The article actually invokes some interesting questions which the discussion here isn't quite getting at. Wikipedia has a policy/guideline that says it's ill-advised for persons to edit their own biographies. The question is, is this a good policy/guideline?
On the one hand, Wales' case shows why it might be a good policy to advise against people editing their own biographies. He insists that the other man was not a "co-founder" of Wikipedia. Wales is in a position to know this, and it seems to me to be a bad idea to bar knowledgeable people from editing articles. Clearly Wales is knowledgeable about his own life.
On the other hand, it looks like Wales was trying to rewrite history. It appears likely that his Bomis Babes was at least so-called "adult entertainment," the modern euphamism for porn. He often removed these references to porn entirely. This seems to be injecting falsehood and bias into Wikipedia.
A lot of the Slashdot reaction has been "why does this matter" but it really does invoke some interesting questions if you stop for a minute to think about it.
...because I visited the link, and I can't find anything at all about "how the shysters work." All I can find are some spotty listings about a few online camera dealers, along with an "about" page which says that the site's administrators are possibly interested in link exchanges or ads (which would take away any credibility the site would otherwise have.)
Overall not a remarkable site at all, and the posted link does not lead to the content mentioned on Slashdot. Either the site content changed or this was not Slashdot worthy at all.
I don't think they're trying to be user friendly. They're just not interested in fielding calls from customers who have suffered fraud because some spyware keystroke logger ripped off the customer's online banking ID, which was then used to transfer money to some crook. The bank is trying to protect itself, which then in turn helps the customer. Seems like a good idea to me.
They spent half a minute or so trying to adjust the refresh rates of their huge CRT monitors, so that the black scan bands wouldn't show up so bad on camera.
Are these guys sitting in their office playing Quake? If not why can't MS get them a flat panel?
You can get what software off the Windows CD? Notepad? Swiss cheese IE? Solitare?
My point with the trusted software is that most Linux distributions come with thousands of software packages. You get a full-featured office suite, email client, PDF creator, IM client, and more. Windows either does not include these apps at all or only includes crippled ones.
The Windows user looks to the Web in an effort to get software packages at low cost. They're already included in Linux.
As for the CD at Target, I'll bet they were selling those Sony rootkits. Has anyone put a rootkit into the repository of a major Linux distribution?
Running Windows as a limited user breaks a large number of Windows apps. The apps won't work because they try to write data and/or configuration info to c:\program files\*.*, which the limited user does not have write access to. Even if you do run as limited user, there are still IE security holes to deal with.
I agree that running Windows would be a lot more secure if one could do it as a limited user. Some people succeed at this (especially if they only run Office, IE, and Windows Media Player; they do fine as limited users.) But that's not a viable option for many people. Then spyware puts itself in the startup sequence and it's impossible to get it out.
At least if spyware infects a limited user (in Windows, Mac,or Linux) it only gets that account. Just wipe the account. If it infects an administrator, often the whole machine is toast.
Immunity of Linux/Mac NOT due to low marketshare.
on
Antispyware Shootout
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Every time a story like this comes out, someone says "just switch to Linux or Mac. They don't have spyware." Then someone writes back "oh, that's just because they don't have marketshare."
Hogwash. In Linux or Mac, you can accomplish all daily tasks as a user with limited privileges. This is often impossible in Windows. In Linux, you can easily choose to install software only from trusted sources (e.g. your distro's package repositories.) It comes with all needed apps. This is not true in Windows.
The issue isn't journalists...it's businesspeople. Journalists cover news; they don't strategize on how to reach new audiences or increase circulation. It's the business side of the newspaper that's managed to miss the rise of the Internet.
I'm not sure this guy really embraces the spirit of free and open source software...if he did, perhaps he would have considered licensing his book under a free license, like the GNU Free Documentation License or one of the Creative Commons licenses. I'm starting to see this with some frequency, even with books published by commercial publishers like O'Reilly and Apress.
A few months ago I thought people who use PGP and GPG are just a bunch of paranoid freaks. Maybe they are paranoid freaks, but now I understand that there's a good reason to be paranoid. I've briefly considered using GPG myself. Then, at least the FBI would have to put a keystroke logger on my computer in order to read my mail.
Yggdrasil, Stampede...does anyone out there have a list of dead distros? It would be interesting to know why each of them died.
Looks like Slack is outlasting many a distro. If Slack weren't important, this guy wouldn't be writing an article about why it's not important. Long live Slack.
MS says it will go to ECMA first with the Office 12 XML format. They say that once Office 12 XML is recognized by ECMA, they will go to ISO. See News.com story.
I think Office 12 will be a steady state release for MS...some users will hate the new UI, some will take really well to it.
Some say it will speed adoption of OOo because OOo will sport the old, familiar UI. But if that happens (or even if relatively few customers upgrade to Office 12 due to trepidation over the new UI) you'd better believe Office 13 will have a new, "Classic Mode" that emulates the old UI, just like Corel did with WordPerfect.
...is free on the Net. Introduction to Linux: A Hands-On Guide at the Linux Documentation Project. Print the PDF, save a trip to the bookstore. Doesn't assume (much) prior knowledge, yet omits all the trivial "Here's how to burn a CD in K3B" nonsense.
Even if software is discounted to account for local pricing, it is usually still extremely expensive and there is no guarantee that this discount will be sustained in the long term, says Ghosh.
It also discusses the price of MS Windows on Amazon.com. This is a straw man. MS Windows is expensive, no doubt about it. But MS is not selling Windows in Vietnam for the same price that they are selling it for in the US. For that matter, few people in the US are paying the Amazon price!! Most folks get Windows preinstalled, and corporate volume licenses and the licenses that HP, Dell, etc. buy are certainly not the $99 or more that Windows costs on the Amazon website!
Windows is expensive, but this article is a total joke. How about giving us some real price data that those in other countries pay. Hell, how about giving us some real US price data!!!
Even if someone does mess up their own home directory, they won't be able to touch system files?
So theoretically one could log in as an admin and easily remove the unwanted warez.
You can do this in Windows XP right now. There are (at least) two classes of users: Administrators and Users (sometimes called "Limited Users.") The Administrator is like a Unix root and has free rein to install anything/wreak any kind of havoc. Users can write only to their home directories and cannot trash other users, change the startup sequence, etc. (This of course assumes that there are no security holes on the system that allow malicious programs to gain Administrator access.)
In theory if most users ran as limited users, there would be a lot less spyware. A limited user can't install software that can insert itself into the startup sequence.
The problem is this: first, most (if not all) Windows systems are not configured to run with Administrator/Limited User bifurcation by default. Most users probably don't even know the difference. Second, a lot of Windows software--even recently written software--only works properly if an Administrator is running it. Limited User accounts break the software. If the user only wants to run MS Office, IE, and Firefox, she will be fine. If she wants to use Winamp, Napster, or The Sims 2, it won't work under a limited account. (No Linux programmer could get away with writing a music player that only works under a root account.)
The third problem, which is likely the biggest of all, is that Windows users are not educated. They often will run the latest downloads on Kazaa only to find out that they have spyware; I think they likely would switch to Administrator to run malware if they were asked nicely. MS does not seem interested in pushing users to run only as Limited Users, likely because it would break so many poorly-written Windows apps.
And a side note: programs that break when run under Limited User accounts often work poorly when used on PCs with multiple users--e.g. different users cannot save their own personal settings. No Linux program could get away with this. One of Linux's biggest advantages is that it was written for multiple users from the start. Multiuser support and security has only recently been grafted into Windows.
My guess is that MS will strive to ensure that Vista does not break old Windows apps. Thus, users will still need to be Administrators to run software. Worms and spyware will wreak havoc. Furthermore, application programmers will continue to be lazy and write software that only works if the user is an Administrator. More antispyware packages will come out, which usually cannot even delete spwyare. The cycle will continue.
I tried Mandriva 2006 on my laptop, motivated in no small part by Mandriva's claim that it is the only Centrino certified distribution. I was very disappointed. The startup process takes forever--it gets to the wireless adapter, then pauses for what seems like thirty seconds. Also, support for my touchpad and trackstick were spotty--sometimes they worked, sometimes not.
SUSE 10.0, which has no boasts about Centrino certification, starts up speedily, supports my WPA network nearly perfectly (support for WPA is still lacking in some ways, however) and supports my pointing devices flawlessly.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, call me a karma whore, but I was going to ask if anyone has ever actually done this. I did a Google search and found out it is possible:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7040
Whether it's worth your time is another question.
On the one hand, Wales' case shows why it might be a good policy to advise against people editing their own biographies. He insists that the other man was not a "co-founder" of Wikipedia. Wales is in a position to know this, and it seems to me to be a bad idea to bar knowledgeable people from editing articles. Clearly Wales is knowledgeable about his own life.
On the other hand, it looks like Wales was trying to rewrite history. It appears likely that his Bomis Babes was at least so-called "adult entertainment," the modern euphamism for porn. He often removed these references to porn entirely. This seems to be injecting falsehood and bias into Wikipedia.
A lot of the Slashdot reaction has been "why does this matter" but it really does invoke some interesting questions if you stop for a minute to think about it.
You've just visited Bomis.com today. Perhaps it used to be pornography, but no longer is.
...because I visited the link, and I can't find anything at all about "how the shysters work." All I can find are some spotty listings about a few online camera dealers, along with an "about" page which says that the site's administrators are possibly interested in link exchanges or ads (which would take away any credibility the site would otherwise have.) Overall not a remarkable site at all, and the posted link does not lead to the content mentioned on Slashdot. Either the site content changed or this was not Slashdot worthy at all.
I don't think they're trying to be user friendly. They're just not interested in fielding calls from customers who have suffered fraud because some spyware keystroke logger ripped off the customer's online banking ID, which was then used to transfer money to some crook. The bank is trying to protect itself, which then in turn helps the customer. Seems like a good idea to me.
Try this link instead: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1896641,00.as p?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
Are these guys sitting in their office playing Quake? If not why can't MS get them a flat panel?
The News.com story did not report this: Jimbo Wales calls this an "experiment." Link to his email announcing the change.
My point with the trusted software is that most Linux distributions come with thousands of software packages. You get a full-featured office suite, email client, PDF creator, IM client, and more. Windows either does not include these apps at all or only includes crippled ones.
The Windows user looks to the Web in an effort to get software packages at low cost. They're already included in Linux.
As for the CD at Target, I'll bet they were selling those Sony rootkits. Has anyone put a rootkit into the repository of a major Linux distribution?
Running Windows as a limited user breaks a large number of Windows apps. The apps won't work because they try to write data and/or configuration info to c:\program files\*.*, which the limited user does not have write access to. Even if you do run as limited user, there are still IE security holes to deal with.
I agree that running Windows would be a lot more secure if one could do it as a limited user. Some people succeed at this (especially if they only run Office, IE, and Windows Media Player; they do fine as limited users.) But that's not a viable option for many people. Then spyware puts itself in the startup sequence and it's impossible to get it out.
At least if spyware infects a limited user (in Windows, Mac,or Linux) it only gets that account. Just wipe the account. If it infects an administrator, often the whole machine is toast.
Hogwash. In Linux or Mac, you can accomplish all daily tasks as a user with limited privileges. This is often impossible in Windows. In Linux, you can easily choose to install software only from trusted sources (e.g. your distro's package repositories.) It comes with all needed apps. This is not true in Windows.
Need more proof? See this from the Register.
It's completely ignorant to say that Linux and Mac would be just as bad if they had more marketshare.
Awesome!
The issue isn't journalists...it's businesspeople. Journalists cover news; they don't strategize on how to reach new audiences or increase circulation. It's the business side of the newspaper that's managed to miss the rise of the Internet.
Any way to get Gmail working in Konqueror? (Not just the crippled Gmail, but the full-featured one.)
Ha, make no mistake, if the government can spend $100 on a toilet seat, I'm sure it can spend big bucks for Linux too, GPL notwithstanding.
Some have complained that they're not extremely Linux friendly because, for example, they use ATI cards rather than Nvidia, but I would consider buying one. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.as px/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
I'm not sure this guy really embraces the spirit of free and open source software...if he did, perhaps he would have considered licensing his book under a free license, like the GNU Free Documentation License or one of the Creative Commons licenses. I'm starting to see this with some frequency, even with books published by commercial publishers like O'Reilly and Apress.
A few months ago I thought people who use PGP and GPG are just a bunch of paranoid freaks. Maybe they are paranoid freaks, but now I understand that there's a good reason to be paranoid. I've briefly considered using GPG myself. Then, at least the FBI would have to put a keystroke logger on my computer in order to read my mail.
Yeah, Microsoft didn't charge for Internet Explorer, either.
Looks like Slack is outlasting many a distro. If Slack weren't important, this guy wouldn't be writing an article about why it's not important. Long live Slack.
MS says it will go to ECMA first with the Office 12 XML format. They say that once Office 12 XML is recognized by ECMA, they will go to ISO. See News.com story.
Some say it will speed adoption of OOo because OOo will sport the old, familiar UI. But if that happens (or even if relatively few customers upgrade to Office 12 due to trepidation over the new UI) you'd better believe Office 13 will have a new, "Classic Mode" that emulates the old UI, just like Corel did with WordPerfect.
...is free on the Net. Introduction to Linux: A Hands-On Guide at the Linux Documentation Project. Print the PDF, save a trip to the bookstore. Doesn't assume (much) prior knowledge, yet omits all the trivial "Here's how to burn a CD in K3B" nonsense.
From the article:
Even if software is discounted to account for local pricing, it is usually still extremely expensive and there is no guarantee that this discount will be sustained in the long term, says Ghosh.It also discusses the price of MS Windows on Amazon.com. This is a straw man. MS Windows is expensive, no doubt about it. But MS is not selling Windows in Vietnam for the same price that they are selling it for in the US. For that matter, few people in the US are paying the Amazon price!! Most folks get Windows preinstalled, and corporate volume licenses and the licenses that HP, Dell, etc. buy are certainly not the $99 or more that Windows costs on the Amazon website!
Windows is expensive, but this article is a total joke. How about giving us some real price data that those in other countries pay. Hell, how about giving us some real US price data!!!
You can do this in Windows XP right now. There are (at least) two classes of users: Administrators and Users (sometimes called "Limited Users.") The Administrator is like a Unix root and has free rein to install anything/wreak any kind of havoc. Users can write only to their home directories and cannot trash other users, change the startup sequence, etc. (This of course assumes that there are no security holes on the system that allow malicious programs to gain Administrator access.)
In theory if most users ran as limited users, there would be a lot less spyware. A limited user can't install software that can insert itself into the startup sequence.
The problem is this: first, most (if not all) Windows systems are not configured to run with Administrator/Limited User bifurcation by default. Most users probably don't even know the difference. Second, a lot of Windows software--even recently written software--only works properly if an Administrator is running it. Limited User accounts break the software. If the user only wants to run MS Office, IE, and Firefox, she will be fine. If she wants to use Winamp, Napster, or The Sims 2, it won't work under a limited account. (No Linux programmer could get away with writing a music player that only works under a root account.)
The third problem, which is likely the biggest of all, is that Windows users are not educated. They often will run the latest downloads on Kazaa only to find out that they have spyware; I think they likely would switch to Administrator to run malware if they were asked nicely. MS does not seem interested in pushing users to run only as Limited Users, likely because it would break so many poorly-written Windows apps.
And a side note: programs that break when run under Limited User accounts often work poorly when used on PCs with multiple users--e.g. different users cannot save their own personal settings. No Linux program could get away with this. One of Linux's biggest advantages is that it was written for multiple users from the start. Multiuser support and security has only recently been grafted into Windows.
My guess is that MS will strive to ensure that Vista does not break old Windows apps. Thus, users will still need to be Administrators to run software. Worms and spyware will wreak havoc. Furthermore, application programmers will continue to be lazy and write software that only works if the user is an Administrator. More antispyware packages will come out, which usually cannot even delete spwyare. The cycle will continue.
I tried Mandriva 2006 on my laptop, motivated in no small part by Mandriva's claim that it is the only Centrino certified distribution. I was very disappointed. The startup process takes forever--it gets to the wireless adapter, then pauses for what seems like thirty seconds. Also, support for my touchpad and trackstick were spotty--sometimes they worked, sometimes not. SUSE 10.0, which has no boasts about Centrino certification, starts up speedily, supports my WPA network nearly perfectly (support for WPA is still lacking in some ways, however) and supports my pointing devices flawlessly.