... that of a huge sample of 900+ *peer reviewed* papers about climate change, 0 contested that it was occuring or that it was a result of humans.
It would be almost impossible to say that no scientist disagreed with these claims. There will always be somebody. There are still some "scientists" who claim that the Sun revolves around the earth because of their positions in whatever religious institutions they belong to.
If they want to contest the points in his movie, that's obviously fine... but also let them publish their claims in a peer reviewed journal so that people smarter than most of us can judge them.
Umm, what part of, "MS's market share in Web browsers was 8% once too, before they started bundling it with the OS" do you think is contradicted by your statement?
Give me a break. The previous poster was suggested that IE only increased its market share from 8% because of bundling. This is clearly not true as they achieved what many consider to be "critical mass" before they ever bundled IE with Windows.
Stop being disingenuous. You knew full well what the statement implied.
The fact of the matter, however, is that they don't have the best browser now, and haven't for many years, but it is still the most popular browser.
What exactly did I say that contradicts what you're saying? I never commented about IE versus Firefox or any of its current alternatives.
This is due directly to the illegal bundling.
It would say it's more directly due to apathy. Most people DO NOT CARE what browser they use. If people cared there is absolutely nothing that has ever stopped them from using something else.
In fact, I'd argue that the bundling is the reason IE is no longer the best browser.
Well, it's no longer the best browser because Microsoft had no reason to update a product that make them no money (no upgrade costs for consumers, unlike Office) and had 90%+ market share. That's the root cause. Had Microsoft succeeded to gain 90% market share without bundling the same thing would have happened.
MS's market share in Web browsers was 8% once too, before they started bundling it with the OS.
Except that's not true. Microsoft achieved nearly 40% market share BEFORE IE was ever bundled with Windows. People switched to IE because, at the time, it was BETTER than Netscape. Simple as that.
I suggest you read David Bank's Breaking Windows. It has a lot of great information about the browser wars and what really happened, as apposed to the popular myths and misinformation proffered on Slashdot.
I use RoamDrive. It's free and works with Hotmail and Gmail.
Eventually they promise a "pro" version that allows you to link as many hotmail and gmail accounts as your want (equating to essentially unlimited storage).
I live in near Boston, MA. I just switched from Speakeasy DSL (6Mb/768k) to Comcast 8Mb/768k service.
The primary reason I switched was cost. I was paying $128/month for Speakeasy's "Gamers" package. Aside from the nice 6 static IPs I got, it offered me nothing that Comcast didn't do.
The fact that I now pay $45/month for a *full* 8Mb is icing on the cake. When I say full, I mean full... I actually get a hair *over* 8Mb. (8317 Kb on my last nyc.speakeasy.net speed test.) Up speeds hover around 716 Kb/sec.
My DSL line never topped 4Mb down, although it was consistantly 730K/s up.
Overall, I'm loving the extra $80 in my pocket, and the extra 4 Mb on my connection... but your results will certainly vary. It depends on where you are and who you are downloading from. Some times I get crap speeds, some sites I get great speeds.
One thing to keep in mind is that with the advent of bittorrent, it's much easier to maximize your connection since you're splitting up the download across many hosts... which, when aggregated, will almost certainly have greater bandwidth than you.
... it's only because our society's attitude toward sexuality is morbid and ridiculous.
The idea that seeing a naked human being, or even seeing people having sex, would somehow "harm" a person is completely silly.
Thanks to the abhorrent way our society has rejected natural sexuality by demonizing it and calling it "dirty" it kind of make sense that exposure to it would cause "harm".
Kind of the way our society puts a forbidden stigma around alcohol consumption for people under the age of 21.
In many countries wine and beer are a normal part of life and young people are exposed to it accordingly. You don't typically see alcoholism problems or alcohol abuse in general in these countries.
In the United States, it's taboo. And anything taboo is simply irresistible to young people. The end result is a pattern of excess and abuse.
Sex and sexuality are not bad things. Can there be bad consequences to uncontrolled sexuality? Sure. Same goes for uncontrolled lawn mowing, or uncontrolled hand washing. The point is that if our society didn't make it taboo, normal exposure to it wouldn't be "harmful".
Obviously there are exceptions. Exposing a 6 year old to scenes of graphic rape fantasies would probably be a bad idea. But exposing that same child to a naked form won't harm them at all.
Think about this. What existed first? Sexual thoughts, or porn? (To paraphrase Bill Hicks.) Porn exists because humans have sexual thoughts, not the other way around. R.I.P. Bill.
1.) The address bar. The address bar in Vista allows for both manual typing of addresses, as well as a more point/click navigational scheme. I can click any of the folder names in my current path and it gives me a list of all sibling folders. Very handy for navigation. It also has a built in progress bar for when explorer is performing a long running task related to displaying the files in a folder. It even lets you cancel that task.
2.) The new start menu. The start menu is SO much better it's ridiculous. Finding applications and files is finally a near instant task... even more so than with 3rd party desktop search tools. The new layout is, for the most part, clearer and simpler to use.
3.) Flip 3d. It might sound cheesy, but it's actually a great way of switching windows. I find it at least as useful as Expose on the Mac... and, in some cases, its better because my windows don't get tiny and I can still see what's going on inside them. (It's all live too, no bitmaps here.)
4.) Task bar previews. If you hover over a task bar button it will show you a live preview of the task. At first I thought it was kinda pointless, but after a while I started to like it. I find myself hovering over task bar buttons in vain on XP.
5.) Windows Mail. SO MUCH BETTER THAN OUTLOOK EXPRESS. I don't like using Outlook at home. It's too slow, and it doesn't do newsgroups. Outlook Express has always been a pain, especially when talking about how it stores your e-mail / newsgroups. Windows Mail is more streamlined, a LOT faster, and finally has an easily to understand storage mechanism.
6.) User Account Protection I love the fact that it's finally trivial to run as a non-Admin on Windows and still be able to get things done. You've always been able to do it, but it used to be a lot harder.
There are plenty of other things I really love about Vista... but I'm tired of typing.
Go ahead. Do a find on the page. The only place where the number 60 is even in there is in the article's title and in a link back to the SAME article at the bottom of the page.
In fact, this 60% number is made up. Not only would this be impossible in less than a year, 60% of the code in Vista isn't even new to Vista.
Hey Slashdot editors... I know you guys are really into MS bashing and you want to satisfy the thirst that most Slashdotters have for MS blood, but at least check to make sure that articles your posting have a shred of truth in them.
I've been using Vista build 5308 for almost a month now as my primary "home" machine. At first I was a little taken back by some of the UI changes, but overall I really do like it. In fact, when I move back to XP it really hurts because of things I miss from Vista.
This guy's critcisms of Vista are so vague it's hard to even know what parts of Vista he is talking about.
"The new programs are phenomenally complex, with scores of buttons and pull-down menus and myriad connections among various applications."
Huh? Which new applications? In most case, Microsoft has decreased, not increased, the number of UI elements.
That would be one HELL of a virus. In order to do that you would need to acomplish things that are basically impossible when trying to take advantage of buffer overflows.
Almost all exploit code that takes advantage of buffer overflows does only VERY basic stuff. It typically calls some Windows APIs to download files from a remote source and then executes those.
It's the downloaded files that do the dirty work, not the exploit itself.
In this case, since IE can't execute anything, what you're saying is more or less impossible.
All it does it wait until the user goes to a site and downloads an executable file that he intends to run, and then my in-ie-only code injects a virus into it.
How exactly does it do this? I think you're making assumptions about the viability of your virus that aren't valid.
What do you mean by every little thing? It's only "every little thing" that requires security privledges. Usually that confirmation already happens. If I click a file on a web page that can't be displayed in the browser I'm prompted if I want to open it or save it. This doesn't change at all, and it's exactly what users expect.
Really, there isn't much difference from a user's point of view aside from the fact they're not constantly raped by malware.
I agree. The only way to know if this scheme will work is by seeing how it has faired after a few months of being in the wild.
But what I'm saying is that the basic design of this is more secure than not only previously version of IE, but all browsers for all operating systems.
It makes sense to treat browsers a little differently than most applications since they are often the primary attack vector for most users.
So what do you want them to do? Not allow users to save files? Give me a break.
The dialogs they will see are EXACTLY the same as they see now. They will have no idea it's a "broker". IE will act more or less just like it does now.
Of course, if you watched the video, you would know that.
If you had watched the video you would realize the experience is seemless to the end user. They see the same dialogs they see today, except in IE 7 / Vista they are shown by the broker instead of IE itself.
The user can't, in nearly every instance, tell the difference.
And while we're at it, shall we compare some of Microsofts newer efforts with LAMP, or whatever platform/software that you feel is so much better?
Let's compare IIS 6 with Apache. How about ASP.NET with PHP? Or event Windows 2003 Server with Linux. At the very least the data shows that there is no clear winner in some cases, and in other cases Microsoft comes out on top.
So rant all you want, but Microsoft is making progress whether you like it or not.
Slashdot Mirror
It's easy to be bold when you're paid by Exxon Mobile to be that way.
... that of a huge sample of 900+ *peer reviewed* papers about climate change, 0 contested that it was occuring or that it was a result of humans.
It would be almost impossible to say that no scientist disagreed with these claims. There will always be somebody. There are still some "scientists" who claim that the Sun revolves around the earth because of their positions in whatever religious institutions they belong to.
If they want to contest the points in his movie, that's obviously fine... but also let them publish their claims in a peer reviewed journal so that people smarter than most of us can judge them.
Umm, what part of, "MS's market share in Web browsers was 8% once too, before they started bundling it with the OS" do you think is contradicted by your statement?
Give me a break. The previous poster was suggested that IE only increased its market share from 8% because of bundling. This is clearly not true as they achieved what many consider to be "critical mass" before they ever bundled IE with Windows.
Stop being disingenuous. You knew full well what the statement implied.
The fact of the matter, however, is that they don't have the best browser now, and haven't for many years, but it is still the most popular browser.
What exactly did I say that contradicts what you're saying? I never commented about IE versus Firefox or any of its current alternatives.
This is due directly to the illegal bundling.
It would say it's more directly due to apathy. Most people DO NOT CARE what browser they use. If people cared there is absolutely nothing that has ever stopped them from using something else.
In fact, I'd argue that the bundling is the reason IE is no longer the best browser.
Well, it's no longer the best browser because Microsoft had no reason to update a product that make them no money (no upgrade costs for consumers, unlike Office) and had 90%+ market share. That's the root cause. Had Microsoft succeeded to gain 90% market share without bundling the same thing would have happened.
MS's market share in Web browsers was 8% once too, before they started bundling it with the OS.
Except that's not true. Microsoft achieved nearly 40% market share BEFORE IE was ever bundled with Windows. People switched to IE because, at the time, it was BETTER than Netscape. Simple as that.
I suggest you read David Bank's Breaking Windows. It has a lot of great information about the browser wars and what really happened, as apposed to the popular myths and misinformation proffered on Slashdot.
I use RoamDrive. It's free and works with Hotmail and Gmail.
Eventually they promise a "pro" version that allows you to link as many hotmail and gmail accounts as your want (equating to essentially unlimited storage).
Tried it on XP using IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519. (Update versions SP2, 3283) and it showed the correct URL.
My XP machine is fully patched.
Did somebody jump the gun over at Secunia?
You're missing the biggest factor.
Most people just don't care what browsering they're using. They just want to check their e-mail and go to myspace. It's as simple as that.
Many of the don't even know what a "browser" is. They call it "The Internet".
That's why people don't switch to Firefox.
Wow, that site is great. The logic is pretty rock solid.
Alas, logic is a weak weapon against those who value belief without reason. (Faith.)
Damn hippie.
Trust me man, if I *could* get FIOS, I would. Boston and Cambridge have zero access to FIOS at this point.
;)
If you know different, HOOK ME UP!
I live in near Boston, MA. I just switched from Speakeasy DSL (6Mb/768k) to Comcast 8Mb/768k service.
The primary reason I switched was cost. I was paying $128/month for Speakeasy's "Gamers" package. Aside from the nice 6 static IPs I got, it offered me nothing that Comcast didn't do.
The fact that I now pay $45/month for a *full* 8Mb is icing on the cake. When I say full, I mean full... I actually get a hair *over* 8Mb. (8317 Kb on my last nyc.speakeasy.net speed test.) Up speeds hover around 716 Kb/sec.
My DSL line never topped 4Mb down, although it was consistantly 730K/s up.
Overall, I'm loving the extra $80 in my pocket, and the extra 4 Mb on my connection... but your results will certainly vary. It depends on where you are and who you are downloading from. Some times I get crap speeds, some sites I get great speeds.
One thing to keep in mind is that with the advent of bittorrent, it's much easier to maximize your connection since you're splitting up the download across many hosts... which, when aggregated, will almost certainly have greater bandwidth than you.
... it's only because our society's attitude toward sexuality is morbid and ridiculous.
The idea that seeing a naked human being, or even seeing people having sex, would somehow "harm" a person is completely silly.
Thanks to the abhorrent way our society has rejected natural sexuality by demonizing it and calling it "dirty" it kind of make sense that exposure to it would cause "harm".
Kind of the way our society puts a forbidden stigma around alcohol consumption for people under the age of 21.
In many countries wine and beer are a normal part of life and young people are exposed to it accordingly. You don't typically see alcoholism problems or alcohol abuse in general in these countries.
In the United States, it's taboo. And anything taboo is simply irresistible to young people. The end result is a pattern of excess and abuse.
Sex and sexuality are not bad things. Can there be bad consequences to uncontrolled sexuality? Sure. Same goes for uncontrolled lawn mowing, or uncontrolled hand washing. The point is that if our society didn't make it taboo, normal exposure to it wouldn't be "harmful".
Obviously there are exceptions. Exposing a 6 year old to scenes of graphic rape fantasies would probably be a bad idea. But exposing that same child to a naked form won't harm them at all.
Think about this. What existed first? Sexual thoughts, or porn? (To paraphrase Bill Hicks.) Porn exists because humans have sexual thoughts, not the other way around. R.I.P. Bill.
Features I Love in Vista:
1.) The address bar.
The address bar in Vista allows for both manual typing of addresses, as well as a more point/click navigational scheme. I can click any of the folder names in my current path and it gives me a list of all sibling folders. Very handy for navigation. It also has a built in progress bar for when explorer is performing a long running task related to displaying the files in a folder. It even lets you cancel that task.
2.) The new start menu.
The start menu is SO much better it's ridiculous. Finding applications and files is finally a near instant task... even more so than with 3rd party desktop search tools. The new layout is, for the most part, clearer and simpler to use.
3.) Flip 3d.
It might sound cheesy, but it's actually a great way of switching windows. I find it at least as useful as Expose on the Mac... and, in some cases, its better because my windows don't get tiny and I can still see what's going on inside them. (It's all live too, no bitmaps here.)
4.) Task bar previews.
If you hover over a task bar button it will show you a live preview of the task. At first I thought it was kinda pointless, but after a while I started to like it. I find myself hovering over task bar buttons in vain on XP.
5.) Windows Mail.
SO MUCH BETTER THAN OUTLOOK EXPRESS. I don't like using Outlook at home. It's too slow, and it doesn't do newsgroups. Outlook Express has always been a pain, especially when talking about how it stores your e-mail / newsgroups. Windows Mail is more streamlined, a LOT faster, and finally has an easily to understand storage mechanism.
6.) User Account Protection
I love the fact that it's finally trivial to run as a non-Admin on Windows and still be able to get things done. You've always been able to do it, but it used to be a lot harder.
There are plenty of other things I really love about Vista... but I'm tired of typing.
Wow, two completely false MS bashing Slashdot posts in one day? You guys are getting good!
Office is not delayed.
Go ahead. Do a find on the page. The only place where the number 60 is even in there is in the article's title and in a link back to the SAME article at the bottom of the page.
In fact, this 60% number is made up. Not only would this be impossible in less than a year, 60% of the code in Vista isn't even new to Vista.
Hey Slashdot editors... I know you guys are really into MS bashing and you want to satisfy the thirst that most Slashdotters have for MS blood, but at least check to make sure that articles your posting have a shred of truth in them.
... of bashing Microsoft and promoting Apple.
He also isn't a big fan of Linux.
This guy is widely considered a hack.
I've been using Vista build 5308 for almost a month now as my primary "home" machine. At first I was a little taken back by some of the UI changes, but overall I really do like it. In fact, when I move back to XP it really hurts because of things I miss from Vista.
This guy's critcisms of Vista are so vague it's hard to even know what parts of Vista he is talking about.
"The new programs are phenomenally complex, with scores of buttons and pull-down menus and myriad connections among various applications."
Huh? Which new applications? In most case, Microsoft has decreased, not increased, the number of UI elements.
That would be one HELL of a virus. In order to do that you would need to acomplish things that are basically impossible when trying to take advantage of buffer overflows.
Almost all exploit code that takes advantage of buffer overflows does only VERY basic stuff. It typically calls some Windows APIs to download files from a remote source and then executes those.
It's the downloaded files that do the dirty work, not the exploit itself.
In this case, since IE can't execute anything, what you're saying is more or less impossible.
Why don't you just watch the video. That's not what it's like at all.
All it does it wait until the user goes to a site and downloads an executable file that he intends to run, and then my in-ie-only code injects a virus into it.
How exactly does it do this? I think you're making assumptions about the viability of your virus that aren't valid.
What do you mean by every little thing? It's only "every little thing" that requires security privledges. Usually that confirmation already happens. If I click a file on a web page that can't be displayed in the browser I'm prompted if I want to open it or save it. This doesn't change at all, and it's exactly what users expect.
Really, there isn't much difference from a user's point of view aside from the fact they're not constantly raped by malware.
I agree. The only way to know if this scheme will work is by seeing how it has faired after a few months of being in the wild.
But what I'm saying is that the basic design of this is more secure than not only previously version of IE, but all browsers for all operating systems.
It makes sense to treat browsers a little differently than most applications since they are often the primary attack vector for most users.
So what do you want them to do? Not allow users to save files? Give me a break.
The dialogs they will see are EXACTLY the same as they see now. They will have no idea it's a "broker". IE will act more or less just like it does now.
Of course, if you watched the video, you would know that.
If you had watched the video you would realize the experience is seemless to the end user. They see the same dialogs they see today, except in IE 7 / Vista they are shown by the broker instead of IE itself.
The user can't, in nearly every instance, tell the difference.
Except that this bug would not affect IE 7 in Vista due to the improvements in security that Microsoft trumpets and you so easily dismiss.
= 14982748
See my other post here: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181121&cid
And while we're at it, shall we compare some of Microsofts newer efforts with LAMP, or whatever platform/software that you feel is so much better?
Let's compare IIS 6 with Apache. How about ASP.NET with PHP? Or event Windows 2003 Server with Linux. At the very least the data shows that there is no clear winner in some cases, and in other cases Microsoft comes out on top.
So rant all you want, but Microsoft is making progress whether you like it or not.
Actually, IE 7 in Vista would have been safe from this issue.
= 14982748
See: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181121&cid