It seems far better to me than mime-types or magic strings.
Seems, yes. Is? No way in hell.
The problem is that extensions are part of the filename, i.e. they are arbitrary. Mapping arbitrary data to meta information is stupid at best, dangerous usually and in combination with hidden extensions and automatic execution it is a blatant disregard of even the most basic security procedures.
Nothing on that list is what iPod owners care about, so this'll be another money bleeding mistake, not an "iPod killer" (besides, didn't we already have an iPod killer this week? I thought they're scheduled every two weeks).
The iPod is a) simple, b) reliable, c) user-friendly, d) cool, e) well designed and f) ties in well with iTunes. That's what sells it, not bigger screens or WiFi. Nobody who owns an iPod wants to fiddle around for 5 minutes to get the WiFi to work.
I agree that Western Union shouldn't allow anyone supporting terrorism to use their service,
Then I'll agree that you're an idiot. Maybe we should start scrutinizing everyone for potential violence before we sell them a hammer, or check everyone if they're a sex offender before selling them a condom. Or not sell computer to hackers, and of course we'll have to screen everyone buying a computer whether they are a hacker. Or know a hacker. Or know someone who might have sent them to buy a computer for their hacker relative.
This is totally ridiculous. You can either put everyone under suspicion and total surveilance, or you can make them fill out a form saying "my money does not support terrorism" - which is, of course, total nonsense because your terrorist supporters will simply lie.
There is no fucking way to prevent Western Union, or your bank, or cash or the Internet or any other device or service that offers a generic service like information or money transfer from being used by people with an agenda you don't like without building a police state.
MS has probably realized that the usual embrace, extend, extinguish will work better than flat out refusal. Let's see:
Scenario A: MS refuses to do ODF Since ODF is making inroads in many places, and is being written into laws in others, flat out refusal will mean either someone else writes a plugin (oops, already happened) or people switch to OpenOffice. Also, it'll mean that Office XML is dead, dead, dead because everyone interested in XML office documents will use ODF while those interested in MS Office will stay with legacy formats.
Scenario B: MS does an Office plugin If MS "supports" ODF, then everyone used to Word will stay with Word instead of switching to OpenOffice. Also, lots and lots of these people will use Office XML as their document format and only convert to ODF when necessary, a process MS can greatly enhance by making sure that their ODF implementation is just slightly less convenient than their Office XML implementation. Then, a couple years down the road, they'll add some killer feature that they only implement into Office XML and not their ODF version. Or they extend ODF the way they tried with Kerberos.
judgements like this are the reason windows sells for $300-400 instead of 50-100, as future judgements like this are part of their pricing model
So what you're saying is that since the fine is for noncompliance with a court order, MS is figuring breaking the law and then ignoring the courts into their pricing model?
Damn, I knew I was making a mistake. If only I had including regular speeding tickets into my considerations for negotiating my salary, I could drive as fast as I wanted to everywhere!
But, then I thought about it for a bit. Does even microsoft deserve that kind of ruling?
Don't forget that 1 billion sounds like really a lot of money to you. For MS, it'll just about barely hurt. We talk about their 50 billion cash reserves on/. all the time. If that figure is correct, they just lost 2 percent of it.
Do you really expect every lawmaker to be an expert on everything?
No, but I expect them to: a) know what they know and what they don't b) have independent experts on hand for those issues where they don't know jack. c) don't try to explain to others something they don't get themselves
So if even the court believes that SCO has abused the legal system for unfair gains - will there be any punishment for that? Can the judge declare such punishment or does it have to go through a seperate case? Does the court system even have a way to send the message that it doesn't like being abused?
True, droves of users would still choose and buy Windos. Soon after, they'll have a head-on collision with the myth that Windos is so much easier to install than Linux (it hasn't been for years, everyone just believes that because they've never actually installed it, but got it pre-installed all the time) and a frustrating week or so later, they'll have it running and a whole new perspective on things.
But, I don't care about them. I care about the other 20% or so. The ones who'll ask "what else is there?". At first, they'll get blank stares from the Walmart guys. Then someone at Walmart realizes they can download Ubuntu for free, press some CDs for $0.10 each and sell them at $10 or $19.95 or even $29.99 each. At that moment, Walmart will become the #1 Linux distributor.
I personally don't. But I don't see why level-of-adherence-to-law should replace punishment. You break the law, you get convicted, you pay your fine. What's that got to do with buying decisions?
No, it isn't that simple, Mr. Bush. The real world is seldom simple enough to have a black-or-white, with-us-or-against-us, like-it-or-leave-it solution.
The question is not and never has been whether or not "The EU" - well, more specifically the EU anti-trust commission - likes or dislikes MS products. It is MS business practice that is under scrutiny here. You know, the whole illegal leveraging of monopoly position thing.
But if you want to have it simple, how about this one: MS broke the law, now they have to pay a fine. Simple enough?:)
The only thing that will break the cycle of everyone adapting MS's newest OS
is what you yourself wrote a few sentences before: Breaking MS stranglehold on the OEMs. If windos were something that you had to buy extra, people would start looking for alternatives.
Didn't Vista start out pretty much the same way? "Total rewrite from the ground up", everything shiny and new, new paradigms for file system handling and coffee making?
Look what we ended up with.
History repeats itself, repeats itself, itself...
Re:Not so sure about the visit count being useful.
on
Dealing with Phishing
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure that visit counts are very useful, as there is only a narrow window between the very beginning, where it is useless because it is basically 0, and where it becomes useless because it's just a big, meaningless number.
And exactly that is the usefulness. Your average phishing site tries to impersonate a site you visit frequently, like ebay, paypal or your online banking. When the counter for such a site is suddenly much lower than you remember, something fishy is going on. If it's 0 or a low one-digit number, it is almost guaranteed to be a phishing site.
Instead of trying to get MS to comply with the politicians, maybe they should just stop SUPPORTING the problem by not purchasing Microsoft's goods and services.
Yes, Mr. Bush. Except that the rest of us still believe there's something like the division of power and the judicial branch is not a customer of enough size or purchasing power to influence MS policy.
Hmm..can you back that up with some links? I'd think the US would be by far the largest market
Can't you search Wikipedia on your own? Or read the 20 other comments who posted the appropriate links? For starters, the US has ~300 mio. potential customers. The EU has ~457 mio.
No matter what you say if microsoft withdrew all support and products from europe their would be some nasty consiquences.
Yes, MS would file for chapter 11 within the quarter.
Come out of that little corner of the world you call the US and take a look around. The EU market is considerably larger than the US market. We have at least as many multinational corporations. If the EU headquarter had to switch to a non-windos platform, the other divisions would follow, starting an avalanche that'd break the MS monopoly once and for all.
Maybe 10 years down the road, we won't joke about the imperial system, but about the fact that you dudes are still using windos while the rest of the world has agreed on something that makes sense.;)
what would prevent MS from basically thumbing their nose at EU, and saying fine, we'll just withdraw all new products from you market
Because the EU is the world's largest market, far surpassing the US or any other. Pulling out of the EU would mean losing a third or more of your revenue, and that's not something you can tell your investors.
As a publicly traded company, even one with deep pockets, the resulting stock crash could wipe them out (there are ways to go bancrupt even with cash in the bank).
I think the EU's reasoning on this issue is faulty, and I think it's an old-fashioned money grab.
On the first: MS has (again) been convicted in a court case.
On the second: Maybe, but then again so is speeding tickets and parking fines. When the crime doesn't warrant throwing someone in jail, or you can't because the "someone" is a corporation, then the only thing left is fines, because in the western world we abandoned the whip, cutting-off-of-fingers and other fun punishments a few centuries ago.
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It seems far better to me than mime-types or magic strings.
Seems, yes. Is? No way in hell.
The problem is that extensions are part of the filename, i.e. they are arbitrary. Mapping arbitrary data to meta information is stupid at best, dangerous usually and in combination with hidden extensions and automatic execution it is a blatant disregard of even the most basic security procedures.
aka "lookhereiamcertainlynotavirus.jpg.exe"
should be a matter of turning the device on, enter the WEP/WPA key the first time, and going.
;)
And how, exactly, are you going to enter the WEP/WPA key on a device without a keyboard?
Nothing on that list is what iPod owners care about, so this'll be another money bleeding mistake, not an "iPod killer" (besides, didn't we already have an iPod killer this week? I thought they're scheduled every two weeks).
The iPod is a) simple, b) reliable, c) user-friendly, d) cool, e) well designed and f) ties in well with iTunes. That's what sells it, not bigger screens or WiFi. Nobody who owns an iPod wants to fiddle around for 5 minutes to get the WiFi to work.
I agree that Western Union shouldn't allow anyone supporting terrorism to use their service,
Then I'll agree that you're an idiot. Maybe we should start scrutinizing everyone for potential violence before we sell them a hammer, or check everyone if they're a sex offender before selling them a condom. Or not sell computer to hackers, and of course we'll have to screen everyone buying a computer whether they are a hacker. Or know a hacker. Or know someone who might have sent them to buy a computer for their hacker relative.
This is totally ridiculous. You can either put everyone under suspicion and total surveilance, or you can make them fill out a form saying "my money does not support terrorism" - which is, of course, total nonsense because your terrorist supporters will simply lie.
There is no fucking way to prevent Western Union, or your bank, or cash or the Internet or any other device or service that offers a generic service like information or money transfer from being used by people with an agenda you don't like without building a police state.
As if.
MS has probably realized that the usual embrace, extend, extinguish will work better than flat out refusal. Let's see:
Scenario A: MS refuses to do ODF
Since ODF is making inroads in many places, and is being written into laws in others, flat out refusal will mean either someone else writes a plugin (oops, already happened) or people switch to OpenOffice. Also, it'll mean that Office XML is dead, dead, dead because everyone interested in XML office documents will use ODF while those interested in MS Office will stay with legacy formats.
Scenario B: MS does an Office plugin
If MS "supports" ODF, then everyone used to Word will stay with Word instead of switching to OpenOffice. Also, lots and lots of these people will use Office XML as their document format and only convert to ODF when necessary, a process MS can greatly enhance by making sure that their ODF implementation is just slightly less convenient than their Office XML implementation.
Then, a couple years down the road, they'll add some killer feature that they only implement into Office XML and not their ODF version. Or they extend ODF the way they tried with Kerberos.
"caved in". Pfft.
judgements like this are the reason windows sells for $300-400 instead of 50-100, as future judgements like this are part of their pricing model
So what you're saying is that since the fine is for noncompliance with a court order, MS is figuring breaking the law and then ignoring the courts into their pricing model?
Damn, I knew I was making a mistake. If only I had including regular speeding tickets into my considerations for negotiating my salary, I could drive as fast as I wanted to everywhere!
Yeah, because offering a peek at the goddamned source code didn't go far enough, right?
If you really, really believe that looking at the source code will tell you what it does and how it works, then I suggest you check out the IOCCC. It's an extreme example, but mostly in length.
You can not study a million lines of code and understand what they do. Source code does not replace documentation.
But, then I thought about it for a bit. Does even microsoft deserve that kind of ruling?
/. all the time. If that figure is correct, they just lost 2 percent of it.
Don't forget that 1 billion sounds like really a lot of money to you. For MS, it'll just about barely hurt. We talk about their 50 billion cash reserves on
To me it's a sad day for America when we have to rely on other countries to police our corporations for us.
You got that backwards. It's not the corporations that belong to America, it's America that belongs to the corporations.
Do you really expect every lawmaker to be an expert on everything?
No, but I expect them to:
a) know what they know and what they don't
b) have independent experts on hand for those issues where they don't know jack.
c) don't try to explain to others something they don't get themselves
So if even the court believes that SCO has abused the legal system for unfair gains - will there be any punishment for that? Can the judge declare such punishment or does it have to go through a seperate case? Does the court system even have a way to send the message that it doesn't like being abused?
True, droves of users would still choose and buy Windos. Soon after, they'll have a head-on collision with the myth that Windos is so much easier to install than Linux (it hasn't been for years, everyone just believes that because they've never actually installed it, but got it pre-installed all the time) and a frustrating week or so later, they'll have it running and a whole new perspective on things.
But, I don't care about them. I care about the other 20% or so. The ones who'll ask "what else is there?". At first, they'll get blank stares from the Walmart guys. Then someone at Walmart realizes they can download Ubuntu for free, press some CDs for $0.10 each and sell them at $10 or $19.95 or even $29.99 each. At that moment, Walmart will become the #1 Linux distributor.
I personally don't. But I don't see why level-of-adherence-to-law should replace punishment. You break the law, you get convicted, you pay your fine. What's that got to do with buying decisions?
Yupp, they can tape you, but you can't tape them. Welcome to the United Police States of America (UPSA). :)
No, it isn't that simple, Mr. Bush. The real world is seldom simple enough to have a black-or-white, with-us-or-against-us, like-it-or-leave-it solution.
:)
The question is not and never has been whether or not "The EU" - well, more specifically the EU anti-trust commission - likes or dislikes MS products. It is MS business practice that is under scrutiny here. You know, the whole illegal leveraging of monopoly position thing.
But if you want to have it simple, how about this one: MS broke the law, now they have to pay a fine. Simple enough?
The only thing that will break the cycle of everyone adapting MS's newest OS
is what you yourself wrote a few sentences before: Breaking MS stranglehold on the OEMs. If windos were something that you had to buy extra, people would start looking for alternatives.
Didn't Vista start out pretty much the same way? "Total rewrite from the ground up", everything shiny and new, new paradigms for file system handling and coffee making?
Look what we ended up with.
History repeats itself, repeats itself, itself...
I'm not sure that visit counts are very useful, as there is only a narrow window between the very beginning, where it is useless because it is basically 0, and where it becomes useless because it's just a big, meaningless number.
And exactly that is the usefulness. Your average phishing site tries to impersonate a site you visit frequently, like ebay, paypal or your online banking. When the counter for such a site is suddenly much lower than you remember, something fishy is going on. If it's 0 or a low one-digit number, it is almost guaranteed to be a phishing site.
Nobody cares if it's 125 or 35743957394923.
Instead of trying to get MS to comply with the politicians, maybe they should just stop SUPPORTING the problem by not purchasing Microsoft's goods and services.
Yes, Mr. Bush. Except that the rest of us still believe there's something like the division of power and the judicial branch is not a customer of enough size or purchasing power to influence MS policy.
I've not heard that so far. If that's the case, I'd be more than happy, but the sources I've read speak of Dec 2005 till now.
Hmm..can you back that up with some links? I'd think the US would be by far the largest market
Can't you search Wikipedia on your own? Or read the 20 other comments who posted the appropriate links? For starters, the US has ~300 mio. potential customers. The EU has ~457 mio.
No matter what you say if microsoft withdrew all support and products from europe their would be some nasty consiquences.
;)
Yes, MS would file for chapter 11 within the quarter.
Come out of that little corner of the world you call the US and take a look around. The EU market is considerably larger than the US market. We have at least as many multinational corporations. If the EU headquarter had to switch to a non-windos platform, the other divisions would follow, starting an avalanche that'd break the MS monopoly once and for all.
Maybe 10 years down the road, we won't joke about the imperial system, but about the fact that you dudes are still using windos while the rest of the world has agreed on something that makes sense.
what would prevent MS from basically thumbing their nose at EU, and saying fine, we'll just withdraw all new products from you market
Because the EU is the world's largest market, far surpassing the US or any other. Pulling out of the EU would mean losing a third or more of your revenue, and that's not something you can tell your investors.
As a publicly traded company, even one with deep pockets, the resulting stock crash could wipe them out (there are ways to go bancrupt even with cash in the bank).
Sure, they can kick 'em out of the country, but MS should call their bluff.
You have no idea what you're talking about, right?
A country doesn't kick you out. It confiscates your assets. Which just happens to be considerably more than the fine.
When a court of law asks for fines, it is not bluffing.
I think the EU's reasoning on this issue is faulty, and I think it's an old-fashioned money grab.
On the first: MS has (again) been convicted in a court case.
On the second: Maybe, but then again so is speeding tickets and parking fines. When the crime doesn't warrant throwing someone in jail, or you can't because the "someone" is a corporation, then the only thing left is fines, because in the western world we abandoned the whip, cutting-off-of-fingers and other fun punishments a few centuries ago.