as a criteria or really implement my other suggestions yet.)
Maybe there needs to be a new level called app for applications but then you have to problem of libraries.
Levels are going out. ACLs are much more granular and useful for security and libraries aren't a big problem. OS X already has ACLs for sandboxing apps, but has only applied it to a few pre-installed services so far. Extending it to all applications will take some serious work, but is the most likely direction for security going forward.
Protect from what? What kind of behaviour in an app that you installed as root you should block that no rightful app should do?
Root, that's what carrots are right? Does that mean anything to a normal user? Programs ask for passwords and usually they work just as expected. Why shouldn't users type in their password to install this software?
Protect from what? What kind of behaviour in an app that you installed as root you should block that no rightful app should do? Connecting to hundreds of pcs? thats what any p2p do.
Right, which is why OS X has a new signing framework to verify the source of software. Combined with a good sandbox and some smart UI options you can make sure no program can connect to hundreds of PCs by default unless it is signed by the developer. If it is unsigned, users can manually allow it to connect, but even technologically clueless users might wonder why their word processor or photoshop wants to connect to hundreds of PCs and why they never get warnings like this about the other software they install (which is signed).
No OS is safe from that.
Actually, a few are, they just aren't in mainstream use because there isn't a demand outside high security settings. As malware becomes more of a problem, these technologies become more likely to be implemented.
But is not like it entered like an unpatched, OS-bundled hole, or that enabled the OS supplied browser to automatically execute something or disguise the real url you are visiting.
Security is a process. It is about finding what keeps the majority of machines doing what users want and not what they don't want. Finding a way to assign blame for compromised machines is not security... except maybe job security for people covering their asses. Finding ways to keep users informed about what their computers are doing and give them good choices to let it do what they want without doing what they don't is security.
You make a good point except for the fact that if I just hide malware in the installation file, neither of your tactics are secure. The user is the weakest link in most attacks.
The users is a weak link in many security chains, but a hard one to exploit on a large scale. OS X and Linux do better on security partly because of market share, but largely because most malware is spread by automated worms and the fewer and more hardened services running by default on OS X and Linux machines provide a much harder target.
For trojans such as we're discussing, no OS has a good solution in place, excepting maybe SELinux or the like which is fairly limited and hard to use because it really isn't in high demand so developers don't target it.
They totally intentionally installed the software. You can't make a machine Malware proof without also making it software proof... Anyone who tells you different is confusing the issue. OS X has plenty of problems, this isn't one of them.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. You can make OS's more resistant to malware and harder to write malware for without making it completely proof from malware. Apple is working on implementing more fully sandboxing, signing, and UI improvements all designed to make OS X less susceptible to this kind of malware. As malware and trojans become more of a problem for OS X users, more methods of mitigating those problems become important. There's no technological reason for unsigned software to have default access to all the functions of the OS outside a sandbox or why users would be conditioned to grant such access (given that they don't need to do so for 99.9% of legitimate software). The fact that OS X does not yet supply this functionality in a user friendly way is absolutely a deficiency of the OS (one they will probably correct if malware becomes a more serious problem for their customers).
I'm just guessing, but I think when he said "Technologically Uneducated Users" he was talking about Mac users, not developers. You might have missed the last 25 years where Macs claim to be more user friendly and cater to a less technologically inclined user-base...
When has Apple ever claimed Macs cater to a less technologically inclined user base? They certainly claim to be more user friendly, but all the ads I've seen on the subject (which are rare) claim to be more useful for the technologically savvy than Windows systems are.
In short, not all Mac users fit that profile, but the ones that do are contributing to the negative image that OSX and Macs in general enjoy among a significant portion of the populace. Think "AOL"...
There's a flaw in your analogy. AOL catered to the technologically incompetent, but was pretty much shunned by the competent because it offered them nothing but higher prices. Macs cater to both groups. To make your analogy apt you'd have to have a goodly chunk of security experts on the opposite end of the technological scale, using AOL... because that's the situation with Macs and anyone who's been to Defcon or Blackhat in the last five years can attest.
More importantly, however, I think that he was implying that the users that claim that Macs are completely impervious to malware and that therefore Mac users need not take any precautions against infection are making the Mac community, and by extension the Mac OS, a laughing stock of the computer technology community.
To date, Mac users have been at greater risk from installing antivirus software which has malfunctioned than from malware in the wild. The message presented by many is an oversimplification. Obviously Macs are not immune to security problems, but at the same time, diluting said message does a lot to prevent non-technological users from making a better decision. Technology savvy users should know better anyway and understand the more nuanced message.
In short, the OS is technologically impressive in many ways, but a vocal portion of the users frequently make claims about it that are factually impossible and socially irresponsible.
Actually, I don't think their claims are any more irresponsible than the claims of the fans of any OS. It' just fodder for people who get all emotional about defending their favorite OS, whether that is to claim OS X was written by the Buddha or FavoriteOS is better because OS X was written by Satan. In truth, even overstated claims about the security of using OS X, is probably of more benefit than harm to the average user.