Ah yes, the classic troll "Apple has a monopoly on their own products."
It's been a while since that particularly specious reasoning appeared. I thought we'd all moved on a bit.
I particularly like the bit where you call it a little monopoly and then say "little by numbers," contradicting what a monopoly actually is. Well done, good troll!
I can play every PC game by installing WinXP on a Mac, and the many Mac-only shareware games. I can participate in just about any open source project on a Mac, and if i get really excited, I can work on the OS X kernel as well.
Several of these are Microsoft products, probably pulled to protect their Windows business. The loss of those, and the hobbling of Office 2007 can't be put to Apple's door (especially Office 2007, as the Mac user base is getting larger). FoxPro hasn't been available since... 1994 for the Mac, and about the same for Windows. Now it's MS Access, which Microsoft will probably never port.
VirtualPC is no loss at all now, since Boot Camp and Parallels are both much better at just about everything.
So... given that your lists had 14 items and only 5 of them were Apple (and of those, only 4 are unique) how can Apple "catch up" with the other items? Should they lobby the other companies for feature parity, or to port the missing apps? How can Apple force Microsoft to release new Mac products, for example, and is that a realistic thing to attempt?
Clearly you were unable to read the FAQ on the MOAB site. Since you're lazy and rude, I'll do the hard work of clicking, copying and pasting for you:
"4. Are the issues being reported to the vendor before public disclosure?
Rarely, the point is releasing them without vendor notification. Although, sometimes we may decide to pass an issue through the appropriate people. The problem with so-called 'responsible disclosure' is that for some people, it means keeping others on hold for insane amounts of time, even when the fix should be trivial. And the reward (automated responses and euphemism-heavy advisories) doesn't pay off in the end."
Perhaps you might like to check out what you're being so arrogant about before you post next time.
As for my use of the word "professional," I stand by my claim that they're not professional in the way they're doing this. There's a story about disclosure on Slashdot right now where you can make points about when disclosure should happen. I'm not the arbiter of professionalism, and am clearly giving my opinion. You can't seem to see this, assuming that somehow I'm the world expert on professionalism (is that a "strawman" argument? probably). I can only look at your abusive post and see that clearly, you're just some random bozo trolling for responses. You started rationally, but went downhill pretty quickly.
COme back when you can keep a civil tongue in your head.
It doesn't confuse me at all - I understand exactly what you're saying here. I just don't agree with it in any way and don't see any evidence of it outside a few researchers who I see as unprofessional and bringing the nature of security research into disrepute. Well... more disrepute.
Podcasts aren't good sources if we're talking professionalism. Anyone who takes fan-boys as indicative of all users is clearly not giving a considered, professional opinion.
I use VLC as well, and have for a few years. It's a great addition to my computer, although the UI is pretty awful (but getting better in leaps and bounds).
That doesn't mean it's popular though. I still don't know anyone outside of tech-based websites who's heard of it when asked.
Thanks for the insults. I see you're doing a good job of being condescending and rude.
Let's try this again. A security researcher has to be professional about how they release their information. That means that if they get hundreds of death threats from rabid fan-boys they do what professionals do - they ignore them. Rising to them is not professional in any way, and (as the FAQ on the MOAB site says) calling vocal fans crack-heads can only inflame the situation.
Look at other industries. If engineers caved to public pressure, we'd have no great monuments or projects. If scientists caved to public pressure we'd still be living with the God of the Gaps. If judges caved to public pressure we'd have trial by voting or the rule of the jungle. Real professionals don't cave - they persist.
I want these people to succeed in their overall goal, although I disagree greatly with their method. By "normal channels" (and I tried to break it out for you) I meant the standard practice of notifying the company first, giving them a reasonable period and then publicising the issue. Going straight to publicity is a wonderful thing for black hats out there, and they'll be extremely happy should any serious vulnerabilities turn up. They've got all they need to exploit them.
Perhaps we're just at loggerheads here. You can't accept my point and I fundamentally disagree with yours.
Re:Response from Kevin Finisterre, second bug
on
Month of Apple Fixes
·
· Score: 1
Surely you meant "On the other hand, if you've never heard of vlc, you're one of maybe 95% of computer users."
Most people have never heard of VLC, because they don't live for their computer. They actually do other stuff, and don't care to go finding software like this. I've mentioned it to a few people, and none had heard of it.
Oh, I get it now. You're saying that security researchers are unprofessional, and their failure to present their work impartially means that the inevitable attacks are being taken personally.
Funny, I'd have thought the real security researchers would go through the normal channels - discover, report, wait and publicise - without getting emotional or letting others get to them. Most do.
Some don't, and the example you point out shows how bad some get. Unprofessional in the extreme.
How can Apple's *users* be affecting the relationship between Apple and security researchers?
I could understand if you claimed Apple's management affected that relationship, or that Apple's history affected the relationship, but I can't see how an unconnected third party can change the way two other parties relate. The users make a lot of noise, but I don't see how that affects security researchers or Apple, if either of them are professional.
I'm happy to be wrong on this, but you need to show something more substantive that a bald statement.
"Do not under estimate the creativity and capability of the hackers out there."
I routinely underestmate these people. They've so far failed to make any inroads into the new(ish) iTunes DRM and failed to really hit OS X. Despite the mantra that hackers will crack anything, they actually can't.
If by "stole" you mean "licenced for Xerox' significant profit" and by "there original stuff" you mean "the starting point of what evolved over time through great effort into a usable GUI-based operating system" then your statement is correct.
It's not his job to protect OS X users, and releasing a list of security holes without giving the vendor an opportunity to reply or repair them certainly doesn't help OS X users.
He wants to publish a list of ways your computer can be maliciously affected, and then what? Will he stand back and say "this is it, I'm not responsible for how it's used?"
That's almost a textbook definition of irresponsible - doing something and not taking any blame for the repurcussions.
Yes, it's not directly his fault if a hacker causes damage, but having provided the instructions and a map, he's at best an accomplice to any criminal acts. It's not enough to pretend that he would bear no blame, and I think it's not going out too far on a limb to say that the legal system would lump him in with the actual perpetrators (certainly in the current climate of hysteria).
In short - he is *not* a security researcher. He's a hacker looking for publicity. I hope he gets a *lot* of publicity, just not the sort he wants.
Not that I think you're lying, but with an ID number in the 950K range, you've not been registered for "some years," maybe just over one year. Also, when you said "Do I post? Not often." you should have said "Have I ever posted until now? Not once."
You have to admit, you fit the profile of an astroturfer very well. The backstory is nice, but could easily be made up.
You're being sarcastic, but I recall similar comments when Apple released the iPod. Of course it was going to fail, Apple should give up, etc.
Of course, that may be the only parallel we can draw between the two cases. The iPod was a moderate success for Mac users, and then expanded slowly into the Windows market. I don't think the Zune has matched even the slow rate of iPod uptake in their target market.
Microsoft shareholders must *love* that strategy - "Keep throwing money down a huge hole in the ground until something good happens. Surely it must happen!"
Still, it's good for people who want something *now* - they see a Zune and buy the next iPod they can find.
Everytime a love-fest starts over Apple or Microsoft here on Slashdot, there's a significant group that fire back. Even the biggest love-ins for Linux are hit by people who don't like or find faults with it.
Slashdot allows user commentary. The Register allows none - it's a soapbox for Orlowski to vent his spleen, and he obliges whenever he can. There's no dissent, and my original comment stands.
"Another machine in that office (set to do automatic M$ updates) is running Office 2003. Over the past several months M$ Word has become almost unusable. The woman at that machine opens online email from Yahoo then uses copy & paste, she copies the text from an online message in an IE6 window then tries to paste it into a M$ Word blank document. Word just hangs up for very long periods, sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes Word crashes. Most of the time she just brings up task manager and kills Word then re-tries it over and over until it works."
I've found that any online document with even trivial formatting will cause Word to spend ages working out how to format it. I've seen some weird and complex table structures come out of fairly simple html documents.
My solution is to paste into Notepad, then paste the resulting text into Word. It's an extra step, but Notepad won't take no guff from IE (!) and passes only nice, clean text to Word. It usually requires a little formatting afterwards in Word to get headers, bold text, etc, but that's not so bad.
I look forward to The Register's Andrew Orlowski explaining his utter hatred of iTunes, Apple and many other things some time soon. It could be that he's being paid by Microsoft, or maybe his bias has another source. It'd be nice for him to come clean and explain himself.
Of course, that's what he's going to do, isn't it? He wouldn't be wanting others to do something he won't try, would he?
"So no, despite the rule of law being uninforced in America, monopolies are not generally "legal" just because an anonymous coward says they are. That's a myth. The US has a long history of breaking up monopolies and companies that exercise undo influence over markets. In other countries, including Europe and Asia, monoploy control is more common and not always illegal. Massive conglomerations are typical in Japan and Germany, but were always frowned upon in the US, back when the rule of law was enforced."
Daniel, I'm generally a fan of your site but you're going off-base with this bit.
The US gov't only breaks up monopolies that start exerting undue influence because at that point a company crosses the line from benign or natural monopoly (eg power station to a region) to a monopoly that's misusing its power to tie products (eg Windows + IE) or force anti-competitive practices (eg Microsoft + forced Windows licencing on new PCs).
A monopoly in and of itself isn't bad or strange. They *are* generally legal, until they start breaking the law. Governments across the world will allow a monopoly quite happily for as long as the company acts within the law.
Massive conglomerations aren't frowned upon in the US any more that the rest of the world, and many of the largest have their home in the US (such as GE). They're not at all bad, until they start breaking local laws.
Shareware has been a viable business model for the Mac since at least the early 90's (when I bought my first Mac). Many companies have produced add-ons, extras, apps and games under that model and some have been very successful at it.
It's not so much a case of "shareware... could do a lot for the Mac" as "shareware continues to do a lot for the Mac."
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes, the classic troll "Apple has a monopoly on their own products."
It's been a while since that particularly specious reasoning appeared. I thought we'd all moved on a bit.
I particularly like the bit where you call it a little monopoly and then say "little by numbers," contradicting what a monopoly actually is. Well done, good troll!
Well, we're about six months into that year (that Boot Camp will kill OS X). Marketshare is up, sales are up, profits are great.
Maybe things are getting *much* better just before the nose-dive, eh?
I can play every PC game by installing WinXP on a Mac, and the many Mac-only shareware games. I can participate in just about any open source project on a Mac, and if i get really excited, I can work on the OS X kernel as well.
Your two qualifiers don't seem that strong to me.
Several of these are Microsoft products, probably pulled to protect their Windows business. The loss of those, and the hobbling of Office 2007 can't be put to Apple's door (especially Office 2007, as the Mac user base is getting larger). FoxPro hasn't been available since... 1994 for the Mac, and about the same for Windows. Now it's MS Access, which Microsoft will probably never port.
VirtualPC is no loss at all now, since Boot Camp and Parallels are both much better at just about everything.
So... given that your lists had 14 items and only 5 of them were Apple (and of those, only 4 are unique) how can Apple "catch up" with the other items? Should they lobby the other companies for feature parity, or to port the missing apps? How can Apple force Microsoft to release new Mac products, for example, and is that a realistic thing to attempt?
Clearly you were unable to read the FAQ on the MOAB site. Since you're lazy and rude, I'll do the hard work of clicking, copying and pasting for you:
"4. Are the issues being reported to the vendor before public disclosure?
Rarely, the point is releasing them without vendor notification. Although, sometimes we may decide to pass an issue through the appropriate people. The problem with so-called 'responsible disclosure' is that for some people, it means keeping others on hold for insane amounts of time, even when the fix should be trivial. And the reward (automated responses and euphemism-heavy advisories) doesn't pay off in the end."
Perhaps you might like to check out what you're being so arrogant about before you post next time.
As for my use of the word "professional," I stand by my claim that they're not professional in the way they're doing this. There's a story about disclosure on Slashdot right now where you can make points about when disclosure should happen. I'm not the arbiter of professionalism, and am clearly giving my opinion. You can't seem to see this, assuming that somehow I'm the world expert on professionalism (is that a "strawman" argument? probably). I can only look at your abusive post and see that clearly, you're just some random bozo trolling for responses. You started rationally, but went downhill pretty quickly.
COme back when you can keep a civil tongue in your head.
It doesn't confuse me at all - I understand exactly what you're saying here. I just don't agree with it in any way and don't see any evidence of it outside a few researchers who I see as unprofessional and bringing the nature of security research into disrepute. Well... more disrepute.
Podcasts aren't good sources if we're talking professionalism. Anyone who takes fan-boys as indicative of all users is clearly not giving a considered, professional opinion.
I use VLC as well, and have for a few years. It's a great addition to my computer, although the UI is pretty awful (but getting better in leaps and bounds).
That doesn't mean it's popular though. I still don't know anyone outside of tech-based websites who's heard of it when asked.
Thanks for the insults. I see you're doing a good job of being condescending and rude.
Let's try this again. A security researcher has to be professional about how they release their information. That means that if they get hundreds of death threats from rabid fan-boys they do what professionals do - they ignore them. Rising to them is not professional in any way, and (as the FAQ on the MOAB site says) calling vocal fans crack-heads can only inflame the situation.
Look at other industries. If engineers caved to public pressure, we'd have no great monuments or projects. If scientists caved to public pressure we'd still be living with the God of the Gaps. If judges caved to public pressure we'd have trial by voting or the rule of the jungle. Real professionals don't cave - they persist.
I want these people to succeed in their overall goal, although I disagree greatly with their method. By "normal channels" (and I tried to break it out for you) I meant the standard practice of notifying the company first, giving them a reasonable period and then publicising the issue. Going straight to publicity is a wonderful thing for black hats out there, and they'll be extremely happy should any serious vulnerabilities turn up. They've got all they need to exploit them.
Perhaps we're just at loggerheads here. You can't accept my point and I fundamentally disagree with yours.
Surely you meant "On the other hand, if you've never heard of vlc, you're one of maybe 95% of computer users."
Most people have never heard of VLC, because they don't live for their computer. They actually do other stuff, and don't care to go finding software like this. I've mentioned it to a few people, and none had heard of it.
Slashdot != normal people
Oh, I get it now. You're saying that security researchers are unprofessional, and their failure to present their work impartially means that the inevitable attacks are being taken personally.
Funny, I'd have thought the real security researchers would go through the normal channels - discover, report, wait and publicise - without getting emotional or letting others get to them. Most do.
Some don't, and the example you point out shows how bad some get. Unprofessional in the extreme.
How can Apple's *users* be affecting the relationship between Apple and security researchers?
I could understand if you claimed Apple's management affected that relationship, or that Apple's history affected the relationship, but I can't see how an unconnected third party can change the way two other parties relate. The users make a lot of noise, but I don't see how that affects security researchers or Apple, if either of them are professional.
I'm happy to be wrong on this, but you need to show something more substantive that a bald statement.
That's not exactly evidence, is it? It's not even hearsay (which is a kind of evidence, according to Lionel Hutz).
"Do not under estimate the creativity and capability of the hackers out there."
I routinely underestmate these people. They've so far failed to make any inroads into the new(ish) iTunes DRM and failed to really hit OS X. Despite the mantra that hackers will crack anything, they actually can't.
If by "stole" you mean "licenced for Xerox' significant profit" and by "there original stuff" you mean "the starting point of what evolved over time through great effort into a usable GUI-based operating system" then your statement is correct.
It's not his job to protect OS X users, and releasing a list of security holes without giving the vendor an opportunity to reply or repair them certainly doesn't help OS X users.
He wants to publish a list of ways your computer can be maliciously affected, and then what? Will he stand back and say "this is it, I'm not responsible for how it's used?"
That's almost a textbook definition of irresponsible - doing something and not taking any blame for the repurcussions.
Yes, it's not directly his fault if a hacker causes damage, but having provided the instructions and a map, he's at best an accomplice to any criminal acts. It's not enough to pretend that he would bear no blame, and I think it's not going out too far on a limb to say that the legal system would lump him in with the actual perpetrators (certainly in the current climate of hysteria).
In short - he is *not* a security researcher. He's a hacker looking for publicity. I hope he gets a *lot* of publicity, just not the sort he wants.
Not that I think you're lying, but with an ID number in the 950K range, you've not been registered for "some years," maybe just over one year. Also, when you said "Do I post? Not often." you should have said "Have I ever posted until now? Not once."
You have to admit, you fit the profile of an astroturfer very well. The backstory is nice, but could easily be made up.
And many other reviews speak for themselves as well - the product is aesthetically inferior and functionally crippled.
Maybe if we look at a *range* of reviews, or even try the product out for ourselves...
You're being sarcastic, but I recall similar comments when Apple released the iPod. Of course it was going to fail, Apple should give up, etc.
Of course, that may be the only parallel we can draw between the two cases. The iPod was a moderate success for Mac users, and then expanded slowly into the Windows market. I don't think the Zune has matched even the slow rate of iPod uptake in their target market.
Microsoft shareholders must *love* that strategy - "Keep throwing money down a huge hole in the ground until something good happens. Surely it must happen!"
Still, it's good for people who want something *now* - they see a Zune and buy the next iPod they can find.
Not really.
Everytime a love-fest starts over Apple or Microsoft here on Slashdot, there's a significant group that fire back. Even the biggest love-ins for Linux are hit by people who don't like or find faults with it.
Slashdot allows user commentary. The Register allows none - it's a soapbox for Orlowski to vent his spleen, and he obliges whenever he can. There's no dissent, and my original comment stands.
"Another machine in that office (set to do automatic M$ updates) is running Office 2003. Over the past several months M$ Word has become almost unusable. The woman at that machine opens online email from Yahoo then uses copy & paste, she copies the text from an online message in an IE6 window then tries to paste it into a M$ Word blank document.
Word just hangs up for very long periods, sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes Word crashes. Most of the time she just brings up task manager and kills Word then re-tries it over and over until it works."
I've found that any online document with even trivial formatting will cause Word to spend ages working out how to format it. I've seen some weird and complex table structures come out of fairly simple html documents.
My solution is to paste into Notepad, then paste the resulting text into Word. It's an extra step, but Notepad won't take no guff from IE (!) and passes only nice, clean text to Word. It usually requires a little formatting afterwards in Word to get headers, bold text, etc, but that's not so bad.
It's the post of the day!
Excellent news!
I look forward to The Register's Andrew Orlowski explaining his utter hatred of iTunes, Apple and many other things some time soon. It could be that he's being paid by Microsoft, or maybe his bias has another source. It'd be nice for him to come clean and explain himself.
Of course, that's what he's going to do, isn't it? He wouldn't be wanting others to do something he won't try, would he?
"So no, despite the rule of law being uninforced in America, monopolies are not generally "legal" just because an anonymous coward says they are. That's a myth. The US has a long history of breaking up monopolies and companies that exercise undo influence over markets. In other countries, including Europe and Asia, monoploy control is more common and not always illegal. Massive conglomerations are typical in Japan and Germany, but were always frowned upon in the US, back when the rule of law was enforced."
Daniel, I'm generally a fan of your site but you're going off-base with this bit.
The US gov't only breaks up monopolies that start exerting undue influence because at that point a company crosses the line from benign or natural monopoly (eg power station to a region) to a monopoly that's misusing its power to tie products (eg Windows + IE) or force anti-competitive practices (eg Microsoft + forced Windows licencing on new PCs).
A monopoly in and of itself isn't bad or strange. They *are* generally legal, until they start breaking the law. Governments across the world will allow a monopoly quite happily for as long as the company acts within the law.
Massive conglomerations aren't frowned upon in the US any more that the rest of the world, and many of the largest have their home in the US (such as GE). They're not at all bad, until they start breaking local laws.
Shareware has been a viable business model for the Mac since at least the early 90's (when I bought my first Mac). Many companies have produced add-ons, extras, apps and games under that model and some have been very successful at it.
... could do a lot for the Mac" as "shareware continues to do a lot for the Mac."
It's not so much a case of "shareware
It's all good, really!