The same reason people leave gaping vunerabilities by not installing the 300 "required" patches in their Windows machines and don't bother to properly password-protect their systems:
People are lazy.
If people have the choice of a.) Hand coding a website, or b.) Using MSWord to create the same website, guess what they'll use? They won't look at what's actually going on, because they don't care. All they care about is that It Just Works(TM) (in, at least, the browser they're looking at it with (IE, naturally.)).
Is it sad? Of course. But it's true. And as long as a majority of people don't care about it (i.e., IE users), there's no reason for Windows to change it. Which means we're stuck with people who can't see our standards-complaint websites, and websites we can't see in our standards-compliant browsers.
Actually, I would argue that the actual trilogy is funny. Anything outside that, isn't. The actual trilogy being the first three books. And then it kind of goes downhill from there.
The point is, they're funny because they're NOT stories, in any more way that Monty Python's Flying Circus is a story. If you really pay attention to a Monty Python show, it actually does follow a very loose, disconnected theme. Adam's books do the same thing, only he follows more of a storyline. He has a bunch of sketches put together with a loose thread of story. After the first three books, he tried to follow more of a story and didn't do quite as well in the humour department.
Nah, it's just because they don't want people IMing friends during office hourse, the same way they don't want personal calls during office hours. Companies aren't far-sighted enough to have a reason like security for any no IM-ing rules.
Actually, I think it might be fair to say that. Or, at least, not seriously disrupt. Geeks, obviously, will be using FF even if they buy a computer with preloaded IE. And just because IE 7 comes out, doesn't mean people running FF now will say "Oh, IE7! Don't need this anymore." That'll just be the ones running IE6. The only ones that might switch will be the ones who run FF now, go buy a new computer, and don't bother reloading FF beacuse IE7 works. More or less. Until the next gigabyte or two of IE7 insecurity patches are unmasked.
If you're trying to compare it to LotR, compare it to the cartoon version. This happens to be changing major plot points and things that are taken for granted in every incarnation of it? IE, Zaphod's extra appendages? One of which gets removed? LotR might have removed some things, but there's a difference between removing and completely changing.
What, exactly, does an "IT Executive" do? Wouldn't that just be a manager in the IT department? Why don't they just ask the people who actually DO the work? Even if the article says that "IT Executives in mid-sized companies are hands-on", the fact that some of these companies make $250-500 mil. says to me that the company is too large to keep a close eye on every bit of tech in it. Managers are the people who *think* they know everything that's going on, but they're probably the ones who know the least.
Last dump made: 2005-03-09 (30 days ago) Total size 50503MB (1460MB for just current revisions)...585MB? When's the last time you checked?
Re:Why does this scam get so much coverage?
on
CherryOS On Hold
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No, it gets so much coverage because this, being such an obvious violation of the GPL, is probably the first time that the aforementioned GPL is going to get a trial-by-fire in an actual court of law. Thousands of people who've written GPL-protected code are going to be waiting to see if what they've written is actually going to be defended in a US Court of Law in such an obvious case of steal-sell-profit. If it isn't, well then, we're all screwed.
Are you kidding? If they switched, they'd end up getting more money. I mean, think about it. You get paid for everyone calling when they can't find their start menu...
Isn't this the same one that was done by two amateurs, comparing RHLE and Windows Server 2000? The ones who didn't follow any type of real scientific method? The ones who based their experiment entirely on the "window of opportunity" between bug announcements and official bug patches? FUD is what this is: Fucked Up Dumb.
With just a little bit more effort, I'll bet that the US'll be able to edge them out. Just remember, kids: ActiveX == Good; Firewalls == Bad. And always give out your password to people who ask for it.
I had a Compaq once, too.
I still do. The blue screen of death it constantly displays makes for wonderful decor. Everytime I get irate at Linux I look at the Compaq and *poof*, I'm grateful for Tux all over again.
Of course major organizations use Firefox. A lot of the filtering software (i.e, Bess) only works on Internet Explorer (or whatever default browser they have). And if they can't play Solitare anymore, they have to do something...
I would say that cluelessness is just as dangerous as the people who take advantage of the cluelessness. You can remove the clueless, or you can remove the script kiddies. I would think it'd be easier to train the people you have control over than try and go after the hackers...and there'll always be more hackers anyways. Doesn't sound like a huge leap of logic to me.
...but the real danger is from script kiddies and other such people...
Actually, the real danger are the federal employees who don't update their horribly vulnerable software, open random attachments to their emails, click on the pop-up ads telling them their computer is insecure, and give their passwords out to social engineers over the phone. Which, of course, make it easy for the script kiddies and other such people to run well-known and documented but apparently still dangerous exploits because people are too stupid and lazy to do anything about them.
Given the U.S.'s penchant for saying "Nothing could possibly happen" until after it actually happens, no one will bother to spend money on this until some huge act of techniterrorism's carried out. Like someone hacking into the White House's system and gets the video recording of Bush choking on a pretzel. Or of Clinton "not having sex with that woman".
128 WEP security should be decent, just change the password every once in awhile. Once a week, probably, possibly more if you're paranoid. WiFi sniffers like AirSnort can capture packages and, given enough time, crack through your security. But unless you have someone sitting in the house across the street actively trying to crack your security, you should be pretty safe.
I'm not sure of the specifics, but sniffers simply collect packets and use a lot of them to crack the password. But it needs a LOT of packets. With a 64-bit password, on a high-usage network, it would take about 6 hours of packet collecting. Wardrivers aren't going to take the time to crack your 128-bit security like that. There's probably other things you can do to secure a WiFi network (I've heard things about virtual networks), but I'm not a network expert in any form. In your case, you could probably bind your computer's MAC address to your access point and be done with it.
However, not everyone is clamoring for full CSS2 support.
"CSS 2.0 has a few nice features, but realistically, I don't think it being in there makes much difference either way," said a Windows developer, who requested anonymity. ...Wow. I can't believe they bothered to put that in the article.
I would never want to see Firefox reach the level of dominance that Internet Explorer has reacher. Having a 90% market share leads inexorably to the stalling of innovation.
Except for the fact that if it does reach that level of dominance, it'll really have to work to keep it. Having people buying hundreds of thousands of prebuilt computers...all with Internet Explorer preinstalled...is going to mean that Firefox is going to have to continually innovate and update their product in order to keep any level of dominance. IE doesn't merely because of it's preinstalled position.
You think you'd be able to get it through some people's heads: "DON'T GIVE OUT YOUR PASSWORD!" It's not brain surgery...if an admin needs to get you to change your password, he can set an expiration date...or, *gasp*, talk to you in person. Or log into your account using su and just leave a note. You just don't do things like that over the phone...
Slashdot Mirror
+5 Sad-but-true.
Microsoft is helping to make it. That makes me feel SO safe.
A child of eleven could understand this stuff! Someone fetch me a child of eleven.
Who else read that and thought "Wait, it was getting paid before?"
The same reason people leave gaping vunerabilities by not installing the 300 "required" patches in their Windows machines and don't bother to properly password-protect their systems:
People are lazy.
If people have the choice of a.) Hand coding a website, or b.) Using MSWord to create the same website, guess what they'll use? They won't look at what's actually going on, because they don't care. All they care about is that It Just Works(TM) (in, at least, the browser they're looking at it with (IE, naturally.)).
Is it sad? Of course. But it's true. And as long as a majority of people don't care about it (i.e., IE users), there's no reason for Windows to change it. Which means we're stuck with people who can't see our standards-complaint websites, and websites we can't see in our standards-compliant browsers.
Actually, I would argue that the actual trilogy is funny. Anything outside that, isn't. The actual trilogy being the first three books. And then it kind of goes downhill from there.
The point is, they're funny because they're NOT stories, in any more way that Monty Python's Flying Circus is a story. If you really pay attention to a Monty Python show, it actually does follow a very loose, disconnected theme. Adam's books do the same thing, only he follows more of a storyline. He has a bunch of sketches put together with a loose thread of story. After the first three books, he tried to follow more of a story and didn't do quite as well in the humour department.
Nah, it's just because they don't want people IMing friends during office hourse, the same way they don't want personal calls during office hours. Companies aren't far-sighted enough to have a reason like security for any no IM-ing rules.
Actually, I think it might be fair to say that. Or, at least, not seriously disrupt. Geeks, obviously, will be using FF even if they buy a computer with preloaded IE. And just because IE 7 comes out, doesn't mean people running FF now will say "Oh, IE7! Don't need this anymore." That'll just be the ones running IE6. The only ones that might switch will be the ones who run FF now, go buy a new computer, and don't bother reloading FF beacuse IE7 works. More or less. Until the next gigabyte or two of IE7 insecurity patches are unmasked.
If you're trying to compare it to LotR, compare it to the cartoon version. This happens to be changing major plot points and things that are taken for granted in every incarnation of it? IE, Zaphod's extra appendages? One of which gets removed? LotR might have removed some things, but there's a difference between removing and completely changing.
What, exactly, does an "IT Executive" do? Wouldn't that just be a manager in the IT department? Why don't they just ask the people who actually DO the work? Even if the article says that "IT Executives in mid-sized companies are hands-on", the fact that some of these companies make $250-500 mil. says to me that the company is too large to keep a close eye on every bit of tech in it. Managers are the people who *think* they know everything that's going on, but they're probably the ones who know the least.
Raw database dumps
...585MB? When's the last time you checked?
Last dump made: 2005-03-09 (30 days ago)
Total size 50503MB (1460MB for just current revisions)
No, it gets so much coverage because this, being such an obvious violation of the GPL, is probably the first time that the aforementioned GPL is going to get a trial-by-fire in an actual court of law. Thousands of people who've written GPL-protected code are going to be waiting to see if what they've written is actually going to be defended in a US Court of Law in such an obvious case of steal-sell-profit. If it isn't, well then, we're all screwed.
Any other questions?
Are you kidding? If they switched, they'd end up getting more money. I mean, think about it. You get paid for everyone calling when they can't find their start menu...
Isn't this the same one that was done by two amateurs, comparing RHLE and Windows Server 2000? The ones who didn't follow any type of real scientific method? The ones who based their experiment entirely on the "window of opportunity" between bug announcements and official bug patches? FUD is what this is: Fucked Up Dumb.
With just a little bit more effort, I'll bet that the US'll be able to edge them out. Just remember, kids: ActiveX == Good; Firewalls == Bad. And always give out your password to people who ask for it.
I had a Compaq once, too. I still do. The blue screen of death it constantly displays makes for wonderful decor. Everytime I get irate at Linux I look at the Compaq and *poof*, I'm grateful for Tux all over again.
Of course major organizations use Firefox. A lot of the filtering software (i.e, Bess) only works on Internet Explorer (or whatever default browser they have). And if they can't play Solitare anymore, they have to do something...
I would say that cluelessness is just as dangerous as the people who take advantage of the cluelessness. You can remove the clueless, or you can remove the script kiddies. I would think it'd be easier to train the people you have control over than try and go after the hackers...and there'll always be more hackers anyways. Doesn't sound like a huge leap of logic to me.
...but the real danger is from script kiddies and other such people...
Actually, the real danger are the federal employees who don't update their horribly vulnerable software, open random attachments to their emails, click on the pop-up ads telling them their computer is insecure, and give their passwords out to social engineers over the phone. Which, of course, make it easy for the script kiddies and other such people to run well-known and documented but apparently still dangerous exploits because people are too stupid and lazy to do anything about them.
Given the U.S.'s penchant for saying "Nothing could possibly happen" until after it actually happens, no one will bother to spend money on this until some huge act of techniterrorism's carried out. Like someone hacking into the White House's system and gets the video recording of Bush choking on a pretzel. Or of Clinton "not having sex with that woman".
128 WEP security should be decent, just change the password every once in awhile. Once a week, probably, possibly more if you're paranoid. WiFi sniffers like AirSnort can capture packages and, given enough time, crack through your security. But unless you have someone sitting in the house across the street actively trying to crack your security, you should be pretty safe.
I'm not sure of the specifics, but sniffers simply collect packets and use a lot of them to crack the password. But it needs a LOT of packets. With a 64-bit password, on a high-usage network, it would take about 6 hours of packet collecting. Wardrivers aren't going to take the time to crack your 128-bit security like that. There's probably other things you can do to secure a WiFi network (I've heard things about virtual networks), but I'm not a network expert in any form. In your case, you could probably bind your computer's MAC address to your access point and be done with it.
Next, we'll be integrating these with artifically intelligent computers that know what temperature you want better than you do. Douglas Adams, anyone?
However, not everyone is clamoring for full CSS2 support. "CSS 2.0 has a few nice features, but realistically, I don't think it being in there makes much difference either way," said a Windows developer, who requested anonymity. ...Wow. I can't believe they bothered to put that in the article.
I would never want to see Firefox reach the level of dominance that Internet Explorer has reacher. Having a 90% market share leads inexorably to the stalling of innovation.
Except for the fact that if it does reach that level of dominance, it'll really have to work to keep it. Having people buying hundreds of thousands of prebuilt computers...all with Internet Explorer preinstalled...is going to mean that Firefox is going to have to continually innovate and update their product in order to keep any level of dominance. IE doesn't merely because of it's preinstalled position.
You think you'd be able to get it through some people's heads: "DON'T GIVE OUT YOUR PASSWORD!" It's not brain surgery...if an admin needs to get you to change your password, he can set an expiration date...or, *gasp*, talk to you in person. Or log into your account using su and just leave a note. You just don't do things like that over the phone...